Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg » Search Engine Optimization

Attack of the Consumer! The Many Ways Consumers Can Put You Out of Business Online

Guest Author — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:04:02 +0000

This is a guest post by David Rodnitzky.

Having the best prices and largest selection of products means nothing on the Internet if you don’t back it up with incredible customer service. Treat customers badly and you will be out of business – period! Bad customer service will get you banned from major advertising networks, skewered in organic results, and ridiculed on social networks. Here are the top ways consumers can crush your business online.

Advertising Bans

If consumers complain about your business, your money won’t be green enough to buy advertising online. Both eBay and Amazon uses customer reviews as a baseline metric of eligibility to participate in their marketplace.

On eBay, too many negative customer reviews will get a seller kicked off, or in eBay terms, the seller will be declared “Not a Registered User.”

I once worked for a company that had been kicked off eBay and Amazon for bad customer service (not my fault, honest!). It took eight monthsand hundreds of pages of documentation to get us back on both sites. Had I not had personal connections at both companies, it’s unlikely I would ever have gotten the company back into the listings.Comparison shopping engines (CSEs) also use customer ratings to reward good performers and push bad performers out of the results. Most CSEs have a “trusted” or “approved” rating system that is designed to give consumers guidance on which vendor to choose, especially when price is not an issue. Shopping.com, for example, will list the vendor with the combination of the lowest price and the best customer reviews first in its results. As seen in the screenshot below, the store is called out as a “Smart Buy!” and is listed first.

Google AdWords advertisers are increasingly being held accountable for the quality of their customer service. Google has integrated star ratings from consumer review sites like Epinions or Biz Rate – but only sites with four out of five stars or greater results get an extra line in AdWords with their star ratings. If you saw five ads on AdWords and four of them had star ratings next to them, would you click on the one that didn’t?

Google is also starting to integrate “+1’s” into AdWords results, just as Facebook has integrated “likes” into Facebook ads. These social extensions are another way to give consumers an indication of whether a potential advertiser is delivering value prior to a click.

And Google reserves the right to suspend any advertiser’s AdWords account if it concludes that the advertiser is treating customers poorly. This is broadly defined to include anything from unclear landing pages, a lack of a privacy policy, misleading ads, or unclear billing practices. Suffice to say, if you are operating in a grey area of customer service, there’s a decent chance that Google will block you entirely from running AdWords ads.

Organic Search and the Voice of the Consumer

There used to be an adage that stated something like “a satisfied customer will tell three people about your business, a dissatisfied customer will tell ten.” These days, the voice of the angry customer has been dramatically amplified through review sites like Yelp and PowerReviews, as well as the built in reviews on commerce sites like Amazon.

Let’s start with Yelp. A recent Harvard Business School study found that increasing a restaurant’s Yelp rating by one star directly led to a 5 to 9% increase in annual revenue for the restaurant. That’s not surprising, considering how much Google’s organic results love Yelp. With almost 7.5 million pages indexed, there’s a high likelihood that whatever restaurant, plumber, or manicurist name you enter into Google, Yelp will be at the top of the results. And for users who have yet to decide on a specific vendor, Yelp’s listings – as with CSEs above – are sorted based on the quality and quantity of positive reviews. Bad customer service gets you pushed out of Yelp’s results.

Products are not immune to the power of customer reviews in organic search. Type in virtually any product and the odds are that you’ll find Amazon’s customer reviews prominently listed:

And even if you don’t type “review” as part of your query, Google’s Instant Search algorithm will frequently suggest a review-related query to you:

Social Media Mass Mobilization

Social media appears to have been a godsend for angry consumers. In the old days before the Internet, angry consumers had little recourse if they were mistreated by a company. These days, one bad customer experience is all it takes to destroy your company’s good reputation.

One broken guitar (and a lack of empathetic customer service) resulted in over 11 million views on YouTube of the catchy jingle United Breaks Guitars. A decision by GoDaddy to support the Stop Online Privacy Act led to an online petition on Reddit (and partially instigated by Tamar) that got thousands of domain owners to transfer their domains off GoDaddy, a revenue loss of around $370,000 a year. NetFlix’s sudden and dramatic increase in prices led to massive consumer backlash, including 67,000 negative comments on their Facebook page. Need I go on? How about Verizon’s decision (and quick retraction) to add a $2 convenience fee, or Bank of America charging $5 to consumers to use debit cards.

Social media makes it easy for like-minded consumers to band together and amplify their message, it spreads rapidly, and it always feels more genuine than the talking heads from a corporate PR team. As a result, we’re seeing large corporations closely monitoring any complaints on social media, and addressing them in hours, instead of weeks or months.

So What Does This Mean?

Let’s quickly recap: if you provide bad customer service, you could be kicked off all the major online advertising channels, the organic search results might be filled with horrendous reviews of your business, and you might be ridiculed or worse by millions on social media. To put it another way: as a business, you can no longer control the message that gets out about your products and services; provide bad service and you are almost certain to be paid back in kind with negativity online.

The solution to this ‘threat’ is really quite simple: provide great customer service! Love and listen to your customers! Read and adopt Zappos’ code of ethics. Conduct and act upon a Net Promoter Survey. If you aren’t actively working to “wow” your customers, you’re probably dying a slow, gradual death. You can hire the best agency, an awesome SEO genius, and an army of social media gurus – all of this talent cannot stop consumers from telling the world the truth about your business.

David Rodnitzky is CEO of PPC Associates, a leading SEM agency. Follow him on Twitter @rodnitzky or visit his AdWords blog.

[ Attack of the Consumer! The Many Ways Consumers Can Put You Out of Business Online is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2011

Tamar Weinberg — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 13:19:57 +0000

It’s my birthday and I have some great news!

In January of 2011, I said that I’d make our Internet Marketing Posts of 2011 subscriber only. And I did. Many loyal readers have checked in on the newsletter throughout 2011 to get both evergreen content, the content that typically embraces these monthly updates, in addition to something completely new, monthly digital trends – the stuff you use for presentations and proposals, for arguing that social media and online marketing does have a firm place in today’s landscape. The newsletter, which was sent within the first week of the month, would include new research findings from surveys conducted by research groups such as the Pew Research Center, new discoveries from a marketing firm’s eye tracking study, or data that was recently culled across a multitude of SEO agency case study reports.

This year, I am pleased to bring back our Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2011 thanks to an excellent sponsor, HubSpot. HubSpot has recently launched a most amazing Marketing Grader tool to help you measure the effectiveness of your website. Please be sure to check it out as it’s one of the best tools I’ve ever seen, and I would be saying that even if they weren’t a sponsor!

