Visual Gold

This new infographic from Marketo (client) takes a dive into content marketing campaigns of the future.  Those that focus on creating visually appealing content in a way that still creates value to the readers.  In this infographic you’ll find ideas such as:

• Content Formats
• The Five Pillars of Visual Marketing
• Promotion Distribution

Pope Joins Tweeting Masses With @Pontifex Handle
Benedict XVI will begin tweeting in eight languages beginning December 12th, 2012 using the handle: @Pontifex.  The pope will use Twitter to respond to questions live during his weekly general audience.  Not surprisingly, within only 10 hours of the announcement, Benedict had already reached nearly a quarter million followers.  Via The New York Times.

Google+ Adds Community Pages and Snapseed Vs Facebook and Instagram
It appears that Google+ Communities is Google’s strategy to go up against Facebook’s Groups.  These communities will allow users to create groups related to their passions and interests, and connect with similar people.  For ease of use, Google has made Google+ Communities easily accessible from the home screen.  Via Search Engine Journal.

Evernote For Business Is Here: Is It Right For Your Team?
Evernote’s personal organizer has now taken on organizing businesses.  One of the great features for business users is the Business Library.  This libray of content can be shared to with other team members and could be used for training, as well as a variety of other purposes.  Via readwrite.

Instagram Snubs Twitter: What Does That Mean For Brands?
If you’re a longtime Instagram user you may have noticed that recently your photos are not meshing well with Twitters platform.  Images are appearing too large and are cropped awkwardly.  Could this have something to do with Facebook’s recent purchase of the vintage inspired photo application?  Via PR Daily.

8 Ingredients of Effective Inbound Marketing for Generating and Qualifying Leads
Determining the exact moment when prospects will buy your products or services is next to impossible, but you can reach out to them at a time when they will be receptive to interacting.  This article shares 8 helpful tips for ways to begin targeting leads in a qualitative way.  Via MarketingProfs.

TopRank Team News

Miranda Miller - Promoted Tweets are now available in Asia through Twitter’s partnership with Komli Media
Twitter is partnering with Komli Media, who will manage all Twitter ad sales in the Southeast Asia. This is significant for Twitter, as they’ve identified the Asia Pacific region as one of their fastest growing opportunities. Komli are experienced in social advertising and already offer similar services to Zynga and Facebook, among others.  Via ClickZ.

Rob Bayne - Social Media: The Christmas Stimulus
Are you using a multifaceted social channel marketing plan this holiday season?  Read this article to learn entry level social strategies, backed up by social success stories.  Via Social Media Today.

Thom Craver – Five Fantastic Web Font Services
Previously, the Web was all about the same basic fonts everyone has installed. If you wanted to use a custom font, you had to use images of your text, which is not optimal for SEO. This article presents 5 services for Web-based fonts that use CSS so everyone can view – regardless of operating system or mobile device.  No longer do you have to be stuck with Arial and Times New Roman!  Via Website Magazine.

Alexis Hall – 5 Graphics that Recap the Most Important Google SERP Changes in 2012
2012 marked another year of big changes for SEOs, including quite a few changes to the Google SERP page, including the Knowledge Graph and personalized search results. Check out these 5 graphical representations of the biggest changes to the SERP page in 2012, and industry sentiment around those changes.  Via Search Engine Watch.

Evan Prokop – The New MySpace: Here’s How to Get Started
Myspace has been reborn!  This article includes a slideshow filled with tips on setting up your new Myspace profile.  Many of these new features allow for customization as well as exciting ways to interact with content.  Via Mashable.

Time to Weigh In: Have you experimented with visual content by adding it to your content marketing mix?  Did you find that the reward was worth the effort?  Does Google+ Communities have a chance of competing with Facebook groups or should Google+ just give it up already?  Has Facebook made a big mistake by messing with Twitter’s integration with Instagram?

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Picture this: your company has exciting news to share with customers, shareholders, suppliers and your target market. You’re launching a new product this week and it will be debuted at a popular industry event, sure to be attended by media, influencers and people who will want to buy YOUR product, just as soon as they learn about it.

You craft the perfect press release and send it to 1,000 of your contacts. Twenty of these people think this is such great news, they each send it to 500 of their friends, relatives and business contacts. Five of those people pass the news on to 250 of their contacts. Of course, these people are all fascinated, as you’ve been able to include pictures, a video, and they all received the message within hours!

Sorry, this type of viral messaging just doesn’t happen in real life… outside of Facebook, that is.

Facebook is fast becoming one of the most powerful PR tools on the web. Using Facebook as an online PR tool allows companies to increase their reach exponentially, getting in front of interested people with engaging content when and where they are receptive to the message.

A recent comScore study, The Power of Like 2: How Social Media Marketing Works, found that earned media exposure through Facebook amplification increases sales both online and in-store. Fans of brands spend more, but so do their friends, thanks to the viral nature of Facebook and the ability to more widely disseminate brand messages.

