Yesterday we talked about the opportunity for combining search engine optimization, social media and digital public relations. Today’s entry will discuss how to start going about it.

Leveraging Low and High Tech for Social Media Relations

“Fuzzy”. That’s how I would describe most companies’ thinking on social media, SEO and PR. How can marketers and companies start incorporating the new rules of the social web into a digital PR effort?

The answer to that question starts with understanding the social web and the technology that connects audiences. Forrester often refers to this social connectivity as “social computing”. The socialized web provides media relations practitioners and search marketers with an array of tools to make it easier for journalists and the media to cover their clients’ news, promote content and attract links. They key is knowing which tools are most appropriate and effective and which are simply “shiny new objects”.

Start with the fundamentals. RSS content distribution, blogs, social networks and microblogging (Twitter) for example, provide excellent channels for social message and news distribution. Establishing each channel as part of an organization’s news platform is a good first step in a digital PR program. Transparency is important, so such efforts should be branded appropriately and involves social media savvy staff that participate, not just push and pitch.

Speaking of push - From a Push PR perspective, social distribution of news provides opt-in networks the opportunity for updates on their terms and can also provide content for search engines. Making information available in different formats makes it easier for Journalists and bloggers to monitor information sources according to their preferences. A 2007 study by Bulldog Reporter/TEKgroup International reports 64% of journalists research stories through Google News and Yahoo News. 70% read at least one blog regularly and 44% visit a social media site at least monthly. Optimizing content for visibility in these channels increases the opportunity for the media to pull themselves to news content and when that information is used for a story, it can be just as beneficial for a client as the outcome of a media pitch. From a SEO perspective, links from articles on authoritative publications and blogs can deliver twofold value: traffic and a positive influence on search engine visibility.

What’s social about a news release? Another example of using technology to help improve PR/journalist communications is the social media news release. The premise of the SMNR is that traditional press release formats do not meet the needs of today’s journalists. In a fast moving world of short attention spans, micro content and the tendency to socialize information, the SMNR deconstructs the traditional news release format into essential information such as quotes, bullets and media elements. Links to share, bookmark and comment on the release are also often included. While the SMNR has yet to be accepted as a standard format by all of the major wire services, it has been adopted as an option by some and has gained popularity in tech savvy sectors and with bloggers.

Get in the media with media – Individual components of what make up the social media news release can be leveraged independently. For example, pitching and blogger relations that involve audio and video can be particularly productive. When reaching out to a particular publication or journalist, including links to a short podcast , video interview or demo can provide more engaging information about the news being promoted as well as sound bites. A link to a traditional press release is included as well for those not tuned in to a multimedia experience.

And now the pull
Hosting audio and video media using blog software in the form of an online media room allows those digital assets to be repurposed and optimized for search. Employing keyword optimization with news content can improve discovery on its own via traditional search as well as through specialized search channels such as blog, video, audio and social media. Employing a digital asset optimization effort with news content ensures each media type is keyword mapped and promoted on relevant channels.

Low tech is still important, if it’s social - Despite the digital and new media flavor of these Digital PR posts, some of the most effective online PR tactics are not necessarily about Web 2.0. Email and smile ‘n dial pitching as we know it may be on the way out for many of the social media PR evangelists, but journalists will always benefit from reputable story ideas and/or sources relevant to their publication’s readership. Sometimes it’s a matter of doing what it takes (reasonably and in a relevant way) to get attention. There is no substitute for voice and personal contact. Combined with an adept understanding of keyword optimized content and the social web makes low tech tactics even more effective with a Push/Pull PR strategy.

This is not the end - Beginning a digital PR program that’s optimized for search and social media means a real effort towards understanding the social web, SEO and the technologies that make them work. It also means listening, participating and not completely foregoing some traditional tactics. In the end, engaging the social web can only facilitate what’s been important for the media since day one: Find reliable sources and interesting story ideas that help the publication serve their readership and advertisers.

The last post in this 3 part series on Digital PR and SEO drills deeper into blogger relations and social media monitoring.

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What exactly, does Web 2.0, social media and even SEO have to do with public relations? Everything!

You’d be hard pressed to find any modern public relations agency practice that isn’t researching or already implementing a digital PR strategy including search engine optimization, blogging/blogger relations and social media. The winds of change are here and many Public Relations practitioners are scrambling to adjust to the opportunities presented by shifts in both consumer and journalist behavior online.

Look no further than popular Public and Media Relations conferences like PRSA International or some of the Bulldog Reporter events to see exactly how the PR industry is making a concerted effort to educate itself on how to adjust to new opportunities with Web 2.0., SEO and social media.

The Point of Connection is coming. In fact, I will be doing a half day, pre-conference workshop for the PRSA International event October 25th (1-5pm) on search engine optimization for news content. News SEO is distinctly different from SEO for lead generation since the desired outcome is not a new customer or a sale, but to be a source for a journalist writing a story and possibly an ongoing collaboration. News content optimization folds in nicely with digital asset optimization as we’ll be identifying the kind of content and assets most PR departments can best leverage for optimization.

Embrace the social, not the drive by. Some PR agencies have been able to fully embrace these shifts at their core, and not only become successfully involved with online communities but have been instrumental at facilitating PR’s role in the various online channels such as social networking, blogs and search. These agencies are best prepared to represent brands in a win-win situation over those firms that skim social media with drive by pitching and promotion tactics and without a full understanding of the medium.

Avoid the “dand bramage” of sloppy social. Not fully understanding social media communities for example, has resulted in far more brand damage rather than audience engagement. There’s an unfortunate history with some PR agencies of brand embarrassments as a result of fake blogs, user accounts on social news sites and fake social network participation. Apparently, when SEO consultants do this en masse, it’s perceived by some as an acceptable risk and by others as a bad marketing decision. Trying to fake the social web with an established brand is very risky and in my opinion, just plain stupid.

