April 19Making Your Brand Social Network Optimized Making Your Brand Social Network Optimized Posted by Brian Solis In Part One, we focused on how to make your brand findable and shareable in social media. A white paper by Gigya validates the shift to, and resulting importance of, social search and its dependence on crowd participation. Online businesses must optimize in order to earn referral traffic from social networks. With the advent of social feeds — a live stream of friends’ activity shared on social networks like Facebook and Twitter — consumers can more easily rely on trusted personal relationships to determine what’s worthwhile to read, watch, play and buy online. Honestly, there are too many top 10 lists, and I subscribe to the Spinal Tap school of numeration, so this list will go to “11!” Here are 11 steps for optimizing your brand for sharing and social search. 1. Keywords This one seems elementary and trivial for many, but it can’t go unsaid. Social media is inviting new players within marketing and communications to the table. Their absence from traditional SEO practices requires the review of all keywords that stakeholders use to find relevant information regardless of the platform or network. 2. Brands Become Media Essentially, for brands to earn the attention of desired audiences their content must be timely, relevant, irresistible, and shareable. Content production is only part of the equation. Establishing a cadence to entice people to introduce our work to their friends and followers is atypical. Begin by defining an editorial calendar to produce and distribute relevant content for each and every network with rhythm and conviction. In the era of real-time and social search, brands now become the CNN of their industry while also socializing the content and experience to broaden reach and awareness. 3. Define the Experience Modernize and socialize your site to complement the experience visitors expect in 2010. Once someone is introduced to your content and they land on your site or landing page, make sure it’s presented in a gripping format and the proper hooks are in place for easy sharing back to the attention dashboards of their social graph. Many Web sites are still stuck in the time of Web 1.0 and essentially represent a static dead end to the dynamic and interactive experiences transpiring in social networks. 4. Establish a Formidable Presence Go where your audiences are already highly active, and also where they’re experimenting. Create enticing, compelling, and personable social profiles in the networks of relevance that convey a sense of “what’s in it for me?” Establish relationships based on context and make sure those relationships are fortified through the production and distribution of value-added content, combined with the art and science of reciprocity, response, and recognition. 5. Social Media Optimization (SMO) Optimize the site and all social objects for traditional, social, and real-time search based on the keywords that are defined in step one. Invest time and resources in the eloquence of describing and defining social objects through titles, descriptions, tags (keywords), links, and active content promotion. Create content in the methods dictated by the communities you wish to reach (e.g., blog posts, tweets, videos, pictures). 6. Social Search Now that Google and other search engines are experimenting with the addition of social search into results, the fusion of sharing and social networking improves the likelihood of someone clicking through to our desired objects. Data shows that, in addition to e-mail, visitors who find content shareable choose to share it on Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and MySpace. 7. Connect with Social Influencers As attention spans continue to thin and as interesting content spins through attention dashboards at blinding speeds, brands must proactively connect relevant information to social beacons who can lend credibility and spark conversations and dialogue around the objects we introduce aligned by theme and context. 8. Employ the Human Algorithm Google is already experimenting with a human algorithm of sorts for ranking real-time search results. The stature of one’s social capital ultimately contributes to the hierarchy, placement, and findability of the content and social objects we share online. Not only do we need to connect with social influencers to help us share our story, we also must identify and connect with individuals in the public stream and the back channel to ensure that the conversation generates ranked awareness. 9. Social Architecture: Analyze how key individuals in your markets are discovering, consuming, and sharing content today and integrate one-click social functionality across all pertinent content platforms. Also, make sure to stay on top of the most promising trends because social sharing will continue to rapidly evolve. Eradicate proprietary login systems and consider pervasive social logins, such as Facebook Connect and Twitter logins, as they’re designed to trigger social effects through reactions on the host site back to their respective social graphs. This extends the reach of content from a site that was once considered a destination to the networks of relevance in order to attract qualified visitors. 