Ghostwriting Blogs for Clients for Link Building and Social Media

I have been writing blogs for quite some time. Blogs are a great link building tool, and they are also great for customer relationship building, reputation management, and a good survey tool to get a feel for what people think about new products and services. In order for a blog to be a good search engine optimization (SEO) link building tool, however, one must use linking strategies that are acceptable and effective with the engines like Google and Yahoo. Right now, one of my blogs is for our client Entertainment Career Connection.

Blogs are great for customer relations if done properly. And remember that anything you post on the Internet can come back and bite you later on. It will stay up for a long time. So be very careful what you say. Authenticity is very important, and starting conversations with your readers is what works today, and in fact, it is the shift in marketing all together.

I have a blog for one of our clients and as part of his campaign for reputation management we do an educational blog that talks about his activities on the Boards of two charities, and also serves as a research and information tool for trends in education, and enables link backs to his website. I use every single blog topic that I write to also revise it into a longer article for submission to article websites. But you cannot submit duplicate copy or the search engines will not count it.

There's one aspect of blog writing that people often do not understand - and that is the search engine optimization and PR value. Take for instance, Rocco's blog above. I post one to two times per week in his blog. Basically you can type in Rocco Basile on Google, and note that many of the items in the ranking list are now positive posts, and include both his official website as well as blog posts, some PR Web listings, and articles. Inside his blog posts I always provide links back to his website. And the linking strategy can be to specific pages in his website that are related about my topic - not just to the home page. There are times when we have seen blog posts get picked up by other bloggers, who link to the blog.

Blogging requires a goal, and they are a lot of work. But the beauty of blogging is that it provides a marketing vehicle that does NOT rely on a third party, such as an editor writing an article about you. Corporate blogs provide you with an opportunity to tell your company's story. Various executives in your company, large or small, can post to a corporate blog, so you can create a strategy ahead of time, then assign folks to write.

Blogs are a great "Crisis Management" tool. Just look at how popular Martha Stuart's blog was during her court battle. And blogs are a great way to build a database of interested people, users, etc. Just shoot folks over to a sign up form from your blog, and you are certain to get some opt ins.

And as for the return on investment for blog writing, it costs very little - you can set up a blog at blogger.com, for free. So it costs you in time - your time, the time of your employees, or the writing fees to hire someone like MarCom to ghostwrite your blogs. You can check to see if your blog is building website traffic, because of course, the better your blog's linking strategies are, the more folks will visit your website. Once a visitor comes in to your website from your blog, what path do they go down? do they ultimately get funneled to a sale? These things must be tracked on your website by programs like Google Analytics, which is free, or HitsLink, which is the one we like. And of course, you need the experience to be able to read and analyze the reports once they are generated on HitsLink, to track successes over a period of time.


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The Social Media Marketing Press Release and Wire Services

MarCom has been using various forms of the new social media marketing press release for our clients for the last few years. In fact a press release just went out yesterday for our client Acutrack, Inc. regarding their new eco-friendly consultation services to help other businesses learn how they can leave behind a smaller carbon footprint while remaining profitable. Acutrack has been helping ease the burdens their clients are placing on the world a number of ways, including environmentally friendly CD and DVD manufacturing. We distributed this release via PR Web, for several reasons. It was a longer than normal release because we added some of the customer testimonials, and PR Web's costs for distribution can often be more modest than MarketWire. Although we use both company's wire services. Each has various methods and distribution cost rates -- PR Web's premium one is $360. The release cannot be more than 800 words basically.

Acutrack's release was already picked up by a couple of newswires -- Acutrack, Inc. Announces Eco-Friendly CD and DVD Manufacturing and Packaging Solutions. There is also PR Newswire, which I have used for years for traditional press release dissemination to the media. Most all of the wires today are doing search engine optimization -- so, right now, I believe it is a matter of client budgets and experimentation for preference as to who gets you the best results.

