Marketer Blog

Plenty of bloggers are talking about the inevitable intersection of social media marketing and search engine optimization. Keyword optimized social content and channels of promotion provide abundant signals to search engines for improved visibility on standard, social and real-time search.

The changing nature of social media marketing and optimization create the need for tools whether for research, marketing and promotion or analytics. Here are 11 social media and SEO tools you might find useful:

• howsociable.com – Social visibility score
• knowem.com – Profile building tool
• Social Media for Firefox – Build a powerful social profile on social news & bookmarking sites
• semrush.com – Find competitor organic search rankings
• Google Insights – Keyword demand trends
• Page Inlink Analyzer – Analyze inbound links, their Delicious bookmarks & keyword tags
• majesticseo.com – Historical back-link tracking
• trackur.com – Social media monitoring
• socialmention.com – Real-time social search & scoring, social keyword research
• bit.ly – Search friendly URL shortening with analytics
• analytics.postrank.com – Track social engagement with combined Google & social analytics

Below are screen shots of each tool with a more detailed description of how you might use them.

HowSociable is a useful tool to quickly gauge the social presence of a particular keyword or brand name. Agencies like TopRank Marketing will use this kind of tool (customized) to take snapshots of customer social presence metrics for social media optimization programs. For each social site polled, you can clickthrough to see specific mentions.  This is a characteristic of more advanced social media monitoring tools, but for those that want a quick glimpse, HowSocialble is easy to use and the price is right, just like these free social media monitoring tools. However, if you want more comprehensive brand search and monitoring, then a paid social media measurement tool is worth the investment.

KnowEm is both a free and a paid service that will help you easily and quickly check whether your brand terms or other keywords have been registered as social profiles on a wide variety of social media web sites. Everything from blogging platforms to social news and bookmarking services are included. If you don’t want to complete all those profiles yourself, you can pay knowem to do it for you.  Companies invest a lot in building their brand, so this tool is helpful both for creating off site promotion channels as well as guarding against brand name squatters.

Social Media for Firefox is the only browser addon in our list and can be a handy tool to identify upcoming news items that are gaining popularity on certain social news and bookmarking services. A big part of building a more influential user profile is to be a consistent source of submissions for articles that become popular. This addon helps identify articles that are becoming popular on services like Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon giving you a heads up to submit to other services.  The logic is that if a news item becomes popular on one service it has a good chance of becoming popular on others.  Relevance, timing and focus are key as is patience for this kind of tactic.

SEMRush is an interesting tool for identifying the keyword visibility, both organic and PPC, on Google for pretty much any domain name you might be curious about. Your own or competitors for example. A common question for marketers is, “What are my competitors optimizing for?”. This tool helps uncover that insight and in combination with other standard and social keyword research, can be very helpful insight in a social media optimization program.

Google Insights for Search is a handy tool to research trends

What low cost or free tools have you found to be effective for social media optimization tasks?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | 11 Free Tools for Social Media Optimization | 5 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

When you think of successful consumer brands in the social media space, names like Dell, Zappos and Pepsi come to mind. Another is Ford. Last year the Ford Fiesta movement generated tremendous amount of awareness (and pre-orders) for a vehicle that wasn’t available to the public yet. At the same time, it inspired a community to engage, create content and continue discussions about the Fiesta with over 7 million video views.

While in Dearborn, Ford’s Head of Social Media, Scott Monty, extended to me an invitation to The Henry Ford Museum, The Rouge Factory and a visit to Ford’s World Headquarters where we did a short interview. In this interview, Scott talks about the place for social media with Ford’s new product lines, local social media work with Chapter 2 of the Fiesta movement and advice for companies on empowering communities.

Being able to take a learn about the history of this 100+ year old company through experiences at The Henry Ford and Rouge factory tours was very informative. Then being able to sit down with Bob Kreipke, Ford’s full time historian and hear stories about Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, company history and evolution was priceless.

Fast forward over 100 years and Ford is a very different company, as is the automotive industry. It’s not enough to be innovative but to be able to actually connect with customers in more meaningful ways. Based on my discussions with Scott, Ford is very committed to making those connections.  Watch the interview below to get more insight on how Ford is approaching social media:

Click here to view the embedded video.