And now, here’s what you’ve all been waiting for: the evergreen portion of my Internet Marketing best posts delivered straight to your doorstep on my birthday as you’ve come to expect year after year. Want the trends, news, and findings too? Sign up right now at a totally reduced cost for 2012 for a limited time.

SEO

Quick and Dirty Competitive Research for Keywords: If you’re looking for keywords to target in your SEO campaign, this guide will tell you what to do with available online tools and websites.
Internal Linking: The Benefits of Great Information Architecture for SEO: Sometimes you don’t have to beg other webmasters to link to you. Consider focusing your link building tactics internally — that is, on your site. Breadcrumbs, navigation, and related pages are a great way to start.
Does Google PageRank Really Matter?: The answer is no, but it’s still a metric that is close to Larry Page’s heart. Think instead about social media traffic, good content, a cleanly coded website, slow progressive growth, and your site’s authority.
SEO Checklist: 60 Essential Checks Before Launching a Website: Is your site ready to be launched? Ask these questions and then answer them.
The Meta Description Tag: Are you using the meta description tag effectively on your websites? Here are some applications of meta tags and arguments as to why you should be using them.
How to Do an SEO Audit: How well is your newest SEO client’s practices? Do an audit to find out. This audit will cover their keywords targeted, tools used, site architecture, backlinks, and other elements to make sure you have a full understanding of what the client needs to take action and do better.
10 Metrics to Check When Your Traffic Crashes: With Google consistently trying to provide the best search experience, your rankings may fall at any time. This is how you can evaluate where it happened.
12 Popular Keyword Organization Tips and Tools: This post contains a list of tools that help organize some unruly keyword lists and includes tools like Ad Group Filter, RKG Duck, Wordstream Keyword Grouper, Spyfu Keyword Groupie (obviously using a different “keyword group” name not to infringe on any copyrights or trademarks!), and a number of others.
A Guide to Geocoding Images for Local SEO: Image optimization is a big part of a cohesive SEO strategy. Wouldn’t you want your image to be associated with local places? This is the article you need to make that happen.
User Friendly SEO: These are the tactics that search engine optimizers should use to optimize for search engines and user experience.
8 Necessary SEO Steps During a Website Redesign: Every so often, we have to redesign our site. But how do we make sure the search traffic we had stays intact? Auditing the site and working out which keywords and links are the top performers is a given.
The Heart of SEO: 8 Everlasting Truths: This is misleading; this is only part 1 so it has 4 truths. Part 2 hasn’t been posted as of the compilation of this report, but you should know that SEO is about a strong brand, that you must perform research, real value produces great results, and you must understand where to circulate the message to get the best results.
Technical SEO: Tools and Approach: Which technical factors matter for SEO? This is a review of what tools (e.g. wget, curl, Xenu, etc.) can help you assess how well your website is performing technically.
Duplicate Content in a Post Panda World: Duplicate content poses a problem for SEO because when two pages share the same content, one page may get indexed (the one you don’t necessarily want, perhaps) while the other gets hidden. This post is a somewhat technical approach toward dealing with duplicate content issues. It’s pretty exhaustive too. There’s even a 22 page PDF of the article in case you wanted to take it with you.
New Edition of the Ranking Factors for 2011 is Now Live!: SEOmoz recently came out with a survey that asked many practitioners their experience with keyword rankings. This data is compiled here. This is the newest data since 2009.
The Ultimate Guide to Keyword R esearch: …and the tools you need to use to do a great job.
Small Business SEO: 46 Experts on the Biggest Mistakes SMBs Make with SEO (and How to Avoid Them): What have small businesses done wrong in the ways of SEO? DIYSEO asked 46 experts who weighed in on many things, from forgetting a local focus, doing too much at one time, having bad quality links, not optimizing their online listings, and much more.
How To Take Your Keyword Research to a Higher Level: This post explores what differentiates quality keyword research from the junk that you get from a tool. Yes, it will take time. Yes, you’ll be happy with the results.
Infographic: SEO Salary Guide: If you’re looking for general salaries for SEO, this infographic might tell you what you can expect to be paid on average by city. If you’re looking for a good salary, you may wish to relocate.
SEO Checklist for Local Small Business Websites: If you’re ever planning on starting a small business website, this is a decent but basic checklist of the considerations you need to make in order to make sure it’s well SEO’d. Have a look.
Should I Change My URLs for SEO?: This beginner SEO question comes up often. And since it’s being touched upon in this post, I figured it’s worth including here too.
Introducing: The Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors: All of this SEO in an easily digestible infographic.
Bing Rankings Cheat Sheet: People still use Bing, so understanding what works for rankings on that site is important. Here’s a list of what Bing seems to prefer for those top rankings.
SEO Best Practices for Restaurants and Eateries: I’m not sure how many of you readers actually have a restaurant or eatery (or know someone who does), but this was pretty solid advice.
The Complete Google Panda Reference Guide: Google’s Panda update has left site owners and SEOs confused and befuddled, but this guide summarizes the history and explains how you can be successful despite this algorithmic update.
The Responsibilities of SEO Have Been Upgraded: SEO is not the same today as it was 6 years ago. Today, we think about XML sitemaps, local integration, keyword usage in images, PR tactics, and so much more. Your strategies must employ content creation, community management, local/maps optimization, among others. How many of these new tactics have you adopted?
How User Generated Content is Changing SEO: This is an analysis of how search results changed in the last year alone and how it impacts your business. Get more reviews, people! That’s one of many ways to be more visible.
How Social Media Affects Content Relevance in Search: Why is social media so important? For those die hard SEO practitioners who don’t see the value in social, this article shows the last few months’ impact on search engine rankings. The more you share, the more likely the content will rank.