Many companies are doing this well, but we discovered a few standouts who are truly making the most of the Facebook PR opportunity. Check them out and see if taking a page from their book could help you generate buzz for your next newsworthy event or announcement:

Country Crock’s Army of Moms Are a Company’s Best Friend

How often can you talk about margarine on Facebook and keep the interest of your fans? Country Crock has the perfect solution for brands with a highly niche product: don’t talk about your brand at all. Talk about the problem your product solves.

Country Crock has an incredible 677,000 Facebook fans, with hundreds at a time sharing their content and generating conversation around the company’s Page. This is the best kind of online PR possible; their fans are advocates of the brand and regularly circulate Country Crock content. This puts the brand’s name and logo in front of a network of thousands of fans’ family and friends.

They encourage social sharing by asking questions of fans, including a call to action in their posts (Share this if you agree!), and sharing delicious recipes for Moms who don’t have time to scour the web looking for simple dinner ideas. Doing so consistently has made Country Crock’s Facebook page “the” place for their fans to find recipes and get inspired.

Facebook PR Pro Tip: Don’t expect fans to share your company’s advertising or PR messages. Deliver great content and they will share your content, putting your name, logo and messaging in front of their network of friends.

Alfa Telecommunications Rock Facebook with Multimedia Event Coverage

Alfa Telecommunications, Orascom Telecom Media Technology’s mobile network brand, have amassed over 89,000 Facebook fans and see an impressive level of engagement on nearly every piece of company news they share. They are skilled in maximizing their ROI from industry and company events by sharing high quality, interesting photos and videos with Facebook fans.

The metrics shown above seem to be about average for Alfa; hundreds of people Like and several more comment on and share their visual content. This is fantastic for them, as this expanded reach is putting their company in front of friends of fans who may not have connected with the brand. Their content mix is kept interesting and fresh with industry news, fun facts and statistics, and information of general interest to people in their geographic region. This means that when they have company news to share, they can do so without fans feeling as though they are constantly the subject of a marketing campaign.

Facebook PR Pro Tip: Use high quality multimedia content on Facebook to increase social sharing and expand the reach of your PR campaigns. For more great tips on event marketing using SEO and social media, be sure to check out Lee Odden’s Tasty Ideas to Maximize Online Marketing for Events.

iConstituent Increases Awareness and Boosts Engagement 300% with Facebook Ads

iConstituent’s success story flies in the face of a perpetual Facebook marketing myth: that Facebook users don’t want to be bothered by business or political messaging while using a social network. Who wants to chat with an elected official in their social time? A lot of people, as it turns out.

The legislative e-communications agency strives to reach constituents in their Congressional districts and deliver timely, important messages about issues in their districts. In one structured test campaign, they saw engagement on elected officials’ Pages increase 300% after running Facebook Ads and had 10 times the ROI, compared to a traditional, glossy paper mailer.  Ad creative typically included an eye-catching photo or logo; a few past examples included a graphic that said “JOBS,” or “I want to hear from you.”  iConstituent deployed ZIP Code targeting for the Congressional district, with precise interest and hashtag targeting to bring in relevant constituents.

Once constituents are pointed to and enticed to Like the elected official’s Facebook Page, PR is incorporated into their content mix. They are then able to connect and engage with constituents regularly, ensuring the people most receptive to their news are receiving it via the Facebook platform.

Facebook PR Pro Tip: Use the tools available to you to build a targeted audience, highly receptive to subsequent organic PR messages.

Are you using Facebook as a facet of your online PR strategy? Share your best tips and success stories in with other readers in the comments!

Image via Shutterstock.

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Implementing a successful social media advertising program is an art form.  There are many opportunities for success and failure, which is why it’s imperative that you follow a set of best practices to increase your chances for success.

Defining what you want to achieve with your Twitter advertising program is a key piece to the puzzle and should not be skipped.  Do you want to attract new customers to your company through education, engage current followers with exciting content, or convert fans into customers?  This post shares 4 basic tips for using Twitter advertising as part of your ongoing social strategy.

Tip 1: Pin To the Top of Your Timeline

If you are using a brand profile or enhanced page you may choose to pin a Promoted tweet to the top of your timeline.  Promoted tweets and promoted pages will typically show up in the left sidebar of your page, unless you specify that you would like to pin the tweet to the top of your timeline.  In the example above you’ll notice that the two promoted profiles and trending topics are clearly identified next to the organic results.

Tip 2: Utilize Hashtags

Proper use of Twitter hashtags can make your tweets more searchable and live on in the Twittersphere.  There are a few options for utilizing Twitter hashtags as part of promoted tweets:

• Create your own unique hashtag to stand out from others
• Jump on an existing trending hashtag to increase exposure

Tip 3: Promote Good Content

If you were to run a traditional advertising program you would do your due diligence to test and refine your messaging before releasing it to the public.  The same applies to your Twitter advertising strategy.  The default selection under “How do you want to select tweets?” will be “Automatically refresh to include your newest most engaging tweets”.  For maximum impact make sure that you select “Manually select your tweets” so that you will have full control over what is seen by your target audience.