By leveraging technology and the social web, Ford is moving from being known from a truck and Mustang company to a car, utility and truck company.  I think the decision to focus on local social media marketing is great evidence of understanding audience in a social strategy. So much of what companies are doing in the social space is more like a shotgun approach based on popular applications vs focusing on where actual customers spend their time.

Check out the The Ford Story, a great example of a corporate social media aggregator not only of Ford social web participation, but of what others are saying about their brands. I can’t imaging any active brand online not launching a site like this.

What are some great examples of consumer brands you think we should focus on in future posts? What kind of insights would you like to learn more of from those kinds of companies when it comes to the social web?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Ford’s Focus on Social Media: Scott Monty Interview | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

As with many bloggers, we’ve been using royalty free images for many years.  Many bloggers make use of images from Flickr and we have too but you can’t always find the right image there. I’ve even made a point to take more photos of people, places and things while traveling for later use in blog posts like the one to the right.

The stock photo site we’ve been using for several years recently decided to essentially double their prices (no matter how they spin it, that’s what they did) and it prompted me to ask the excellent people I’m connected with on Twitter for their suggestions on royalty free photography and image web sites. Here is a collection of 9 such sites that were suggested via Twitter or researched by TopRank.  Which leads us to our poll for the most “blogger friendly” royalty free stock photo site:

For a list of over 100 free stock photo sites, visit this link.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Poll: Best Royalty Free Stock Photo Sites for Bloggers | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

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

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

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

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

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

1. Build a Network, Then Start a Group
Getting started with a LinkedIn marketing strategy involves two important steps, the second of which is dependent on the first:

• Create a personal account and build a network of contacts. Reach out to customers with whom your business has a solid relationship – those who truly know your company and its products or services. Ask them to write recommendations for your company, which will appear in your profile. And don’t forget to ensure all employees are part of the network as well.
• Once your personal account is setup, create a group for the brand. By creating a group for your brand, you’ll be able to maximize reach beyond your network. Within the brand group, you can start discussions, share news, post jobs and create subgroups.

2. Make the Most of Your Profile
For the LinkedIn community, your profile will be this first item they see, so treat it as you would any landing page. To make the most of your profile:

• Hyperlink using keywords. Include relevant URLs in your profile, and use links with anchor text. For example, instead of “My Blog,” use a keyword to describe it such as “SEO and Online Marketing Blog.” (see image below)
• Use keywords in descriptions. That includes the summary, specialties, experience and all other description categories.
• Include an image in your profile. LinkedIn, after all, is a social networking channel. So add as many personal touches as possible to maximize engagement and put a face to the brand.
• Caption: Include blog or website links in your profile using anchor text.

Include links in your LinkedIn profile using anchor text.

3. Leverage Third-Party Applications
Today, there are a host of third-party applications available to help you make the most of your LinkedIn activity. For example:

• Box.net: Add links to files like resumes and marketing kits
• Slideshare: Share business presentations and demos with your network
• Company Buzz: Monitor messages sent out on Twitter about your brand or other subjects
• TripIt: See where members of your network will be travelling to and when you’ll be in the same city

For an upcoming trip to Dallas, my contacts that will also be there are identified.

4. Update and Engage Frequently
Think of LinkedIn marketing efforts as you would blog, Twitter or Facebook marketing efforts: The more activity and interaction, the better the results. To consistently engage with your network:

• Sync blog posts to your profile with tools like Blog Link or WordPress LinkedIn Application
• Frequently update your profile with the LinkedIn status feature, much like Facebook status updates
• Leverage the LinkedIn Question and Answer function – participate in others’ questions and ask your own

5. Promote Your Profile
In order to expand your network, LinkedIn marketing efforts – like anything else – must be promoted in other channels. Include a link to your profile on your website and blog, in individual blog posts, in email signatures and even on business cards. Be sure to optimize your profile for important and relevant keywords. Allow enough of your profile to be public so search engines can rank that content accordingly.