Blogging

Top 10 Attributes of a Successful Blogger: If you like writing, have good grammar skills, are creative, and have an entrepreneurial spirit, you might make a great blogger for yourself or your company!
21 Real Blog Metrics Your Company Needs to Track: Whether it’s pageviews, time on site, calls to action, or reader comments/votes, all of these metrics are helpful to fulfill certain goals, such as understanding how engaged your readers are, finding out where the readers are most interested, or whether your sales are being supported by appropriate content, so take a look at this post, reevaluate your blog, and see if you need to fix it up a bit.
A Definitive Guide to Blog Content Scraping & How to STOP It!: Ever get your blog content stolen by another new blog who wants to get established? This is the definitive guide on how to handle that, from proactive stances to applying rel=”author” (plus full instructions on how to implement that) to finding out who is stealing your content altogether.
Top Corporate Blogs: What are the best corporate blogs? SocialFresh ran a contest and picked their finalists. If nothing else, you should take a look at these corporate blogs and see where and how they’re doing it right!
10 Proven Tips for Getting More Engagement on Your Business Blog RIGHT NOW: There are lots of great tips on how to make a great blog, including not moderating comments, rewarding engagement, giving readers ways to connect with you, publishing posts around the time you get visitors, and more.
7-point Checklist For Bloggers Who Want to Create a Profitable Blog: As bloggers who want to monetize, a checklist can come in handy to see if you’re following the steps needed to drive your blog into moneymaking territory.
Adding Revenue Streams into Your Website or Blog: How do you monetize your blog? It’s not only AdSense that you can use. Michael’s post should inspire you to make more money for your blog.
40 Dead Simple Ways to Get More Comments on Your Blog: This post really has 31 tips for blogging, from design tips to writing post ideas to how to respond.
7 Habits of Professional Bloggers: Bloggers who do so professionally are willing to learn, creating a sustainable online property, creating content consistently, have self discipline, maintain integrity, have courtesy, and always aim to grow bigger.
Ultimate Blogger’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization: There have been a lot of guides on blogging and SEO, but this is the latest and has good info.
5 Reasons Why Deleting Your Blog Posts Is Stupid: …or why Steve Rubel shouldn’t have done it.
Neil Patel’s Guide to Blogging: This article touches upon the Neil Patel way of blogging — and he’s been doing it for quite awhile. He starts off with a list of how he crafts a blog content, how he chooses topics, social promotion, timing of the post, and more.
12 Flavors of Content to Attract Your Audience: Whether it’s video, webinars, long-form content, Q&A, whitepapers, or whatever else tickles your fancy, you can gain a big audience if you continue pushing compelling pieces of content.
Using Authorship Markup to Increase Click-Through Rates in the SERPS: A new tag lets you identify authors in search engines and helps you get seen. This tag is rel=”me” or rel=”author,” and this article walks you through getting set up.
How to Title & Tag Your Blog Posts: This post explains how to have blog titles that are keyword optimized for SEO and capture the reader’s attention.
Creating a Corporate Blogging Policy? Here are Six Areas to Consider: Corporate blogging policies should surround the following areas: the general policy, policies for writers, and internal comment policies. Externally, it’s important to have a solid “about” page, the official blog’s comment policy, and bios/pictures for all bloggers.
How to Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts with These 13 Questions: This article touches upon blogging from an SEO perspective, giving you questions and solutions on common SEO questions. The focus is high quality content.
About to Publish a Post? STOP! Read This: This article follows the previous title tag post very well. It includes considerations for the types of things you need for good SEO (and again, attention) when publishing blog posts.
5 Lessons Fortune 500 Companies Can Teach You About Blogging: Some Fortune 500 blogs are really great. This is a post that looks at some of the high performers and gives examples on how you can do the same.

Marketing Automation

A Guide to Marketing Automation: Inbound marketing tactics include marketing automation, a way to segment leads and scale personalized communications. This article introduces this element and explains how it helps a cohesive inbound marketing effort.
4 Ways to Get More out of Marketing Automation: A lot of my general audience doesn’t understand marketing automation, but did you know that it’s responsible for more than $300 million in revenue? Here’s how to maximize it.
4 Ways to Grow Your Business with Marketing Automation: Sometimes you don’t need to man everything in a marketing engagement. Automating your marketing efforts may be fruitful. Here’s what you can do to change your business course. Enjoy!
How to Fail at Marketing Automation: …and four characteristics that work.
5 Disastrous Misconceptions About Marketing Automation: Marketing automation is not something you can do alone; you need to put it together with a strong inbound marketing plan. It’s about being active all the time, watching the progress of your campaigns as they go through their cycles. These facts are discussed in more depth in this article.

Link Building

10 Years of Link Building Advice: Link building advice can be hit or miss, but some link builders have given us pretty good advice even as far back as 2001. These golden nuggets are shared and discussed.
Link Building 101: What’s link building? This is your introductory guide. (The next link goes even further.)
How to Build Links: The Ultimate Guide: This is one of several really helpful link building guides, covering topics in social media, viral content, guest posting, news, link requests, face to face networking, and much more.
A Guide to Long Tail Link Building: It’s always more advisable to target long tail keywords versus the broader ones (e.g. “travel,” or “jewelry”). This article explores how to get into this tactic and its benefits.
Creative Tips for Link Building on a Shoestring Budget: One of the best ways to get links is via writing guest posts. How many of you actually do that?
How to Train a Link Builder: It seems that there’s a lot of turnover in the link building space, so training new link builders will be a frequent occurrence.
Notorious S.E.O: The 10 Crack Commandments of Link Building: Link building as seen from the Notorious B.I.G. angle. This is a really creative piece.
10 Ethical Ways to Buy Links: While some may argue that you need to nofollow links purchased via paid reviews (which is suggested here), link buying isn’t over and is a great way for many people to get the visibility they feel they deserve and the SEO value that may come from it.
25 Reasons Why Another Site Will Link to Yours: How are you getting links to your site? Are you being resourceful? Offering discounts? Publishing videos? Helping people make money? This and 21 other reasons are why those links are coming.
Understanding Your Backlink Profile: Backlinks are important to find out the health of your site in search rankings. However, they could be manipulated. It’s important to analyze your backlinks regularly to see if there’s anything unhealthy going on.
Kicking off a Linkbuilding Campaign with Questions: If you’re link-building for yourself or for a client, these are questions you want to have answered for a good understanding of what you’re doing and where.
Link Building with the Experts – 2011 Edition: Every year, this interview series asking link builders about the trends in search engine optimization and how it impacts link builders.
Into the Minds of Link Builders: Three link builders are asked tough and fun questions on tactics and strategy.
Proven Ways to Use Content to Attract Links: This is part 3 in a series of posts that explain link building. To get good links, you don’t have to build brand new content. Repurpose! Add a new twist! Use forums. There are many ways to go with this.
Link Building for E-commerce Sites: Anchor text is important when it comes to link building – you want traffic but also conversions. Here’s a good framework for making that happen … and it isn’t necessarily only for e-commerce sites.
10 Reasons Why Your Link Requests are Failing: If your requests are spammy, you don’t have clear messaging, the links aren’t converting to traffic, and you’re just building a link and stopping there and not focusing on a relationship, your requests will fail at generating the right response. It’s hard work. Are you prepared?
Link Building in 2011: This is an interview with 2 known link builders on the impact of SEO and links.
99 Ways to Build Links by Giving Stuff Away (and Improve Your Brand Too): Want to build links? Here are 99 ways, from giveaways to community building to media connections to offering discounts and so much more.