Tip 4: Using Geographic Targeting For Improved Results

Lets assume for a moment that TopRank Online Marketing is hosting a content and social media event in California.  One of the channels that will be used to promote that event is Twitter.  In order to get the most “bang for your buck” it would make sense to target your promoted tweets at users in a particular geographic location.  Above is an example of how you would target metro specific locations.  Keep in mind that “Metro Areas” will override “Country” because it is a more granular target.

To get the maximum value out of any advertising program you must have attention to detail.  The information within this post is only a portion of what businesses can do to target customers using promoted tweets and paid advertising on Twitter.  Social media advertising should be used to augment your existing social business strategy and not viewed as a stand alone solution for generating buzz or interacting with prospects and customers.  Have you used paid advertising on Twitter in the past?  What did you learn?

 

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10 Crucial Consumer Trends 2013

2013 marks a new year filled with new predictions and trends for consumers.  This new Slideshare presentation from Trendwatching.com provides insight into the top trends ranging from mobile to data mining.  Browse the presentation for a detailed report on these trends and what it means for your business.

3 Tools to Simplify Your Social Media Marketing
The time it takes to post, respond, and monitor your social media marketing can eat up valuable time during the work week.  But don’t worry, there is a solution.  The three tools mentioned in this post will help simplify and manage your social media marketing efforts.  Via Social Media Examiner.

Zynga Agonizing As Facebook Gains Right To Develop Its Own Games
Zynga put out a statement announcing that they had come to an agreement with Facebook which would allow the social media giant to develop its own games starting in 2013.  Immediately following their statement, Zynga’s dropped more than 13%.  Via Forbes.

Social Leaders Get Teams Past the Velvet Rope
When you’re a marketer it can seem that you are sometimes expected to take a reactive role to the vision that has been handed to you.  Many employees in varying roles are afraid to step outside of their designated job description, which is a mistake.  This article provides sound advices for diving change in your organization.  Via InformationWeek.

7 Content Marketing Tips from the Best in Social Business
Content marketing is not a new concept, unless it’s in terms of social media marketing and engagement.  This article provides advice from experienced content marketers on how to create, product, optimize, and distribute content online.  Via Search Engine Journal.

Should Your Boss Care About Your Klout Score?
You may not care about your own Klout score, but that doesn’t mean you don’t make decisions based on other people’s score.  If services like Klout are used to measure the competitive advantage then how do you measure up?  Via Harvard Business Review.

TopRank Team News

Thom Craver – Bing Claims Shenanigans on Google’s Paid Shopping Results
Microsoft is claiming that their shopping search results are more “honest” since Google switched to a paid model which was announced last May.  Bing alleges that Google will not show you the most relevant shopping search results for your query but will decide what to show you, and how prominently to display what product offers they show.  Via Bing.

Jolina Pettice – 5 Social Media Publishing Lessons Brands Learned This Year
Many brands still aren’t ready to take off the social media training wheels.  Learn from other’s mistakes and take a peek at some faux pas brands made this year socially.  Via Content Marketing Institute.

Alexis Hall – ‘Tis the Season to Be Shopping
The holiday season is prime time for most retailers and social sites are busy promoting the benefit of brand specific tools and pages. Pinterest launches a business microsite, including brand best practices and guidelines. And Amazon now offers Amazon Pages, which will allow retailers to create customizable landing pages.  Amazon Pages integrates with Amazon Posts a social media dashboard which allows content to be published to Facebook and Amazon Pages.  These new opportunities sound like they have great potential for businesses to further integrate social into their marketing mix.  Via ClickZ.

Brian Larson – Master Your Brands LinkedIn Page
Marketers have known for some time that LinkedIn is now much more than just a recruiting tool for HR, but are you taking full advantage of the engagement features and benefits this evolving network offers? It’s likely a time to reevaluate your brand’s LinkedIn profile and discover these easy tips – courtesy of Social Media Examiner – to more effectively manage your profile.  Via Social Media Examiner.

Evan Prokop – 10 Website Quality Indicators That Can Sink Your SEO Battleship
Received a warning from Webmaster Tools?  Don’t despair; read this informative article covering the 10 most common warnings, how to avoid them and how to recover if you get one.  Via Search Engine Watch.

Rob Bayne – Facebook and Pinterest Are the New Wedding Planners
1 in 10 brides updates Facebook within minutes of saying “Yes”, while one in three is within hours.  More brides are keeping up on wedding websites and blogs than are buying wedding magazines.  Learn all about the changing trends in tying the knot from this article, complete with infographic from @Mashable and @theknot!  Via Mashable.

