I was invited to join the SEO Dojo guys for their weekly radio podcast, to talk about linkbuilding and SEO for Google News. It was a blast and I thoroughly enjoyed chatting with David and Terry. You can stream or download the podcast here (my contribution starts 40 minutes in):

SEO Dojo: SEO Dojo Radio Episode 4

In the second part of the show today we’re having Barry Adams from the Great Websites blog. He works at Visual Script in Belfast and deals with some major newspapers. As such we’ll be asking him about his (extensive) knowledge of Google News.

After seeing yet another regurgitated blog post on how we should stop doing SEO and start focusing on social media, I couldn’t hold back my frustration any longer and wrote a rant that got published on the SEO Bullshit website:

SEO Bullshit: Search and Social? Eh, no.

I don’t buy in to this social-search-coagulation. It just doesn’t compute with me. Looking at my own behaviour online, when I use a social media site I’m in an entirely different mindset than when I’m using a search engine. My ‘user intent’, if you will, is very different.

Recent Writings on SEO 7 is a post from: The Great Websites Blog

(This article was originally published in the Belfast Telegraph on 30 March 2010. It’s been modified slightly for this blog.)

Last week I received a surprising email from Facebook entitled ‘Your Weekly Facebook Page Update’. It contained an overview of all the Facebook pages I am an admin of, with statistics on the number of new fans, wall posts and visits to the page.

Those of us who use Facebook and other social media sites in a professional capacity have been aching for reliable metrics to judge the success of our social media marketing campaigns.

Facebook launched its Insights tool in late 2007 as a means for page admins to gather data on what happened on their pages and get some basic demographical data on the composition of their fan base. However, since then there’s been remarkably little movement by Facebook on the analytics front.

This latest move is an indication that Facebook is starting to take the professional use of their social media platform more seriously, and can be seen as an outreach to social media marketers.

The fact that several professional web analytics vendors such as Omniture and WebTrends have recently announced new Facebook tracking features, makes this latest move from Facebook just that little bit juicier.

Perhaps Facebook is trying to pave the way for its own (paid) analytics package, that will hopefully allow admins to gain deeper insights in to how visitors reach their pages and how they interact with it.

This will hopefully help take a lot of the guesswork out of social media marketing, and allow clients of social media marketers to demand clearer ROI on their investment.

Facebook Takes Social Media Marketing Seriously is a post from: The Great Websites Blog

Social media is the current Big Thing, or so we’re told. You have to Tweet! Be on Facebook! Get Linked In!

But do you really? Is it necessary to be on every social media site and shout your message as loud as you can in to as many microphones as you can find?

Social media websites are not ends in and of themselves – they are a means to an end. For most users social media sites are channels to connect with friends, relatives and colleagues, to read relevant news and keep up to date with stuff that interests them.

Sites like Facebook and Twitter are the digital equivalent of conversations with friends and acquaintances. This means that commercial messages aren’t really welcome. It’s important to realise that on social media websites the user controls the content – what they read, what they share, what they ignore.

Commercial messages are considered interruptive and unwelcome. That’s why as a company, when you do decide to build your presence on Twitter or Facebook or any other social media website, you need to adapt your voice to the medium.

People who are interested in Ford cars don’t want to read loads of hyped sales tweets straight out of car dealer brochures. What they might be interested in is advance information about upcoming Ford cars, inside knowledge of Ford’s R&D, or just to see a human face behind that monolithic corporate image.

The people at Ford know this, so their Twitter account isn’t just a faceless PR machine. It’s run by actual people who have conversations with their followers and provide tweets that are interesting.

This has proven to be a successful approach for them – the Ford Twitter account has over 25 thousand followers.

On Facebook the overall tone is even more informal and social. Where Twitter is becoming a networking tool, people ‘hang out’ on Facebook with friends and family. That’s why success on Facebook depends mostly on how you approach your audience.

While some companies have the benefit of a corporate image that lends itself well to Facebook (Nike for example whose various FB pages boast tens of thousands of fans), for other companies it can be quite challenging to build a strong presence.

They key is to deliver what your fans want. Nike uses Facebook to share cool videos, ask for user input, and launch contests where participants can win great swag.

If all you’re pushing on Facebook is the same sales material as you send by email, you’re not on the right track. Get personal, be authentic, and ask for feedback. Listen to your fans and give them what they ask for.

When you do decide to start tweeting or build a Facebook page, make sure you define for yourself what you want to get out of it. Your goal can be anything from fuzzy marketing stuff like brand-building to solid ROI metrics such as more visitors to your website that convert in to customers.

Sometimes you’ll find that a certain popular social media site just doesn’t work for you. And that’s OK. Social media sites, for all the hype surrounding them, are just channels that you can use for the benefit of your company’s bottom line. If you can’t get any value out of them, don’t use them.

For every social media site that you think can add value, ask yourself the following questions: Is my target audience present? And do they want to hear what I have to say?

