Jetting Blogs

Setting and Measuring Goals for Business Blogging

Posted by under Blog Marketing, Pay-Per-Click

As companies that realize the value of online marketing understand the need to publish engaging content, one of the most common considerations is a company blog.  Blog software is fundamentally one of the easiest content management software systems to install and use. Of course the software isn’t magic. The content and ability to reach and engage with customers is a big part of what makes a business blog successful. For those companies that are thinking of starting a blog or reinvesting resources into a company blogging effort that has gone stale, some of the most important questions to ask are:  Have you identified specific goals for the blog? How will you measure success? In sports you can’t score if there isn’t a goal and it’s no different with business blogging.  There are a variety of reasons why publishing ongoing communications that allow readers to interact adds value to a business. Add to that the distribution via RSS that extends the reach of your message and  it’s easy to see why so many companies start blogging. The failure for many business blogs is centered around not making a connection between business goals, blog specific objectives and most importantly, how meeting customer needs leads to the first two. Here are three key questions to consider as you design your plan for business blogging success: Why start a business blog? What end goals or outcomes can you reasonably expect? There are many good reasons to start a blog. But are those reasons good enough to start and stay blogging for the long haul? Our survey on blogging and SEO showed 90% citing blogging as important, significantly important or a primary SEO tactic. 94% of bloggers reported seeing measurable SEO benefits from blogging within 12 months. Initiate and foster customer engagement Improve coverage by media and bloggers Improve search engine visibility Increase mentions on other blogs, social networking, news, bookmarking and media sites Build thought leadership Provide an informative communication channel Recognize employees, clients, marketing partners and especially brand evangelists How will you know your blogging efforts are successful according to those goals? How are you measuring blogging success? We ran a poll last year with our readers that ranked their most important measures of blogging success. Here is the distribution: Engagement: comments, links 36% Improved brand recognition 31% Build thought leadership 31% Search engine rankings 31% Better communicate with customers 30% Traffic to the blog 27% Coverage by media and other blogs 18% Traffic to the corporate web site 16% Sales leads 16% Industry Recognition 13% Sell products 2% Improved customer satisfaction 11% Page views 9% Time on Site 6% Ad revenue on the blog 5% What tools are you using to measure blog performance? Goals for business and the blog are great but it’s essential to have the right tools in place for analytics. One of the biggest mistakes is to rely on things like Google Alerts. Web analytics (Google Analytics, Woopra, Clicky, etc) Feedburner Social media monitoring tools Link analysis tools Comment tracking tools Clipping services Forum conversation tracking tools It’s fundamental, this notion of setting goals, understanding outcomes and the tools needed to measure. But you know the saying, “Common sense is the least common thing on Earth.”  Companies can achieve great return on investment with the right plan and leadership in a blogging effort. The key is to do the baseline work to build a foundation upon which it can grow and succeed.  Stay the course and leverage both listening and engagement tools to guide content. Develop networks and distribution channels to grow readership and reach. Take the time to really understand the impact of data provided by reporting tools and create reports for executives that highlight business goals. What are some of the challenges you’ve faced with setting, measuring and reaching business goals through corporate blogging? Have you started a business blog only to shut it down? Have your company blogging efforts been successful beyond expectations? © Online Marketing Blog , 2010. | Setting and Measuring Goals for Business Blogging | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

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Setting and Measuring Goals for Business Blogging