Oh and BTW I just noticed this MarketWire press release regarding the fact that the inventor of the new social media press release format (now on version 1.5) PR agency Shift Communications, just won the Holmes Report "New Media Agency of the Year." Well done.

Our Small Business SEO and Social Media Teleseminar

Last week our MarCom associate Carole Hodges hosted a free teleseminar where I focused on small business websites, SEO and social media marketing. Carole's latest venture is The Yes Connection at http://www.carolehodges.com where she assists business partners and individuals with their start-ups and small business decisions.

There is a lot of confusion these days about what is needed on the Internet to market new and existing websites. So our teleseminar addressed the questions that the non-techie business owner may have.

The free teleseminar is about 40 minutes long, but in the end has some really good tips and information. To listen online: go to http://www.audioacrobat.com/play/WXcl1C3s

In summary, some of the points we covered included how you should spend your marketing dollars wisely insofar as the complexity of web marketing. We answered questions including:

Does every business need a website? Are there times when an inexpensive “Website Tonight” type product from GoDaddy is an appropriate choice? If you don’t have a lot of money, is a free Blog a good starting place? How do you differentiate between the types of websites? For example: Brochure – e-commerce – Membership Site – Services (online purchase and not.) Do you NEED to be selling something online to benefit from a website? What brings traffic to a website? Why do I care about SEO – Couldn’t I just pay for clicks to my site? What are traffic statistics? What are keywords? How do I know what keywords are right for my business? How do I determine how much traffic I really want on my site? What makes people STAY on your website and look around? Why should I look for competitors on the web? What if I have BIG plans for growth... is there a way to structure my website so that I start out simple and later add product sales or a membership site? What advice do you give to someone who is starting out and does not yet have a website? What advice do you give to someone who has spent a lot of money on their website but it is not giving them the results that they want?

Tough Times Require SEO and Social Media Marketing

Most of us over 40 years of age have all been though tough economic times in our careers, and having just done my taxes, and reading the Wall Street Journal every day, plus watching the news ... I can now admit, times are getting a bit tough. It's an election year.

Many folks have been talking to MarCom about doing search engine optimization and social media marketing -- and my associate Mike and I agree on this one -- the worse thing companies can do is stop marketing altogether. This is a huge mistake, because while you stop marketing, your worse nightmare of a competitor is ramping things up.

The reality these days is that in order to keep your small to medium sized business afloat - you need to do a minimum of a limited amount of marketing and advertising. But then what does that mean today? Many folks are just realizing that SEO and social media are party of the marketing mix, therefore they had just started to get serious about hiring experts like us to help them.

The bottom line? Do it. Here's why. If you have a company with products and services, and you rely on website traffic for sales, if you don't appear on the Page One of Google and other search engines, chances are people will not find you. And many folks are already optimized. We have a dentist client - as an example - Wilshire Dental Care. Just as fast as our client's website increases in its ranking with Google, his competition is working just as hard or harder and paying their SEO specialists allot to keep them on top! So our client really should increase our SEO and social media marketing efforts so that he stays on top and ahead of his competition. The bad news is IF he were to stop, his rankings will diminish, and six months from now? His competitors will be on page one of Google, and he will not.

Also the crazy thing is that right now, many SEO specialists are charging more than we do. I just did an analysis of Los Angeles SEO experts -- and we came across others who do what we do but who charge triple what we charge.

Here are some pointers you may want to keep in mind when considering SEO and social media marketing.
• There should be a compelling reason for you to look at it, read it, listen to it, watch it, like it, interact with it, and ultimately buy it!
•Today, people use search engines, like Google, to get what they want, how they want it - fast.
•The biggest challenge now is how to communicate your story over multiple channels, including the Internet.
•Becoming an “Authority Website” is the gold rush of the Internet.
•Authority = Attention
•Attention = Money

Social Media Marketing and Revising Websites

Given the fact that folks are beginning to notice some changes in business and the economy, MarCom Broadband is getting lots of new business referrals. I think it is because we have little experienced competition out there. Few companies have been doing search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing as long as we have, which is basically since it all started.