Get busy with Digital PR and public relationships. PR and media relations consultants and organizations are now charged with embracing the online culture of user generated media and the social web. Participation, transparency and conversation are the buzz words for the future of PR as in “Publicly Relating” or “Public Relationships”. The question is, “How to best start incorporating the new rules of the social web into a digital PR effort?”

To start answering that question, be sure to read tomorrow’s post in this series on leveraging high/low tech for social media relations.

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Content is King and links are Queen. Together with a nice dose of marketing they make a nice little kingdom. But what if you have trouble generating new content on a regular basis? How can resource strapped bloggers and busy web site owners leverage what they’re already doing for the benefit of their online audiences and better search engine visibility?

The answer to those questions lies in an analysis of the content creation processes within the overall organization. Companies like TopRank call that process consulting but in the meantime, here are 5 tips for those active in an industry to re-purpose content for the web.

• Get more power out of PowerPoint - Turn PowerPoint decks into articles and/or blog posts and vice versa. It’s smart marketing anyway, to build supporting editorial visibility to a topic you’re speaking on at conferences, with prospective clients or other situations requiring PowerPoint. Why not leverage the effort put into a PowerPoint presentation for inspiration to create a contributed article offered for republishing to other blogs or industry publications? Same goes for transforming a PowerPoint into a single or series of blog posts.Conversely, a great article that speaks well to your key strengths with research and examples can be a perfect outline for creating an effective PowerPoint presentation. Two birds, one stone. Nice.

• Let interviews do the talking - lf you’re fortunate to be interviewed by other bloggers, typically via email, leverage the answers you’ve given into a blog post or an article. Many such interviews do not include the full text of your reply, which you can use for your own online content. Another scenario is when the interview is by phone, podcast or video and you’ve been given prep questions in advance. Answer the prep questions in text and you have a great basis for several blog posts or an article.If the press and bloggers are not knocking on your door for interviews, no worries. Have a co-worker interview you using a digital camera about your perspective on a certain industry topic. Either transcribe the interview or have your co-worker create prep questions and answer them. You get video and show notes out of it, both great content for a blog.You could just write an article of course, but we’ve found the interview angle to be more motivating for many people not confident about exactly what to write.

• Break it up - Take a long article you’ve had published online or in a notable publication and break it up in to a series of blog posts. Do this AFTER the article runs in the publication! Add unique introductions and summaries along with plenty of related resource links. Of course this tactic assumes the original article is structured into topical segments, easy for breaking up. If you’re not writing articles that way, it might be time to start. Hint hint.

• Turn press releases into lemonade - Press releases written in AP style are pretty boring for consumers. Heck, they’re pretty boring for everyone. Take the key messages of the press release and rewrite conversationally as blog post making sure to cite examples, offer tips and to link out to relevant resources - ideally other influential blogs on the topic. There’s no harm in having a link to the original press release either.

• What’s old is new - A robust blog often posts an array of tips, insights and how to’s over time. We’ve been posting since Dec 2003 and believe me, there’s a lot of content update opportunities over 5 years of blogging.The search marketing industry changes pretty quickly creating the need to offer updated tips to stay current. What better source for those updates than old blog posts that were popular in the past? Update the title, ex: “All New Tips for Re-Purposing Blog Content” as well as the actual tips and make recent news references. Be sure to revisit what keywords are in demand by mining popular social tags and keyword research tools. Add new examples and links to external resources, ideally influential blogs on the topic. Those links out are like a virtual tap tap on the shoulder of the popular blogs and might just get you noticed. They can also be useful to readers and search engines.

Bonus:
When you shoot a video for online promotion, take screen shots of appealing moments. Share them on image sharing sites and social networks with a link back to the blog post where the video is embedded. If you manage multiple blogs on relevantly similar topics, show the image(s) on the other blog(s) along with a unique text transcription of the word content within the video. Link back to the blog post with video embedded.

These examples are bit close to home because many are what we do with Online Marketing Blog and our own involvement with the SEM industry. These tips are literally the tip of the iceberg and can be applied to just about any industry. It comes down to being both creative and understanding what your target audience wants. If they don’t respond well to repurposed content, then you’ll either need to hire a writer or get more creative in your packaging of information.

“Listen” to blog comments or lack thereof, web analytics and social media monitoring to get an idea of how audiences respond and also to get new ideas for more content. As with all marketing, it’s a matter of anticipating what the audience wants and doing your best to give it to them. If they don’t respond, use analytics and feedback to make changes and refine.

We’ve shown you some of ours, now how ’bout you show us a few of your tips for re-purposing content?

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Welcome back to the BIGLIST Update of SEO, SEM and Social Media Marketing Blogs. This week’s blog reviews include ecommerce, social media and PR as well as agency insights on industry trends. Enjoy!

eCommerce Optimization Blog - This ecommerce blog by eCopt (aka Matt Franklin) advises you’ll sell more online if you read the many tutorials, how to’s and tips on search optimization, usability and marketing.

Liberate Media Blog - This UK based agency blog with Andy Merchant, Tim Greenhalgh and founders Lloyd Gofton and Wendy McAuliffe covers emerging trends, industry observations, social media and digital PR topics.

Honorable Mention:

evilgreenmonkey - Rob Kerry is a British SEO consultant and editor on Sphinn, two things which must keep him terribly busy because we haven’t seen a blog post since July, something we’d love to see rectified.

Our hypothetical research says blogs with a BIGLIST BADGE are 78% more likely to impress the opposite sex. (link back optional)

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At marketing conferences readers of Online Marketing Blog mention to me frequently about the photo roundup posts we do as favorites. We certainly like to make those posts and since readers like to see them, here is a collection of favorite candids taken during SES San Jose.

