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26th
APR

Social Media Strategy Before Tactics

Posted by under Internet Marketing, Pay-Per-Click

It’s a debate that’s more common than you might think. Strategy or Tactics first when it comes to social media? Many companies approach their participation on the social web tentatively, picking a popular tool like Twitter, Facebook or for the more adventuresome, a blog. The exercise of setting up and populating a profile, friending others and seeing what happens is akin to the proverbial “throw spaghetti against wall to see if it sticks” school of marketing. There’s a time and place for tactics, for strategy and for experimentation. I think it’s perfectly reasonable for a company to test certain channels without a broad corporate wide commitment to being more social. However, that effort should be guided by smart analysis of audience, tools and with the aid of goals and measurement methodology. Without a plan, social media efforts often fail, waste time, money and detract from the brand experience. There’s plenty of room for discussion on this topic so I reached out to over 40 friends, collegues and others in my social network to get their opinion. Responses include a great mix of insights, metaphors and analogies from the likes of:  Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, Katie Payne, Peter Kim, Debbie Weil, David Meerman Scott and many more social media smarties. Does social strategy need to come before tactics? (in order received): Say you want to build a house. You survey the site. You assess your needs: do you want a one-room cabin, or a sprawling mansion? How many rooms? Should any serve specialized functions? How many bathrooms are necessary? Pool? Garden? Once you’ve answered these (and more) questions, it’s time to go out and buy bricks, lumber, hammers, nails, windows and all the other stuff you need to get your house built. Not before. After all, how do you know what you’ll need if you don’t even know if you’re building a ranch house or a stone cottage? Same thing in social media. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, FourSquare, Digg, delico.us, blogs and all the rest are tools in your arsenal. A means to an end, not an end in themselves. Sure, most are “free,” but “free” comes at a cost: time, effort, ideas and commitment. This isn’t chicken-or-egg. You need strategy before tactics. How else could you possibly know what tactics to implement? Rebecca Lieb – Blog Vice President, North America Econsultancy Author, The Truth About Search Engine Optimization “What it comes down to is asking the question ‘How do you define success?’. Tactics don’t answer that question. Strategy does. Sure, you can measure tactics, but without a strategy, there’s no benchmark. You can’t confidently say your program has succeeded if you don’t have a clear snapshot of what success looks like.” Jessica Smith – JessicaNow VP Digital and Global Co-Chair WOM Fleishman-Hillard The majority of the market still suffers from “bright and shiny object syndrome.” Is it any wonder that they’re still struggling to figure out a Return On the their social media Investment? Ultimately a solution in search of a non-existent problem or a tactic in search of a strategy will only underwhelm, underdeliver and fail to deliver any real, long term and sustainable impact which is consistent with social media being activated correctly. Joseph Jaffe – Jaffe Juice Chief Interruptor Powered Author, Flip the Funnel There are so many outlets for social media that it is imperative to have a solid strategy before acting unilaterally in the space. If you make a mistake on a simple project, you only affect your company and the client. However, if you make a mistake in some social media space, it is potentially in front of thousands. There are so many different strategies you can carry out in social media, that it is imperative to have your whole team on board and in alignment. We have project planning every quarter for a day and then act on that plan the rest of the quarter. However the social media project is an ongoing discussion where we spend more time on strategy than we do acting. We are constantly revisiting what is going on with the major outlets. Brett Tabke Founder, WebmasterWorld & Pubcon With new ‘tools/tactics’ launching every 2.7 seconds, or so it seems, the social media world over flows with options. It can be overwhelming to both novice and experienced social media marketer. Strategy First helps you identify which are the best opportunities to put into play to achieve your goals. You do have goals? Oh, that’s another conversation. Toby Bloomberg Diva Marketing Blog Strategy before tactics on Social Media is equivalent to diving into a pool before looking to see if there is water let alone the depth to handle such. If you don’t spend the time, you knock out your two front teeth and be reticent to ever get in the pool again. And as we all know, this is a pool worth swimming in. Aaron Kahlow – Online Marketing Connect CEO Online Marketing Connect : Online Marketing Summit & Institute The only thing true about online marketing – and by extension, social media – is that the tools always change. Three years ago, MySpace was king. 10 years ago, Yahoo! had 67% of the search market. A “strategy” that is based on tactical execution isn’t a strategy at all, it’s a recipe for playing a constant game of catch up. The trick is to focus on how you’re going to be social, not where you’re going to do social media. Jay Baer Founder,  Convince & Convert If there was an upside to last year’s down economy, it was the fact that it encouraged many big brands to dip their toes in the likes of Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. While experimentation in these social outposts was initially a good thing, doing so without an overarching strategy ultimately risked works against the brand in the long run. Imagine the chaos that might ensue if a company’s traditional distribution channels — phone, web and physical stores — didn’t align. Similar risks lurk below the surface of the social web if brands’ messaging and CRM capabilities don’t coordinate… except on the social Web, customers have an ability to tell their 200+ friends with the click