I got a call today from a prospect who is planning on revising his website. This often happens. We even had one client who refused to listen to us a couple of years ago, and they redid their website, ditched half the content and lost traction with their rankings on Google, even though we warned them!

Point is that you do not want to change the name of your url if you don't have to, but if you do, then certain SEO tactics must be put in place. My associate Mike Keesling often works very closely with website design firms, like Rigney Graphics, right from the start of a client's redesign on their site to make sure their site SEO is done right. Their newsletter, called LunchMeat" is pretty fun BTW.

As an example, MarCom is about to change our company name from MarCom Broadband to MarCom New Media -- and we have a new url, so we will be redesigning our own website. The only way we can salvage our current ranking with Google is to point the old site to the new site. And we need to salvage much of the old site content and rework it with our key words on the new website.

Also what many people do not understand is that the Meta tags on each website page must correspond to content and keywords inside that particular page. There are many other little intricate tactics that we have learned to use to improve client rankings.

Pitching New Business: An Integrative Approach with Social Media Marketing

Once again it's that time of year when my associate Jeff asks me and my colleagues to do a guest lecture at his class of PR and communications students at Cal State Northridge. Our MarCom Broadband creative director, Brad Stone, is heading there today. And I will talk on Friday.

When I was chatting with Brad this morning about his presentation, it came up that now, with the press and the Internet, media don't need PR folks as much because they can research whatever they need online. And to get the media to respond to a pitch is becoming more and more difficult. Nowadays we wrap video right along with website links inside email pitches.

Having been in marketing and advertising for several decades, it's easier to see trends, and as the saying goes what comes around goes around, because patterns tend to duplicate. What I mean is that many years ago when we pitched new business, we gave a killer presentation, provided our creative ideas and often won the account (whether advertising or PR) based on the creative ideas within. We had to start getting the potential clients to sign and promise not to steal our ideas and use them without hiring us. Then along came technology and the dot com world, where that went out the window. We never gave any creative ideas away UNTIL we were hired. Our proposals where based on case histories and results for prior clients.

Today we are back in the place where with social media marketing and search engine optimization being wrapped into our presentation, and with competition out there, we are doing more presentations with creative ideas inside. Now back to a place where we need client signatures again.

Social media marketing is becoming a part of all of MarCom's new business pitches -- even though many clients still request just one thing - like PR. We must incorporate it into all of our marketing, advertising, PR and social media marketing strategies these days.

Is Social Media Marketing Revolutionary?

I read another blog post today that said that social media marketing is the biggest shift that has taken place in marketing since television. That's a pretty big claim. Hat Tip to Karl Long and FutureLab. His blog references the same study I referenced in my last blog on Feb. 28. about the TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony study that polled more than 60 marketers and discovered that social network marketing is still a puzzle, and agencies don't seem equipped to help clients "get it."

There was and always will be shifts in marketing. That's why the term "new media" was coined. It wraps all the new marketing strategies and tactics into one term. And again, it is why we will soon be changing the name of our company from MarCom Broadband to MarCom New Media. (Our new website will be up soon.) Our business has shifted entirely in the last two years from marketing and PR, to marketing, branding SEO and social media marketing. We started out with the concept of helping companies go to market faster in today's world, i.e. the Internet, which has the potential to reach millions of people in quantum time. Ergo the broadband in MarCom Broadband. But people understand new media more than broadband.

There is still much confusion about new Internet driven marketing strategies. The Web has changed everything, yet it in reality is merely another channel in which to market through -- a channel with worldwide reach. The television, as Karl said, changed everything. And I do believe he is right about the revolutionaries, who are "participating in the conversation" and building deeper relationships with their customers, versus those who are "waiting to see."