These tips, of course, are just the tips of the iceberg when it comes to LinkedIn marketing tactics. What specific tactics have you found successful for marketing on LinkedIn?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | 5 Ways to Weave LinkedIn Into Your Marketing Mix | 3 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

It’s a little ironic that I’m writing this post about iPhone apps using WordPress on a Motorola Droid (Devour actually), but it allows me a chance to experience how hard it is to blog, using a tiny tiny tactile keyboard and also finally get this post started.

Ah, back to a full sized Logitech keyboard and mouse. Much better.

Popularized by iPhones, there are apps for just about everything, including tools to help social media marketers on the go. In fact, there are over 100,000 iPhone applications to choose from. Many of those apps are extensions of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Others serve as productivity tools for more efficient social web participation or for content creation.

As a content marketer that is also a big fan of social networking and sharing, here are a few of my favorites:

Echofon – Twitter usage on iPhones must be out of this world and while there are many great apps for Twitter including Seesmic, Hootsuite, Tweetie and Tweetdeck, I like EchoFon the best. It’s amazingly easy to switch between multiple accounts, its fast and there’s an auto-complete feature when typing in Twitter handles that saves a lot of time.  It works with lists very nicely but does not offer scheduled tweeting, which I don’t personally use much anyway.

Facebook – I probably use Facebook more on the iPhone than through the web site. Personal social networking or networking as an individual on Facebook is pretty easy to do with the app. What I’ve pictured below is where I also get a lot of productivity, which is being able to manage our blog’s fan page. We’ve gone from about 80 to over 1,400 fans in about 3 months and the convenience of adding to discussions via the iPhone has a lot to do with that growth.

Foursquare – You know those social media shiny objects that you’ve come to avoid but then they gain so much momentum and buzz that you have to try it out and then you end up liking them? That’s my Foursquare experience. It was the same with Twitter. Using Foursquare for marketing as an individual isn’t as obvious as what one might do with Foursquare location based advertising.

However, it can be pretty handy at conferences and events for announcing/leaking certain kinds of information. As a retailer or other business with a brick and mortar presence, can you imagine how useful it would be to know who your most active consumers are that are also active on the social web?

LinkedIn – While I’m not always by a computer (can you believe it?) I almost always have my phone with me and that makes accepting LinkedIn invitations (or not as you can see below) easy to do. Status updates are easy to do and can be seen by as large a social network as you care to develop. Thus the LinkedIn iPhone app makes it easy to feed that network. Quality trumps quantity here by far.

UStream Live Broadcaster – Capturing live video and audio plus the ability to poll viewers and promote on Twitter seems like a fantasy app for a social media marketer. Especially when you’re at an event and you want to capture something and get it out immediately. It’s amazing how easy the UStream iPhone app (U Broadcaster) makes this process.

Flickr – Capturing and sharing images is an essential part of digital asset marketing and social media marketing. The Flickr App makes it pretty easy to upload and manage images taken with your iPhone.

Google Buzz – Privacy issues aside, there’s plenty of buzz about Google Buzz and the only way I’ll use it is on my iPhone.  Let’s face it, with Google’s dominance and momentum, you can’t afford not to stay on top of their obvious efforts to become a social media powerhouse. It’s not exactly a standalone app though. However, Google makes it easy to add a bookmark to Buzz on your iPhone from Gmail so you can use it directly.

Update via Mashable: Apparently there’s a new app called Buzzie for Google Buzz on the iPhone.

AudioBoo – This is a handy tool for capturing and promoting on-the-move podcasts. It’s really a no-brainer except when you’re like me the first time I interviewed Vanessa Fox for a podcast and held the iPhone right side up, which for podcasting with an iPhone, is upside down since the microphone is on the bottom. Doh!

AnalyticsApp.com – What good is marketing online if you’re not MEASURING? For those with Google Analytics implemented on their sites and blogs (who doesn’t?) this app gives you insight into all the details of web visitor data you’ve come to love with GA.

Are these the bestest, newest and most awesome iPhone apps for Social Media Marketers? For this marketer, the apps I’ve listed above take care of 90% of my mobile social media needs. In fact, 4 or 5 would probably do the trick.  I do wish there were more social media monitoring iPhone apps though. Especially those that offer Social CRM functionality with your contact list. I’m also keen on finding task management apps that work well with Outlook.