Kevin Ryan, Misty Locke, Kevin Newcomb

Danny Sullivan, Matt Cutts, Kirsten Mangers

Shoe (SEO sucks) money, Brent Csutoras

Jill Whalen, Patricia Hursh, Christine Churchill

Matt Cutts, Michael Gray

John Diorio, Bryan Eisenberg

Dave Temple, Greg Jarboe, Andy Beal

Jessica Cameron-Ruud, Ashley Bruce
Thomas McMahon, Dana Larson

Todd Friesen, Brett Crosby

Chris Boggs, Rebecca Lieb

Roger Akers, Mike McDonald

Patrick Sexton, Lisa Barone

Dan Robbins, Heather Lloyd-Martin

Fionn Downhill, Bruce Clay
Kathleen Fealy, Matt Van Wagner

Of course, a good photo wrap up would be amiss without fun photos of Kevin Ryan and Danny Sullivan from the Google Dance. Any suggestions on good captions?

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What a great conference for SES at San Jose and the many new people to the event in attendance. Below are the TopRank team blog posts for the final day. Another big thank you goes to (L to R) Jessica, Ashley, Thomas and Dana for a great job covering sessions. If you saw these happy faces at the conference, be sure to comment and say hello.  Thanks to SES too, for having us.

• Google Dance 2008 Photos - TopRank Team
• Blog SEO Tips from SES San Jose - Lee
• Internet Marketing Conference Tips: Michael Brito Intel - Lee
• Social Media Analysis and Tracking - Jessica
• Internet Marketing Conference Tips: Heather Lloyd-Martin DMA SEMC - Lee
• Black Hat vs White Hat Playing Dirty with SEO - Ashley

It was a great conference with plenty of all new sessions and many tried and true topics. Of the sessions I was able to attend, I particularly enjoyed:

• Tech Giants Orion Panel
• The always entertaining Black Hat (aka no hat LOL) vs White Hat session
• The In-House SEO panel which tends to focus on giant companies for some reason, but was absolutely insightful for the kinds of projects we work on at TopRank

Of course, it wasn’t all work and no play at SES, no no no. There was the Internet Marketers Charity dinner and Party on Monday night and Google Dance on Tuesday night, which was full of even more activities from Rock Band to Robots to both inside and outside Dance floors.

Then on Wednesday evening there was curiously non-eventful Yahoo thing and the very eventful SearchBash put on by WebmasterRadio.FM and their sponsors. The SearchBash seems to get bigger and better every year.

I’d say by all accounts it was a successful conference. It didn’t break any attendance records - likely held to the same numbers as last year, food is still typical conference food and I’ll never know whey there is only a day and a half of exhibit hall, but the sessions got a lot of good feedback. I have to say again that the one Orion Panel I did see was excellent - really good stuff.

SES has come a long way this past year and many people in the SEM industry have good reason to see it continue to succeed.

See all of TopRank’s coverage at Search Engine Strategies San Jose here and hundreds of photos on our SES San Jose Flickr set.

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There were so many good photos taken at this year’s Google Dance that we decided to show a collage here with a link to the full set on TopRank’s SES San Jose Google Dance photos on Flickr.

A big thank you goes to the hard working TopRank blogging team at SES putting out an amazing number of posts and photos each day.

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Blogs have been abuzz for at least 4 years in the tech space and in the past 2-3 years in the business marketing world. Like many new marketing/communication channels, there continues to be a need to demystify shiny new objects and what they mean for businesses. Blogs and search engine optimization are no different.

One point I would make is that companies are wasting their long term time when setting up blogs purely for SEO purposes. It’s short term thinking and over time, results in difficulties with keeping momentum, new ideas and content. How do I know? Been there and done that, many times.

It’s far more realistic to implement blogs for specific purposes such as product communications, online newsroom, thought leader/strategy, customer support/communications, news, branding, advice/tips, aggregation of content in specific topics and many more. Regardless of the purpose, each blog implementation and ongoing management should have an intentional SEO effort.

Our session at SES San Jose on Blogs and Feeds included Amanda Watlington who gave a litany of advice and insights on strategic considerations for blogging ranging from goals to content sourcing to URL. She also offered an impressive list of specific tactics for optimizing both blogs and feeds. Amanda has been presenting on this topic at SES since the session was first implemented 3-4 years ago.

Chris Boggs gave advice on linking from blogs with examples of why not to link to press releases since they can get removed and not linking to other types of content because of archiving and lack of proper redirection.

Daron Babin made an argument based on his personal experience with the new WebmasterRadio.FM site on why it might be better in some cases not to use a blog platform, but to use a custom CMS (content management system) that publishes feeds. He offered numerous ranking examples and technical details of how the publishing platform automates many SEO friendly features of the web site.

My presentation on blog SEO focused on the value and opportunity with links specific to blogs and also offered 3 case studies.

In 2007 there were approximately 70 million blogs tracked by Technorati and this year they post 112 million, although there are likely far more than that. Out of all those blogs, 100 million have less than 20 inbound links. 400,000 blogs have more than 20 links and the top 2,600 blogs have over 1,000 inbound links.

Think about that. To be one of the top 1% of all blogs according to Technorati, it takes (among other things) 1,000 inbound links. That’s a number any competent search marketer could achieve in a reasonable amount of time provided there’s good content to work with. It represents a good illustration of the opportunity for SEOs to leverage blogs as a compliment to search engine optimization programs.

The first case study I presented concerned a Senior Housing Development Company, that wanted to provide an informal communications channel to address topics of interest to their target market and also to motivate a shift in thinking of their industry from “old folks homes” to “senior communities, senior living”.

Tactics included updating their blog and optimizing with keywords as well as leveraging categories to offer an online newsroom to archive optimized press releases both chronologically and by keyword-rich category.