of a button. Aaron Strout –   Citizen Marketer 2.1 CMO Powered Social media without strategy is like cooking without a recipe. Sometimes it works but sometimes its disaster. With a recipe, at least you know what ingredients to have before you get started. Along the way it’s great to improvise to make it your own but without at least a plan, you end up wandering aimlessly. Julie Roehm Marketing Strategy Consultant How about research before strategy before tactics??? In social media you have to understand what is going on in your marketplaces and what people are saying BEFORE you jump in. It’s the old “don’t ask a social media expert if you should blog or Tweet, ask your customers first” — Once you know where the market is going, THEN you need to fit your organizational goal into the reality of the marketplace and see what kind of strategy might be effective. The last thing you need is tactics and tools. Katie Delahaye Paine – Blog CEO KDPaine & Partners, LLC The C-Suite talks strategy, not tactics. And you are going to need their support if you even want ’social’ to take root in the soul of the enterprise. You don’t need to re-invent the wheel when it comes to social strategy – borrow one if you need to. How could you go wrong with a strategy like: make listening to the voice of our community/customers central to how we make decisions as an organization. David Alston – Community Instinct VP Marketing & Community Radian6 Tactics don’t take into account the customer need. They typically center around “doing something viral” or “doing social” or “creating a community.” Good social strategy forces you to understand and realize that if you don’t solve a real customer need with your actions, you’re already forgotten. Steve Bendt – Blog Senior Marketing Manager, Social Media Microsoft Why strategy before tactics? A better question might be why do marketers shoot first and ask questions later? First, unlike other marketing tactics, the barrier for entry into social media is very low, so a lot of marketers think they can just jump in and base their strategy “later” upon a hollow number first achieved. They think this is data. There is this false perception that social media is black and white and its effectiveness is based on hard numbers. i.e. followers, subscribers and friends. That might be somewhat true but it reminds me of the early days of web analytics, when web traffic was measured on a “hit” and not much else. Sure we can measure followers, friends and subscribers but that’s merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Marketers in social media think they can measure their activity and effectiveness by looking at social media’s hard numbers, meaning they are measuring a gross aggregate number and associating it with “marketing” and effectiveness all in the same breath. A tactic first approach in social media avoids answering the questions “Why?” and “What For?” Movement for the sake of motion in social media doesn’t mean effectiveness. Marc Meyer -  Direct Marketing Observations Dir.of Social Media and Search, Principal DRMG The tactics are just tools and most are easy to learn. What’s tough is the 1st step in a social strategy: adopting the social media mindset Debbie Weil – Blog Author, The Corporate Blogging Book Using social media without a strategy is like writing your message on a paper airplane and aiming it out a window. Before you start engaging with customers you need to be prepared with what your goals are. Determine who your audience is, plus where and how to reach them. Most importantly you need a plan for how you will monitor the converation, respond to feedback and funnel it back into the company so you can be continuously improving. Jennifer Cisney – 1000 Words Chief Blogger and Social Media Manager Kodak Why should social strategy come before tactics? Because you don’t ask a girl to marry you before you ask her on a date. Because Chevy doesn’t manufacture hoods before they design a car. Because you fill sandbags before a flood. While it’s tempting to sign up for Facebook, Twitter, [choose your social networking flavor of the month], just to “be there,” it’s critical to define your measurable objectives, test the waters, develop a strategy, and define evaluative criteria before jumping into the deep end of the social pool. Without solid strategy driving tactics, companies can find themselves questioning ROI, making significant missteps, or worse, annoying or offending stakeholders in both the long and short term. Greg Swan – Perfect Porridge Digital Strategy Director Weber Shandwick “Why strategy before tactics when it comes to social media?”… …because the payoff of a strategic approach to social marketing is effectiveness. As this chart shows, marketers in the strategic phase of social marketing maturity are much more likely to report that their social media programs are “very effective” at achieving objectives than are their counterparts in the tactically-oriented trial phase. Sergio Balegno Research Director MarketingSherpa I call Social Media w/ out tactics Zombie Media : Social Media w/ No Brains . Any marketing needs strategy before tactics not just social media. You use marketing tactics to drive a business outcome. If you’re expected to measure contribution to the business you need a strategy. If you haven’t defined that outcome (Goals) or how you’ll achieve that outcome (Strategy) then how do you expect to measure the result of your marketing? Developing strategy doesn’t have to be a complicated exercise. It can be simple and fluid. Tac Anderson – New Comm Biz Social Media Director Waggener Edstrom You simply can’t tell if you’re doing well or not if you don’t know what you’re trying to do. You don’t need social media for social media’s sake, you need it for business’ sake. Laura Fitton CEO/Founder oneforty.com & Pistachio Consulting Author, Twitter for Dummies If you’ve ever had an ounce of question as to where and how to start social networking (on or offline), I’d ask you what does your data say? Jumping into a social environment and starting to engage is like crashing a wedding reception and trying to network with everyone there. You might make some friends (and enemies) along the way, but are you really engaging with an audience that 1) is