New Google Design & Not Entirely Unlike Jeremiah Owyang

Posted by under Internet Marketing, Pay-Per-Click

No this is not linkbait using Jeremiah’s name. Read on to find out what this “not entirely unlike” business from Google is all about and what it has to do with him. A while back I wrote about the new design Google is testing (which I like a lot) that adds a third column to search results along the left side.  It’s come and gone a few times since then as I move about the country and as Google reveals it for testing. As of this morning, Google is delivering the new design to me again and I noticed something different after doing a search on my name. (Admit it, you Google your own name too!) At the bottom of the new column it shows an unconventionally named, “Not entirely unlike” result.  What kind of label is that? It reminds me of the slang phrase, “it doesn’t suck”. With the addition of Google Profiles and real-time search as well as many other sources, it’s interesting that Google is making such a distinction at the individual level. However, it’s not just people being referenced as “Not Entirely Unlike”. Here are an interesting set of connections that came up: Lee Odden > Not entirely unlike:  Jeremiah Owyang Jeremiah Owyang > Not entirely unlike: chris brogan, robert scoble, charlene li, om malik, john battelle John Battelle > Not entirely unlike: guy kawasaki, david weinberger, seth godin, robert scoble, om malik Om Malik > Not entirely unlike: marshall kirkpatrick, walt mossberg, kara swisher, robert scoble, john battelle Robert Scoble > Not entirely unlike: dave winer, jason calacanis, jeremiah owyang, steve rubel, guy kawasaki Guy Kawasaki > Not entirely unlike: seth godin, john battelle, robert scoble, clay shirky, lawrence lessig And on and on it goes with circular references (except for me, since I hardly belong in a list with these people). The notion that many public figures on the web frequently reference each other or at least cite common concepts and resources may very well be supported by the connections listed above.  Also I would note this is not the same as the “Related searches” that often show at the bottom of the search results. Is there anything useful in the “Not entirely unlike” feature for marketers? I’d say it’s about as useful as the Wonder Wheel if you were to use it for keyword brainstorming or research. Besides certain people’s names, it does come up for certain, general phrases too: Internet marketing > Not entirely unlike:  search engine optimization, online marketing, affiliate marketing CRM software > customer relationship management, erp, financial software, crm solution, business software Coffee > espresso, cocoa, orange juice, banana, chocolate Interestingly, it doesn’t fire for phrases like, “iPad”, “iPhone” or “Apple” but does for “smart phone” and “google phone”.  To test this yourself, Google must have chosen to display the new Google design to you. It doesn’t work with the current form of Google. Are you getting the new Google design? What do you think of it? Are there other features you’ve seen that are interesting?

BIGLIST Update: These SEO Blogs Are No April Fools

Posted by under Internet Marketing, Pay-Per-Click

On this fine April Fool’s day BIGLIST foregos the tricks and brings you yet another collection of better than average SEO & SEM blog reviews. Over the past 2 years we’ve reviewed over 1,000  SEO blogs and we offer you 5 more to add to your RSS reader and get search engine smart. Think Traffic – This blog by internet entreprenuer Corbett Barr  makes some serious promises: “…teach you the techniques, tools and knowledge you need to build real, sustainable web traffic without a big budget.”  Sounds pretty good to me. Corbett relates his experiences with past projects and growing an audience for Think Traffic to the benefit of readers.  This very new blog offers practical tips and is well designed enough to get our top listing for this week’s review. Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg – Best selling author of multiple books, Bryan Eisenberg begged me for months to add his new blog to the BIGLIST. I challenged Bryan to write another best selling book, start a new company, become a keynote speaker at several popular industry conferences and lose at least 30 pounds. (Hey, we set the bar high for the BIGLIST).  Of course, I’m kidding about the challenge (and the begging). Bryan has accomplished all of those things and much more while writing an excellent blog on conversion optimization and internet marketing strategy with his brother Jeffrey, who is also a best selling author, keynote speaker and online marketing strategist for major brands. Jeff Bullas’s Blog – Jeff works as a sales and marketing manager at Infinity Technologies and his self-titled blog flavors towards social media – offering examples, case studies, lists of tips posts and insights from setting aside his traditional marketing roots and current focus on building trust and relationships with customers through social media, permission and inbound marketing. CanuckSEO – Long time internet marketing veteran Jim Rudnick writes with passion and flair about “Canadian SEO for Google Success!” as well as small business, local SEM and plenty of flavorful opinion posts on a variety of search marketing industry topics. Go for the tips, stay for the story telling and enthusiasm. Honorable Mention Lip Service – Laura Lippay is an ex-circus performer, SEO pioneer, very classy woman and currently Director of Technical Marketing for Yahoo! Media. Laura teases us all by occasionally writing about life and search marketing on this blog that just isn’t active enough to be added to the full BIGLIST. But the Feb 2010 posts are certainly worth an Honorable Mention. Did your SEO or SEM blog make the cut? Share the good news with your readers using the badges page .