Results included the blog becoming a top 5 source of referring traffic to corporate site, a huge increase in keyword rankings and a 500% increase in unique visitors.

The second blog SEO case study involved an online book and games retailer that wanted to tap into the passionate communities of games and puzzle enthusiasts online.

The tactical approach involved creating robust online game content include taking old style carnival games and having them made into Flash games to be played on the blog itself. A presence was created on Facebook as well as social media promotion efforts on StumbleUpon, Digg and bookmarking sites. Also, Twitter data was mined for users talking about games, puzzles, learning etc and followed to create a channel for promoting the latest games posted to the blog.

Results for the online puzzles site included a doubling of unique visitors from organic search, a quintupling of monthly traffic and more than qunitupling of page views to well over 400,000 per month. Now the site not only sells books and games but monetizes content/traffic with contextual advertising.

The third blog SEO case study involved our own blog, Online Marketing Blog. Our strategy was to transition a news blog into a unique content destination that would demonstrate TopRank’s thought leadership on topics ranging from Push and Pull Public Relations to Digital Asset Optimization. Increasing awareness in the search, PR and direct marketing industries as well as with prospective clients were specific, long term objectives.

Tactics for Online Marketing Blog include a regular schedule of unique content: industry and SEM agency insights, interviews, conference coverage, surveys, blog reviews and blog tools, photos & video.

Results include being ranked in the Technorati 100 (#31 favorite out of 100 million + blogs) and in top 15 on the AdAge Power150 list of top marketing blogs. However, the more meaningful results according to objectives include media coverage in influential publications:

Additionally, our blog ranks in Google on many, difficult keyword phrases such as “online marketing” #2, over 13,000 RSS subscribers and about 80k monthly web visitors. However, the most meaningful results are that we get daily advertising requests, weekly requests from the media, weekly requests to speak at conferences and daily new business requests.

Blogging alone can be a long term productive marketing channel. Blogging, optimizing and promoting great content delivers a far greater competitive advantage.

Other blogs covering or mentioning this session include:

• Search Engine Roundtable
• Search Engine Journal
• Web Mama Blog
• Erik Cunningham
• Simarprit
• StoresOnline

Be sure to check out all of TopRank’s coverage of SES San Jose as well as the SES San Jose photos on Flickr.

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Wow, what a conference! Search Engine Strategies is near it’s end and what better way to wrap up our series on internet marketing conference tips than with the following super-tips from super smart Michael Brito, Social Media Program Manager at Intel.

Michael worked with HP then moved on to Yahoo and is now with Intel practicing his adept social media stylings. Be sure to check out Britopian and the social media practitioner blog, Conversations Matter, for more of his insights.

Not all marketing conferences are created equal and from a content perspective, some are much better than others. Last month I attended SMX Social in Long Beach, California; and the content seemed to be more aligned with SEO than Social Media. Nonetheless, there were plenty of really good takeaways from the conference, but the true value for me was networking and meeting others who work in the same space as I do. Here are some other things to consider to prepare for conferences:

• Do your homework: Seek out the speakers/panel/participants and begin networking through blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc. prior to the event.

• Network as much as possible at the event; and dedicate some time to introduce yourself to others. Bring plenty of business cards.

• Bring a laptop, not only to take notes but also to Twitter any insights or revelations that may come upon you. Share everything; and don’t hold back. Who knows? You can be the first to share

• If you blog, attending conferences is a great way to brainstorm new post ideas so take good notes.

• Bring resumes; you never know, you may meet your next employer.

What’s not to like about bullet point marketing conference tips you can act on, right now? Thanks for the insights Michael.

It seems the theme we can extract from all this sage advice from our internet marketing conference tipsters is to first and foremost, plan ahead. Do a little homework before hand and have a plan for how you’ll capture, internalize and transfer the knowledge you gain. Have fun, but don’t overdo it. Realize the networking opportunities extend beyond prospects and also include competitive intelligence, marketing partners, vendors and new employees.

That’s a wrap for this series on getting the most out of internet marketing conferences. We hope you’ve enjoyed the series and would especially appreciate any additional tips our readers can provide. Many of the tips from the posts in this series came from conference organizers, programmers and speakers.

We’d like to hear more from the folks who pay the bills: attendees, sponsors and exhibitors. Please share your tips, thousands of other readers would love to see them!

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Social Search can be used to drive traffic, conversions, and increase ROI by monitoring conversations happening online. This panel is a first for SES with Marshall Sponder, Senior Web Analyst for Monster.com as the Moderator.

Industry leaders Todd Parsons, Co-founder and CPO of Buzz Logic, Rob Key, CEO of Converseon, Edmund Won, Vice President of Strategy for iCrossing along with Breanna Wigle, CRM manager for Military Advantage share insight into monitoring the conversation and best practices to track success.

Marshall kicked off the session making the case for Google to start measuring and reporting user trends in social media.

Categorizing referring traffic from social media is the first step in attributing success. Is your traffic coming from blogs, social network sites, message forums, bookmarking sites, micro media sites and photo sharing sites?

Rob spoke specifically to the expanding social media universe and developing a social media marketing strategy.

With the expanding social media universe, you need to go where the conversation is going in order to remain relevant and pertinent to your customers.

Designing a social media strategy in 3 phases:
1. Listen to map the landscape
2. Engage to participate and ignite the conversation
3. Measure and optimize based on performance

Listening to identify the external conversation is a crucial key to success. To really understand what community members are saying, you need be ‘mining the universe’.