Time to Weigh In: How do you think Zynga’s business model will have to changed based on their recent agreement with Facebook?  Do you track your Klout score or the score of your employees?  Have you ever made a hiring decision based on someone’s Klout score?  What is one social media lesson you’ve learned in the past year?

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The recent Powerball of $550 million has a lot of people excited, fantasizing about what to do with all that money. That excitement also has more people than ever participating. Who doesn’t like to win?

It’s part of the game brands play with consumers to attract, engage and convert new customers, fans and advocates.

Social Media contests in particular have gained in popularity and can be a powerful catalyst for spreading a brand’s message where it matters most. Online marketers are finding that social media are great for holding online contests that boost awareness and engagement for consumer brands.

To help you tap in to some of the opportunity with contests on the social web, here are four examples of B2C social media contests that boosted brand visibility. We’ve also included one example that was popular, but not without risk.

1. Lay’s Do Us a Flavor – Facebook

When Frito-Lay developed a new potato chip flavor, they bypassed focus groups and instead turned to Facebook to connect directly with the customers who would be eating them.

Visitors to the Lay’s “Do Us a Flavor” Facebook app were asked to suggest new flavors and appetizing treats such as beer-battered onion-ring flavor and churros flavor gained popularity.

While the voting is done, the contest isn’t. Next February 2013, three finalist flavors will be available in stores for people to buy and try. The app will email participants when the chips are in stores, and even offers users $1 off their chip purchase.  Currently, this contest app has about 740,000 users which could turn into a lot of bacon chocolate flavored chip sales.

2. Sheikh el Carnival is Taking You to Rio – Facebook

The Frito Lay company’s Facebook page has 2.3 million fans giving them a distinct advantage for attracting contestants. But what if you’re a little travel company, with only 4,000 Facebook fans?

Travel Sheikh used the power of imagery and social media marketing to spread its brand message. It held a social contest where entrants were invited to upload photos inspired by the Rio de Janeiro Carnival. Then contestants were encouraged to ask their friends to vote for the best photos. Friends could upload their own photos and encourage others to vote, creating some virality to the contest. The prize for the lucky contestant with the most votes? A trip for two to Rio for the real event.

Within 30 days, Travel Sheikh had gone from 4,000 fans to 16,000 new fans.

3. AMC Giveaways – Pinterest

AMC Theaters has found that social media and contests are a great combination and have dedicated an entire Pinterest pinboard to AMC Giveaways.

All users have to do is follow the pinboard to stay up to date on the latest AMC contests. When they see a prize they want to try to win, they can click on the image which takes the visitor to a landing page that collects the contestant’s basic information and preferences. They win if their name is drawn.

Prizes have ranged from movie posters to an autographed director’s chair, but who are we kidding? The real winner is AMC. This Pinterest contest setup is a gift that keeps on giving in the form of increased brand engagement and customer data.

4. Doritos Party – Twitter

One of the most tempting types of social contests for brands to run is the “Retweet to Win” style contest on Twitter. For these contests, a brand will ask followers to retweet a post and choose a winner at random after a specified amount of time has passed. There have been many of these types of contests on Twitter, including a recent example from Doritos UK.

Doritos tweeted a message that said:

Fancy winning a whole host of BRILL PARTY PRIZES? Simply RT to be in with a chance of winning stuff to make a #DoritosParty.

That tweet was retweeted more than 500 times in a single day. Of those 500 entrants, seven winners won products that ranged from Doritos (of course) to a 32-inch widescreen HD TV.

Now for the DOWNSIDE of RT contests on Twitter: These kinds of contests are a big no no according to Twitter’s Guidelines.  You’ll have to focus your Twitter contests on using an @reply to your brand Twitter account in their update, which by the way, should include relevant topics to your contest but not be duplicates. An example using the Doritos brand might include asking followers to suggest the best situations to eat Doritos, interesting uses of the product or curious flavor suggestions like Lay’s did with their contest. It’s not the same as a RT contest, but you’ll stay out of hot water with Twitter.

5. Vera Bradley Style Share – Instagram

Vera Bradley is fantastic at visual social media marketing as highlighted in this post from a few months ago, B2C Pinterest marketing superstars. Now Vera Bradley is ruling at Instagram, too.

The contest asked people to post as many Instagram photos as they liked showing them wearing or carrying a favorite Vera Bradley bag. Submitting was as easy as including the #VBStyleShare hashtag when posting images to Instagram.

The Vera Bradley Instagram contest was short – just about 4-5 days. At the end, 10 winners received a free wristlet.  Though figures aren’t available for how many followers the contest garnered, this contest was great for all involved. Contestants and bystanders could follow the hashtag and get their own fashion ideas. Vera Bradley staff could view the photos and get an idea for how consumers were pairing their products with other fashions. That’s a win-win-win situation!

Social media channels aren’t just for status updates and conversations. They can be used to fuel contests that can propel a brand into more followers, wider reach and greater chance for success. Take the ideas included above and think about how you might benefit from holding your own social media contest.

