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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.

Web Site Advertising – Building Links

Posted by BlogPostman under Web Site Advertising

So, you’ve come up with a great idea for an online business, and everyone that you’ve told about your idea thinks it will really be popular with internet audiences. Before you rush out to tell the world about what you’ve come up with, you’ve got to consider how you’ll use web site advertising to build a network of traffic for your business.

The internet is a great medium for entrepreneurs because it is almost a level playing field. Anyone can create their website, come up with a business plan, and start making money if they know how to use smart web site advertising to get them noticed on the web.

Unlike the real world of brick and mortar businesses, where if you have more money, you can build a fancier store front and set your prices lower, the internet doesn’t show favorites to those that have more money to throw at web site advertising. However, it will reward you handsomely for using those tactics in an intelligent way.

The key to using web site advertising in the most efficient way is to build links with other websites that will help to direct traffic to your pages. This isn’t as easy as it sounds, because usually other sites are loath to give up real estate to help someone else out.

This is why it can be helpful to work with an experience internet marketing firm that will be able to plug you into their already existing network of commerce and information websites. This is a smart type of web site advertising because not only will you get valuable links, you’ll be able to target your exposure to the audience members that are most likely to make a purchase.

If you are aware of your need for web site advertising but still unclear about how having additional links to your business on other websites is going to help you to be more successful, you’ve got to think of the web like a highway and your site like one of millions of exits.

Every time you have a link to your site placed on another website, it’s like adding the number of exits that will take people to your pages. The more people that travel through your pages every day, the more chance you have to make as sale and hit the goals that will make you successful.

Don’t allow your business to plateau at a low level of exposure! Click here to learn about proven web site advertising techniques that will increase your visibility and your success.

Web Marketing – Do You Need It?

Posted by BlogPostman under Web Marketing

So, you’ve been in business for a few months now, and you’ve seen your customer base grow from just a few friends and family members to enough local action to keep you busy on a daily basis. You’re probably thinking that you’re doing alright without any web marketing campaigns, but that’s where you’re wrong.

Too many people think that because they’ve managed to generate interest about their products or services through word of mouth tactics, or simply print and television advertising in their particular region, they are doing all they can to build a brand awareness about their company. However, without web marketing, you are leaving out a very important piece of the puzzle.

If you’re just now starting your web based business, you have to understand that web marketing is even more important for you than it is for traditional brick and mortar businesses. This is because the internet is your lifeline to your customer base. If you’re not making use of it, you can be sure that your competition is.

If you’re trying to decide whether or not you really need to invest in web marketing, you have to ask yourself how big you eventually want to grow. If you want a big tomato bush, with lots of fruit on it, you can’t keep it in a tiny container on your kitchen counter forever. Internet marketing gives you access to the biggest audience of all: the millions of people who are searching the internet right now.

Neglecting the need for web marketing just puts your business at risk for complete obscurity, meaning that you might have a great product or service that many people would be interested in, but because you don’t show up in the relevant search results, they have no idea you exist.

If you’re interested in utilizing web marketing to help grow your business, but aren’t really sure the best way to get started, you should know that there are many qualified internet marketing firms that can provide you with comprehensive packages that will work for you.

When choosing a web marketing firm for the first time, make sure that they offer a wide variety of services for you to pick from. This means that you should have your choice of website linking, email advertising, and social bookmarking, as well as banner ads.

If you’re scared that you might not be doing enough to connect with your online audiences, web marketing could be the tool that you’ve been looking for. Click here for more information on services that could propel you to success.

Internet Marketing – Climb to the Top

Posted by BlogPostman under Internet Marketing

Owning or managing your own business can be very stressful, and many people have so many things to think about on a daily basis that they don’t even realize they are ignoring one of the most important business processes: internet marketing. Research has shown that millions of people turn to the internet first when they want to find a product or service, and you’ve got to figure out a way to take advantage of this ready-made audience.

Traditional marketing usually consists of creating promotional materials that can be distributed and disseminated in a number of different ways, usually through print, radio, or television advertising. While these methods have been proven successful to a certain extent, they won’t be enough to keep you fresh in the minds of web surfers.