10. A Call to Action Implementing calls to action remind someone that captivating content is worthy of sharing. Integrating the tools to instantly do so is one part; reminding them to do so completes the circle. However, sharing isn’t the end game either. Inciting responses in addition to sharing, such as posts, retweets, likes, etc, create paths that define and engender the experience you desire with destinations and calls to action integrated to close the loop. Decide the activity you wish to inspire and integrate it into steps one through nine. Give them something to find and to talk about! 11. Listen and Adapt Create listening dashboards to monitor all activity including the number of shares, discoveries, click-throughs, etc., and find ways to improve the experience, as well as how to ignite a greater volume of sharing. If the socialization of content is defined by governing behavior, it is that of sharing and searching. The share economy currency is defined by likes, links, retweets, updates, comments, shares on Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, MySpace, et al. The potential and overall impact of social objects, either discovered or shared, only expands the reach of the brand as social media becomes pervasive. Providing the necessary means for individuals to not only find your content, but also actively share it across the social Web, is paramount to the survival of businesses in the era of curated search, social influence, and channeled attention. Comments This entry was posted on Monday, April 19th, 2010 at 8:30 am and is filed under Brand, Customers, Networking, Public Relations, SEO. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. About the Author: Brian Solis is principal at FutureWorks PR, an award-winning PR and Social Media agency founded in 1999. FW PR bridges the communications gap between companies and their customers, and between products and their specific benefits for their target markets. Solis blogs at PR2.0, http://www.briansolis.com, and regularly contributes to many industry trades. He is also frequently quoted in articles relating to technology trends and Marketing/PR strategies. 2:36 PM GMT | Read comments(1)October 01Difference Between SEO & SEM Search engine optimization and search engine marketing are two different terms which belong to the same group and have a common goal of making your Website and your product popular with search engines and people. SEO is basically a part of SEM and one of the techniques from various techniques used by SEM like paid inclusions, paid ads, PPC etc. SEM uses a number of such methods to advertise a website. In a search engine the results are listed in pages which are known as search engine result page or SERP. The result shown in this page is very diverse in nature and contains various sections. There are various paid inclusions which are shown in the top of SERP where as paid ads are placed in the side of the page. To show these ads you need to pay minimal fees and variable fees which depend on the number of clicks you receive. SEO is a part of SEM and its main aim is to make changes in your website itself and make it more search engine friendly. In SEO you do not need to purchase ads on any other paid services to rank your website higher. It mainly works by making you site attractive to search engine spiders by having proper keywords, key phrases, Meta tags, and inbound links. Sometimes web masters get confused while selecting from SEO and SEM. You need to spend a good amount of money while practicing SEM but the result is not guaranteed. You might get some short term benefits. But, in general people hardly care to click on the links displayed in the side bar. So you might end up losing your money. So in overall scenario SEO seems to more beneficial than SEM. Some regular ways of optimizing a website includes keywords in Meta tags and title, proper name to images, alt tags, keyword and key phrases inclusion etc. Whereas regular way of SEM includes PPC advertising, video marketing, social networking and article marketing. Any method you use to promote your website, your main aim should be specific and to attract someone who can be your potential customer and help you increase your business. Tony Josan 3:43 PM GMT | Read comments(1)July 09There is No Substitute for Pounding the Pavement So you have just finished building your new website. You have made all the plans about where you are going to advertise online and how many visitors you are going to get based on the latest statistics. It's going to be great, right?A week later nothing has happened. It's the search engines. Blame it on your key words. There is just too much competition. Your life's work is going completely unnoticed and it is killing you. Well, before you go out and purchase a $2,000 course from one of the many web gurus that fill your inbox try some old fashion leg work.Electronic advertising works but they have not invented anything to replace a firm handshake and a polished sales pitch. Of course you didn't plan to have business cards printed or hand out flyers but it is a necessity in today's market place. A lot of times business owners get caught up in the internet marketer's dream of automated sales and the whole, "make money while you sleep" sales pitch.Sure, that is great but it is not entirely realistic. If you take a look at the major web players, internet marketing is just a portion of their whole advertising plan. Pick a company, any company that is entirely web based and it is guaranted they have printed material and pitch men. It is just one of those things that are a part of business. Especially for a start up or growing business.That being said, there are a few materials that any "real business" must have. Despite what you might think, affiliate marketing