We hear questions like this all the time. What's the best way to design a website? Is Flash in or out? I know I need Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but just exactly what does that mean? How is Search Engine Marketing different from SEO? If I invest in doing business over the Internet, what marketing strategies will guarantee sales results? My company works with consultants who are in some cases virtual, so what's the best way to manage them? I see other companies getting excellent PR stories, so why can't I? Do people really read email or pay per click ads? Do web banners work? What is social media?

The bottom line is that the most important thing we can understand as marketers is our need to first "get inside the client's challenge." Once the challenges are identified, we can put a strategic plan together that will allow our clients to "go to market" and get measurable results with a return on their investment. The thing is - it's hard to measure television commercials. SEO measurement is easy.

Skills + knowledge + thought + creativity + channels = positive energy and results.

Adweek Survey on Social Media Marketing

Brian Morrissey reports on social media marketing in Adweek (Feb. 28, 2008) about a TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony study that polled more than 60 marketers and discovered that social network marketing is still a puzzle, and agencies don't seem equipped to help clients "get it."

With more and more clients starting to place emphasis on trying to master social media marketing, they seem to find that their agencies are not equipped to help them succeed in that space. More than 60 marketers in North America, France and the U.K. were polled to see how they are doing in figuring out the world of social media. They were asked for feedback on their agencies' abilities to help with social media.

According to TNS "Agencies don't get it." Clients complained that their agencies -- creative, media, public relations, design and others -- typically treat social channels like blogs as traditional media.

In other cases, their ideas are not backed up by practical skills in the area. What's more, one client pointed out that his agencies have little of their own experience using social networks or video-sharing sites for themselves.

The perceived, and real lack of social media competence at agencies will present opportunities for new providers. That means firms like MarCom Broadband will be getting the business because we have been deep into social media marketing for the last five years, and well into search engine marketing for over ten years. Following are just a couple of our customer case histories.

Client: Entertainment Connection (http://www.film-connection.com/, http://www.radioconnection.com/, http://www.recordingconnection.com/) SEO and online PR
Result: In less than one year, in addition to expanding the websites tremendously, we have decreased Entertainment Connection’s original PPC budget by 67 percent of what it was, and increased the number of leads by 67 percent. For one third the budget they are getting 170 percent of the business. We are currently drafting press documents for launching the company’s corporate press room, and will soon write articles for submission – all in the new social media format. Future plans including a Spanish version of each site. Each website is getting excellent rankings

Client: The Wiley Protocol (http://www.thewileyprotocol.com/) SEO, PR and Social Media Marketing
Result: After a year of SEO and social media marketing, the Wiley website is ranking well in search engines. With Joomla as their content management system there are limitations, however as one example, a year ago the company was ranked 35 on Google under the key word phrase “bio-identical hormone replacement therapy. It is now number five on page one of Google. PR and social media efforts continue.

Client: Wilshire Dental Clinic (http://www.oralimplant.com/) SEO and Social Media Marketing
Result: In a year this client is ranking on the first page of all the major search engines for most all of the key words for the website www.oralimplants.com. Social media marketing continues, and we will begin ghostwriting a blog for Dr. Afar in February, 2008. These bi-weekly postings will further improve and maintain rankings of each website.
CyberDefender.com (www.cyberdefender.com)

Client: CyberDefender, Inc. (http://www.cyberdefender.com/) Reputation Management, SEO and PR
Result: Negative listings for the company’s CEO and the prior company were pushed back off of Google’s first page within six months. Within three months there were increased product sales and revenues and after six months the company’s ranking by the search engines showed a significant increase in organic listings based on the key words, while increased product sales and revenues amplified.

Using Linked In for Social Media Marketing

I was invited to a colleague's BNI networking group this morning, and they had recently implemented a group instruction to network each other via Linked in. I have been on the service for years. And I am guilty of not always using it correctly, as I suspect is an issue with many business people, even though I know the value of social media networking sites like this. We instruct our MarCom Broadband clients about the value of social sites like this.