Local Online Marketing

Local Search Ranking Factors: David Mihm comes out with local search ranking factors every year, and his research is indispensable for those focused on local SEO.
9 Ways to Start a New Local Business Using Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, and Google: These easy (and mostly affordable steps) can put your local business on the map. The big investment in this case is time.
10 Unorthodox Ideas for Local Citations & Links: If you have a local business and want high rankings, these are some creative ways to move forward to get some nice links: hosting parties at the event, selling products for sale online and offering feeds for the products, integrating badges or writing a guide of local places in Foursquare, and more.
Local SEO 101 Guide: Want to learn the basics of local SEO? Hire a company or check out this guide for how to DIY.
Review Management: 7 Tips on Avoiding Bad Reviews: Don’t want a bad review? Here are some tactics to keep them off the Yelps of the world and affect you negatively. Communication is key!
Local SEO Tracking: How to Track Offline Conversions: Whether it’s by custom URLs or custom phone numbers, offline conversions can be tracked thanks to a bit of analytics know-how.
13 Must-Have Tips for Local Search Marketing: If you represent a small business in a physical location and want big visibility, this guide will help.
How to Make Awesome Landing Pages for Local PPC: Sometimes customization makes a ton of sense, and in local PPC, the more personalized the message seems, the better.
5 Tips for Content Marketers on Google Places Optimization: If you want your Google Places page to shine, fill out the information, encourage participation, use keywords, and focus on what you’re best at.

Branding

125 Tips for Building an Irresistible Brand: Ask yourself some questions, jot down your answers, and think clearly about what makes your brand tick to build an amazingly powerful brand.
10 Ways to Beat Online Obscurity: Are you a rockstar? Maybe not. But you can be if you’re willing to follow the tips in this article.
How to Deal with Negative Online Sentiment About Your Brand: How do you deal with “badvocates?” Here are steps you should take to close the gap and solve problems that can taint your brand.
The 4 Layers of Online Brand Marketing: With your brand as the core, you then have a website, then content development and off page SEO, and finally social and reputation management. Are you integrating all facets of the pyramid to establish your brand?

Content Marketing/Development/Copywriting

3 Ways to Get Great Content from Your Boring Business: Shannon Paul suggests three ways to make your boring business exciting to prospects: through problem solving, through creativity, and by being the media.
SEO Guide to Creating Viral Linkbait and Infographics (Content Development): This is definitely one of the best articles in this year’s report. This Distilled guide to creating viral linkbait and infographics should not be ignored. It talks about how to brainstorm contnet to gathering data to presenting it with visual appeal to sharing the final copy.
Linkbait and Content Marketing: And now, a great walk-through of the mindset you need to be in to provide some amazingly great viral content that people will share and which will drive links to boost visibility for your business.
What to Look for in Freelance Writers: When you’re hiring a writer to produce content, you want to create a good business relationship with clearly communicated deliverables (which is the case in more than just writing engagements). Don’t commit to long term engagements unless you’re really sure about the writer, though.
Making the Leap: Egocentric to Empathy in Content Marketing: Sometimes you need to look at your company in the eyes of someone else: your customers. Once you do this, you can engage differently and get a different view of how to market. This post explains the process of how to think like your customer.
5 Reasons Copywriters Need to Get Data … or Get Out of the Business: If you can put numbers and accountability on your copywriting skills, you are a winner. The future sees copywriters as having more responsibilities in analysis, since writing content nowadays just isn’t enough.
The 7 Deadly Sins of Content Promotion: Don’t be greedy. Don’t be gluttonous. Don’t show envy. Each of these sins is dissected as a strategy, a problem, and a solution.
6 Content Tips: How to Write When You Have Nothing to Write About: I got a comment on my blog that other day from someone who felt she wasn’t inspired to write anything for her blog. But there are so many things you can write about! While this won’t have you scribbling notes (okay, typing posts) for months, you might be inspired to improve upon your content development strategy for good SEO. The more original content you have, the better your SEO. Always remember that.
A Kick Ass Guide to Growing Your Website Traffic Online: From platform to linking strategy, this guide covers everything needed to build a site that is networked enough for some good traffic.
10 Steps to Writing Better Content : I love this tip – “write drunk, edit sober.” Aren’t you more creative when you’re a little tipsy?
6 Steps to Making Your Infographic Work: Is your infographic going to resonate with your audience? By doing research among a social audience, communicating with your designer, getting outsiders’ opinions, including links, and publishing the infographic with all of these considerations intact, your infographic can travel far.
A Quick and Dirty Guide to Content Marketing: Whether you’re creating written or video content, cornerstone or spicy content, content that tells stories or solves problems, there’s an approach that will suit you and your readers. This article touches upon different content marketing angles and email autorepsonders to sell yourself and your services.
Copywriting Essentials from A to Z: From Action to Zing, here is what you need to keep in mind for a great copywritten piece of content that will grab the attention of the people who you’re looking to connect with.
Great Content for SEO: Simpler than You Ever Imagined: Build a survey, send it to your customers, record their responses, and leverage it to build what people want (via search, of course). Simple, right?
21 Ways to Create Compelling Content when You Don’t Have a Clue: You can steal ideas, borrow name recognition, get inspired, and do so much more to create some really good content that works.
Infographics or Articles: Which Type of Content is Best for Your Idea?: This article takes a deep look at infographics versus linkbait articles and explores why you should do one (or the other).
A 5 Minute Guide to More Persuasive Copywriting: Or in five words: Write for a real person.

