Email LinkedIn Twitter

Social Media steps to boost Search Engine Optimization

Leave a Comment

As Google and Bing stare down social media threats, these search engines are taking steps to retain relevancy for searchers. Algorithm changes like “real-time” search will increasingly include social media activity — helping to recognize experts — and can be used to build links as well.

Here’s a few Social Media steps, advice from  Josh Ziering owner of Full Speed SEO at Affiliate Summit East 2010, that can help boost your to boost Search Engine Optimization (laypeople term: Google rankings).

Twitter

  • Make profile look authoritative
  • Keep following/follower ratio so you look authoritative
  • Utilize hashtags all the time, make them really general

Other platforms

  • Set up Google profile
  • YouTube
  • Yahoo Answers
  • UrbanSpoon, Yelp

Facebook

  • Make links public, everything else private
  • Create business page

You can also follow Josh on Twitter @JoshuaZiering

Social Media audience attraction & retention: If you suck, you’re simply amplifying it -Scott Stratten at Affiliate Summit East 2010

4 Comments

Social media = talking to people

Social media = NOT a new way to run horrible ads

Social Media enables us to see that other people are awesome. But if you suck, you suck worse on social media –Scott Stratten, UnPresident, UnMarketing (Twitter @UnMarketing) wrapped up an hour ago at Affiliate Summit East 2010.

Words to post by

  • Marketing isn’t a task or to-do list. It’s every single time you have a touchpoint with any audience.
  • Build a following and friendships before you ask for anything.
  • Invest time before you try to pull.
  • Don’t say or do or post anything that you don’t want to see on a billboard.
  • Take the time to write custom messages for Twitter and Facebook *each.*

Once you choose a social media platform (Twitter/Facebook etc.), here’s what to expect

3 stages of platforming

  1. Traction – getting people to pay attention, start conversations
  2. Momentum – when you get invited into conversations
  3. Expansion – Have to play to small crowd until you get the big time

Stratten Tweeted 10K times before pitching anything; 38,000 of his Tweets were @replies to other people, meaning 75% of @UnMarketing Tweets were conversations.

Convert your corporate sensibilities

  • Better for your video to be on someone else’s blog than to promote yourself — let it go.
  • Why we have to listen – 98% of people will complain online, not directly to you, so at least listen.
  • Can’t control the troll? Take the high road 99% of the people are watching and seeing.
  • If you haven’t found the creepy dude at the event, you are the creepy dude at the event!

Text analytics and market segmentation: Understand your customers’ specific needs

1 Comment

Text analytics: Mining users’ web 2.0 worlds for brand action

MIDIOR Consulting’s John Sutter laid out a thorough approach for market segmentation that was, well, a bit beyond the scope of Designated Editor’s blog. But this is exactly why Boston Product Management Association (BPMA) events are worthwhile: move beyond the world of content to consider how messaging truly integrates with the rest of the online and offline universe.

What exactly is “Actionable Market Segmentation”?

According to the BPMA description, it’s “how to assess market opportunity for new products and services and turn that analysis into actionable steps that will increase market share and win sales. … Learn how to stake a hypothesis about market opportunity, gather the data, make sure to protect it with services like the ones at venyu.com/cloud/, and ask the right questions — and turn that data into a purposeful market assessment.”

How can text analytics influence market segmentation?

Scour the web — blogs, social media, anywhere customers are gathering and commenting — to see what customers are saying about your products. Natch, this is nothing new for social media mavens.

What should I be listening for or paying attention to  … comments about? trends in?
  • Product strengths & weaknesses
  • Marketplace factors
  • Customer goals
  • New requirements/opportunities
  • Competitors’ strengths and weaknesses
  • Major geography
  • Minor geography
  • Client segment
  • Segment size
  • Pockets of growth and change
Now what do I do with it all?

Use this data to develop ideal customer profiles & define common characteristics aka segments that may include:

  • Company sales revenue
  • Market value
  • Profits
  • Growth
  • # of employees
  • # of locations
Now simply …

Add marketing action plan for each ideal client profile and voila! Well … if only it was THAT easy.

As social media and web content strategists know, it’s not all that easy. But too often there’s too much forgiveness for the sake of search marketing and social media’s new-ness. To maximize these time-consuming activities, it pays to do your homework, or pay someone to do your homework, but you get the gist.

There are existing frameworks, and search marketing and social media professionals perform best when they’ve modified the wheel rather than reinvent it poorly.

This post focuses on a thin slice of the presentation: For more meat from Sutter’s presentation, click the link at the bottom of the BPMA event description to download the file. Or follow MIDIOR Consulting on Twitter.

Meanwhile, I wonder if there’s a difference between text analytics and marketing metrics? Looking forward to your thoughts and insights.

Seth Godin’s Roadtrip visit to Boston

2 Comments

Seth Godin: Thoughts on the media revolution, entrepreneurship, education − Boston edition

By Alexandra Smith of Designated Editor

The Revolution: It’s the biggest of our time, the biggest since Henry Ford

  • We used to work toward and with a tangible product that wore out eventually – not anymore.
  • What you do all day at work is being constantly shaped by the revolution.
  • It will never go back to the way it was.
  • What are you doing during the revolution?

Entrepreneurship

  • There’s a shift in what it means “to work” in the world we live in now.
  • Doing work that provides a gift changes you, similar to service work.
  • A steady job with a predictable income is old school.
  • What makes something remarkable is people wanting to make remarks about it – This is why people talk about advertisements, because they are funny, not because they’re all that great.

Education

  • School simply teaches us to be good at school and to do what we’re told.
  • Problem-solving is missing from traditional education.
  • We need people who don’t just simply listen to and document a problem, but those who can solve it when it is presented – this is what we do in business.
  • We aren’t trained to be the best at one thing – we are trained to be competent at many things.

Godin’s advice for adapting

  • Don’t listen to your lizard brain. (Godin used a lizard prop to represent the part of our brain that controls our fear of taking  leaps, which drives us to do things that are safe and protected).
  • Very few people can accomplish creative work while their lizard brain is freaking out.
  • The cost of failing has never been lower.
  • You know it’s your lizard brain talking if it’s like fearing your will plane crash – it’s irrational.

Godin on spam

  • Don’t spam people to get your ideas out.
  • Earn the right to be an expert.
  • Spam doesn’t work as well as it used to.
  • Talk to those who want to be talked to with relevant messages.
  • Earn the right / gain enough knowledge to get in to talk to people in your niche about your ideas.

Godin on your work

  • Your job should be to come as close as possible to being fired every day.
  • If they don’t embrace your new ideas, leave.
  • Who would miss you if you left?
  • If you’re a go-getter, team up with a visionary, or vice versa.
  • “My boss won’t let me” is bogus. You’re not asking the right way.

Resources

More Seth Godin wisdom

Learn more about the Boston Linchpins

« Previous Page
Next Page »