What are your favorite iPhone apps for social media marketing?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | My Top iPhone Apps for Social Media Marketing | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

“If you don’t eat your meat you can’t have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat!” Pink Floyd, The Wall.

That quote from Another Brick in the Wall reminds me of the cart horse situation with social media marketing:  If you don’t know your customers you can’t engage them. How can you ever hope to engage your customers if you don’t understand who they are?

There are so many questions from marketers and agencies alike about how best to grow businesses through online channels.  Questions are particularly popular when it comes to best practices for social tools. “Always do this” and “always do that” is what most marketers have been bombarded with for as long as there have been conferences to attend and email newsletters to subscribe to.

Inevitably, many of the most pressing questions about social media come down to understanding who you’re trying to reach. For example, some common questions I hear a lot at conferences:

Q: Should we blog or focus on Twitter? Is Facebook or LinkedIn a better fit? Foursquare or Gowalla? (Or other shiny object)

A: Find where your customers spend their time and spend your time there too.

Q: What type of social content should we create? How often? Where?

A: Study your customers as they create, consume and share content.  Then you’ll know the what, how, when and where. They why has to come from your organization.

Q: What  is the most overrated social media site?

A: The one your customers aren’t using.

So much time is spent on tactics without a good understanding of goals, audience and how to measure success with social media programs.  As we discuss Roadmapping social participation with companies, audience research is one of the key areas of importance. As I mention above, how can you reach and engage customers if you don’t understand them?

Let’s say you’ve used a social media monitoring tool like SM2 to identify who is talking about your brand and topics of importance to your prospects and customers. Within this analysis, you’ve noticed that there’s alot of activity on Twitter.

A logical next step might be to further investigate influential Twitter users.  If a paid tool like Radian6 or SM2 don’t fit your budget you can try free tools Trackur or Social Mention to gain some insight into content types, commentary and sharing/publishing platforms.

Other tools you might use to identify influentials on Twitter include directories like wefollow.

Under the tag, “SEO” you can see that Matt Cutts is the most influential.  Since reaching out directly to a popular person on Twitter, especially a Google employee, might not be prudent, it can be helpful to learn more about that individual and who they are influenced by as well as who they influence.

Using the site Klout, you can see a Twitter influence score (78 is pretty high) and other information including predictions on who is most influenced by Matt and more interestingly, who may be an influencer of Matt Cutts.

There are other tools that show communities surrounding an individual such as Top Twitter Friends.

As for understanding what kind of content someone likes on Twitter, you can look at retweets and @ responses. You can also look at what kind of content and what user tweets get favorited most,. Favstar is a tool that does just that.

In this example, Favstar shows which Tweets Matt Cutts has favorited. The types of content and users can be noted for guidance with future outreach.

I mentioned free social media monitoring tools above including Social Mention. Below is a screengrab that shows how much information you can get from Social Mention with options to download into Excel friendly formats.

Other Twitter user analysis tools worth looking at include Twitter Analyzer and Twitalyzer.

The basic tools I’ve shared here are just that, basic. They’re good for poking around and getting familiar with discovery of social content and influencers.  However, it would take a more robust tool set (which is what Agencies and larger companies do) to scale monitoring over many topics, influencers and conversations.

Other customer social media research tactics include:

• Survey your existing customers for social preferences and behaviors
• Review web analytics for social media sources and behaviors
• Tap into Compete, Quantcast, Alexa  information on specific social sites
• Leverage profile information provided by advertising staff on social sites themselves

In combination with directly observed and experienced customer behaviors and preferences, general site data can compliment understanding of customer social content needs.  What are some tactics and tools you’ve found useful for researching customers on the social web?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Customer & Influencer Research in Social Media | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

Relevant, Consistently Updated Content + Flawless Technical Functionality & User Experience = Perfect Blog Launch

What’s missing from the equation above? You guessed it: blog promotion.

Creating a glitch-free blog with informative content means next to nothing without attracting readers.