Internet marketing is an amazing tool for entrepreneurs, because it never closes, it can’t be torn down or covered with another advertisement, and it isn’t so permanent that you can’t make changes if your product or service suddenly becomes different.

Something that you have to understand about internet marketing is that it is always most successful when it happens in a wide variety of ways, all at once. This means that you have to find a way to combine search engine optimization techniques, with email advertising, website linking and other tactics in order to build quality brand awareness.

When you talk to most new internet business owners about internet marketing, you are likely to see their face become a little frustrated and very confused. Because there are so many different ways to go about it, choosing the right methods can be difficult.

If you want to take advantage of all the different ways that internet marketing can help to propel your business to the top of its industry, but you don’t want to waste time making silly novice mistakes, you might want to consider using an established online marketing firm to design and execute your campaigns.

The best internet marketing companies are the ones that have been around for a long time, and that have proven over and over again that they can increase visibility and sales for their client companies. Don’t be sucked in by fly by night companies that tell you they can double your traffic overnight, because these claims are often much too good to be true.

Don’t waste your time on marketing techniques that won’t get you noticed in the audiences you’re targeting. Click here to learn more about internet marketing.

Ten Must Read Tips to Start a Small Business Blog

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

A friend of mine who is an experienced corporate marketer started a new business. The store just opened and being the good pal that I am, I was able to provide some advice regarding marketing on the web – specifically regarding blog marketing. This is a new small business, so considerations for what to do about a web site included: cost, functionality, flexibility, ease of maintenance and marketability. The web site needed to serve as both an online representation of the business, but without transactional functionality, as well as a host for landing pages used with email and PPC campaigns. My recommendation for a low cost, easy to use and search engine friendly content mangagement system? Blog software. What often happens when friends ask for advice regarding web marketing is that I’ll make some recommendations in a casual setting or email links to a few resources like this one on blog marketing tips , then a few weeks or months later, the conversation will turn to, “So, how is your blog or web site doing?”, and I find out that the site/blog was either not started at all, it was created in a way that blows away any chance of SEO or marketability outside of advertising or it was built using resources with no cost of entry but without the capabilities to scale if successful. Something along those lines happend with my friend’s blog. What was the issue? The blog was started using Blogger.com, which by itself is not a problem, but the blog address selected was: nameofstore.blogspot.com. This is understandable because it’s the default URL selection when you create a blog with Blogger.com. However, picking a third party domain for the blog address violates one of the most important rules in sustainable blogging: Always host the blog address with a domain name you control. That means yourdomainname.com/blog or blog.yourdomainname.com or yourdomainnameblog.com. Otherwise, you give up control. How so? What if the blog host goes down? Free services rarely provide support. Also, what if the service does not support the functionality you need? You can’t change their entire platform to suit your individual needs. There are other reasons for keeping the blog address as part of your own domain name including the ability to change blog software services without having to change your blog address. Of course there’s also a benefit for search engine optimization if you host the blog as a sub directory of your main company domain name such as yourdomainname.com/blog. Blogs are very linkable entities and other blogs tend to be enthusiastic about linking, so any links to your blog can be percieved as a vote of credibility to your main web site since the blog and the web site share the same domain name. Now back to our tale of the small business blog. My friend had only made one post on the blogspot.com URL so nothing would be lost by moving to a dedicated domain name. My own experience with Online Marketing Blog was different. After blogging for nearly 2 years at a blogspot.com address, I decided to move to a dedicated domain name and WordPress. It took some talented optimization and 6 months of aggressive promotion to recoup the linking footprint (100,000+ inbound links) that was lost. Of course, now our traffic is multiple times more than what it was. What my friend decided to do was register a domain name and setup a hosting account. Since there was no main company web site to attach the blog to, this makes the most sense. Essentially, the blog became the company web site. With more and more businesses, this is becoming a very practical, cost effective and functionally