PPC Marketing & Paid Search

How to Write the Best PPC Adverts: PPC ads is a bit of psychology, so you might want to consider some tips to make them clickworthy. Then again, you also need a great product!
Paid and Organic Search: Why the Marriage of Both is Important: After looking at analytics from a year’s worth of client data, Razorfish determined that you should buy keywords even if you’re in position #1.
25 Tips for Giving Your PPC Campaigns a Boost: Whether you’re using Facebook PPC or Google AdSense, you may want to follow some tips to maximize ROI (with minimal effort).
What Visible Quality Score isn’t Telling You: There will be things you’ll need to monitor yourself when it comes to the quality score. Geography, for example, comes into play here. There are things you can try to see better impact of your ads.
14 Things to Ask Before Starting a PPC Project : These are questions for PPC practitioners to ask before starting work on the campaign.
How to Write the Best PPC adverts: Five years has taught this now seasoned PPC pro how to get qualified leads through the sponsored search results.
The Secret of the Quality Score: I didn’t catch this post until February even though it was published in January, but it’s good stuff. Your quality score is determined by the probability someone will actually click through to your ad. There’s some interesting data and findings here.
5 Common PPC Optimization Mistakes: This is a great read for newbies especially.
Why Display Is Changing The Value Of Search: As someone who does a lot in paid advertising, I take solace in knowing that display advertising is apparently going to be the future of search — coupled with retargeting. Display advertising looks to increase over time, especially from eMarketer studies and available data.
When Should You Delete a Low Traffic Keyword?: If you have a really difficult and overwhelming PPC campaign, you may want to tidy up low performing keywords. Here’s an analysis of the impacts of doing so.
How to Use Google AdWords to Reach the People Who Didn’t Click on Your Ad: This is called remarketing and is a brilliant use of banner ad campaigns — stalking! It’s also the reason for this reddit submission. See, it’s really good.
Are You Creeping Out Your Customers With Remarketing?: Remarketing campaigns are pretty powerful, but if you’re chasing your followers everywhere they go, they may get spooked. Think about frequency caps to limit your ads, use different offers/themes, refine your ads with topic targeting, and use negative audience lists. Remarketing is great if done right!
Start Collecting Your Cookies! Setting up Remarketing Tags 101: Remarketing is the hottest PPC method yet, and here’s how you can get started to launch and monitor your new campaign.
How to Acquire Demographic Insights from Your Remarketing Campaign: Using data given by your campaigns and Quantcast, you can paint a picture of the people your remarketing campaigns are targeting so that you can make your marketing message resonate better.
43 Paid Search Signals You Need to Understand: These are the signals that reflect the user who is searching and the behavior of the user and thus must be understood for maximum gain.
9 Tips for Using Product Listing Ads: Here is advice on taking advantage of Google’s new ad format which should be a great opportunity for advertisers and for end users.
8 Best Ways to Find Negative Keywords: Whether you’re using someone else’s keyword list as inspiration (why not?) or monitoring what’s being said (or not) in the media, you can definitely find negative keywords for your campaign to avoid paying for that which would never convert.
3 Awesome Remarketing Ad Strategies: Have you ever seen an ad unit … EVERYWHERE? That’s remarketing. And if it converts, that means it’s been successful. Here’s how you can make that campaign work.
Should You Buy PPC Ads for Your Brand Keywords?: There are many reasons why you should buy PPC ads for your brand keywords (so yes, the answer is yes!) Here they are.
What PPC Practitioners Should Know About Robots.txt files: To prevent low quality scores and unapproved ads, PPC practitioners need to know about robots.txt files. Here’s how you can identify and solve that issue.

Public Relations

How to Create a Good Blogger Pitch : This is the best blogger outreach post I have ever read.
The Front Page Isn’t What it Used to Be: This is a simple reminder why you can’t rely on your website alone. You need to be firmly grounded on all major platforms serving as the “new front page” and aim for placement throughout these new mediums.
9 Essential Tips for Warm Blogger Outreach Pitches: Every so often, I share a blogger outreach article because people always do it wrong. My key takeaway from this article is to do your research. No, seriously. People pitch me all the time despite the fact that I clearly say I don’t want pitches. Obviously, the research part is overlooked. I wonder how much traction those PR campaigns really get if that’s the case?!
Blogger Outreach Guide: How to Get Started: If you’re tasked with doing outreach on behalf your client or perhaps for yourself, it’s important to find the right people. This guide gives you tips on creating that pitch and finding people who can seek out the right people — your community manager.
Recommendations for Blog Commenting as a Marketing Strategy: Blog commenting can be a great way to market yourself and your business if you do it right. This writeup explains the benefits and illustrates best practices for making it worth your time.
8 Tips for Blogger Outreach: Networking is important, but how do you reach the influencers you’re looking for? I blogged about this last year, and while those points are incredibly valid, so are these: flattering people on Twitter, finding them on a social network (especially if you can’t locate the email address), searching for opportunities via Twitter, and other lesser-known tactics are discussed.
Outreach Tips and Tricks to Increase Efficiency and Effectiveness: If you’ve done any personal outreach, doing something above and beyond can certainly help make that campaign a bit more effective for you. The suggestions here are quite smart yet simple to implement.

Social Media

Why Most Social Media Departments Fail: This is my own post and most popular post on Techipedia this year, highlighting some case studies encountered by myself and colleagues on why social media sometimes just doesn’t work for companies. Hint: it’s in the approach and communication, not in the fact that viability isn’t possible in some industries.
Process: A Pragmatic Approach to Social Business: A social media planning process requires 8 full steps to execute and measure effectively: education, research, strategy, planning, implement, manage, measure, renewal.
Blog SMO Guide: How to Apply Social Media Optimization to Your Blog in 33 Steps: This is a HUGE list of great tips to make your site social friendly. Tips like minimizing obstacles to comment, displaying voting icons after the article, having a well-written title, and more are discussed in this lengthy article.
Why Social Media Departments Fail: This post speaks from the heart (and is my own) on why social media marketing initiatives are completely useless without goals and a cohesive marketing plan.
How To Find The Perfect Network For Your Content Promotion Campaign: Today, we look at all of the social media sites out there to see what’s worth promoting where.
14 Best Practices for Long Term Social Media Success: These are the traits that successful online businesses exhibit day in and day out: they have governance and rewards, guidelines, a training program, an editorial program, a mission and purpose, and they serve their customers and prospects.
10 Considerations When Creating a Social Media Policy: If you ever need to create a social media policy, look at this list of advice for things you may need to consider: an understanding of chain of command, disclosure information, monitoring of usage, and much more.
21 Types of Social Content to Boost Your SEO: Viral content helps build links. Whether you write something that’s passionate, that’s controversial, that’s epic, that lists a bunch of great resources, and that’s visual, you can definitely reap benefits if you truly understand what a social audience is looking for.
Who Should Represent Your Brand on the Social Web?: Whether you create a social media council that integrates many team members or you take it on yourself, humanizing the brand is a primary goal for social media, since it’s all about human interaction. How do you approach it?
The Social Media Marketer’s SEO Checklist: Social media influences SEO, so this post tells social media marketers how to best craft your social messages to yield the best SEO value for search effectiveness.
Tracking the KPIs of Social Media: With social media analytics, you should track traffic, fans/followers/ social interaction, and how well the content is performing. Here are tools on how you can do these measurements.
Social Media for Small Business: 6 Effective Strategies: Businesses starting in social media may need this most, but I think it is valuable to any business. First, the customer is always right. (Well, almost.) Second, sometimes you have to pay. Third, followers are just a number. Fourth, [constant] self promotion won’t help you. Fifth, benefit from expertise. Finally, there are people you can hire to help.
An Insider’s Guide to Social Media Etiquette: I’ve written about social media etiquette myself, but this one makes it more business-centric, like not using logos (if you’re representing yourself as a person, not a company, that is) and refraining from retweeting praise about you. This is good stuff.
Don’t Abuse Social Network Pings: Social media gives you ways to connect with people you know easily, but there are certain etiquette rules to take into consideration.
Social Media for SEO vs. Customer Engagement: You should be doing social media for customer engagement (relationships) but also for SEO value. Are you coordinating both efforts? Are you doing both?
How to Grow Social Media Leads: New Research: The more you blog, the better it is for your leads. Also, the more Twitter followers you have, the better you will fare as well in leads. They call that social proof. You also get better results with a larger Facebook fan base. Do these findings surprise you?
Social Media Consultants, Experts, and Gurus, Oh My!: Earlier this year, I worked on a campaign with a client who wanted nothing more than LOTS of new followers. He didn’t know why he wanted it, but he wanted it. Naturally, it felt odd to just build numbers for him, and I gave him the explanations as to why. This is the blog post that I could’ve used before the campaign to align expectations. Numbers aren’t everything.
6 Areas of Your Business that Should be Listening: Amber Naslund and Jay Baer show the benefits of listening across sales, marketing, customer service, R&D, HR, and management.
The Rules of Social Media Engagement: It’s important to put rules into place when you involve yourself in the social media space. It makes you more productive as a company. This post includes 25 guidelines that you should consider when crafting those company policies.
9 Companies Doing Social Media Right and Why: Here are some good case studies of businesses who do social media the right way. What’s your business doing?
Secrets of Social Media Revealed 50 Years Ago: Research by Ernest Dichter in 1966 has found that there are 4 motivations that people use to communicate about brands: product involvement (a great experience), self involvement (sharing information about oneself), other involvement (desire to help others), and message involvement (a great message). Do you think all of this is still the same today? This and other discoveries still hold true.
Optimizing Social Media Campaigns for Search: Together, search and social are extremely powerful. Come up with ideas, get your external content on your main site, get tracking in place, optimize, and consider load times to create a powerful social and search machine.
Your Secret Weapon for Standout Social Media Success: In a real time world, your response times need to change. That means when someone wants your attention on social media, you better reply within minutes. This post includes the various desired response times for a variety of channels.
The Number One Least Asked Question in Social Media…Why?: Why are you as a business engaging in social media? Why should your customers follow you? Because you rock? Do your customers think so?
50 Kloutless Ways to Get Value from Twitter: …or any social network, really. Summary: network (the verb).