Start promoting your blog today with these five effective tips:

1. Involve influential industry bloggers.

By linking to popular blogs, you can gain the attention of both the influential blogger and his or her readers.

But your blog won’t be the only one to benefit. You’ll be giving the other blog a little link juice – and be paying them a compliment at the same time.

Try out a few of these ideas for leveraging other blogs:

• Create a post around an interesting concept published by an influential blogger: Be sure to attribute the information to the blogger and link to his or her post. And don’t forget to offer additional unique insight to make the post your own.
• Interview an influential blogger and turn it into a Q&A post: That blogger is sure to link to your post, and his or her readers are likely to visit your blog as a result. Side benefit: Including the insight of a thought leader will help position you as a thought leader as well.
• Create a list of influential blogs: Include popular blogs from your industry, and include a link, short description and even a screenshot. Online Marketing Blog has successfully done this with its BIGLIST of online marketing blogs. Publish a blog post each week highlighting one or two new blogs to promote the list and acquire another link to the list.

2. Promote your blog via social media.

If your organization already has a solid presence on Twitter, Facebook or other social media channel, leverage your followers or fans to promote your new blog.

For example, when a new post goes live, create a short tweet with a link back to the post – and provide the link on your Facebook fan page.

A few tips to keep in mind:

• Whenever possible (we know how quickly 140 characters can be used up!), include the blog name in tweets and other social media messages.
• Auto-feed new posts to your social media accounts with tools like FeedBurner. But if you choose this option, make sure your headlines are as compelling as possible for social media.
• Maximize promotional efforts by asking employees to add the blog URL to their signatures and personal social media accounts. Employees can also re-tweet posts that they find interesting.

3. Create “link-bait” posts and “sticky” headlines.

Creating compelling headlines or posts that resonate with social web users is another way to garner attention for your new blog.

Try some of these ideas:

• Write counter-intuitive posts – i.e, “The 10 Worst Online Marketing Ideas” or “The 5 Quickest Ways to Get Caught in the Spam Filter.”
• Incorporate celebrities into posts (if appropriate for your industry) – i.e., “Top 10 Celebrity Tweets of the Week”
• Leverage the sticky headline formula, “number + adjective + sticky message” – i.e., Lee’s recent post, “10 Must Read Tips to Start a Small Business Blog” (see image below)

4. Promote the blog on your corporate website.

It’s important to gain some valuable real estate on the homepage of your corporate site – particularly in the early stages of getting a new blog up and running. Create a button with a link to the blog to appear on the homepage, or at the least provide a link to the blog in the nav. The Otter Group does a good job of promoting its blog on the homepage of its corporate website (see image below).

In addition to the homepage, ensure the blog is included in the upper and right-hand nav on all website pages. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for visitors to find your blog.

5. Promote the blog offline.

For all of the online channels available to promote your blog, there are just as many offline channels to leverage. Don’t limit yourself to the online world. Instead:

• Add your blog URL to business cards.
• Promote your blog at industry events.
• Get print publications to pick up blog posts.
• Use word of mouth to let customers and business partners know of the new blog.
• Include the blog URL in the boilerplate of press releases (and in online releases, too).

Of course, these five tips are just a few of many ways to promote and market business blogs. Whatever promotional efforts you choose, look for tactics that will help you reach business goals whether they are increasing awareness, garnering buzz in the media or driving additional website traffic.

What tactics have you used to promote your blog?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | 5 Sure Fire Tactics to Promote a Business Blog | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

Our agency TopRank Marketing has been working with Marketo providing SEO, content and blog marketing consulting services for about 2 years. I finally had the opportunity to meet Marketing VP Jon Miller in person today prior to his presentation at Online Marketing Summit: Marketo’s Secret Sauce for Demand Generation.

Marketo is one of the fastest growing software companies in the U.S. and this session is a case study for how Marketo has achieved that rate of growth.

Marketo launched their main product about 2 years ago. In 2 years, they’ve signed up 400 customers at a value of about $30,000 per year in recurring revenue. The current run rate is over $12 million which is pretty impressive for a 3 year old company.