If you have run a social media marketing contest for your consumer brand, what advice would you share with someone that is new? Please, share your success and challenges in the comments below.

This post was also contributed to by Sara and Ashley from TopRank. 

Happy Woman photo credit: Shutterstock

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Today’s post is like a virtual reunion with two people I have known in the search marketing industry for a long time that are also authors: Vanessa Fox formerly of Google wrote Marketing in the Age of Google, and Mel Carson formerly of Microsoft has co-authored a new book, Pioneers of Digital.

When writing this book about success stories from leaders in advertising, marketing, search and social media, Mel asked me for a quote about Vanessa’s contributions to the search marketing world. I easily obliged. I’ve had a chance to read through a preview copy of Pioneers of Digital and there are an impressive mix of lessons to be learned within. Rather than doing a regular book review, Mel agreed to share an excerpt from the book so I can share it with you.

This book is about a lot more than search of course, with profiles that range from Alex Bogusky to Stephen Fry. Take a peek at this preview about search marketing pioneer, Vanessa Fox:

We interviewed 20 amazing digital entrepreneurs for our book and all of them, somewhere in their career, have shown the importance of marrying the needs of a business with that of its audience and customers.

In Vanessa Fox’s case, it was Google and the hopes and fears of an entire industry. Her story is one of an uphill battle to break down the barriers of cynicism and secrecy to provide webmasters with the information, tools and sense of community they needed to create great experiences for their site’s visitors, and also about Google who were desperate for the data it needed to keep ploughing ahead as the world’s most significant database of intent.

In this excerpt from the chapter on Vanessa Fox in our book, we talk about the sitemaps project that would become Google Webmaster Tools and what Fox had to do to start marrying Google to the webmaster community in a beautiful and useful way….

The Sitemaps project begins

@vanessafox

Working out of Google’s new and small Kirkland office was a strange gig, as everything and pretty much everyone were in Mountain View at the time.

Fox was asked to work on a number of developer projects that weren’t really ready to launch, although she did work on a few items such as the API (Application Programming Interface) protocol for Google Talk.

The Kirkland office was run by Shiva Shivakumar, whom Fox describes as a visionary engineering director: ‘He wanted the Kirkland office to come up with new innovative things that were totally different and really change the way people thought about things.’

One of his ideas was the initial ‘Sitemaps’ project and he asked Fox to start working on it. Sitemaps involved reimagining how Google could work with website creators to submit their sites to their index. Little did Fox realize at the time that this project would be just the beginning of a fundamental shift in the way internet search engines worked with site owners.

Until this point Google had been so successful because its raft of smart engineers had built technologies that ‘crawled’ the web quickly, indexing billions of website pages and presenting relevant search results every time a searcher typed in keywords to their search box.

But the driving factors behind Google’s popularity were relevancy and speed of search results, and it cost money for all those servers and crawlers to be up and running, generating so many connections between consumers and website owners. This is where the Sitemaps project came in. Instead of Google just coming to the website and hoping to find everything, the website owners could submit their sitemap – literally a list of all the pages on their site and how they interconnected – which would connect the dots and ensure that the Google crawlers had a comprehensive list of what the site owner wanted indexed.

Shiva blogged in June 2005: ‘It’s a beta “ecosystem” that may help webmasters with two current challenges: keeping Google informed about all of your new web pages or updates, and increasing the coverage of your web pages in the Google index.’

Fox is very philosophical about how the idea developed: ‘…but this is very common, right? This is what happens. You iterate and you change. His idea was to do the opposite of what people expected. People could just submit a list of URLs. Done! Let’s shake things up and see what happens.’

Help me help you

So Fox started to shake things up: ‘I could already see that there were tons of other things we really should be doing.’ She talked to site owners at search conferences and realized that Google had all kinds of useful information that could help them create better websites for their (and Google’s) audiences. She travelled to Mountain View a lot, talked to engineers from all parts of Google and started asking them what information they needed from site owners to make their jobs easier. Her approach was to ask Google’s engineers how she could help them.

So many people in Fox’s position would have embarked on a project like this with a ‘help me’ attitude but she knew she had to kick it off by saying ‘help me help you’. She was a nobody from the Kirkland office, she had no computer science degree and she was touting a project nobody knew or cared about. She had to find a positive reason for other teams to collaborate with her.

One person she ended up collaborating with most was Matt Cutts, then, and now, head of Google’s web spam team. Cutts had made a name for himself at conferences and in online marketing internet forums as a spokesman for Google on what webmasters shouldn’t be doing – how they might be contravening Google’s guidelines and run the risk of getting banned from their search results. Given Google’s reach and ubiquity, this was enough to give any website owner sleepless nights and so people would hang off Cutts’ every word.

Even with Cutts’ support, Fox still needed to get some full-time help, so she started making friends with new Google employees to generate interest in the project….