Social Networks

A How-to Guide for Submitting Content to Fark: Chances are if you’re reading this, you may never see the need to submit something to Fark, a social news site for funny/odd news. With content on Fark being totally manually selected, it’s hard to get the attention of the editors. Here’s the type of content that works.
Twitter for Brands: 6 Winning Strategies: Brands on Twitter may elect to take different types of approaches to be successful. Here are 6 that are taken by Ford, Zappos, JetBlue, and other well known Twitter accounts.
10 Ways to Get More ReTweets: This article analyzes some research from Twitter scientist Dan Zarrella to find out what and when you should tweet. Plus, the Twitter button helps too.
Why and How to Use Facebook Comments for Your Blog: High quality comments? Yes, Facebook Comments allow for this. Here’s why you should enable them on your blog.
How to Build the Perfect Facebook Page: Tim Ware is amazing at Facebook page design, and in this post, it shows.
How to Succeed at Facebook Advertising: This blog post is a case study of a store that used Facebook ads. Some findings include leveraging endorsements of existing fans and use highly engaging content.
How Small and Local Businesses Can Use Facebook: This is a really nice interview covering the benefits of Facebook. I especially like Greg’s detail.
How to Improve Engagement on Your Brand’s Facebook Page: This report has been under scrutiny for being too basic, but Buddy Media says that the best Facebook posts are timely, concise, and engaging.
The Ultimate Guide to the Facebook Edgerank Algorithm: News feed optimization is important if you want to pull in decent traffic from Facebook. Here are those algorithmic elements dissected so you can see more engagement and better return on your Facebook marketing methods.
6 Tips to Increase Your Facebook EdgeRank and Exposure: Want more Facebook visibility? Encouraging interaction and sharing great content will help you get on your way.
How to Improve EdgeRank on Facebook: This is an infographic that discusses the Facebook EdgeRank algorithm and shows how you can improve it.
Facebook Edgerank: How I Increased My Facebook Edgerank Score to 141: This is a great case study of how a mommy blogger saw an increase in overall Facebook engagement.
5 Ways to Build a Sticky Facebook Fan Page: With case studies to explain how to do each, this post is a good primer to creating friendly Facebook pages.
An Optimizer’s Guide to Facebook Ad Reports: Understanding Facebook advertising analytics can give you a leg up on the competition. Here’s a huge chart for your perusal.
How to Time Your Facebook Updates to Reach the Most Fans: When do people stick with and/or unsubscribe from your updates? When do updates disappear from news feeds? How do I measure the success of Facebook updates? These questions are explored in the article from PageLever’s CEO.
Cost Per Like Campaigns On Facebook: The CTR, Conversion Rate, Reach Tradeoff: Do you want to see the best return on your Facebook campaign — the highest cost per likes? This article gives good direction on how to focus on Facebook PPC.
Buying Facebook Fans is a Horrible Idea: While this isn’t really strategy at all and most of my reports contain that, I really like this fresh take on why buying FB fans won’t bode well for your brand. This relates how it will kill the algorithm that gives you status messages any visibility: EdgeRank.
How to Build a Thriving LinkedIn Group: Making good choices and promoting well means you’ll see good LinkedIn group results.
The Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Mastering LinkedIn: Well, we had a Facebook article, so we need one for LinkedIn. This is a good one that includes 20 hidden tricks, such as a vanity URL, optimization of your profile, tracking company buzz, using LinkedIn groups, checking in on updates, and much more.
HOW TO: Optimize Your Company’s LinkedIn Profile: Did you know that you can optimize your LinkedIn company profile for multiple audience segments? That’s pretty powerful. Read about this and other tips on this Mashable post.
7 Quick Ways to Turn Your LinkedIn Profile into a Social Media Marketing Workhorse: Your LinkedIn profile can get you leads, connections, and so much more — if you actually do more than set it and forget it. This article shows you how to take your profile to the next level.
5 Tips for Using the New LinkedIn Company Pages: A lot of companies jump onto LinkedIn and create pages, but do they take advantage of everything, including monitoring? I doubt it. After reading this article, you might be taking a different approach.
16 Smarter Ways to Use LinkedIn to Build Your Business: From creating meaningful connections to mining your datastream, LinkedIn can be a valuable resource for business connections. Here’s what you can do to make the most of it.
How and Why to Use Pinterest for Business: The new social network Pinterest is all the rage for those who love visuals. Here’s why it works for business and here’s how you can use it.