Marketo revenue cycle benchmarks show that Marketo spends about 50% more than comparable companies on Marketing but less on sales. Their customer acquisition cost are much less than other software companies. Marketo has a very efficient marketing and sales effort. How is that so? They use their own product and have made smart investments in their marketing efforts.

Rather than a sales cycle, Marketo focuses on the revenue cycle that starts from awareness to becoming a customer.

Awareness > All Names > Engaged > Prospect Qualified > Lead > Sales Lead > Opportunity > Customer

Marketo keeps their landing page forms very simple. They then actual manually check the company web site and decides if that inquiry is a worthwhile prospect. Since they’re marketing automation company, adding a manual process may seem contradictory but such activity helps sales people evaluate companies a lot more effectively.  Contacts are then nurtured and scored. If they score above a certain level, they become a “lead”.

Awareness – Investments in awareness and brand have paid off in a very big way for Marketo. They’v found it to be very effective to focus on content and thought leadership through tips, best practices and ideas that are available without registering.

Marketo’s blog is their single most effective marketing tactic. They’ve actually diverted marketing investment away from other activities and focused instead on blogging.  Woot! TopRank gets a shoutout as Marketo’s SEO agency.

PPC is the top converting tactic and their best leads are coming in from inbound: search and word of mouth. Once a prospect is generated, sales follow-ups are personalized and very soft touch.

What is Lead Nurturing? The art of maintaining permission to stay in front of your buyers as they educate themselves. The key to lead nurturing is relevance.

Types of Lead Nurturing: Stay in touch, Incomin lead processing, Accelerators, Lead lifecycle.  If you get a new prospect, about 1/4 are sales ready. Putting lead nurturing in place resulted in 50% more qualified sales leads at 33% of the cost.

Content mapping. Make sure content is relevant to where buyers are in the buying cycle. Think big, start small and move quickly. It doesn’t have to be your content either. You can package other content with your observations surrounding it.

Companies with sales people that spend the time to qualify leads ultimately generate more revenue.

Lead scoring rules focus on behaviors: Latent and Active. Latent means people engaging with content. Active means showing interest intent such as Googling Marketo’s brand name as well as downloading reviews, visit web site 2x in one week.

There’s a certain threshold that’s met to initiate follow up. There’s a huge drop off for leads that are not responded to with 5 minutes or less.

Inbound leads are segmented: target companies, enterprise companies, other. Also segmented by latent or active. Response time is based upon meeting scoring criteria.  Inbound calls, contact us forms, and qualified free trial requests get “Active” follow up. ie speedy follow up.

At the end of the 21 day lead nurturing period, a final email is sent giving options for recipient to self score themselves in terms of interest in Marketo.

No lead left behind: There’s an automated process that reminds sales teams to follow up. This dropped unresponded leads from 33% to 5%.

Lessons learned: Focus on the entire revenue cycle, not just generating new leads. Do not understimate the value of creating content! Build trust and reduce risk vie thought leadership and social media. Leverage analytics.

You can learn more about Marketo on their blog and on Twitter.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | OMS10 B2B Marketing Case Study: Marketo | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

TopRank ran a survey of journalists, reporters and editors on their use of search and social media in 2008. We found 91% use search engines like Google to do their job. 64% use social networks.  Published in Jan 2010, a George Washington University and Cision survey of journalists reports 89% use blogs and 65% use social networks to research stories.

As prep for a presentation I’m giving Thursday at Online Marketing Summit on the intersection of SEO, Social Media and PR, I reached out to a few local journalists and industry news contacts and asked for examples of how they used search engines or social media to do story research.

Newsrooms are cutting staff and reporters and editors are hard pressed to do more with less. Tools like search engines and social media make available a tremendous amount of information in real-time.  The news world is a world of deadlines and it would seem the use of search and social networks to source experts or people/companies that fit a story angle would be ideal. Even respected news organizations like the BBC are encouraging their journalists to embrace social media.

This kind of insight is very helpful to understand how companies can make their news content more easily discovered via social web participation, content and optimization. Why is that important?  According to TV News Reporter Jason DeRusha, “Private business does a horrible job cataloging their expertise in a manner that’s search engine friendly.  This is a real opportunity, as journalists become much more crunched for time, and use search as quick way to identify local experts.”