useful for you to engage with and 2) wants to engage with you? Most companies will put up a giant megaphone to the internet and “listen” to the conversations, spending time finding out where people are talking about the things they care about first – for 6 months and longer. This allows you to determine where people are talking about the things you care about (your brand assets and relevant topics), what they are saying, who’s saying it, and how they feel about it. With that type of insight, you can more effectively determine a social networking strategy, engaging targeted networks and people with a specific message or goal. Laura Lippay -  Lip Service Founder, Online Visibility Ex-Yahoo Marketing Director & Ringling performer “Social-media strategy” is over-rated if not a downright oxymoron. The goal is to do more business. Social-media is a means to that end. Maybe you’ll use it to establish warm and fuzzy communal feelings. Maybe you’ll sell excess inventory. Don’t focus on some kind of high-level strategy because no one really knows how to use social media yet. Focus on tactics: Get more followers, make them happy, promote your stuff to them every once in a while. That’s all you need to know about strategy right now. Guy Kawasaki – Blog – Alltop Social Media Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures Author, Reality Check & 8 Other Books The most important aspect of strategy is to focus on your buyers and not your own ego. Only then can you create the tactics that reach people in an authentic way and that they are eager to consume. David Meerman Scott – Web Ink Now Author, World Wide Rave and The New Rules of Marketing & PR Why social strategy should come before tactics: “You might feel comfortable leaving for vacation and just driving until you get tired of driving, but would you do that with your business? Without a strategy, goals, objectives and measures for success, you’re just going for a ride.” Jason Falls Founder, Social Media Explorer Would you pick up a phone and randomly dial 10-digits? Unless you’re prank calling, probably not. (Darn you, caller ID). The phone is a tool for communication, just like social media is a tool. Before making a phone call, sending a tweet or launching a blog, strategy is essential. It will guide the decisions you make, the platforms you use and how you interact. Sarah Evans Founder,  Sevans Strategy Strategy before tactics means, essentially, think before you talk. In other words, in any social-media effort for marketing or other business purposes, it’s important to do a gut check. What is your corporate culture? Who are you? This leads to other key questions: What do you want to say? What do you seek to accomplish using social media? what are the ground rules, the map to follow? This doesn’t have to be a 500-page manual or anything, but do look before you leap. Julio Ojeda-Zapata – Your Tech Weblog Technology writer and columnist at St. Paul Pioneer Press Author, Twitter Means Business Having a social strategy before jumping into tactics is imperative for long-term success. Short term tactics are okay for brands who are just testing the waters, but having a strategy will a help a brand think more holistically about becoming a social business rather than a business who can sometimes be social. Having a strategy will force brands (or small business) to think about culture change from within the organization which is required to transform into a social business. It will also help brands determine how to effectively integrate social into everything a brand does in their communications arsenal (web, PR, outdoor, retail, customer support, channel, B2B). Michael Brito – Britopian VP Social Media Edelman Digital The most succinct argument would be to quote Louis Carol’s Cheshire cat: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” You really need to know why you want to use social media and which tools are best suited to meeting that objective. A good start is to know where, on social media, your customers hang out and what you can give them by joining their activities. This depends on which objectives you have in mind. It can be sales, lead generation, support, feedback, new ideas. So many things can be achieved in social media. If you know what your goals are they will shape the tactic. Conversely, if all you want to do is get your feet wet, then I would advise you to get yourself a wading pool. Shel Israel – Global Neighborhoods Author of Twitterville and Co-Author of Naked Conversations Putting strategy ahead of tactics is a must for just about anything, but especially social media marketing. The problem seems to be so much confusion around what the word strategy actually means — a strategy is not a timeline or a goal, even though these elements are often included in what people refer to as a strategy document. The actual strategy piece is the spirit with which you approach others and engage with them. Engagement is not a strategy, but a high level tactic. HOW you plan to engage is strategic. Strategy also doesn’t ask about ROI, but about how you plan to win. Proponents of social media often “get” the strategy piece in an intuitive way, but that means they don’t always empathize well with those who don’t. The result is poorly articulated strategies centered around a single trendy tactic. Initiatives like this may be easy to launch, but they’re typically not very successful. Shannon Paul – Very Official Blog Community and Social Media Manager PEAK6 Online Strategy needs to drive tactics, as companies first need to know where they’re going before they figure out how to get there. A lot of roads can get a brand from point A to B, but a good strategy will help selection of the optimal route, as well as how to respond if setbacks are encountered along the way. I can see where some people might recommend tactics first when it comes to social technologies – the space moves quickly and new opportunities emerge weekly. This actually reinforces the need to have a good strategy in place to evaluate and experiment with possibilities within frameworks that drive towards business goals. Peter Kim – Being Peter Kim Managing Director, North America Dachis Group It’s a bit like baking a cake. Tactics are the ingredients that deliver the