Know what you need to know:
- How are people feeling about your brand
- Who are the most influential voices
- How effective are you contributing (or not) to the conversation
- What influentials should you cooperate with
- What collaborative environment ‘tool kit’ do you utilize
- What kind of content should you be creating
- How do you optimize this content for highest visibility

You have the potential to help amplify your customers’ voice and develop an engagement strategy, but first you need to know:
- Where is your current audience
- What are they saying
- Who are the influential voices
- What are they talking about
- What is their sentiment

To track results for your social media campaigns, harness data and develop reports to measure volume of conversation, voice sentiments, topic relationships, and competitors and features.

Product attribute Tag Clouds can provide a more qualitative snapshot of the words associated with your brand. The anatomy of search, as it relates to social media, is the opportunity for us to identify important keyword phrases to map an engagement strategy based on those keywords.

The grand unified vision is to over lay all relevant data sets from a social media campaign for correlative analysis which will eventually help enable predictive modeling. Brining all this data together, will help to determine and ROI for social media campaigns. Finding the meaning within the measurement is critical.

Breanna and Todd shared a social media case study, in which they leverage BuzzLogic as a tool to identify where the conversation is and how to identify influential voices.

Marketing strategy was to isolate the influencers and reach passionate readers of military defense news and information. Campaign goal: Increase product awareness to new influencers and their audiences as well as to convert visitors into RSS and newsletter subscribers.

The challenge was, they needed to find those influencers, while advertising to their audience manually was daunting, given the fragmented nature of social media.

What they found was they were able to better identify and reach influencers in the long tail.

Step 1: Uncover conversations
Specifically, look at blogs and forums to help drill down to specific topics, and identifying the influencers in the conversation.

Step 2: Rank the influencers and their content
Look at the influential blogs, and the posts specific to each conversation topic. How many times does the blog write about that specific topic? And what is the blog readership?

To maximize ad placement within social media, look at the targeted influencers’ networks and identify the most heavily traveled paths regarding specific topics.

Ad campaign overview:
- Critical that the creative is well done
- Create a unique highly targeted ad

Successful social media ads are:
- Compelling
- Informative
- Have a clear Call to Action (CTA)

Key Observations / Learning’s

1. Active conversations about specific topics attract passionate audiences. Highly targeted display ads can perform in this environment. Find active conversations where people are talking about the subject.
2. Social search is different then web search and traditional site-targeting, it’s about sourcing information via what trusted people are referring to. This can get you closer to a search like intent.
3. Influencers and their network relationships are key. The nature of linking connections matter when it comes to ad performance. Sites that connect to each other around specific topics are key targets.
4. Conversation offers a new window in analyzing user psychology and intent. The nature of the conversation can impact ad performance.

Edmond shared a case study with the audience, specific to engaging forums.

Situation: high tech client facing dissatisfied customers that vocalized their technological problems and frustrations in online forums. The solution was to identify, monitor and develop an engagement strategy on influential technical support communities. The goal was to provide support and help resolve problems with current products and improve community perception over time

Outcomes included:

Measuring and reporting
- Measurement is key
- Standard ROI measure does not work in social media

Monitoring metrics
- Tonality of user postings
- Categorization of discussion topics by product
- Site traffic for the forum sites

Engagement metrics
- Direct impact metrics
- Number of company postings
- Number of conversations engaged
- Number of members directly conversed with

Indirect impact metrics
- Page views of postings
- Number of links posted to client’s website
- Amount of traffic resulting from these links

Analyze page views over time
- Since many forums are optimized for search, engagement is highly visible….forever
- SEO continues to drive new page views for older postings

In addition, links posted in forums were tracked by thread and matched back to the client’s referring sources to determine the number of clicks. Often, a specific post generated more page views and clicks due to extremely high rankings within the natural search results for typical search queries.

Key takeaways

1. There is no one killer metric for social media
2. Track anything possible to glean insight
3. Social media is not just about numbers
4. It’s all relative (focus on benchmarking and trends)
5. Measuring social media does not = ROI for social media
6. View monitoring social media as a Social Intelligence Program, involving the world’s biggest focus group

This was a very interesting session. Each speaker shed new light to the question on most our minds: What’s the ROI for social media. My key takeaway is that there is no one right answer, and mostly the answer is based on the campaign objective. As we continue to advance our ability to track results and monitor trending, all you can do is keep testing to identify what gets results.

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SES San Jose week is nearly over one might say we’ve saved some of the best internet marketing conference tips for last with the ever enthusiastic and insightful Heather Lloyd-Martin.

Heather is Chair, DMA’s Search Engine Marketing Council and President of SuccessWorks. She also blogs about copywriting at SEO Copywriting.

Attend all the “search marketing site labs” or “search marketing clinics” you can find. During a site lab, a panel of experts review Web sites on the fly and discuss how to improve them for search positioning and conversions.

Here’s why they are so cool:

1. If your site is reviewed, you get free consulting from the best minds in the industry. Search marketing experts charge anywhere from $250-$500+ an hour. Even if a three or four-person panel spends just 15 minutes reviewing your site, you are seeing remarkable value for your money. I’ve seen panels suggest one site tweak that ended up making the company thousands of dollars.

2. If you are too shy to have your site reviewed, simply sitting in the sessions is a great learning experience. Chances are, you’ll pick up quite a few actionable tips and ideas for your own site.

Go to the networking parties. Sure, you may feel like you have 1,000 things to do after being away from work for a day. But it’s amazing how much business actually takes place during these things. If nothing else, walk around with a glass of water (or your beverage of choice) and try to talk to as many people as you can. By the end of the conference, you’ll have formed some fledgling business relationships that you can develop later. I’ve seen people hired during networking parties, I’ve seen partnerships formed - I’ve even seen a group of folks brainstorm a new business idea. The parties are definitely worth it!

You’ve got to love advice that explains specifically how you can get more than you’re money’s worth from an internet marketing conference. Excellent tips Heather.

As SES San Jose winds down, another value packed set of tips is coming your way this afternoon from Michael Brito, Social Media Program Manager at Intel.