The Role of News in Blended Search – Observations & Best Practices

Posted by BlogPostman under Pay-Per-Click, Press Release Distribution

We’re starting this Spring Break week off with a very rare guest post from TopRank Marketing client, Jiyan Wei. Jiyan is Director of Product Management at Vocus, Inc. where he drives product platform strategy and roadmap execution for PRWeb. I’ve presented on panels with Jiyan several times at search marketing conferences, talking about the virtues of search, social media and public relations, finding him to be a very strategic and smart marketer. We’ll be co-presenting at the upcoming MarketingPros B2B Forum in May on Content Optimization and Marketing. In this post, Jiyan discusses the progression and importance of news content in blended search: Once upon a time, Page 1 had a special meaning for PR practitioners and business owners alike. It meant that for one day, they had received the pole position in the consciousness of the consumer, who would hopefully transition from newspaper consumer into business customer. For businesses – both local and global alike – Page 1 either meant an outpouring of business or pending doom. With the emergence of search as ubiquitous, Page 1 has begun to take on added meaning. Business owners are still very concerned about Page 1 but now, depending on whom you ask, Page 1 often refers to search and the consequent generation of a limitless stream of business and leads without having to pay for ongoing PR or advertising. For many, Page 1 in search has become the new holy grail of business owners and SEO practitioners alike. When I’m asked the question, “Will PRWeb get us onto Page 1 of search,” I immediately start shaking my head vigorously while hoping no one from the major engines overheard the question. Of course, nothing can guarantee you will be on Page 1 of search. That being said, as part of a broader online marketing strategy, news releases can be an effective tool to facilitate the outward expression of news and information about a business, which over time can result in the creation of online authority in the eyes of search engines. Yet with blended search, the picture becomes muddled. At some point in the last couple years, Google (and now Bing) decided that users want more than just Web results when they run a query in search and so started offering a front page that contained a broader array of types of content including images, video and news. According to some accounts news performs better in blended results than other forms of media and unlike other forms of media in blended search, news has a distinctly temporal slant. After all, news is really just information with a timestamp. What this means for business owners, communicators, marketers, etc. is that under some circumstances, news can actually be a viable gateway onto Page 1 of search in a relatively short amount of time by leveraging sites that search engines regard as ‘news sites,’ including news release sites. All that being said, here are some specific observations we’ve made about news in blended search: 1. If a recent news story is relevant to a query, it is more likely to appear somewhere in the results This may seem fairly obvious but the devil is in the details. Nailing down ‘relevance’ between a query and results is a tall order but we have found that placing your target keywords in the title, preferably in the first part of the title of your news story, dramatically increase the likelihood that your news story will show up for queries of the target keywords once the crawlers have found the story. As the keywords descend into the story, from left-to-right and top-to-bottom, they become less impactful in terms of helping your story get onto the blended results for your target query. 2. News results can include thumbnailed images and these can improve click-through rates Crawlers like Google look for relevant images to place in connection with news stories in the news block in blended search. They normally extract images from within the body of the story so including these images can result in having a thumbnail placed in connection with the result. Who cares? Well, everyone has seen the heat maps that show the importance of receiving top billing on page 1. What we’ve found from our own internal tests however is that results with image thumbnails can have click-through rates that are similar and sometimes even higher than results that are actually located higher. In other words, reader’s eyes are naturally drawn to the thumbnail so even if the news block is located lower down on the blended results page, the inclusion of a thumbnail can mitigate the lower placement to a great extent. 3. Many types of queries can result in news There are some types of queries that seem to have an obvious time slant: current events, sports, celebrities, etc. However, we have seen news show up in blended search results for query types that seem less obviously tied to a date. For example, tip sheets and best practice documents can be easily turned into news stories that can have a presence in blended search and drive traffic. With Spring right around the corner, there is a great opportunity to leverage audience demand for content to drive Web site traffic. For example, a quick glance at Google insights reveals that queries for ‘Spring decorating’ are on the rise. An opportunistic interior designer could use the opportunity to submit a release with a title like ‘Spring decorating tips from leading interior designer,’ that will have a good chance to tap into an upwards trending query in the blended search results. 4. Individual stories don’t appear in blended search results for long Using your news to get Page 1 placement is a short-term proposition. As quickly as the story enters the blended search results, it can disappear. We typically see news stories show up in the blended search results for 24-48 hours. Depending on how dynamic the news landscape is for the query (some queries are going to receive a flood of news stories that may wash your story away in hours), the lifespan of your story may be even shorter. Connect with Jiyan on Twitter , his blog or visit PRWeb, TopRank’s favorite press release distribution service.