efficient way to manage web site content: Using blog software as a content management system. As my friend asked what to do next, writing everything down in a notebook, it became clear that there’s a litany of things you COULD do with setting up a blog. Even if we filtered it down to what one SHOULD do, the list was amazingly long. As someone new to the whole idea of blogging and this not being a formal consulting arrangement, I decided to create what I think, is a short list of what a small businesses CAN do when starting a blog. 1. Decide the purpose of the blog. Do this before going out and registering a domain name or anything else. Is the blog going to serve as a journal for starting the business? Is it a search marketing tool? Is it to be used to demonstrate thought leadership and create credibility? Will it be a communication tool for customers? Will it also serve as the main company web site? Is the purpose some or all of the above? I could elaborate on setting up each of these types of blogs if I ever decided to write that book, but for now, we’ll stick with a blog that serves as a company web site, hosts landing pages, serves as a small business resource and marketing tool. 2. Pick a URL. If the purpose of the blog is to support company brand and audience, then the URL should be part of the company web site. Ideally, the blog hosting situation allows for a sub directory such as companysite.com/blog.  Otherwise, a sub-domain such as blog.companysite.com will work and you can can host the blog elsewhere, separate from the company web servers. IT will like that. If the purpose of the blog is independent of the primary company brand, or messaging, then a dedicated domain name such as topicgoeshereblog.com might work better. It’s tempting to use a keyword only domain name, but those keywords will not be a silver bullet for search engine rankings. A catchy, meaningul brand name for the blog will go much farther as content can always be optimized for search engine rankings. 3. Pick blog software. In most cases, WordPress is the way to go. An inexpensive Linux platform hosting account that supports PHP and mySQL can be secured for $10-$20 per month. However, should the blog get really popular, expect to upgrade to support increased demand. It’s entirely worth it. The blog software will need to be installed on the server that will host it and the database will also need to be set up. This is fairly straightforward, but in all honesty, it’s best to have someone that knows what they’re doing help. As an example, I do very little of the technical work on our blog and prefer to have a specialist (Thomas McMahon) take care of maintenance, adding plugins, design and functionality updates. We have outside programmers do any heavy lifting in the application development department. WordPress software is open source, ie free, so if you are code/technically savvy and you have the time to figure it out, it’s certainly doable. There is no one “right way” to setup a blog. There are literally hundreds of shades of gray. It can cost a hundreds to thousand of dollars for a blog consultant to install, setup and customize the design of your blog. You’re not paying for the software, you’re paying for expertise that will save you MONTHS of time and allow you to get to market more quickly and efficiently. 4. Customize the blog. After installation of the core blog software, there are a number of customization tasks. First, the blog design should be modified to match your branding. If you don’t hire a consultant to do this, there are many free templates that can then be customized, but many of them require a link to the author at the bottom. Personally, I’m not a fan of those, but they are a low/no cost place to start. Design customization involves modifying the CSS, JavaScript, graphics and possibly a few database elements. The second set of customization tasks involves plug-ins to improve the adminstration, front end functionality and the SEO friendliness of the blog. Thanks to Twitter and Thomas for this recommended minimum list of plug-ins: Redirection HeadSpace2 Google XML sitemaps Gravity forms All In One SEO PostPost ACE WP Plug ComLuv Disqus Members only Cookies for comments Section widget Page order Related posts FeedSmith FeedBurner Plugin Sociable Askimet or WP-SpamFree Post Teaser 5. Create a content plan. In concert with the purpose of the blog, it’s important to generate a basic editorial guideline for creating content. The easiest way to manage this is by creating categories for the kinds of content you plan on posting. Before you create those categories, it’s a good idea to do some keyword research as the categories will become excellent repositories of related content. Why not make it even easier for search engines to understand and rank them? Common keyword research tools include: WordTracker and Google . Paid keyword tools include WordStream.com and KeywordDiscovery.com Once you identify which keyword phrases best represent the content you’ll be publishing, use them to name your content categories. Each time you make a blog post, that entry will be associated with one or more categories, creating a very search engine friendly repository of content. Create an editorial calendar or schedule of posts to keep you on topic for your audience and true to the purpose of the blog. Leverage interactions with blog readers as well as your analytics to know if your content and keyword picks are productive or not. 6. Pick your blogging team. In the case of most small businesses, the blogging team is a team of one. That’s fine, just be sure to document what’s working and what’s not so when the time comes, you can get your blogging team mate up to speed quickly. Since blogger’s block (like writer’s block) can really dampen a good thing for a small business blog, go ahead and keep a good number of posts in draft mode. Add to them as you get new ideas and inspiration. Or facts and examples. That way, you’ll have a steady stream of blog posts ready to publish in advance. In fact, you can schedule blog posts in advance using WordPress. 