Here are a few examples of how journalists use search engines and social media tools to connect with story subjects. Not all of them are business situations, but are helpful as feedback on where to spend time creating, optimizing and socializing news content.

I begin every day at search engine. It doesn’t matter what story I’m working on, it always starts with a search. I work on a segment called “Good Question,” so I often type my question directly into Google, and see what comes up. When searching for local experts, I’ll often take the subject matter, tack on the word “Minneapolis” and add the word “expert.”

For example, last week I did a story on whether cursive handwriting was vanishing because of e-mail. I typed “Minneapolis handwriting expert” into Google, and found several local handwriting analysts. Next, I searched for private schools (because public schools are often challenging to get permission to shoot at) and found the school we used for our story.

For my story on whether we get enough Vitamin D in Minnesota, I searched “Vitamin D” “Minneapolis” and “expert.” If a local company showed up very high with their own expertise in those results, I would have called that company.
Jason DeRusha, WCCO (CBS) TV News Reporter

Often times, the use of search engines and social media sites intersect. Here is an example provided in our initial survey:

I was writing a column about the planned partnership between Google and Yahoo. I tracked down potential sources first using Google and LinkedIn, and came across a white paper prepared by a senior fellow at the American Antitrust Institute. While I could not easily find an e-mail address, I went to Facebook where I located him, then sent a message. He replied and we followed up with a phone interview.
Marketing Industry Journalist

In some cases, news publications also run real world events. Example: iMediaConnection has ad:tech, MediaPost has OMMA, Search Engine Watch has Search Engine Strategies. Here’s some great insight from MarketingProfs on how they’ve used social media tools for finding writers, case studies and speakers:

We do use social networks extensively to find key writers or speakers for our events or publications. I also use it to monitor key issues to cover in our newsletters, seminars, research, and so on: Social networks are a great way to take the “pulse” of a topic. What are people talking about? Is this a hot-button issue or not?

For events: Social media is integral to programming the agenda. We always distribute the proposal form for potential speakers via various social channels (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn).

Same for our case study collections: We mine for good stories by asking Twitter/FB/LI. For example, “Who has a good story on social media ROI?”

We always harvest an abundance from this “social Google,” open-ended approach. Once we have harvested leads from those channels, our seminar programmer or writers can follow up via email or DMs, whichever.

LinkedIn is a great place to mine client-side folks. It’s especially valuable for us as we try to include a significant percentage of client-side speakers at our events, and often client-side folks are harder to uncover/book. And obviously, our case studies always feature client-side folks.

We also use Idea Scale to crowdsource topic ideas for our event agenda.

We use Flickr all the time to find creative common graphics for use on the blog (or for the contributed pieces I do for AMEX Open Forum); we use YouTube and Slideshare to see possible speakers or presenters in “action.”
Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs

Sometimes the information found isn’t what companies or individuals would want a reporter to find:

I routinely track down potential interviews by sending out a Tweet. Most recently, we came across a number of Toyota car owners who fell under the recent recalls. It would have been very difficult to find those people in a short amount of time without this type of technology.

Just today I was feeding and getting information through Twitter on the house explosion in Edina that helped our crews navigate around the situation and get better pictures of the breaking news.

Also tonight, I used YouTube to find video of a man who is being investigated by a Ponzi scheme by the Secret Service. It turns out he had many videos of himself giving sales pitches to potential customers. We used the video on the air where otherwise we would have never known what the man looked like.

We often use Facebook to get photographs of crime suspects and or victims. And police investigators tell me Facebook is one of the first places they check when investigating someone involved in a crime.Chris O’Connell KSTP (ABC) TV News Anchor/Reporter

Sometimes it’s not your content that gets discovered, but a connection to someone else that leads to being found:

This fall I was working on a feature about ethnic weddings in the Twin Cities, for our Weddings magazine. I was looking for recently married couples of various cultural backgrounds. I posted a query on Facebook to my recently married or engaged friends. Their responses led me to three of the five couples interviewed (via email contacts). After initial email correspondence, I interviewed the couples by phone and in person.
Senior Editor, Mpls.St.Paul magazine

I think this quote from Chris O ‘Connell sums it up nicely: “social networking has changed the way we do business and how we are able to get news and sources faster when deadlines matter.”