is a "real business" that requires business cards, with a web address, for networking and flyers for building your initial customer base. These items cost extra money but they consistantly yield a better return dollar for dollar than pay per click ads.When you hand someone a flyer they can put a face with that cold, unfeeling, disconnected website. It is the difference between making a sale on your first few days online and feeling empowered to earn and waiting around for the search engines to list you on the first page, backlinks to register and people to click on your adwords.The majority of web businesses fail because their entire marketing plan is online. Which is passive advertising. Don't let your business fail. Take a pro-active approach. Get out and meet the customers wherever they are. Remember, although the web is a productivity multiplier, the rules of business have not changed.9:18 PM GMT | Read comments(0)June 12Universal Search: Changing the game Universal Search: Changing the GamePosted on: March 16th, 2009 | 4 Comments Universal and blended search has had a tremendous impact not only on searchers but also on SEOs. In this video, Amanda Watlington explains how universal/blended search has pushed SEO into a new position. With all the different forms of content that universal/blended search returns, SEOs have to look beyond the site. Back in the early days of SEO in 1995, Amanda says that SEOs were classified as soloists. They worked closely with IT departments and in some cases, worked more with IT than they did with marketing departments. Today, the game has changed. The SEO is, as Amanda calls him/her, a “visibility manager” or a “symphony conductor.” SEOs have to look at sites such YouTube, Flickr, and networking sites and work with videographers, public relations, and content providers in order to adapt to the game of universal/blended search. In her session as PubCon South, Amanda listed the following steps for SEOs to succeed: - Inventory the available digital assets- Look for overlooked opportunities- Audit current optimization success- Find the gaps and close them- Plan an attack based on business needs, not on what you think the engines want- Monitor the results- Get smart with the metrics An important point that Amanda stresses is that even though SEO has changed as a results of universal/blended search, the expectations have not changed. If you expect changes and are prepared for them when they come, you will be able to alter your game and continue your work effectively.10:38 AM GMT | Read comments(0)The Truth About Blogs"Douglas Quenqua reports in the NY Times that according to a 2008 survey only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days meaning that "95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream -- or at least an ambition -- unfulfilled." Richard Jalichandra, chief executive of Technorati, said that at any given time there are 7 million to 10 million active blogs on the Internet, but it's probably between 50,000 and 100,000 blogs that are generating most of the page views. "There's a joke within the blogging community that most blogs have an audience of one." Many people who think blogging is a fast path to financial independence also find themselves discouraged. ... 10:20 AM GMT | Read comments(0)
In Part One, we focused on how to make your brand findable and shareable in social media. A white paper by Gigya validates the shift to, and resulting importance of, social search and its dependence on crowd participation. Online businesses must optimize in order to earn referral traffic from social networks.
With the advent of social feeds — a live stream of friends’ activity shared on social networks like Facebook and Twitter — consumers can more easily rely on trusted personal relationships to determine what’s worthwhile to read, watch, play and buy online.
Honestly, there are too many top 10 lists, and I subscribe to the Spinal Tap school of numeration, so this list will go to “11!” Here are 11 steps for optimizing your brand for sharing and social search.
1. Keywords
This one seems elementary and trivial for many, but it can’t go unsaid. Social media is inviting new players within marketing and communications to the table. Their absence from traditional SEO practices requires the review of all keywords that stakeholders use to find relevant information regardless of the platform or network.
2. Brands Become Media
Essentially, for brands to earn the attention of desired audiences their content must be timely, relevant, irresistible, and shareable. Content production is only part of the equation. Establishing a cadence to entice people to introduce our work to their friends and followers is atypical.
Begin by defining an editorial calendar to produce and distribute relevant content for each and every network with rhythm and conviction. In the era of real-time and social search, brands now become the CNN of their industry while also socializing the content and experience to broaden reach and awareness.
3. Define the Experience
Modernize and socialize your site to complement the experience visitors expect in 2010. Once someone is introduced to your content and they land on your site or landing page, make sure it’s presented in a gripping format and the proper hooks are in place for easy sharing back to the attention dashboards of their social graph. Many Web sites are still stuck in the time of Web 1.0 and essentially represent a static dead end to the dynamic and interactive experiences transpiring in social networks.