If you’re attending SES San Jose this week, what tips can you share with our readers that will make the next SES even more productive for you?

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People love controversy, and that was clearly in evidence at this SES session covering the most controversial of SEO debates, White Hat versus Black Hat. Moderator Matthew Baily of SiteLogic and his crew of experts from both sides spoke to a standing-room only crowd. Panelists included:

• Greg Boser of 3 Dog Media
• Todd Friesen, Director of SEO at Range Online
• Bruce Clay, President of Bruce Clay, Inc.
• David Naylor, SEO of Bronco
• Jill Whalen, CEO of High Rankings

The speakers were, for the most part, vague about what color their hats were, but each expert drew upon their own professional experience, techniques and observations when responding to questions posed by Matthew and the audience.

What is Black Hat SEO?

Jill and Bruce kicked off the debate by responding to this question. Bruce stated that both the search engines and clients decide what is white versus black. White SEOs tend to play in the middle, Greys at the edge and Black Hats out of bounds. He believes Black Hat techniques are truly defined by whether or not they hurt the client.

Jill defined black hat as a technique designed to trick the search engines into believing a site is most relevant. She further went on to state that legitimate businesses shouldn’t need black hat techniques to rank.

What is White Hat SEO?

Matthew selected Greg, Todd and David to respond to this query. Todd began by polarizing the two sides, stating that anything damaging to a client is black hat while following Google’s regulations to the letter is white. He then clarified his position, by saying that the true color of SEO actions depends on the vertical. If everyone in a given industry is using ‘Black Hat’ techniques, are they really Black Hat?

“White Hat is a code name for SEOs with no game,” Greg said.

David contributed to this idea by comparing Black Hat techniques to a Porsche, whereas white hat techniques are very slow to see results. White Hats ensure all their tactics are within bounds, while Black Hats do whatever it takes to get links and high rankings.

Black Hat carries certain risks. Does White Hat SEO have any risks?

From this question the panelists took a look at which tactics would be defined as Black versus White Hat. Bruce argued that, because the search engine guidelines aren’t clearly defined, White Hats do overstep boundaries every now and then.

Those on the Black Hat side of the debate argued that tactics are designed to test and find the boundaries, not necessarily overstep them. Greg also pointed out that the majority of “Black Hat” firms don’t perform aggressive tactics without client knowledge.

Several speakers brought up the client side of SEO, indicating that sometimes the clients overstep bounds without SEO knowledge and make mistakes that are detrimental to their business.

As this question wrapped, Matthew opened the panel up to the audience for questions.

How do SEOs explain the benefits and risks of Black Hat vs. White Hat SEO to clients?

Earlier in the debate, Greg had mentioned a two-tiered strategy his firm often used: performing Black Hat techniques initially to boost client visibility while simultaneously laying the groundwork for a solid White Hat SEO campaign. He reiterated that a firm should explain both approaches to clients, including the benefits, drawbacks and risks, so that if a client does move forward with either they are aware and accountable.

The panelists also explored more ‘legitimate ways’ of getting an initial boost, such as Yahoo! Paid inclusion, pay-per-click campaigns or hiring a traditional PR firm.

Is there a White Hat approach to affiliate programs?

The response to this question quickly morphed into a discussion of large corporations and their sites’ supposed immunity from Google sanctions. While Bruce argued that large corporations had the most to lose from Black Hat backlash, both Greg and Todd argued that larger corporations faced virtually no consequences whereas smaller companies could lose everything. Several panelists discussed BMW’s short-lived banning due to some overseas Black Hat tactics.

In a surprise appearance, Matt Cutts stepped up to the microphone to defend Google. Matt claimed that big corporations are by no means immune to Google sanctions, and several big companies have had all or portions of their sites banned due to inappropriate techniques.

Do Black Hat techniques attempt to deceive searchers?

Black Hat defenders were quick to point out that SEO on both sides must still answer to the bottom line. Todd observed that companies are ultimately looking to sell their products, and sites must be seen by the appropriate target in order for this to happen. Black Hat isn’t about deceiving the searcher, but rather making it more likely a searcher will find a specific company within their search query.

In listening to the panelists’ responses, it is clear that the definition of White and Black Hat SEO is constantly changing, depending on the industry in which one is operating, the latest set of search engine guidelines and a number of other influencing factors. Though the speakers were sometimes at odds over responses, all had respect for one another and their opinions. And all were able to agree on one point: whether Black or White Hat, SEOs that are bad at their jobs are the ultimate offenders.

Check out the rest of the TopRank Teams’ posts on the SES San Jose conference on the TopRank Online Marketing Blog, and view more photos from the TopRank Team at TopRank on Flickr.

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Another fine day of blogging is under the collective belt of the TopRank team. Google Dance offered a very nice distraction last night and you can see by a quick search on Flickr the fun that was had. Thank you Google.

Here’s a wrap up of posts from the TopRank Blogging team for day three of Search Engine Strategies in San Jose:

• Successful Tactics for Social Media Optimization - Ashley
• News Search SEO - Jessica
• SEO Rehab & Intervention - Thomas
• Social Media Marketing - Jessica
• Ads in a Quality Score World - Ashley
• Search Behavior Update - Thomas
• Internet Marketing Conference Tips: David Berkowitz Search Insider Summit - Lee
• Getting Vertical Search Right - Thomas
• Landing Page Utopia Expert Roundtable - Ashley
• Internet Marketing Conference Tips: Chris Sherman Third Door Media - Lee

The revelry will be amped up this evening with the SearchBash event sponsored by WebmasterRadio.FM, PRWeb, BruceClay and Moniker.