We’ll be conducting a new survey on Journalist Use of Search soon and will be posting more detailed data on how stories are sourced, tools used, preferences of types of information and more.

If you are attending #OMS10 be sure to check out our session on Social Media, Search and Public Relations at 3:15. It will be a very informative and engaging set of presentations from: David “dk” Klein, Dana Todd, Rand Fishkin, myself and moderator duties handled by Sally Falkow.

Does your company incorporate news optimization as part of your online marketing and content strategy? Do you optimize and promote news content differently than marketing content? Do you track whether the media finds your content via search or social media?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | How Journalists Use Search & Social Media | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

Online Marketing Summit 2010 in San Diego is host to a smorgasboard of internet marketing topics and this afternoon I am priveledged to participate on a panel about Social Media. Panelists include:

That’s a lot of people for a panel, so moderator Jason Baer decided that in the spirit of Twitter, we’d keep bios, questions and answers succinct and at 140 characters or less.

For those that can’t be here I thought I’d share the prep questions and my short answers with you. If you’re at OMS and you live blog this Social Media Leaders Forum, please leave a link in the comments.

What’s your advice for individuals just getting started using Twitter?

Have some idea of what you want out of Twitter. Connect with people of similar interests and goals and engage with them.

What’s your advice for individuals just get started using Twitter?

Have some idea of what you want out of Twitter. Connect with people of similar interests and goals and engage with them.

What’s the #1 myth preventing companies from embracing social media?

To start when you’re ready. You’ll never be ready. But you need to do it anyway because it’s the only way towards progress.

What’s the best way to integrate social media with other marketing efforts like email, direct mail, etc?

Strategically. Learn what customers want and leverage social technologies across channels to make it easier for them to get it.

What are the main differences between B2B and B2C social media programs?

More romancing in B2B & emphasis on qualitative interactions. Mass appeal of B2C provides large audience engagement opportunities.

Is social media best used for customer acquisition, or for customer retention?

Both. Social media is essentially word of mouth and once you start facilitating that and customer conversations, you create a cycle of acquisition & retention.

How do social media and SEO work together?

Yin & Yang. Social network channels of distribution promote content & attract links. Optimized social content grows networks via search discovery.

What’s the biggest mistake most companies are making in social media?

Outsourcing customer engagement. Companies know their own business and customers best and lose opportunity by not participating themselves.

What’s the most overrated social media site or tactic today?

Google. LOL. Actually, the one your customers are not using.

When is it okay for companies to not engage with their customers in social media?

That’s like saying when should you not answer the phone at your business? For severe dissenters invite offline discussion.

Does it make sense to make a Facebook fan page at the core of your social media initiative?

If the audience to reach is all about Facebook, then why not? Only caveat is that you don’t “own” 3rd party web sites.

How can agencies work best with their clients in social media?

Be a guide, partner, educator, trainer and source of ongoing support and innovation. Help them help themselves.

What’s the one social media skill set that you wish more potential employees had?

Honesty about skills. Social media user & expert are very different. Passion, curiosity and ability to really listen, learn and create value using social technology.

How important (really) are geo-location services like Foursquare and Gowalla?

If you were a brand, how interested would you be to know all the most active people visiting your stores? Many Advertising & social networking tie-in opportunities.

With so many companies now using social media, what’s the best way for a brand to stand out?

Find remarkable people to curate & tell your brand’s story. Listen to, engage with & empower customers.

How can you measure the effectiveness of social media efforts?

Start with goals, outline a strategy and how to best reach audiences. Then pick the right tools and metrics aligned with those goals.

There you go. I think this exercise proves that shorter is not always better. There’s so much more that’s meaningful to say about each of these questions. I may come back and add to this post after the session or we might just use them as inspiration for a series of blog posts.  Until then, be sure to read this roundup of 25 social media marketing tips.

What are some of your most pressing questions about social media? About integrating social media with other channels?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | 15 Social Media Answers From OMS10 | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com