Because LinkedIn is an online network of millions of professionals from around the world, it will help to improve your Google Page Rank, or Google PR. You can post your personal profile and make the information available for the search engines to index. LinkedIn gets high PR in Google, so it is another way of influencing your ranking so people will find you on the Internet. It is pretty simple: just create your public profile and choose the option called “Full View.” You may also want to have your profile’s URL be your actual name, or the name of your company. Then link this page from your blog, or website or from press articles online.

Also LinkedIn is a great place where you can list your website with a link, and or your blog link. All links back to your blog or website create "activity" on these sites which Google likes, and which will go as credits towards your , or PR, on those sites. Be sure if you link to your blog that you include your name or keyword phrase in the link, which will provide search-engine optimization for your blog site.

Linking in press releases and wire services

I had an interesting experience yesterday. I was submitting my client Peternity.com's press release, when I called tech support at the wire service that I use and was told that I could add my key words - and that I was allowed one key word per 100 words. The release was 800 words long, meaning I could add eight keywords. I did this but, to be honest, it really looked stupid. So I contacted my colleague, and social media marketing mentor Sally from Expansion Plus, who said that three links per article "work best." We changed the release.

We've been practicing social media marketing at MarCom Broadband for quite some time, and every day I learn something new. For article submissions, I have only been using three links per article. And the same rule applies for articles as for releases. It is best to link to a key word phrase in the first paragraph, and at the end -- because, as I have been told, the search engines read from the bottom up, and top down, and pick up words most used on the beginning and end of sentences.

One more issue. When in the article submission sites, they do not allow linking in the main text of your article. However they will allow a maximum of two URLs in what is known as the RESOURCE BOX. You are allowed to use HTML code to make the link work. If you don't link up your URL they will automatically assume that you only wanted it displayed, but not linked. Oh, and they also do not allow these links in the resource box to contain a downloaded file of any kind. Plus they won't accept articles that have the same link in the box more than one time.

And as always -- stick to white hat, not black hat SEO practices, or they may reject your articles.

2008 Trends in SEO and Social Media Business Models

Now that the new year is well under way, we have been getting questions from current and potentially new small to medium sized clients regarding business models and the online arena.

In fact, MarCom is also currently undergoing a new website development strategy for our own website MarCom Broadband. Although we liked the original design two years ago, we want a more corporate content driven site today, so we've decided that the black background needs to be switched out. Plus our website in need of upgrading to a more SEO and social media friendly design. We will be having our web designer add this blog, and make it easier to switch out content on the pages of the site. Websites with lots of dynamic changing content rich with your key words get the attenditon of the search engines, which will mean better rankings.

That brings me to the fact that I noticed a great article on Steve Rubel's Micro Persuasion blog this week which talked about some of the new online business models. There is of course, "advertiser-supported advertising" in which some of the big brands are partnering with online media properties. Then there are"advertiser-subsidized devices, " where incentives play a big part. However, the model that fascinated me is is known as "just-in-time," which is digital advertising planned, placed, measured and evaluated, so that people can decide if the program should be tweaked or tossed. According to the report, new technology allows marketers to create "just-in-time" campaigns that adapt to conditions, so creative campaigns will adapt and change based on specific triggers -- such as sales/ERP data, blog chatter/consumer feedback, or other external conditions.

Yes this works for those who are online. But what about people who still are not online all the time, like pharmacists or doctors. I believe that no matter what the business model, the reality here is that consumers are still interacting in a variety of mediums with the exception of email spam now which typically goes in the trash. Direct mail for example can still work in conjunction with postcard campaigns that drive folks to a website where they can accept a special offer by filling out a survey, and instigate a lead gen call from a sales rep. This works really well for some businesses.

Our new client, Peternity.com, for example, is a small business that currently relies on online lead generation, based on people who are searching for pet urns, pet memorial markers or information about pet burials. A targeted direct mail postcard campaign to vets, or pet stores, could lead to new business tie-ins and direct customer referrals.

