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...

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.