4. Establish a Formidable Presence
Go where your audiences are already highly active, and also where they’re experimenting. Create enticing, compelling, and personable social profiles in the networks of relevance that convey a sense of “what’s in it for me?” Establish relationships based on context and make sure those relationships are fortified through the production and distribution of value-added content, combined with the art and science of reciprocity, response, and recognition.
5. Social Media Optimization (SMO)
Optimize the site and all social objects for traditional, social, and real-time search based on the keywords that are defined in step one. Invest time and resources in the eloquence of describing and defining social objects through titles, descriptions, tags (keywords), links, and active content promotion. Create content in the methods dictated by the communities you wish to reach (e.g., blog posts, tweets, videos, pictures).
6. Social Search
Now that Google and other search engines are experimenting with the addition of social search into results, the fusion of sharing and social networking improves the likelihood of someone clicking through to our desired objects. Data shows that, in addition to e-mail, visitors who find content shareable choose to share it on Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and MySpace.
7. Connect with Social Influencers
As attention spans continue to thin and as interesting content spins through attention dashboards at blinding speeds, brands must proactively connect relevant information to social beacons who can lend credibility and spark conversations and dialogue around the objects we introduce aligned by theme and context.
8. Employ the Human Algorithm
Google is already experimenting with a human algorithm of sorts for ranking real-time search results. The stature of one’s social capital ultimately contributes to the hierarchy, placement, and findability of the content and social objects we share online. Not only do we need to connect with social influencers to help us share our story, we also must identify and connect with individuals in the public stream and the back channel to ensure that the conversation generates ranked awareness.
9. Social Architecture:
Analyze how key individuals in your markets are discovering, consuming, and sharing content today and integrate one-click social functionality across all pertinent content platforms. Also, make sure to stay on top of the most promising trends because social sharing will continue to rapidly evolve.
Eradicate proprietary login systems and consider pervasive social logins, such as Facebook Connect and Twitter logins, as they’re designed to trigger social effects through reactions on the host site back to their respective social graphs. This extends the reach of content from a site that was once considered a destination to the networks of relevance in order to attract qualified visitors.
10. A Call to Action
Implementing calls to action remind someone that captivating content is worthy of sharing. Integrating the tools to instantly do so is one part; reminding them to do so completes the circle. However, sharing isn’t the end game either. Inciting responses in addition to sharing, such as posts, retweets, likes, etc, create paths that define and engender the experience you desire with destinations and calls to action integrated to close the loop.
Decide the activity you wish to inspire and integrate it into steps one through nine. Give them something to find and to talk about!
11. Listen and Adapt
Create listening dashboards to monitor all activity including the number of shares, discoveries, click-throughs, etc., and find ways to improve the experience, as well as how to ignite a greater volume of sharing.
If the socialization of content is defined by governing behavior, it is that of sharing and searching. The share economy currency is defined by likes, links, retweets, updates, comments, shares on Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, MySpace, et al.
The potential and overall impact of social objects, either discovered or shared, only expands the reach of the brand as social media becomes pervasive. Providing the necessary means for individuals to not only find your content, but also actively share it across the social Web, is paramount to the survival of businesses in the era of curated search, social influence, and channeled attention.
Comments
This entry was posted on Monday, April 19th, 2010 at 8:30 am and is filed under Brand, Customers, Networking, Public Relations, SEO. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
About the Author: Brian Solis is principal at FutureWorks PR, an award-winning PR and Social Media agency founded in 1999. FW PR bridges the communications gap between companies and their customers, and between products and their specific benefits for their target markets. Solis blogs at PR2.0, http://www.briansolis.com, and regularly contributes to many industry trades. He is also frequently quoted in articles relating to technology trends and Marketing/PR strategies.
Search engine optimization and search engine marketing are two different terms which belong to the same group and have a common goal of making your Website and your product popular with search engines and people. SEO is basically a part of SEM and one of the techniques from various techniques used by SEM like paid inclusions, paid ads, PPC etc. SEM uses a number of such methods to advertise a website.