SESNY Keynote Interview: David Meerman Scott

Posted by BlogPostman under Pay-Per-Click, Web Marketing

David Meerman Scott is a best-selling author and popular keynote speaker on the topics of viral and online marketing as well as the convergence of web marketing, digital media and online PR. One of his most popular books, The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to use news releases, blogs, viral marketing and online media to reach buyers directly , was a real eye opener for a lot of companies trying to make sense of where blogs, press releases and search marketing fit together. The second edition of The New Rules has recently been published and David will be keynoting the upcoming Search Engine Strategies conference in New York. I caught up with him just before SES and did a phone interview to get more insight into the new book, his insights into the emerging social media world including Twitter, Foursquare, Blogging and Content Marketing. I also asked him to share some practical advice for time management and staying current. The first edition of The New Rules of Marketing & PR was a real groundbreaking book for many marketers, bringing together web marketing and public relations strategies & tactics together. What’s new about the second edition? First of all Lee, you were among the very first people in the world to to read the book and identify that it had something interesting to say and help talk it up. I appreciate that. There were a handful of people really early on in June 2007 who discovered the book, picked it up, read it and said wow, there’s something going on here. The first edition came out June 2007 but I wrote it throughout 2006. If you remember in 2006, Twitter didn’t exist. Facebook was only for students, you had to have a .edu email address. Second Life was really being hyped. After the book was published for a few years, I’ve been getting emails nearly every day from people asking if I’d heard of a cool new service called Twitter that’s not in the book. I had to update services and take a hard look at each of the examples in the book. I kicked out about 15 of them and added 25 – 30 new examples, so the new book grew a little bit in the number of pages. The examples are really interesting and really current. One of the challenges of writing a book is when you submit a manuscript, the book doesn’t come out for 6 months. Now, I wish I’d written about Foursquare, since that’s not in this new edition. What is one of the biggest myths you’re seeing perpetuated about marketing on the web? About social media? It’s not what I’d call a myth, but what I hear a lot are people who mistake these ideas that we’ve been talking about for 3-4 years with just being about Twitter and Facebook. People say, I’m doing this Online Marketing thing, I’m on Twitter. Or the opposite, they’ll say, “What are you talking about? This isn’t a form of marketing, it’s just a toy. who cares what you had for lunch today.” I see this everywhere, all over the world as I go on the speaking circuit. People confuse the broad ideas that we’ve been talking about, on how to reach people on the web in all of its forms with the “latest fad”. One of the fads out ther eis the phrase, “social media”. We didn’t use that untill recently. That fadish sort of phrase does a disservice to us getting the word out about the big picture of what you can do on the web. I continue to call it the new rules of marketing and PR. It’s just allowing us to create and publish content and get it out there. There’s lots of ways to do that. The labels and attempts to box it in can be limiting. Let’s try some word association. I’ll mention a word or phrase and you tell me what comes to mind. “Foursquare”: Newest hottest thing, I’m obsessed. Really interesting, fascinating. Foursquare was huge at SXSW. “Twitter”: Twitter. Twitter. I think Twitter is with us for the long haul. I think Twitter is a real and valuable form of communication. “Content Marketing”: People don’t know what the word “content” means. I wrote a book in 2005: Cashing in with Content. That book is just as well written and groundbreaking as The New Rules of Marketing and PR. But it suffers from a horrendous title. Because nobody associates content with marketing despite many people trying to make that association, including me. I am trying not to use phrase “content marketing” because many people don’t know what “conten”t means. I often use “information”. I learned my lesson. I wrote a really good book on the topic but no one has ever heard of and followed it up with an international best seller in 24 languages and the major difference was use of “content” in the first book. “Blogs”: A lot of people are saying blogs are dead. I don’t beleive that in the least. I think it’s the best way for people that are passionate about a subject to share that passion with the world. Have you heard some of this “Blogs are dead stuff?” Lee: Yeah, I think of it this way. If you haven’t had the opportunity to learn how to use a tool in a way that results in positive outcomes, you can either decide to quit and call it dead or you can figure it out. I say that from a position of feeling very satisfied with our own blogging effort. Recently I had the opportunity to interview Tom Peters, who said his best marketing is his blog. For many of us it’s huge. I interviewed Seth Godin as well and I’d guess that he would say a blog is a big part of his success as well. If you don’t do a very good job, it’s easy to dismiss. Many people are doing quite well. Social media and blogging is not an issue of either or. They work together. “Viral Marketing”: I love the concept of viral marketing. The idea of people spreading ideas for you. There’s nothing better than people talking you up. “Social Media Expert” : Ha ha. Snake Oil Salesmen. There are plenty of people that are very skilled at different aspects of