strategy. Decide on what kind of cake you want to bake first and why. If you dive straight into the ingredients and get the balance wrong, you could end up with a very bad taste in your mouth. Mel Carson – UK Internet Marketing Blog Community Manager Microsoft Advertising Why do you put social media strategy before tactics? There is the standard cliche about making sure that you have blueprints before you build your house, but here’s a bit of a different take. As you achieve some initial success, you’ll soon have other business units asking “How did you do that?” and “How can we be part of that?” If you don’t have an agreed upon strategy things can get messy rather quickly. Having a strategy developed before tactics helps you manage the growth of your program. Also, working with different business units to develop a strategy in advance of tactics also helps with buy-in and keeps internal political battles and communication breakdowns from derailing your efforts. Josh Hallett – Hyku Blog Director, Voce Connect Voce Communications In practical terms, you want to know where you’re going so you can get there. Every resource you expend in business needs to be justified. Everything worth doing needs to be measured. Social media is no different. It may be a great way to share useful content in places where your customers spend time to generate interest for further actions. And it can provide powerful business intelligence back, straight from the people who buy your products and services. However, to capitalize on all of that, your process needs to tie all your activities together — the information sharing, the intelligence gathering, the communications, content creation, and anything else that happens in between. All activities aligned with and in support of the business. Without a strategy and goals, you won’t know how you’re going to measure results and won’t be able to answer the “so what” question. For example, we have 2,000 followers on Twitter. So what? Are they in our base or just robots? Why are we on Twitter? What are we going to tweet? And so on. Today many companies are working on optimizing social media, moving away from tactical approaches and working on the business alignment part. Tomorrow, we will hopefully see the ultimate strategy, which is that to optimize the business for social. Valeria Maltoni , ABC Brand Strategist Conversation Agent I have a very short answer when someone asks me why strategy should come before tactics. Having your strategy in place, with your objectives set, usually means not having to go back and fix everything that you rushed to develop in your communications program. You must know the “why” part first, before you build anything, and use a listening strategy to determine early on what tactics will actually be successful with the people you want to reach. The strategy first approach saves time and doesn’t waste valuable resources. Deirdre Breakenridge – Juicy Bits Blog President, Executive Director of Communications Mango! Creative Juice Co-Author, Putting the Public Back in Public Relations & PR 2.0 Strategy is the path one intends to take to reach a certain goal. Using only tactics in social media is like picking up the phone and dialing random people before you’ve even decided if the call is for a sale or customer service. The tools are there to serve the goal, and certain tools improve certain strategies. Starting the other way around is just asking for pain. Chris Brogan – Blog President, New Marketing Labs Co-Author, Trust Agents The primary reasons businesses flounder with their social media integration is a) not clearly identifying their target market and which social sites these prospects visit most, b) lack of clear, measurable objectives and c) lack of a solid strategy to achieve such objectives. Thing is, there’s so much peer and media pressure to “get on Facebook (and, now, get Facebook on your site!), get on Twitter, work on your blog, make videos.” But, for what purpose? What are you trying to achieve? By starting with the technology tactics piece first, you could be completely missing the mark and, in fact, might not even be building a presence where your target audience lives! Carving out time to architect a solid social strategy is vital for success in today’s uber noisy online world. Mari Smith Social Media Speaker & Trainer Author, Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day Strategy starts with understanding what unique values we bring. It requires an overarching mission and understanding of the climate, systems, current conditions, and the character and culture of the people involved. Strategy is a practical plan to analyze and advance a position over time through understanding human nature and making good decision. Tactics or campaigns are the methods for executing a strategy. Social media strategy has to come first. Without a strategic mission — to build a community to strengthen a brand — social tactics at best gather momentum then end without building something larger that people (the social) can believe in and belong to. Tactics may gather followers and fans, but strategy keeps them coming back and bringing their friends. Liz Strauss – Successful Blog Social Web Strategiest & Founder of SOBCon Tactics are fun, strategy is boring. Focusing on tactics, in social media as in business generally, in sport and other areas of human activity, appeals to people who like to get things done, action-oriented people. They say things like “ready, fire, aim!”