Sponsored By: 2009 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide All New Report from Marketing Sherpa

Entering the realm of social media can be a bit like trying to enter an exclusive club. There are barriers to entry, codes of conduct, and unwelcome outsiders are quickly identified and ostracized. Yet, like an exclusive club, the benefits of membership can be great. Marketers looking to benefit from social media would do well to heed the advice of the three presenters in this SES session, moderated by Pauline Ore of IBM Corporation.

As Kendall Allen, digital marketing and convergence media consultant, pointed out, social media has come a long way since the advent of the Internet. Listservs, user groups and chat rooms have given way to the networking giants of Facebook and Myspace.

These highly organized, more defined social networks have made it possible for marketers to establish a brand presence among their consumers. Kendall stated that social media optimization should be integrated into any comprehensive, cross-platform marketing plan.

Kendall also pointed out a few new ways in which marketers can enter the social sphere. Services like Ning.com allow users to create their own unique social network. Many social networks allow brands to create applications, in the form of surveys, content sharing and more. Companies can enter the blogosphere with the help of Socialspark.com, which connects companies with bloggers who will right about their goods and services for a fee.

Li Evans, director of Internet Marketing at KeyRelevance, highlighted the varied benefits of using social media. Many people mention linkbuilding, but “Links are by products of social media,” Li said. While good social media practices will result in links, Li and the other panelists highlighted several important uses and benefits:

• Talk to your audience Use social media to interact with your consumers in a more ‘natural’ setting outside of focus groups and surveys.
• Gather information Find out what the public thinks of your brand. This can be especially useful to gather feedback when a company has recently implemented changes.
• Create brand ambassadors By directly engaging consumers with your brand, you can create a legion of devoted brand followers who will spread the word to others. This can also result in increased links.
• Give consumers a voice Allow consumers to collaborate with your brand in order to strengthen your products.
• Manage your reputation Directly address any negative brand noise on the web, and monopolize your search engine results pages (SERPs) with the additional content you’ve created. Many social media profiles will rank in SERPs for your brand, and images and video can show up in universal search.

However, before you enter the social world, do your homework. Li highlighted variety of different online users, from creators of content like bloggers, to joiners of social media, to spectators who merely read and absorb online content. She pointed out the importance of knowing where your audience lies in this spectrum, and planning your social media activities accordingly.

Once you’ve identified where and how your audience is using social media, you can begin to enter these networks and interact with them. David Snyder, Search Specialist at JRDunn.com, gave several useful tips for engaging consumers ‘socially.’

• Create optimized profiles Your username should relate to your company or product and be phrased in a way that is familiar to your consumers.
• Create original content Your social profiles should contain creative, thoughtful copy that provides value to your consumers.
• Use keywords In your tags and descriptions for photos, videos or other content, use keywords to ensure these items can show up in universal search.
• Be authentic All three panelists underscored authenticity as a cornerstone of good social media practices. Consumers can recognize a fake instantly, which can have dire consequences for your brand.

As the three speakers in this session indicated, social media can offer many benefits to the marketer savvy enough to use it correctly. Its potential uses move beyond mere linkbuilding to consumer research, reputation management and more. By following the rules, marketers can not only gain entry, but flourish in these social spaces.

Stay current with the SES San Jose conference by checking in regularly with the TopRank Online Marketing Blog, and view more photos from the TopRank Team at TopRank on Flickr.

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News search engines offer a great way to receive targeted traffic related to breaking topics or to help with a public relations launch. In this session, industry experts Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, Lisa Buyer, President & CEO of The Buyer Group and Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder, SEO-PR look at how to make use of press releases and news content to tap into the power of news search.

Lisa kicked off our session explaining that optimized press releases are a vital part of any news SEO strategy.

The first step to defining the online PR opportunity is to define the media segment. With your online PR campaign are you targeting editors, journalists, analysts or the media?

Media relations does not just mean getting your story found in the search results, but rather helping journalists find their story online.

So, how are journalists searching for news?
- Reaching out to social networks including Linked in and Facebook
- Searching in Google and Yahoo news for sourcing
- Requesting an email including link to Press release on PRWeb

64% of journalists report they use Google or Yahoo news services to follow the news. While 70% report they check a blog list for news on a regular basis.

Strategies for news search:
- Distribute over regular distribution networks (PRWeb & Businesswire)
- Leverage newsforce.com for to get headlines in top tier publications
- Have a newsroom blog or web site newsroom
- Being first to market, best opportunity for news search results

Consider developing a 12 month press release editorial calendar, including keywords relevant to a national event to increase visibility.

A marriage made in heaven - PR & SEO influences:
- News search results for optimal SEO
- Optimized web content
- Social media

Some things to know about Public Relations & Search:
- Currently under the radar when it comes to influencing SEO
- SEO agency should be working in synergy with your PR agency
- PR brings boardroom content to SEO
- PR professionals and agencies need to have expert working knowledge about SEO
- Online public relations strategies give business a strategic advantage over competition
- Integrate with PPC/SEM campaigns for best results

What’s cool about optimized press releases?
- SEO
- Credibility
- Perception
- Vanity
- Journalists find you and write about you
- People find you
- Online branding
- Lead generation?

Lee provided some best practices for optimizing news content to increase online visibility.

Most journalists have a beat and know the story, but they are searching online for sources and ways to populate that story. Increasingly, they are turning to social networks including Twitter and Facebook to find sources.

Most SEO efforts optimize for lead/sales generation, however news content is optimized for a different audience and outcome. Most journalists are looking for facts and trends, yet the outcome of both SEO and Online PR can be mutually beneficial.

News SEO Fundamentals:
- Focus on facts, research, and case studies
- Include keywords in news titles, navigation, content and hyperlinks
- Archive newsroom content and press releases by category (not just by date)
- Offer photos, video and demos
- Promote content and attract links
- Monitor social and web analytics

What news content should you be optimizing?
- Press releases
- Online newsrooms
- Corporate blogs
- Reports / white papers
- Email newsletters
- Webinars
- Podcasts, internet radio shows
- Interviews (coach interviewee on keywords)

Digital Asset Optimization (DAO) is a holistic approach to optimization, taking SEO to the next level. DAO is the practice of taking inventory of all available news content, optimizing it based on relevant keywords, and then promoting it to distinct online marketing channels.