Blog ?s from our Search Engine Optimization Clients

We always get quesitons from our clients about how they can improve their skills on tactics that they are doing. Yesterday for example, I had a quesiton from my client at Peternity.com
a place where people honor their pets for eternity by offering pet memorial products like pet urns, garden statue pet memorials, and other pet memorials.

Colleen asked, "Do you think it's okay for me to do my blog posting thanking another blog for featuring me on their blog. It would give me an opportunity to put in links to product pages on my site through my blog."

We get this and other questions often. Basically the answer is yes, however it's common courtesy to actually link to the other person's blog. Here are the rules about blogging ethics… Another thing you may want to do is blogroll folks that have other blogs that you want to promote. In your blog that means you list other blogs that you recommend.

And of course, MarCom Broadband is all about search engine optimization and it's critical that if you want folks to even FIND your blog, your keywords need to be in it. Make wure that you list them in headlines, close to the beginning of the sentence in para one and close to the beginning middle and end of the blog in general.

Blogging is a Top New Year SEO Trend

The world of the blogosphere has grown, matured and diversified as a business communication medium and a tool used by search engine optimization and social media marketing experts like those of us at MarCom Broadband.

Just like websites, blogs are just another way to provide information -- but the difference is that a blog is more dynamic, contentwise. Many websites, even our own at MarCom, are more like portfolios. Although the trends are to have a more dynamic website, many folks still have static information or web copy on websites.

There are several different types of blogs for companys. An executive blog can profile comments and/or blog content from it's management team, or the executives of the company. But it is important that these executives take the time to write -- at least two to three times a week, otherwise you should ghostwrite for them.

Currently I am helping one client with his blog at http://www.roccobasile.blogspot.com/ so you can check out how we talk about his charity work.

You may need to coach your clients and help them with editing their blogs. And they need to learn how to make sure their key words are inserted into the blogs properly, or it won't do any good for their SEO.

There's also another type of blog, which has been tagged by the experts as an "advice" blog. That's what this blog of mine is. I give advice on social media marketing. Sometimes I go off topic, which is fine, and actually encouraged. These kind of blogs do really well in the search engines.

Whatever you blog about, the key thing is that you are consistant, with two to three posts a week. Keep it of interest, keep it real, and add your keywords.

As for how to set up your blog, I like the templates in Blogger.com, but there's also Wordpress, and other blog formats that are free and very easy to set up and use.

Happy blogging in the New Year!

Powers of Social Media Marketing

Here's an interesting factoid. If your website isn't optimized properly, it's probably no more than a portfolio, and unless you just point people to it, nobody will find it. And if it is flash, it can't be optimized for the search engines. In fact, for expedience and time, it's probably much faster and more effective if you have a blog, or post information in social media sites like You Tube, or My Space.

We have a couple of new projects at MarCom, one of which will require launching and getting information out to the masses by early January. We need to build a simple website first, and even if my associate Mike did a key word analysis, and then optimized all of the new website pages (the meta and alt image tags), Google and the search engines would not necessarily start tracking the site for well over a month. Mike is a pro at website optimization.

One mistake is that many website are using same title tags for all pages and no description tags. And then I typically take a look at the content inside each of the pages, and make sure the key words are placed properly.

There is one pretty cool program that we often recommend to our clients. It's called PRESSfeed. This is a cost effect and easy way to put up a press room and post and show press releases within a website. But more importantly, PRESSfeed is a Social Media Marketing tool that creates RSS feeds for online content syndication and publishing as well as for better search engine visibility.

A blog on the other hand, is also a great online marketing tool. They are pretty easy to set up, and ready to go insofar as the RSS feeds. This blog, for example, is by Blogger. It's easy to set it up, choose a template, add photos, and add keywords, or as they say "Labels for this post."