. We need to have a bit of that in our approach, or we’ll never get anything done. But if we ignore strategy we have no way of managing the process intelligently, no way of measuring how we are going, no way of adjusting when circumstances change. Implementing a social media focused regime in business, going on Twitter, setting up a Facebook page, starting a blog, all without doing the hard yards on strategy, would be like trying to build a home without a blueprint: could be interesting, could get you on prime time television, but might not be livable. Two quotes from Sun Tzu, The Art of War: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” “All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.” Des Walsh – Blog Social Business Mentor Director The Webarts Company Strategy before tactics isn’t only relevant to social media it’s relevant for all aspects of business. Strategy should always be the backbone of anything you do. There’s no point in creating a presence on various social channels unless you have a very clear understanding of the business challenges you are looking to solve and an understanding of how you are going to solve them. Only then you can start to think about the tactics. What happened to Nestle recently is a great example of what happens when you put tactics ahead of strategy; it’s irresponsible, not accountable, and quite frankly stupid. Any company that puts tactics ahead of strategy will fail, and rightfully so. Jacob Morgan – Blog Principal of Chess Media Group Author of Twittfaced One of the biggest mistakes many people jumping into social media make is to focus on the tactical application of various social media platforms before creating their strategy. It is easy to get off track in social media, after all SM conversations vary dramatically day to day. By setting your goals and strategies before you start your outreaches, you ensure everything you do online includes your company branding, ensures your messages are delivered and can be easily tracked and measured. My rule of thumb? Determine your goals, write your strategies, create your program, measure and revise your strategies based on customer/consumer feedback. Serena Ehrlich – StartupArmy Blog EVP of Social Media, StartupArmy Corp Sec – Social Media Club I think strategy should come first because your goals for social media usage are more important than the tools. You pick the strategy/goals, then that tells you which tools will help you best execute that strategy. The alternative is to pick the tactics first, then you have to pick your strategy based on the chosen tools. That’s obviously a recipe for disaster. Mack Collier – The Viral Garden Social Media Consultant It drives me a little nuts when organizations jump on the “shiny new toy of the day” bandwagon without much forethought. Often this happens because someone influential within the organization has seen a competitor doing it, or because it’s getting “buzz” and they think that buzz will automatically rub off on them. On the other hand, I’ve also seen organizations resisting social technologies because of fear, ignorance or internal turf wars (who will “own” social?), regardless of how much these might help them achieve their strategic goals. You nailed it when you said companies need to “develop a strategic approach based on customer research and goals.” I don’t think you can keep your finger on the pulse of your customer and adjust your tactics successfully unless you’re working in the context of an overall strategy, one that is research-based and has goals and measurable objectives. Shonali Burke – Waxing UnLyrical Founder, Shonali Burke Consulting There are so many different tactics you can use, and some of them even conflict with each other. If you ignore the big picture goals and strategy, then in the best case you wasted time and money, in the worst case you moved your company backwards. Mike Volpe – Blog Vice President Inbound Marketing HubSpot I have to smile about this request since I meet brand marketers on a daily basis who want to start their efforts in social media by creating a facebook fan page, or worse, already have taken this into their own hands prior to thinking through best practices, resources and ongoing engagement…let alone strategy, KPIs, etc…! I’ve put this to a stop via corporate governance/guidelines, but am still playing the role of an educator. I’m also seeing venues vary by brand depending upon the existing discussion. Developing a social strategy is a complex process that stems from business goals and objectives; it involves embedding listening (both mining and monitoring) into the organizational culture. Tactics are the easy part that follow. Amy M. Lamparske Global Social Media Leader 3M Consumer & Office Brands In today’s world of digital marketing, things are moving at an intense speed – so quickly, in fact, that today’s platform du jour may be tomorrow’s digital refuse. Remember Friendster, Jaiku and Splashcast? Perhaps you do. Or not. They are sites that faded from relevance, got acquired or shut down completely. Or maybe you’re more conversant with the white label social platform Ning, which recently announced that it’s ending its free service. Think of the implications if you’ve built a number of online communities that depend on the site. If you’re putting tactics in front of strategy, then you’re probably out there building profiles and pages on social networks that could just as easily succumb to the same fate. In other words, you’re busy chasing trends instead of focusing on what’s core to your brand and building a sound strategy that will outlast every technology upheaval. For the leaders out there, instead of building your plan on the back of everyone else’s success, maybe you should focus a little more on building your own. Scott Monty – Blog Global Digital Communications Ford Motor Company Thank you to everyone that participated in this post. It’s a testament to the power of social connections and social technology. My request went out on Friday and it simply amazes me that so many, arguably very busy, people responded the same day and some over the weekend. What are your practical observations and opinions about social media strategy and tactics? Why do so many companies approach social web participation based on tools and metrics like friends/fans/followers versus establishing listening programs to analyze their market, influencers and develop a plan to reach and engage them? It might be a lack of trustworthy information, it might be that social technologies are so new to senior executives. We’d love to hear your perspective. As a postscript, a good number of the responses I received were shortened for this post. We are putting together a downloadable compilation of everyone’s Social Strategy Before Tactics response in full. It will be posted in the next week or so. Details will be tweeted from @toprank and @leeodden. © Online Marketing Blog , 2010. | Social Media Strategy Before Tactics | 10 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