Yes, optimization is important, however, Lee stressed the need to never stop acquiring inbound links.

Inbound links can come from:
- Pickups on blogs
- Syndication (RSS)
- Online newsroom
- Blog post
- Social bookmarks

Bottom line: Package news that will travel

Newsroom optimization best practices:
- Create an optimized template
- Include title tags
- Keyword rich categories
- Keyword rich anchor tags

Press release optimization best practices:
- Think upward and to the left
- Optimize for people first, search engines next
- Use keywords in title, subheading, and body of the release
- Don’t obsess over keyword density
- A 500 word release should include the keyword 2 to 4 times
- Use keywords when linking back to the company web site
- Add media: images, podcast, video, pdf/word doc

Press release SEO analytics to measure success:
- picks ups (traditional & bloggers)
- inbound links
- Google & Yahoo news inclusion
- Social bookmarks
- Keyword ranking for press release
- Keyword ranking for target web page
- Traffic to web site
- Conversions: media inquiries

Lee provided a few parting thoughts to optimize online campaigns, including:
- Journalists increasingly rely on search for news sources
- If it can be searched, it can be optimized
- Focus news SEO for the media more than sales

Greg shared a case study on press release optimization, in which the campaign was designed to address the challenge: How do you optimize for ‘not’ news when the initial campaign launch failed?

If your campaign is newsworthy, but was ignored by both the press and the bloggers, what’s next?

The answer: combine a push / pull strategy to get your message out there:
- Push: through blogger outreach
- Pull: with optimized press releases

A multi-phased launch approach can help you determine what works in the first phase and then amplify that approach in the second phase.

In a multi-phase campaign launch:
- Outline the content for each phase
- Leverage keywords appropriately for that content
- Include images to increase results

In conducting blog outreach, Greg stressed the importance of being transparent of who you are as well as the need to provide useful, ‘insider’ information for blog readers.

Extending the campaign to include blog outreach can increase online coverage and the number of credible inbound links to a web site.

Lessons Learned:
- Focus on creating useful information, and rich content using keywords
- The more useful content you have, the greater the chance it will get picked up
- Creating good content pays off and can increase editorial (authoritative) inbound links

How are you incorporating SEO into your newsroom, and online PR campaigns?

For more photos from SES San Jose, be sure to visit TopRank on Flickr.

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The SEO Rehab & Intervention was a great session oh how we are all addicted to something in our industry. Granted it was a bit of an un-structed session, but that’s what made it entertaining. The discussion flowed from chocolate cake to Twitter and SEO.

Here are a few good tips:

• Spend your time on what your doing next. Things change, so should you.
• Why check your page rank daily when it changes quarterly?
• When page rank does change, and if yours goes down, check the sites in your industry. Did they all go down? If so, stop panicking.
• Other time wasters include checking rankings, backlinks and pages indexed constantly.
• Feed your addition with tools that will do the checking for you. Then you can get a quick overview.
• Look at overall trending. If your links go down one month, is it going down month over month? What’s the trend?

Also, here is the SEO (Sanity Escaped Organically) 12 step program:

1. Take care in choosing KPIs. Don’t rely on rankings.
2. Set realistic objectives
3. Employ people who know what they are doing.
4. Build your website for seo from the bottom up.
5. Only work on projects which deserve to rank.
6. Only work on projects where there is a market.
7. Be different - ideally unique - in the market place.
8. Get Good Training
9. Understand the mechanics
10. Don’t try to be an expert in every SEO technique. Focus on your strength.
11. Be Patient
12. Enjoy your addiction.

It was an interesting session with not a lot of takeaways, but a lot of fun none the less.

–

Check out all of TopRank’s coverage of SES San Jose and sessanjose08 Photos.

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Social media marketing is fast emerging as a must-have in search strategies. In this session, industry experts Vanina Delobelle, Global Product Director for Monster, Erik Qualman from Search Engine Watch and Global VP of EF Education, along with Brnet Csutoras, Online Marketing Consultant offered some tips to successfully integrate social media into your search marketing mix.

Vanina kicked off the session this morning discussing what social media is and how, when used correctly, it can benefit your business.

So, what is social media?
- Social networks like MySpace, Facebook and Xing
- Forums such as Phorum and phpBB
- Microblogging with twitter or pounce
- Multimedia sharing sites like YouTube, Flicker and Slideshare
- Diggs with Wikio and digg
- Blogs and live casts
- Virtual Universes like Second Life

Social media is a user centric approach to online marketing and each of these sites are built with the user and community in mind.

Use social media to:
- Connect with people
- Maintain brand positioning
- Generate more traffic
- Enlarge the targeted segment
- Increase the user experience

And also…leverage current marketing results to get better brand awareness, get better brand management, get better user stickiness, get better quality products, and get more sales.

Requirement for social media include:
- Global means local. Because we deal with communities we need to be close to them
- Resources. Community managers need to get more focus
- Consistency. The effort should start and last
- Content. Content should get more focus

Because social content is updated more often and users link to the content, social media sites rank within the search engine results page, providing businesses another opportunity to increase visibility online.

Erik addressed the users specifically within the social media communities and lessons learned to launch a successful social media campaign.

Lessons learned:
1. Don’t treat social media like every other channel you use. Community members don’t want to be added to your database, they want to have a conversation.

2. Figure out what users want and what you offer, don’t provide irrelevant information, or applications if your customers don’t want it. Identify what it is that only your company can provider the user base.