Now back to Mel:

The book ends with a chapter outlining the ten entrepreneurial trends we gleaned from talking with each Pioneer. We wanted the book to be inspirational but also actionable, and what we uncovered was fascinating.

For instance, there was a heavy emphasis from most on NOT having to be original in your thinking. Pivoting swiftly around an established product or strategy could pay many more dividends than starting from scratch, and many of our interviewees had got lost in the notion that their way forward needed to be brand new.

In the Vanessa Fox chapter, the spotlight shines on her understanding that utility is often the best way to people’s hearts.

When you create something useful and there is some kind of value exchange that addresses a need, then your community will trust you have their best interests at heart.

Being authentic and transparent in your communication is also crucial to success. At the end of the chapter, Google’s Matt Cutts pays tribute to Fox’s innate ability to communicate:

“Vanessa always had an outstanding ability to bridge the world inside Google with the world outside Google. She could dive into deep technical details with engineers, and then translate those technical details into plain language for regular people. Likewise, Vanessa took comments and feedback from the webmaster community and made sure that the right people at Google heard that feedback. Vanessa was always a pioneer in terms of pushing Google to be more transparent and to surface useful data to site owners.”

We were thrilled that Vanessa agreed to be profiled in the book. Hers is an enduring story from which we can all learn about how to create experiences that are useful and that turn information into action.

@leeodden @melcarson

You can get a copy of Pioneers of Digital: Success Stories from Leaders in Advertising, Marketing Search and Social Media on Amazon in print and for Kindle.

Mel Carson is founder of Seattle based digital consultancy Delightful Communications  and his co-author Professor Paul Springer  is Head of Research at Buckinghamshire New University in the UK.

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Long before an army goes into battle, intelligence organizations have been busy collecting and analyzing information about the opposing threat. The right information and insight could lead to a much more advantageous outcome. Inaccurate information or an absence of competitive research can lead to disaster.

In the competitive world of content marketing and optimization, it’s essential for companies of all sizes and industries to understand their online marketplace in order to gain a business advantage.

Developing a competitive strategy is essential in today’s dynamic search and social web and an effective approach starts by understanding both the broader Search Landscape and internal Website SEO Readiness.

The approach to competitive search and social media research can vary widely by situation because no business is the same. It’s essentially always going to involve some kind of information capture, assessment and comparison.

A new business entering a competitive market with companies that have mature Internet marketing programs may need to uncover key weaknesses in their competitor’s marketing efforts in order to compete “David and Goliath” style.  In a situation with companies that have very similar levels of Internet marketing resources and effort, competitive research may uncover weaknesses or unrealized opportunities that can create advantage.

In all cases, an understanding of the competitive search and social media landscape will help content marketers differentiate to better attract and engage with customers.

For example, one entrepreneur in the self-help area of memory and IQ improvement wanted an online marketing program that would help achieve top visibility on Google for the word “brain.  With a new website and nearly 700 million competing search results for the search term, a first glance evaluation indicated the outcome to be unlikely with any reasonable budget and time frame.

Further research into the search landscape to identify competitors did not reveal the list of online puzzle and learning websites the entrepreneur considered “competition”, but a mix of Wikipedia, University (Harvard), industry publication and resource websites with large numbers of web pages and a long history of search relevance for the topic.

In the search and social media marketing world, the competition isn’t always who you think.  What companies need to understand is that online competition isn’t just businesses competing for market share in the business world, but information and content published from a variety of sources that compete for search engine and social media users’ attention.

In the case of the “brain” customer, thoughtful analysis of the search and social media landscape revealed popular forums and social networking groups focused on topics related to what the target website visitor would find useful. A more diverse, yet relevant keyword mix proved to be more attainable and more importantly, a better reflection of the interests amongst the target community.

A larger group of keyword targets promoted through the optimization of content and social media channels resulted in the entrepreneur’s website reaching over 300,000 unique visitors per month and a decision to change the business model to advertising over product sales because of the volume of traffic. Had the entrepreneur focused only on “brain” without conducting competitive and marketplace research, they might still be selling just a few learning games per month instead of a thriving website supported by an active community and strong search engine traffic.

Of course, the research that goes into developing an aggressive search and online marketing strategy goes beyond these basics. There are 5 audits we use for developing a more effective approach to dominating the search and social web including: topic/keywords audit, technical SEO audit, on/off site content audit, social media audit and a linking audit. More on those in my next post.

Excerpt with permission from Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing, published by Wiley.

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Content Marketing Media Matrix For Small Businesses

This new infographic from PRWeb ( a TopRank Online Marketing Client) provides a guide to finding what type of content is best for promoting your business depending on your audience as well as you’re services or products.  Use this infographic to find out what will work best for your content marketing strategy.

DMA Finds Marketers Bullish on Growth of Digital and Direct Marketing
According to this recent article, 75% of marketers say that they’re bullish about growth prospects for digital and direct marketing.  This is slightly up from a previous survey taken 2nd quarter, in which 72% said that they were bullish about growth prospects.  Via BtoB.

