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.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Social Media Marketing Versus Public Relations
I was reading Paul Gillin's newsletter this morning (which if you don't get, you absolutely MUST) and something he said in a prelude to a podcast he did with David Strom (in St. Lewis) triggered this thought. What skills can PR pros still use in the new world of social media marketing? This is actually something that I initially was concerned about some three or four years ago as I became familiar with search engine optimization (SEO). I called it search engine marketing (SEM) back then, and now it's known as social media marketing.
Check out Tech PR War Stories. Their podcast was prompted by Tamar Weinberg's list of the best Internet marketing blog posts of 2007 .
Paul encourages PR folks NOT to focus too much on all the new SEO tech tricks and services, stating, "With so much focus on search engine performance and user recommendations these days, PR pros may be tempted to spend all their time learning how to game the various traffic drivers that are sprouting up all over the Internet. Sure, it’s always nice to get a traffic boost from Digg or StumbleUpon, but the value of that traffic may not be worth the effort."
They talk about what IS important which includes the fundamental skills of PR, mainly creating compelling content, building relationships and delivering a message which are all still really important on the Internet. In the podcast David and Paul try to put the recommendation engine craze in perspective.
This is why MarCom Broadband has continued to focus on an integrated approach, and why we named the firm MarCom in the first place -- as in marketing communications -- which encompasses almost every aspect including advertising copy and design, marketing, journalism or content building, public relations, and now, Internet tactics. The Broadband part of our name just addresses the quantum speed at which the Internet allows us to do it all now. The short of it is that your 2008 Internet marketing strategy should include all of these points.
Strom commented about how new technology changes things all the time, to the point where it can be overwhelming ... because it's not enough to continue to just do the same thing year after year. Download their podcast here. (http://www.gillin.com/Podcasts/tprws-41.mp3)
Gillin also believes headlines that are search engine friendly are very important. We agree, that's one tip that I have used that really works, as evidenced just yesterday when my associate Mike Keesling did a quick review of one of our clients.
One year ago, we started working with T.S. Wiley, who developed a new protocol for bio identical hormone therapy (BHRT) protocol, known as The Wiley Protocol. When we searched for bioidentical hormones a year ago, she and her website came up as number 35. Today it shows up in Google as number five. I have been writing many articles for Wiley, posting them on the article submission sites throughout the Web -- therefore we have many Google Alerts that show up with headlines including her key words which Mike did in his keyword analysis last year - such as hormones, bio-identical hormone replacement therapy, and bioidentical, etc. We have been doing PR Web releases, and some newsletters. This year we are ramping up with a blog.
So it IS important to take a look at using the keywords in headlines, in a company's website, including all the tags such as meta and alt tags on each page (stuff Mike does for our clients). And also keywords can go in photo caption tags and videos for You Tube
It all comes down to content which will serve you best. As David and Paul said, "Content is the king."
Check out Tech PR War Stories. Their podcast was prompted by Tamar Weinberg's list of the best Internet marketing blog posts of 2007 .
Paul encourages PR folks NOT to focus too much on all the new SEO tech tricks and services, stating, "With so much focus on search engine performance and user recommendations these days, PR pros may be tempted to spend all their time learning how to game the various traffic drivers that are sprouting up all over the Internet. Sure, it’s always nice to get a traffic boost from Digg or StumbleUpon, but the value of that traffic may not be worth the effort."
They talk about what IS important which includes the fundamental skills of PR, mainly creating compelling content, building relationships and delivering a message which are all still really important on the Internet. In the podcast David and Paul try to put the recommendation engine craze in perspective.
This is why MarCom Broadband has continued to focus on an integrated approach, and why we named the firm MarCom in the first place -- as in marketing communications -- which encompasses almost every aspect including advertising copy and design, marketing, journalism or content building, public relations, and now, Internet tactics. The Broadband part of our name just addresses the quantum speed at which the Internet allows us to do it all now. The short of it is that your 2008 Internet marketing strategy should include all of these points.
Strom commented about how new technology changes things all the time, to the point where it can be overwhelming ... because it's not enough to continue to just do the same thing year after year. Download their podcast here. (http://www.gillin.com/Podcasts/tprws-41.mp3)
Gillin also believes headlines that are search engine friendly are very important. We agree, that's one tip that I have used that really works, as evidenced just yesterday when my associate Mike Keesling did a quick review of one of our clients.
One year ago, we started working with T.S. Wiley, who developed a new protocol for bio identical hormone therapy (BHRT) protocol, known as The Wiley Protocol. When we searched for bioidentical hormones a year ago, she and her website came up as number 35. Today it shows up in Google as number five. I have been writing many articles for Wiley, posting them on the article submission sites throughout the Web -- therefore we have many Google Alerts that show up with headlines including her key words which Mike did in his keyword analysis last year - such as hormones, bio-identical hormone replacement therapy, and bioidentical, etc. We have been doing PR Web releases, and some newsletters. This year we are ramping up with a blog.
So it IS important to take a look at using the keywords in headlines, in a company's website, including all the tags such as meta and alt tags on each page (stuff Mike does for our clients). And also keywords can go in photo caption tags and videos for You Tube
It all comes down to content which will serve you best. As David and Paul said, "Content is the king."
Thursday, January 3, 2008
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!
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!
Thursday, December 27, 2007
News from a Social Media Survey
Tanya Irwin at www.mediapost.com mentioned a recent survey indicating that nearly one third of Web marketers plan to increase spending significantly on social media, including blogs and discussion boards. This survey was conducted in September by Prospero Technologies, LLC (www.prospero.com).
According to their 2007 Social Media Survey, 59 percent of respondents reported that social media performance in 2007 met or exceeded their marketing objectives, boosting future spending expectations--with 31 percent planning to spend significantly more on social media applications in 2008.
The survey also mentioned that current challenges include integrating community-generated content with the rest of the Web site and understanding best practices for new and evolving technologies as well as keeping up with new social media technology advances.
This is the area that MarCom Broadband is getting alot of new business. Writing content, adding key words properly, and nd making sure the meta and alt tags have been done properly.
Regarding the types of social media applications currently in use, respondents said blogs and discussion boards topped the list. And for 2008, they say that discussion boards and blogs still top the list for Web and brand marketers followed closely by ratings and reviews and then social networking applications.
That's why we ghostwrite for our cients blogs, such as Rocco Basile's new blog on his charity work with Children of the City in Brooklyn.
Happy New Year!
According to their 2007 Social Media Survey, 59 percent of respondents reported that social media performance in 2007 met or exceeded their marketing objectives, boosting future spending expectations--with 31 percent planning to spend significantly more on social media applications in 2008.
The survey also mentioned that current challenges include integrating community-generated content with the rest of the Web site and understanding best practices for new and evolving technologies as well as keeping up with new social media technology advances.
This is the area that MarCom Broadband is getting alot of new business. Writing content, adding key words properly, and nd making sure the meta and alt tags have been done properly.
Regarding the types of social media applications currently in use, respondents said blogs and discussion boards topped the list. And for 2008, they say that discussion boards and blogs still top the list for Web and brand marketers followed closely by ratings and reviews and then social networking applications.
That's why we ghostwrite for our cients blogs, such as Rocco Basile's new blog on his charity work with Children of the City in Brooklyn.
Happy New Year!
Friday, December 14, 2007
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...
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...
Thursday, December 6, 2007
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.
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.
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