In a search engine the results are listed in pages which are known as search engine result page or SERP. The result shown in this page is very diverse in nature and contains various sections. There are various paid inclusions which are shown in the top of SERP where as paid ads are placed in the side of the page. To show these ads you need to pay minimal fees and variable fees which depend on the number of clicks you receive.
SEO is a part of SEM and its main aim is to make changes in your website itself and make it more search engine friendly. In SEO you do not need to purchase ads on any other paid services to rank your website higher. It mainly works by making you site attractive to search engine spiders by having proper keywords, key phrases, Meta tags, and inbound links.
Sometimes web masters get confused while selecting from SEO and SEM. You need to spend a good amount of money while practicing SEM but the result is not guaranteed. You might get some short term benefits. But, in general people hardly care to click on the links displayed in the side bar. So you might end up losing your money. So in overall scenario SEO seems to more beneficial than SEM.
Some regular ways of optimizing a website includes keywords in Meta tags and title, proper name to images, alt tags, keyword and key phrases inclusion etc. Whereas regular way of SEM includes PPC advertising, video marketing, social networking and article marketing.
Any method you use to promote your website, your main aim should be specific and to attract someone who can be your potential customer and help you increase your business.
Tony Josan
So you have just finished building your new website. You have made all the plans about where you are going to advertise online and how many visitors you are going to get based on the latest statistics. It's going to be great, right?
A week later nothing has happened. It's the search engines. Blame it on your key words. There is just too much competition. Your life's work is going completely unnoticed and it is killing you. Well, before you go out and purchase a $2,000 course from one of the many web gurus that fill your inbox try some old fashion leg work.
Electronic advertising works but they have not invented anything to replace a firm handshake and a polished sales pitch. Of course you didn't plan to have business cards printed or hand out flyers but it is a necessity in today's market place. A lot of times business owners get caught up in the internet marketer's dream of automated sales and the whole, "make money while you sleep" sales pitch.
Sure, that is great but it is not entirely realistic. If you take a look at the major web players, internet marketing is just a portion of their whole advertising plan. Pick a company, any company that is entirely web based and it is guaranted they have printed material and pitch men. It is just one of those things that are a part of business. Especially for a start up or growing business.
That being said, there are a few materials that any "real business" must have. Despite what you might think, affiliate marketing is a "real business" that requires business cards, with a web address, for networking and flyers for building your initial customer base. These items cost extra money but they consistantly yield a better return dollar for dollar than pay per click ads.
When you hand someone a flyer they can put a face with that cold, unfeeling, disconnected website. It is the difference between making a sale on your first few days online and feeling empowered to earn and waiting around for the search engines to list you on the first page, backlinks to register and people to click on your adwords.
The majority of web businesses fail because their entire marketing plan is online. Which is passive advertising. Don't let your business fail. Take a pro-active approach. Get out and meet the customers wherever they are. Remember, although the web is a productivity multiplier, the rules of business have not changed.
Universal and blended search has had a tremendous impact not only on searchers but also on SEOs. In this video, Amanda Watlington explains how universal/blended search has pushed SEO into a new position. With all the different forms of content that universal/blended search returns, SEOs have to look beyond the site.
Back in the early days of SEO in 1995, Amanda says that SEOs were classified as soloists. They worked closely with IT departments and in some cases, worked more with IT than they did with marketing departments.
Today, the game has changed. The SEO is, as Amanda calls him/her, a “visibility manager” or a “symphony conductor.” SEOs have to look at sites such YouTube, Flickr, and networking sites and work with videographers, public relations, and content providers in order to adapt to the game of universal/blended search.
In her session as PubCon South, Amanda listed the following steps for SEOs to succeed:
- Inventory the available digital assets- Look for overlooked opportunities- Audit current optimization success- Find the gaps and close them- Plan an attack based on business needs, not on what you think the engines want- Monitor the results- Get smart with the metrics
An important point that Amanda stresses is that even though SEO has changed as a results of universal/blended search, the expectations have not changed. If you expect changes and are prepared for them when they come, you will be able to alter your game and continue your work effectively.