Another tip is that social media marketing strategies must be well planned in advance. This means you need to map out a schedule and budget for posting PR Web releases ($360 each), along with traditional press releases on a newswire such as PR Newswire. You need to schedule blog posts. Three per week minimum is advised at first. And then you can always do a social media video to post on You Tube - and the 30 or so other video websites online.

In fact, we have a new client that we started about a month ago that we can now begin tracking in my next blog as a case hisotry. Stay tuned...

The 30 Percent Rule in Social Media Marketing

Here's a tip for those who are posting content online. When the search engines look at website content, they read left to right and bottom up and top down. Therefore the beginnings and ends of all your sentences are being scanned. If you have several identical documents online, say a press release posted on your website, and also on PR Web, the engines like Google will only count one.

However if you post two different types of release - each with content that is at least 30 percent different, search engines will count the releases as two separate documents -- giving you more credit toward rankings on the search engine pages.

Google runs on a unique combination of advanced hardware and software. Their PageRank™, is a system for ranking web pages which plays a central role in their web search tools. As Google puts it:

"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages' relative importance.

Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query."

Therefore, whether you are writing an article, a press release, blog post, forum post, web content, or a white paper -- all about the same topic -- each ducument must be about 30 percent different. And don't forget to add your key words to each document.

MarCom Broadband has done hundreds of keyword analysis reports for out clients. You'd be surprised which longtail words do the best.

Consumers Define Social Media Marketing

As with everything in marketing, it’s the consumer who defines the market in the end. And we are there ready to give them what they want via what we call MarCom On Demand. Today it’s essential that companies – large or small – deploy an online marketing strategy that engages its customers. People research stuff on the Internet, so they can basically find anything that they want online. They go to chat rooms, and join social networking sites like Linked In, Facebook or MySpace, read blogs, newsletters, news groups, and often interact in online forums, wikis and chat rooms.

We have been out there experimenting with all the latest the social media marketing tools for more than three years – the search engine optimized online marketing strategies and tactics that will draw customers in by way of putting our clients’ info out there on the Internet. It’s working. Many of our clients are now on the first pages of the search engines like Google, or Yahoo. As people are seeking information about our clients’ products and services, we have made sure that every piece of content on the Internet about our clients, such as their website copy, press room, and then press releases we distribute over the wires, and articles that we post in submission sites, are chocked full of the keywords that we have determined are best. We do a keyword analysis for each client, and these are the words being used to pull in information in on by individuals searching the Net.

Nowadays, we have become more like online business consultants at MarCom Broadband, and we have to really know our clients business, and know their customers. It takes hours of research sometimes – just to get it right. Then we use many different social media tools to convey messages for our clients – everything from ghost writing their blogs to writing newsletters. My associate Mike is doing some really cool video podcasts and video shorts for clients that he posts in over 25 plus different video sites, including the big ones like YouTube and Google, as well as on the client’s websites.

Meanwhile I have been busy writing, as I call it, “six ways to Sunday” with topics that stretch from press releases to blog copy to articles that I write in a very special social media format. This includes keywords placed in specific places, and using a specific number for characters in the titles and subheads. It’s all geared for the search engines to be able to read the content – and if your keywords are placed right, Google reads it, then serves it up to people using their engines to find what they want.

The bottom line is -- the days of just simply advertising and pushing PR messages out to people are over. With anti spam software, how many emails to you simply avoid these days? Even the media use the Internet to find what they want, so PR people become less important. It’s now more important than ever to engage people in conversations, get them interested, share knowledge, and let them sell themselves on your client’s products and services.

BloggerWorld Conference

This week from Wednesday - Friday, Nov. 7 - 9 the first "BlogWorld & New Media Expo" will be taking place in Las Vegas. (Go to www.blogworld expo.com.) The promoters promise it to be an exciting forum for members of both the new and traditional media. It's open to any blogger, vlogger, podcaster, Internet radio broadcaster, or producer of any other form of new media content. I wonder if their press room is open then to ALL bloggers, or just traditional media.