c79a52bd5eactics.jpg Social Media Strategy Before Tactics

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Social Media Strategy Before Tactics

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22nd
APR

How I Started Blogging. What’s Your Story?

Posted by BlogPostman under Pay-Per-Click

While today’s online media are abuzz with the latest and greatest social media tactics and tools, for many of us that have been around a little while, it was blogging that started our social media careers. It’s funny to think that in 2002 a type of site called “blog” came up on my radar as a possible marketing tool. At the time, many blogs were personal diaries posted anonymously or by people with a little tech savvy and plenty of opinion. Writing personal thoughts on a public web site was absolutely the last thing I would ever consider doing.  However, it was a curious thing and I started a few blogs anonymously to see what it was like. Unfortunately, the excercise was so foreign, poorly executed and without feedback, that I deleted them. In mid 2003 I began looking for online content outside of forums and started reading several SEO blogs including Search Engine Blog (Peter Da Vanzo), Search Blog (John Battelle) and Search Engine Lowdown (Andy Beal). Interestingly, only Search Blog remains what it was. In December 2003 after using Blogger.com as a group blog software for a few collaboration projects I finally decided to start a blog under the  blogspot.com domain for TopRank Online Marketing , which by then, had been in business about 2 years. As you can see from my “ Hello World ” post in Dec 2003, I had humble goals to post news and information related to online marketing.  We had a web site that pulled in a lot of search traffic, why would we need a blog? The reason was simply to see what blogging could do to get the word out about our expertise and to share information.  Blogging was very new territory and there wasn’t anyone to demonstrate best practices, so I set out to find what those were while sharing links, news and resources. I suspect there are a good number of companies that treat other social media services the same way, whether it’s Twitter, Foursquare or building a social mobile app. It’s new territory and they want to find out whether those applications or sites would make sense in their marketing mix. The problem with that perspective is that it’s about the most inefficient and unproductive way to go about finding the right online marketing channels for a business. The biggest mistake I made 6 plus years ago when I started blogging was not creating a strategy. As a marketer, I knew better than to chase a tactic, but I had no idea at the time how much of an impact blogging would have on our business. In other words, despite a lack of strategy, we were able to use our marketing savvy, curiosity and interest in connecting with the online marketing community to achieve many of the goals we set out to reach in our business. It just took a lot longer without that strategic plan. Companies starting down the path of becoming more social in their culture to better connect with customers and to realize the marketing, PR, and customer service benefits from social media participation don’t need to waste that time.  Doing the homework of researching customers, setting goals and developing a strategy are essential steps towards a successful social media marketing experience. Back to why I started blogging. The SEO community was a lot smaller in 2003 and 2004. Writing a post about anything to do with search engine optimization would be noticed and commented on by the small number of SEO bloggers. There were plenty of cross links and “hat tips” (whatever happened to those?) and openly shared opinions. Blogging even made a number of SEOs very popular, very quickly. Blogging to get popular is the goal for some people and there certainly is some relationship between notoriety, awareness and credibility with the ability to attract sales.  The key (for me at least) is that creating awareness of oneself is simply a proxy to gaining visibility for your business. It’s not a goal in itself.  As a result, Ive been open about using visibility to help others and make connections. The turning point for me in blogging was due in part to learning to liveblog at conferences.  Steve Hall of AdRants provided my first opportunity to liveblog at a ad:tech event  - an absolutely humbling experience for anyone that isn’t a natural writer. I met people like Frank Gruber and David Berkowitz at that event  in 2004.  I did some liveblogging for Barry Schwartz and Search Engine Roundtable after that which also provided great exposure and connections. Matt McGowan brought even more exposure opportunity by having Online Marketing Blog as a media sponsor for SES conferences . There’s a huge list of people that have been very helpful over the years, especially our longtime readers. Since then we’ve published a lot of content and provided a lot of insight into holistic SEO and online marketing topics. During that time I think the most important thing I’ve learned is to find your voice and stick to it. Don’t try to be what you’re not. It simply doesn’t resonate with readers or with the goals you’ve likely set. Whether it’s blogging or other types of content and networking, I think the real value from online publishing in a social context is of course,  being social.  Blogging has been a great experience in terms of developing relationships with people I would have never connected with otherwise. It has definitely served as a platform for making connections in the industry that have led directly and indirectly, to a lot of new business. I started blogging personally as an experiment and found a process and strategy along the way that has helped grow our business and the online marketing/sales performance of many of our clients.  Long time blogging provides ample opportunity to make and learn from mistakes. Blogging also allows us to continue to be a resource while sharing our expertise with potential customers, partners and employees. We’ll be going through yet another evolution with Online Marketing Blog in the next month or two and I wonder about the experiences of our readers that also blog: If you’re a blogger, why did you start? What’s your blogging story? Did you start as an experiment? Did you start with a strategy? What was your biggest mistake? What have you learned? © Online Marketing Blog , 2010. | How I Started Blogging. What’s Your Story? | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

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How I Started Blogging. What’s Your Story?