Usability

A Client’s Guide to Usability: A good usable site is the one reason people will actually come back to you. This is the type of guide you send a client before you design their site so that they understand that a maze of difficult pages won’t get them any loyal visitors.
The Website, the Webcam, and the Test Plan: Simple and Exciting Website Usability Testing: This has turned website testing into more of an exercise, with useful information on how you can apply this (based on a real case study) for your own website usability tests.
How to Improve the Usability (and Conversion Rate) of Your Forms: Filling out forms doesn’t have to be arduous for your users. Consider some of these items to make the process simpler.
Technical Site Audit Checklist: This is a GREAT checklist of the various considerations you need to address when launching a new website.
Improve the User Experience by Tracking Errors: Are you doing any 404 page or other error monitoring? It’s something you should do so as not to upset your users. Here’s how to find and fix them.
15 Title Tag Optimization Guidelines for Usability and SEO: Your title tag is being read by users, search engines, and web browsers alike. How do you make them stand out and appeal to all?

Conversion Rate Optimization/Landing Pages

A Beginner’s Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization – Part 2: Part 1 of this guide was written on the site in November 2010, so feel free to check out the CRO link in the post. To succeed, the author suggests that you include calls to action, have credibility, write great copy, and much more. Oh, and yes, there will be a part 3 to this guide too.
How to Implement a Conversion Rate Optimization Process: Like social media, CRO is one of those processes that takes time and energy to fine tune your performance for best results. This detailed post shows the tools needed to start, how to measure your results, what happens during the analysis phase, how you implement changes based on findings, and how to test these results. Not so easy.
Testing, Testing, 1-2-3: A/B Tests Boost Creativity, Productivity, and Bottom Line: Small changes can help improve your sales, so it’s important to consider A/B testing as much as possible.
A Beginner’s Guide to A/B Testing: An Introduction: With the preceding article, it only helps to learn a little more about why A/B testing is so important. Here’s your intro guide.
10 Site Tweaks to Make Your Customers Actually Click “Buy”: If you’re building an e-commerce site and want people to buy your product, big and attractive buttons with calls to action are the best way to ensure you get a buyer.
Your Web Design is Killing Your Conversion Rate: Is your website or landing page design killing your conversion rate? You offer many choices or perhaps use the wrong background color. These things can hinder the effectiveness of your site and put a dent in your revenue.
How Images Can Boost Your Conversion Rate: If you are looking to buy a product online, you probably prefer pictures of the item, especially if you’ve never owned something like it before. Right? This article includes lots of studies that show the benefits of images on product pages.

Affiliate Marketing

12 Ways to Pick the Best Affiliate Program: Looking to engage in affiliate marketing? There are dozens of programs out there. How should you choose the best? Consider product, competition, EPC, tools, and other elements to make the best educated decision.
When to Launch an Affiliate Program: If you have an online marketing program that’s working well, it may be time to get an affiliate program on board as well. But do you have the staff to handle it? Can you handle the inbound support? These are questions to ask before you launch.

Brand Evangelism

Inspiring Brand Ambassadors: If you’re looking to help get your customers to do word of mouth marketing for you, a brand ambassador program is something to look into. This guide lists the benefits and explains why and how you should proceed.
Fans Aren’t Just for Rockstars: For big brands, it’s time to connect more closely with your customers. This is a process you can follow that makes that all possible.

Web Development

Why User Experience Cannot Be Designed: This is a theoretical way to view UX, complete with why you cannot design it (it’s based on how the user interacts with the product). But you can design for UX.
7 Simple Fixes for Your Small Business Website: Does your site have good navigation? A contact page? A good About page? Title tags that are informative? Well, if not, it’s time to review these guidelines and create a website that truly will resonate with your prospects and customers.
HTML5 and SEO: New Strategies for Optimizing Code: If you code for SEO, you’ll find that HTML5 takes things to a different level. This article discusses some tags you can do without (as they’re deprecated) and tags you should start considering instead.
What Potential Impact Can HTML5 Have on SEO?: Each major element of code is dissected with some indications as to how it will fare with the search engines.
Top 15 Free Things Every E-Commerce Website Should Do After Launching: Once you launch a new site, you need to think about product feeds, a sitemap file, getting analytics set up, and much more.
How to Make Your Website Look More Legitimate: Beyond having a presence online that you are happy to share with legitimate pages and information, to be truly legitimate, you need to get a media kit, press mentions, social profiles, a reusable logo, and a website that looks very professional.
Does Good Web Design Really Matter?: Do you hate some websites? Why? If your issues stem with bad design, you’re with 94% others who agree that design can make or break a website. Therefore, it’s paramount to create a design that really resonates with your potential viewers

Community Management

8 Ways to Deal with Negative Comments in Online Communities: There are many things you can do with negative comments: ignoring it, lawyering up, changing it to a positive discussion, removing the comment (and possibly banning the commenter), educating the customer, confess and beg forgiveness, fight, or own it. What are you?
8 Ingredients that Make a Community Manager: Who are the best community managers? They need to be passionate, available, and good communicators.
What Does a Community Manager Do?: There’s no one-size-fits-all job description for a community manager. It’s actually a LOT of work. Here’s what it might look like, though.
The 2011 State of Community Management: Year after year, this report has served as one of the best resources for community managers. It covers strategy, leadership, culture, content, and so much more. It’s a 95 page report primarily based on survey findings of 109 individuals which you can download as PDF for your personal pursuits.
How to Build a Great Contest: This is a case study of how a contest was run successfully via Twitter and Facebook. What contest ideas are you trying for your business?

Reputation Management

Our Online Reputation Management Playbook: Ever search Google and see “companyname scam”? The writer has. Here’s how he successfully conquered this reputation management problem.
How to Combat Fake Reviews While Managing Online Reputation: Who cares if you have some negative reviews? Try to get as many positive (legitimate!) reviews as you can and you’ll find that conversions will soar.
Using Google Analytics to Monitor Your Brand: With a few tweaks, you can learn a lot about how your brand is faring across search results.
How to Avoid Negative Reviews and Bad Publicity for Your Online Store: The more someone is unhappy about an experience, the more likely his friends have to hear about it. (Surprisingly, though, in this case, the store was unnamed even though the writer says that “word travels fast.”) Still, the lessons to take away from any negative experience is that marketing and customer service go hand in hand, and you could truly make a difference and prevent negative reputation marks against your business if you actually are proactive about what people are saying about you.