5 Tips for Creating Pinterest Images That People Love to Share
Good images on social sites like Pinterest can increase your traffic, get you a higher number of pins and repins, and ultimately improve your presence on Pinterest.  This article shares 5 tips for creating Pinterest-friendly images.  Via Social Media Examiner.

Yahoo’s Ad Sell-Through Rate on Its Log-in Page Has Plummeted
A recent report shows that Yahoo’s log-in page – where users sign into their Yahoo services and email – only had an ad present for 47% of the days in the first half of fourth quarter.  Via Adage.

Longer Online Videos Beg for New Ad Strategy
Online audiences are not only consuming more and more videos, they’re staying glued to the screen for much longer.  This presents a new opportunity for advertisers and marketers to rethink their ad strategies.  Via ClickZ.

TopRank Team News

Jolina Pettice – Reality Check: Is Small Business Saturday Actually Working?
As we head into the shopping season, we have been discussing with many of our small business clients how to take advantage of Small Business Saturday. From campaigns to email marketing to content; are you counting on Small Business Saturday to drive sales and acquire new customers? Check out this post from Inc. about the inception of this movement and whether it’s proving effective for the small business owner. Via Inc.

Rob Bayne - Majestic SEO New Feature: Bucket Lists!  Don’t Just See Links, Manage Them
If you are doing Penguin analysis, link building, or competitor research, a new feature of MajesticSEO you will probably want to become familiar with is the bucket list.  Similar to making something a favorite or bookmarking, adding a link to your bucket allows you to not only keep track of that link, but also to run bulk reports and comparisons on everything in your bucket.  Via Majestic SEO.

Brian Larson – Are You Paying Too Much for Your PPC Keywords?
Bid management tools can be critical to keeping SEM costs in check by effectively managing keyword bids. But alas, not all tools are created equal. Search Engine Land analyzes Forrester’s research on the best PPC bid management providers in this post from Chris Sherman. Is your provider on the list?  Via Search Engine Land.

Sam Giehll – Marketing and Thanksgiving: A Tempest of Myths and Facts
When it comes to your metrics and marketing efforts, there is a fine line between fact and myth. This post addresses facts – like the existence of social media ROI – and wraps them up in a metaphorical Thanksgiving themed bow. An excellent read for the holiday, or any day.  Via Adobe.

Evan Prokop – Mobile Proves to Be Incredibly Profitable for Auto Dealers
Summary: A recent study showed that an astonishing 40% of people searching for cars on mobile end up buying a car the same day and 36 percent within the hour.  Interestingly, only 1% of mobile users reported using an auto industry app.  Via Search Engine Watch.

Time to Weigh In: What types of images have you found appeal most to your Pinterest audience, Facebook Fans, and Twitter Followers?  How do you think Yahoo’s low ad sales will affect the number of people using their service?  Have a safe and happy holiday weekend!

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After months of waiting (or stressing) Thanksgiving is finally here.  Your relatives are on their way, you’ve gathered all of the last minute ingredients (hopefully), and you’re ready to start cooking the meal you’ve been planning.

When tackling an entire Thanksgiving feast it doesn’t take much to become overwhelmed.  As you begin rehashing the planning of the meal, cooking all the elements, and making sure you please your guests it’s likely you may feel like you’re in over your head.

However, if you break up your planning and execution into smaller and more digestible elements you’re more likely to be at ease, and have a much more enjoyable time.   How does the planning and execution of a large meal relate to your online marketing strategy, and what are all of the moving pieces?

#1 – Appetizers

The beauty of appetizers is that they’re quick and easy to make, and keep your guests satisfied while you prepare the bird, side dishes, and dessert.  A good appetizer will provide “nuggets” of information without filling them up.

When creating “appetizers” as a part of your online marketing strategy, you want to wet the appetite of your audience, but entice them to stick around for the main course.  This can be accomplished by frequently sharing helpful but easy to understand tips, stories, and news articles that will help them with day to day issues.

#2 – Side Dishes

The pairing of side dishes with your main course is key in creating a well-balanced meal.  Side dishes are used as a compliment to the main dish and while important, they are not hearty enough to stand alone as their own meal.

Similarly,  you can use your content “side dishes” to augment larger content objects.  Consistency of these content objects is essential, think smooth mashed potatoes.  While more hearty than your appetizers, this content will be used to engage and interact with potential and current clients.

#3 – The Turkey

If there were one element of the Thanksgiving meal that you would like to wow your guests with what would it be?  Chances are the bird is what will receive the most preparation and TLC, making it the centerpiece of the meal.

Now it’s time to get to the meat of your marketing strategy.  The “turkey” is your stellar content meant to convert your prospects into customers.  Unique content types such as Visual eBooks, infographics, videos, and more are a great way to showcases your talents.