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19th
APR

Key Questions to Optimize Your Content Marketing Strategy

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I’ve been thinking about how entering the content marketing space is not for the faint of heart. It can be a signifcant undertaking both in terms of resources and a change in an organization’s approach to marketing and sales. Obviously, content marketing is better for some companies and industries than others. Outside help also makes a difference. While increasing numbers of companies are realizing they  must provide more than product information to satisfy customers, many of those same companies fail by implementing random tactics and missing out on benefits like better search visibility. In order to take full advantage of the significant gains in search traffic that are available with a content focused marketing effort, it’s essential to answer some key questions: What do you really know about your customers? I put customers first before company goals because a social media and content focused marketing effort must emphasize the needs of those you’re trying to reach in order to meet your own. Think of it as, “Give to get”. Who are you trying to reach? Have you developed Buyer Personas ? How well do you understand your customers’ goals? What are your customers preferences when it comes to content discovery, consumption and sharing? What keywords do they associate with your products or services? Who are they influenced by? In what communities do they spend their time on the social web? What business objectives are you trying to achieve? What are your goals? What is your social media strategy ? What must happen for your customers before you meet your business objectives? What are teh key performance indicators that will help you measure the buyer persona’s path towards conversion? Do you have the measurement tools in place to properly monitor and measure for research and to determine the effectiveness of your marketing efforts? What does the competitive SERPs landscape look like? What does the search engine results page look like for the keyword phrases you’re after? The SERPs page is a big part of the competitive landscape for SEO. What types of web sites appear in first page results? Who is linking to them and not linking to you? What type of Universal results are triggered? (News, Blogs, Real-time, Books, Products, Local) What types of media are included in the SERPs for your target phrases? (Images, Video). Will the new Google design have any impact on the SERPs landscape for your target keyword phrases? What other types of search engines should you focus on besides Google.com, Yahoo.com and Bing.com? What resources will you need to succeed? Most companies are not in the publishing business. In order to achieve longevity for an optimized content marketing effort, it’s important to outline the resources available to implement including: content, people, processes. Content . What content do you currently have available for optimization? What content will you need to create according to your keyword glossary and customer needs? Know what digital assets you have available for publishing online and indentify what new media you may need to create, and who will be creating/promoting it. People . Who will create that content in your organization? What in-house content development resources do you normally use? What new content resources, including other departments, could you leverage for SEO? What other groups in your organization will you need to coordinate with in order to execute on promotions? Processes . what is the current content creation and promotion process? Identify how can you make optimization a baked-in part of established content publishing processes. Determin whether manual keyword glossary sharing is applicable or if the content management system can be modified to dynamically pull in keyword options when adding new content. Can SEO be made part of the corporate identity standards and incorporated into the style guide? What is the right tactical mix to help you reach your goals? Based on customer preferences, your goals, the SERPs and resources, what channels will you optimize? What mix of content creation will be used? Web pages, press releases, white papers, case studies, online newsroom with press releases, articles, video, images, audio, rich media, sharing content on social sharing web sites.  How will you get the content creators within and external to your organization trained on content optimization? What oversight and monitoring methods will you use to ensure quality and avoid unfortunate overwrites? Also, what link building tactics will be emphasized? How can you leverage existing communications and relationships to increase relevant links? Can you tap into existing dealer networks, affiliates, branch office web sites and marketing partners for quality links? Can you get public relations on board with using links that are more likely to be included in placements? Can links be better optimized for SEO within other online documents such as press releases? How will you measure success and what tools will you use? Measurement is the most critical piece of an optimized content marketing program. Measurement with social media monitoring tools up front can be essential in defining the social conversations driving content creation, sharing and consumption that are consistent with your marketing goals. Once a program is implemented, analytics will help measure key performance indicators (KPIs), conversions and anything in between. There’s a lot you can measure so here are a few examples for SEO, Social Media and Online PR. SEO related measurement often includes search referrals and keywords that drive traffic to the web site, what search engines send traffic and what the visitors do once they visit. Relative measures of rankings and links can be useful as well. Ultimately, conversions are an idea measurement for SEO, whether it’s a white paper download, webinar signup or an actual product/service sale. Social media measurement often includes engagement metrics such as fans/friends/followers, comments, brand mentions & sentiment, referred traffic and links. Tracking buzzing topics on the social web can create opportunities for real time content creation/optimization and promotion. Online PR measurement often depends on determining the effectiveness of press releases distributed via email directly to a short list of journalists or to a newswire service for broader exposure online. Blog and publication mentions (unsolicited) as well as links and sentiment are also important. Do no underestimate the value and importance of using social monitoring and web analytics to help inform the ongoing content marketing opportunities and the creation of specific types of content in order to attract trending search traffic. Social conversations fuel search traffic. Understand the keywords most often used in social conversations and you may get a leg up on your competition by creating, optimizing and promoting content that’s being discussed and popular. © Online Marketing Blog , 2010. | Key Questions to Optimize Your Content Marketing Strategy | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

6fa95659b9rategy.jpg Key Questions to Optimize Your Content Marketing Strategy

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Key Questions to Optimize Your Content Marketing Strategy