I am happy to see that the traditional "media stunt" is sill part of this celebration. The conference will play host to the first annual BlogWorld & New Media Expo's "World's Largest Pajama Party." That should serve up some interesting podcasts and photos.

I also wonder if the presenters (there are seven keynote speakers) will be answering some of the questions that we are confronting these days with clients as everyone transitions into the blogosphere. One keynote is with Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and founder of HD.net, plus a recent contestant on ABC-TV's Dancing with the Stars. He is the author of the popular "Blog Maverick" blog.

For example one of my questions came about when writing a press kit for one new project. It has come to my attention that many websites are no longer featuring press kits for the media. On eBay, for example, I could not find a traditional press kit to download. As this is a traditional media tactic, is it still important to make press kits available that are journalistically written in AP Style for the media to specifically just "lift" and use the content therein? I think so -- although I no longer believe a had printed folder with paper inside is a good idea. environmentally speaking it's a waste. So a CD/DVD version would be better for handing out at trade shows. Our client Acutrack, Inc. handles that for marketers in its On Demand Production product.

I have numerous blog posts out there to query and find out the answer to this question BTW, and I will post the answers in a future blog post.

I know that from now on many media within the blogosphere, won't pay any attention to anything unless it comes in RSS format. In fact, here is the Shift Communications new media format RSS enabled press release.

Happy blogging.

Optimizing Your Website for the Search Engines

Once you have chosen applicable keyword phrases (see previous blog item) that have a high search volume, but a corresponding low number in the "competition" column, the next important search engine optimization (SEO) tip is that you can now incorporate these key words and phrases to optimize your website. Website optimization is one of the most important things you can do to make your website more visible to the search engines.

When optimizing any website the goal should be to choose one or two of your top keyword phrases for each page in your website. You can make your choices by matching the subject matter of your web pages to the keyword phrases.

Then you can plug your keyword phrases into the appropriate place on each web page. The appropriate places are your title tag (approx 70 characters long), your meta description tag (approx 100 characters long), your headline or page title (preferably as an H2 tag), in the first sentence of your body copy, somewhere in the middle of your body copy, and in the last sentence of your body copy.

You can also use keyword phrases in the alt image tags -- and you get bonus points for using your keyword phrase as link text. Repeat this for each page on your website. Just remember not to duplicate tags, or exact content, because with anything you do on the Internet, the search engines will only count content one time, so you won’t get credit for duplications.

Applicable keyword phrases can also be used to guide your website content. This means you can use your keyword phrases to define what your website content should be about -- one web page per keyword phrase. So, while looking over your keyword phrases, figure out those that you already have content for, which ones you need to write content for, and then add content pages for those keyword phrases where you are lacking content.

Ultimately, good search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing will gain better search engine visibility.

Keyword Analysis - The First Step in SEO

There is a lot of confusion about just what search optimization (SEO) is. There are a number of steps involved, but the first and most important step is to do a keyword analysis to figure out what key words people use when they search for a product or service via one of the search engines like Google or Yahoo.

Here are the basic steps for a keyword analysis:
1) Take a look at your client’s key messages, and jot down the words and phrases that stand out.
2) Go to http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-playground.php
3) Enter your keywords and or phrases and copy the results for searches per month containing the keyword phrase(s) into an excel spreadsheet. One column is for the search term and the other column is for search volume.
4) Go to http://google.com and enter each keyword phrase one at a time. Just above the search results on the right hand side on Google is a line with results 1-10 of about NUMBER for each keyword phrase.
5) Enter the value of this number in the third column (heading of Competition) for each of your keyword phrases. Repeat for all the keyword phrases you can think of. Then sort your spreadsheet under search volume column in descending order.
6) Now look for applicable keyword phrases that have high search volume and low number of competition...these are the keyword phrases you will want to use--the PRIME keyword phrases.

Use your keywords in press releases, online articles, and link to your website with links that use your keywords. All of this will help your website's rankings in the organic listings of the search engines so people can find your site when the use the same keywords.