social media. And provide value in education and some execution. I just have to think there’s other people out there who really are just jumping on the latest bandwagon and don’t really have the skills that companies are looking for and may be doing a disservice to their clients. Some of these people, were the same person in the 1970’s who opened a video center then a tanning salon in the 80’s then in 90’s web sites and then the late 90’s offered email and SEO and now doing social media. It feels like whatever the hot topic is, there’s experts coming out of the woodwork claiming themselves as experts. Don’t get me wrong, there are many talented people out there, it can be hard to tell who’s real. It can be hard for companies to tell because the don’t have the skills to see the difference. Please share a few tips on how companies can decide where to start on the social web: I think the best thing is to start where you’re comfortable. Decide what media you’re most comfortable with. Not everyone can write for example, so a blog might not be a good idea for them. Maybe photos or video is a better match or if you’re analytical, create charts & graphics that help people visualize critical concepts. Forget about your own company and products. No one cares. Try to understand the people you’re trying to reach: the buyer persona. What problems can you solve for them? Then create content that helps them. People coming into online marketing from an advertising agency or PR firm or even direct marketing all bring a different bias. You’re like the energizer bunny, doing an amazing amount of work. What insights do you have for companies or individuals at companies on managing time and being efficient with social participation? First, I would like to tell everybody: You have permission to say no. You have permission not to respond. A lot of people treat social sites like email – there’s an expectation that when you get a message you have to respond. You can do your best to be responsive, but there’s only so much time. I have ablog, I do videos, Twitter and FourSquare. However, I’m not on LinkedIn, not on MySpace and I don’t do a podcast. You have to pick and choose. We all have pockets of downtime. Maybe you can take 5 minuets every 3 hours or so and take a quick look in the morning. Then again maybe after lunch. When you’re feeling productive, and this is very true in my case, you can really crank it out. That’s when it’s a good time to shut off access to other distractions. Today’s a great example. I just spent 5 days at SXSW and I’m so tired. It’s a perfect day to have a conversation with you. I couldn’t do a blog post today. There’s a right time and place. The social web is still new to many companies and as a result, opportunists who are at best, familiar users” of social apps, come across as “experts” without having actually implemented paid consulting for companies. The same has happened with web design and SEO. How much of a problem is this? Is it a problem at all? There are a number of people that say because they have 10k followers they’re a Twitter expert. They actually do provide a lot of value because they can teach you to be a better user of the service. However, that’s very different than helping you to create a strategy in a company to grow a business. How do you stay current and informed? Events, people, blogs/feeds, social tools, testing, magic 8 ball, secret handshake society? The main thing is that I’m so lucky to speak around the world and give presentations. Of course when I do that I get to meet lots of people that share their stories. Some are of success and some are about wanting to do more. I use those as my way of staying current. I first heard of Foursquare at a conference. In early February I was speaking at an event in Amsterdam. Some people were talking about Layer and how cool it was. I started using it and blogged about it. If I hadn’t been at that conference in Amsterdam I wouldn’t have heard about Layer. It’s really about getting out there, talking to lots of different people, listening and asking questions. I live in fear of being a gray haired consultant that people look at and say, he was really smart 10 years ago, but now he’s lost it. What are your thoughts on the future of the social web in 2-3 years? We’re experiencing a revolution akin to when the telephone was invented or when the television was invented. There’s a new and fantastic way that we’re communicating today. Literally 100s of millions of people are communicating in new ways and the numbers of people and companies using social media are all growing. Some tools might not be growing like Second Life, but overall it is. We’re in the middle of a revolution. It’s important for people to recognize that this stuff is really growing. What question should I be asking you? (And the answer of course) One of the things I pay very close attention to is what’s going on outside of North America. New Rules of Marketing and PR is publishing in 24 languages: From Vietnamese to Turkish to Bulgarian. It’s proof these ideas are working all over the world. I’ve been fortunate to deliver presentations in over 20 countries in the last 2 years. There are so many companies doing interesting things worldwide. There are so many social networks that are popular that we don’t know about. It’s a global phenomenon. That’s fantastic, thank you for your time. You can get more information about the various books written by David Meerman Scott here along with his blog . You can also see David presenting a keynote presentation at the upcoming Search Engine Strategies New York conference. For readers that are attending SES, I also invite you to attend the Digital Asset Optimization panel right after David’s keynote. Hope to see you there. For even more of David’s insights, watch this video interview we shot at a past Minneapolis St. Paul Social Media Breakfast.