#4 – Gravy

What does gravy do?  It can make what was already good, great.  Gravy is used to enhance the flavors of your much labored over turkey and side dishes in a way that will have your guests gobbling up their portion, and asking for seconds.

When it comes to your marketing strategy, the “gravy” is your promotion of content objects large and small.  While your content may be good, it doesn’t become great until it is shared!

#5 – Dessert

For many this is their favorite part of the meal.  After a feast filled with savory goodness, it’s time to top it all off with something sweet.  Instead of serving your guests the expected slice of pumpkin pie, try something new and less traditional as an added surprise.

Try to give your audience something awesome out of the blue every now and then.  An example might be to step outside of the regular promotion of your content and recognize your peers, or others within your industry that are truly having an impact.  For example, each year TopRank creates the list of “25 Women Who Rock Social Media” in order to shed some light on those having a true business impact using social media.

#6 – Doing the Dishes

Now it’s time to survey that damage.  Was the meal a success? Did all of your guests gobble up the food you prepared, or are there lots of untouched plates?

Measuring the success of your content strategy is key in determining how to adapt and refine your approach.  You can easily survey your audience to determine what they would like to see more of (or less of) or simply use your analytics to determine what pieces or types of content are most popular.

#7 – Bonus: Leftovers

Finding new ways to reuse your leftovers is a great way to avoid wasting good food.

Take a crack at repurposing elements of content that your team creates to get more mileage out of something that has already performed well with a particular audience.

Phew! See how much easier it was to take the meal step by step instead of tackling the whole thing at once?  The same applies to your content marketing strategy.  Don’t get overwhelmed just make sure that each individual piece is quality so that everyone can enjoy your content marketing feast.

I would also like to take a moment to show thanks to my fellow teammates, our rockstar clients, and those of you that read and interact with our content!  Happy Thanksgiving!

Image credits via Shutterstock: Thanksgiving feast, appetizer, green bean casserole, Thanksgiving turkey, gravy, dessert, dishes, leftovers.

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Phew! What a whirlwind week at SES Chicago.  While my TopRank Online Marketing teammates were taking SES Chicago by storm, I was holding down the homefront manning the blog, monitoring Twitter feeds, and helping in any way that I could.

We were fortunate to have an army of TopRank  staff speaking, attending, live blogging, and interacting for the entire conference including:

Lee Odden: CEO
Jolina Pettice:  Director of Client Accounts
Thom Craver: Senior Technical SEO Manager
Alexis Hall: Account Manager
Evan Prokop: Associate Account Manager
Miranda Miller: Content Marketing Manager

In this wrap up I’ve provided you with a 360 view of the conference which includes links to our live blogs, tweets, a video with keynote presenter Avinash Kaushik, and photos from the conference.  Enjoy!

Live Blogging From TopRank Online Marketing

• 14 Online Marketing Wak-Up Calls from @Avinash – SES Chicago - Jolina Pettice
• Exploiting the Infinite Loop: 5 Tips for Mobile Marketing Optimization from SES Chicago - Alexis Hall
• 10 of the Best Kept Secrets to B2B Videos from #SESCHI - Alexis Hall
• Remarketing Retargeting Done Right and Wrong – 6 Do’s and Don’ts From SES Chicago - Evan Prokop
• 7 Link building Phiosophies for a Post-Penguin World – #SESCHI - Jolina Pettice
• SES Chicago: Building the B2B Social Media Machine – 6 Steps for Success - Evan Prokop
• 5 Strategies to Increase Conversion in a Social World from #SESCHI - Alexis Hall
• Guest Blogging: Stop Thinking Link Building, Start Thinking Relationship Building – #SESCHI - Evan Prokop

From The Twitterspehere

Below are just a sampling of the tweets shared during both of TopRank CEO Lee Odden’s SES Chicago Sessions.

Interview With Avinash Kaushik

Jonathan Allen (@jc1000000) the Director of Search Engine Watch interviews Avinash Kaushik (@avinash) at SES Chicago.

A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words

Miss out on the SES Chicago festivities, or didn’t have your camera handy while you were there?  Don’t fret, in addition to providing live coverage our team was also able to snap some photos to help document the conference.

If you’re looking for more coverage of SES Chicago, be sure to visit our Flickr page.

Integrated Marketing: What Does That Really Mean? 
Panel Keynote: Lee Odden, Giovanni Rodriguez, and Todd Friesen

Deliver, Engage, Transact: 11 Absolutes for Email Engagement
Speaker: Sundeep Kapur 

How to Win With Google Bing
Speaker: John Gagnon

TopRank’s Jolina Pettice and Lee Odden

TopRank’s Miranda Miller

We are honored to be involved in helping teach, share, and learn at events like SES Chicago.  Working in an online world has many benefits but it is always great to have the opportunity to connect with other attendees, speakers, and vendors.

I’m curious to know, what was the most awesome thing that you learned at SES Chicago and how do you plan on applying it to your business?

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