As long as you set your expectations and manage your social media presence accordingly, you’ll be OK. Just don’t be social for social’s sake. Whatever you do with social media, make sure it means something.

UPDATE 16 Feb: I came across an excellent case study from Microsoft Advertising on how they successfully deployed social media. It’s a great read and definitely worth your while:
» Microsoft Social Media White Paper – Learn & Earn [PDF]

Use Social Media sites effectively, or not at all is a post from: The Great Websites Blog

I recently wrote about social media and if it’s right for you to start using it as a means of generating more business. This week Michael Stelzner has published his Social Media Marketing Industry Report. This free report is an excellent resource for all who are using or considering social media as a marketing instrument.

The report is based on an extensive survey among social media marketing professionals, and you can distill some great insights from it that can help you determine if and how social media marketing can work for your business.

A few key takeaways from the report are:

• Social media marketing does help with generating sales and business.
• The most popular social media sites used by professionals are Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook.
• Doing social media marketing takes anywhere from 5 to 20+ hours a week.

The report (PDF) is very much worthwhile. Whether you’re new to social media or a seasoned pro, you’ll pick up quite a bit from reading it.

Free Social Media Marketing Industry Report is a post from: The Great Websites Blog

Communication is what the internet is all about. The world wide web is one huge gathering of voices, of people expressing themselves in many different ways. People use the web to talk to one another about anything and everything. And they can also use the web to talk about you.

Contrary to the physical world where you can rarely know if people are talking about you and your business, in the online world there are many ways to find out if others are having conversations about your organization. Everything that is online can be searched, indexed, compiled and found. The trouble is finding out where the conversations are happening. Fortunately there are quite a few tools available to help keep you updated on what others are saying about you.

First and foremost you have Google Alerts. This very straightforward service lets you subscribe via email to any new piece of internet content that matches your alert query. It will send you an email with the latest article, web page, video, and blog post that matches the keywords you submitted.

This sounds like the perfect solution, but it has a catch: you need to define your query well to prevent getting swamped with non-relevant alerts. Set your alert query too generic and you’ll get hundreds, or even thousands, of alerts in your inbox, most of which will be entirely irrelevant to your business.

A good idea is to set your company name as a Google Alert. Unless your business has a very generic name, this will ensure that you’ll only receive alerts when your company is actually mentioned in an online publication. You could also set alerts for your product brand names, the names of high profile employees, and of course your competitors.

Another very useful tool is Google Blog Search. This is a specialized search engine that only searches in blog posts. Blogs are becoming increasingly important and valuable as a form of citizen journalism, and some successful blogs can make or break the reputations of international corporations. It’s important to be aware of when and how a blogger is talking about your business.

Knowing when people are talking about you online is just the first step. Next you’ll want to join the conversation. But be careful when responding to news articles or blog posts – don’t be aggressive. Join the conversation with a civil tone – this is a public conversation after all and you don’t want to come across as a jerk.

Don’t be afraid to contact the blogger or journalist directly via email instead of openly discussing matters in the comments section. Just be sure to always stay friendly and positive, just as you would with a customer on the phone or in person. One unhappy customer in the real world may not harm your business much, but online everything is stored forever and publicly available to anyone – one negative online argument can come back to haunt you years later.

Find Out When Others Are Talking About You Online is a post from: The Great Websites Blog

Social media is a catch-all phrase that encompasses all websites that offer interactive functionality and user-generated content. Social media ranges from social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn) to video sharing sites (YouTube, Vimeo), social news sites (Digg, Reddit), social bookmarking (Delicious, StumbleUpon) and everything else that claims the tag ‘social’.

Social media is often hyped as a means of generating a lot of buzz for little money. And part of the hype is certainly founded in truth. Every company of respectable size needs to have a profile or group on social networks, and if you do anything with video at all you’ll need to upload it to YouTube at the very least.

But social media is not a replacement for a good website. On the contrary, your presence on social media sites should stimulate visits to your website, not replace them. If your website isn’t as good as it can be, you should invest your time and money into making it better first before you start experimenting with online projects. The core foundation of all your online activities should be your own website.

A social media project isn’t something you should just jump in either. A successful entry into social media requires a solid grasp of what social media is and what it isn’t, and realistic expectations of what you can achieve with it. Generally speaking, social media doesn’t lend itself very well to commercial exploitation, as the very nature of the phenomenon is non-commercial. Don’t expect users to come flocking to your social media presence unless you’re willing to throw some serious incentives at it.

A recent blogpost from B.L. Ochman about social media myths delivers some much-needed realism – read it and consider if you’re willing and able to step into social media just yet. If you’re in doubt, it’s probably better to spend your efforts on improving your website and gaining traffic the old-fashioned way: SEO, SEM and good content.

Are You Ready For Social Media? is a post from: The Great Websites Blog