7. Make it easy to share. Blogging in a vaccum is inevitable blogging death. It’s essential that you solicit comments in your posts, respond to comments quickly, create and enforce a commenting policy. Being responsive is an essential part of attracting subscribers . Don’t covet the comments either. Visit other blogs in your industry and write useful comments. Those bloggers may notice you and it can become something more, like an invite for a guest post, collaboration or simply a new online friend. Make it easy for readers of your blog to save and share your content with sharing buttons or widgets. It pays to create accounts on the more popular services and develop social networks there. Your contacts on Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon and similar services will watch for your next post and vote for the good stuff, which can drive your content to be exposed on more popular areas of those web sites. More exposure can mean more traffic. The social bookmarks tool is handy for adding such functionality to any web page and Thomas offered several new blog promotion tips last week. 8. Get your social on . RSS feeds come with blogs and it’s worth taking the time to make sure the RSS feed is readily available and obvious for people to subscribe. Submit your blog and RSS feed to our HUGE list of blog and RSS directories . Set up social profiles on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as appropriate and automate the sharing of links from your blog posts to those services. In other words, you could use a service like TwitterFeed to publish your latest blog post to Twitter and Facebook automatically. Be sure to publish your blog URL everywhere you publish your web site address. 9. Make static. If you’re using the blog as a CMS for a small business web site, then make your static web pages such as those for About our Company, Product/Service pages, Contact Forms, etc. The blog can be customized to have a home page like any other web site as well. That way, visitors arriving on your site can see what they expect from a company selling products/services. At the same time, blogging creates a rich and frequent source of useful content that’s syndicated via RSS, promoted automatically to relevant social channels and leaves the door open for interaction via comments. 10. Measure. Test – Test. Measure. It’s important that you set goals for the blog, a plan to execute tactics and most of all, measure progress. Most web site measurement is focused on web analytics and metrics specific to different types of marketing such as with email, SEO or PPC. Standard web analytics software such as Google Analytics will address the vast majority of your needs. I would also recommend social media monitoring and analytics. Monitoring can be as simple as the RSS feed from search.twitter.com combined with the RSS feed from the results of a search on Google’s blog search. You could also use services like socialmention.com , trackur.com or more robust social media monitoring tools such as Techrigy SM2, ScoutLabs or Radian6. Social monitoring tools will help you understand what your customers are saying about you on the social web as well as uncover new interaction opportiunities with influentials. Real time search means real time marketing and social monitoring can facilitate that. One example would be if a competitor Tweets a deal on a product. Your Twitter search on that competitor or product would create an alert. You could then decide to offer a deal at a lower price or some other counter offer. Another example is if a customer complains about your company. Before others jump on the bandwagon, your social monitoring tools would alert you and you can then qualify and address the situation quickly. As web analytics and social media monitoring tools become increasingly intertwined, you’ll be able to identify many other key metrics for the effect of your social participation on bottom line business goals. There you go. Ten tips for starting a small business blog. This was a long post and yet, it’s nowhere near a comprehensive guide to create a small business blog. Even though there is plenty of free blog software and advice available online, many companies would benefit from having professional help with a business blog. The funny thing is, my friend will look at this post and say, “This is the SHORT list?”. Blogging can be simple to start, but no one said it wasn’t hard work. If you’ve created a blog for your small business, what has your experience been? Did you do it yourself? Do you get expert help? Have you set up a small business web site using blog software? we’d love to hear about your experiences, challenges and successes.