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17th
APR

Using Vinyl Banners For Product Advertising

Posted by BlogPostman under Pay-Per-Click

The main priority of a good product advertisement campaign is to get more and more people to know all about your products and services. The advertising is going to tell the potential customers out there, all about the benefits of the product or the service. This is the main aim of good advertising; sway a potential buyer or customer to at least look through your product, if not buy it outright. There are plenty of product advertising mediums available out there. One of the most popular advertising medium is using vinyl banners as an advertising material. Not only can your products be advertised on these banners in a really stylish manner, but also the advertisements are going to last you for a really long time. Vinyl banners are quite durable; apart from that, you can find them in different colors, shapes, sizes and designs. You can not only use a vinyl banner for advertisement purposes for your business, but also to advertise special events like film screenings, exhibitions, political campaigns, school events, team events, company trips, seminars, restaurant promotion, musical concerts… forany occasion or event promotion, the use of banners are ideal. These long-lasting vinyl banners are more often used in areas which are prone to extreme atmospheric conditions like cyclones, winds, rain and typhoons. Long-lasting vinyl banners are digitally printed with base inks, which are semi-solvent. As these inks are water resistant, the printed words are not going to drip down the advertising surface, when exposed to water and air. You can also find vinyl letters stuck to a banner with an adhesive. As these banners are made of an extremely sturdy elastic material, you can find them in different sizes. So starting from 8 x 8″ to a maximum size of 16 x 100, ‘’ you can get the right vinyl banners of your choice and specifications, whenever required. .25 inches can be added on each side to adjust the dimensions of the banners. So, you have long-lasting sturdy banners, –advertising your products — which can be hung from any surface. So this is one of the best options for outdoor and indoor advertisements. Why use outdoor banners to advertise your business? First of all, these banners can be tailored to your specifications regarding color, design, style, and size. Many of these banners are going to come with a three-year warranty. These are extremely durable, and long-lasting. Continuous exposure to rain, sun, and air does not have a fading effect upon the ink or on the material. So once you have chosen your banner, and thought up the advertisement to be printed on it, you need to select the borders, fonts, themes, as well as graphics which are going to be printed on the banner. Custom banners can be used for promoting trade shows, festivals, reunions and other social activities. Custom full-color banners are a stylish advertising medium, which can be printed on both sides to entice more and more customers to your business. – About the Author: Bannerstoyou.com is a leading provider of vinyl banners in the USA and beyond. They can provide all your needs for vinyl banners for business or personal use. Tom Jacobsen is a writer for http://www.bannerstoyou.com who has worked in the industry for some years. Article Source

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Using Vinyl Banners For Product Advertising

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16th
APR

Top 5 Search Terms at Online Marketing Blog – Including Pirates

Posted by under Internet Marketing, Pay-Per-Click

Here on Online Marketing Blog , we post a tremendous amount of insight on organic  search optimization and content marketing related topics each month. But how about the site search tool on our own blog? Who’s searching for what, and why? And what are they finding? Mining the site search report from Google Analytics can be very useful since it’s an indication of what our visitors want to read more of. Here are the six most popular site search terms for Online Marketing Blog including our favorite, “pirates”. 1. Facebook With Facebook taking off as a top channel for social media marketing, it’s no wonder that them comes up as our leading search query. Just consider the recent numbers : Facebook boasts more than 400 million active users 50% of Facebook users log on during any given day More than 20 million Facebook users become fans of pages every day A quick Online Marketing Blog site search for “Facebook” yields recent posts on tools for sharing microcontent , insight on social media advertising and how to leverage channels like Facebook to take advantage of real-time search . 2. Twitter Speaking of popular social media marketing channels, Twitter takes to No. 2 spot for most common site searched on Online Marketing blog. Twitter may only have less than 106 million users compared with Facebook’s 400 million. But consider how quickly Twitter is growing and how active its users are: New users sign up at the rate of 300,000 per day 180 million unique visitors visit the site every month Users post an average of 55 million tweets a day So what can you get with a search for Twitter on Online Marketing Blog? Learn more about the role of news in blended search or find ways to electrify your social network . 3. Books Who says print is dead? “Books” turns up as our fourth most popular search term. Here on the Online Marketing Blog, we’ve posted reviews of some of latest most intriguing marketing online marketing books like “The Art of SEO.” Plus, we’ve conducted exclusive interview with some of the hottest marketing authors out there, such as David Meerman Scott , author of “The New Rules of Marketing.” We’ve even polled our readers on the best available books on SEO . 4. Social Media These days, social media isn’t just a hot topic for B2C marketers looking to connect with consumers on sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Social media is equally as relevant in the B2B world. In fact, 91% of business buyers read blogs, watch user generated video and participate in other social media, according to Forrester Research. A “social media” search on Online Marketing blog pulls up posts on setting and measuring goals for business blogging , which social media sites are the biggest time wasters and the risks of sponsored blog posts . 5. Email Marketing Contrary to predictions, RSS never did replace Email. Social media and network use and status updates or microblogging haven’t “killed” the popularity of email either. In fact, there have been reports that Email use is actually up. So it certainly makes sense that our readers are looking for more information on email marketing. A search for “email marketing” reveals some insight posts including, “ 5 Top Email Marketing Tactics for 2010 “, 5 Tips for Effective Email Copywriting ” and “ How Social Media & Email Marketing Boost Customer Reach “. And Finally: Pirates! Few things seem less relevant to Online Marketing Blog than pirates. Yet somehow it’s one of the most searched terms on the blog. So what do pirates have to do with Internet marketing and Web 2.0? There is an answer in this social media marketing post, we promise. Hint: It has to do with Dave McClure. Are you analyzing the top search phrases on your web site? Are you using that insight to guide your site content? © Online Marketing Blog , 2010. | Top 5 Search Terms at Online Marketing Blog – Including Pirates | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

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