Web Analytics

Using Regular Expressions to Group Keywords in Google Analytics: Did you know about the pipe, carat, dollar sign, question mark, or plus sign tools of the trade for Google Analytics? Well, take a look at this guide and you’ll learn a thing or two.
A Beginner’s Guide to Google Analytics 5: If you know about Google Analytics, not much has changed, but GA has been upgraded to version 5 and sports some new features. This article takes a look.
Web Analytics: Frequently Asked Questions and Direct Answers: This article addresses FAQs such as how to sell analytics to a skeptical client in 30 seconds, why some keywords have 0 visits in Google Analytics, how to attribute offline sales to the online marketing, where to find competitive intelligence, and much more.
How to Use Events as Goals in Google Analytics: Here are some tips on how to set up Google Analytics to assess engagement on your site.
11 Analytics Metrics that are Actionable: Focusing on the right metrics makes your life easier and your time more productive. Here are 11 metrics you should actually care about.
Best Social Media Metrics: Conversation, Amplification, Applause, Economic Value: Social media can’t be measured, you say? When you finish reading this article, you may disagree with that sentiment. Comments are the conversation rate, shares/retweets are the amplification rate, favorites/Likes/+1s are the applause rate, and your long term revenue and cost savings is your economic value.
Using Google Analytics to Uncover Hidden Problem Areas: Have you seen your site’s analytics yet? If your website exists specifically for some ROI, it’s time you analyzed your top exit pages, high bounce rates, your site search, and site elements to determine if there’s anything needing improvement.
Data Analysis 101: Seven Simple Mistakes that Limit Your Salary: This article looks at pretty charts (that aren’t particularly useful) and shows how you could totally create or construe the data incorrectly.

Domaining

Practical Domaining: People buy domains for many reasons — for search traffic, misspelled words, exact match, and more. If you’re into the art of domaining, you already know this. If you’re not but want to learn, here is your introductory guide.

Video Marketing

Video Posts: Are You Doing it Wrong?: If you ever blog about video, and many people don’t realize this, it’s not useful just to include the video without any detail. I can’t stress how many sites just let you submit the video without ANY detail whatsoever. Here are the steps you should follow to get people passionate about what you’re posting. The video alone still doesn’t cut it.
8 Ways to Maximize Your YouTube Marketing Results: With YouTube being a powerful search engine, it’s the go-to place for video marketing. Compelling videos coupled with a branded page can yield great results.

Email Marketing

Top 10 Ways to Use Email Marketing Effectively (Email Marketing): Whether you’re focused on design, goals, or social media promotion, email marketing should be considerate of some of these elements so that you do create an effective campaign that works.
4 Steps to Understanding the ROI of Your Newsletter: By understanding email marketing metrics, defining a baseline using historical data, assessing ROI, and testing (and retesting, of course), you can learn much about how to improve your newsletter for greater engagement.
4 Mobile Email-Marketing Tips: People are reading their email on mobile, so it is important for you to think about mobile email marketing in the same way that you do regular email marketing.
5 Email Marketing Tips for Increased Open Rates: If you’re looking to get people to open those emails you’ve sent, you should make a good first impression, time your emails appropriately, format the email in such a way to avoid spam filter traps, get rid of those folks who just don’t read the emails, and continually optimize the sign-up process.
Email is (Still) Important and Here’s Why: Email is my best method of communication, but so many people think that Facebook and Twitter have replaced that. (Oh, and phone calls.) Nope. Not for everyone. Email has suffered the fate of value theory — but for me, it’s incredibly valuable. Do you think email is dead?
7 Email Case Studies: Publishers Who Forget About the Fold: Did you forget about the fold? Your core messaging should be easily visible. Don’t require people to scroll down.This report dissects many emails and shows where they failed.

General Online Marketing (and everything else)

109 Ways to Make Your Business Irresistible to the Media: Want to be quoted in the media? You can be — just follow some of these steps, which include being social, thinking visually, launch a brand new product, write an e-book, give the interviewer control of the discussion, and much more.
The Ultimate Small Business Website Guide: This guide is truly ultimate. It talks about the benefits of creating a website, how to plan one, how to set one up, how to integrate social media and email marketing, and how to review your analytics.
Drip, Drip, Drip – Building Prospect Trust One Drop at a Time: A lot of websites fall into this trap of assuming someone checking out your site wants to buy now or later, but this thought process is fundamentally incorrect. It’s important to build relationships via your website for these people to convert when they’re ready.
A Holistic Approach to Marketing: Integrating Social, Search, and People: A great online marketing initiative integrates search, social, and paid together.
The Noob Guide to Online Marketing: This exhaustive article also contains a tremendous infographic that you might as well hang up as a poster on your office wall; it covers the gamut from social media to analytics to PPC, email marketing, lead gen, and whatever else. The “Wheel of Marketing,” as he calls it, has so many spokes.
Jedi Mind Tricks: 17 Lesser Known Ways to Persuade People: Using support from numerous studies, these tips help you get what you want, which is great in business. For example, if something happens often enough, you’ll be persuaded. How many of you have friends or family that were Facebook holdouts but eventually joined due to the prominence around you? Also, did you know that men prefer email than face to face discussions? (This woman prefers email too.)
7 Repeat Business Strategies for Small Businesses: Why does repeat business make sense? Because they’re targeted, easy to reach, cheap, and there’s no middle man. So here’s what you can do as a small business to get more repeat purchases.
Marketing to Early Adopters: This is a great article from Mukund Mohan on how he identified adopters and reached out to them for his business.
21 Big Marketing Ideas for Small Marketing Budgets: I really like the tips in this article because they don’t require the deepest of pockets to implement. You’ll probably just need a community manager who can be active on blogs, message boards, social networks, and blogging to succeed at most of these tips.
My Dad Taught Me Cashflow with a Soda Machine: …or how to teach your child to become a kick ass entrepreneur. The lessons you can pick up from selling soda are really applicable in business, and I love the approach.
Tasty Ideas to Maximize Online Marketing for Events: This post explains how to promote an event with a model focused on Audience > Objectives > Tools > Tactics > Measurement. Plus, there are 27 great online marketing and public relations tactics that can help!
The 100 Rules for Being an Entrepreneur: This isn’t a bad article, but he should have used numbers and not roman numerals or whatever he did there. It also has a good number of questions and answers from readers.
100 Ways to Connect: Relationship building at its finest.
14 Best Practices for Brands to Grow their Audiences in Social Media: Successful brands have gotten to that point because they designed an effective channel strategy, constructed a listening framework, initiated training programs, served customers and prospects, among other things that kept them at the front of their customers’ minds and hearts.
Know. Like. Trust.: This is a reminder of the failures of many businesses with their own marketing; they forget to get consumers to know them, to like them, and to trust them.
Email Overload: The Secret to Getting Inbox Zero Every Time: Answering email is good customer service. Good customer service is good marketing. Why this falls on deaf ears for perhaps 85% of people I email to is beyond me. These are my personal tips on how you can truly conquer your inbox. As we speak, it’s over 3 months after that post was written and I still have nothing in my inbox.

Thanks again to HubSpot’s Marketing Grader for making it possible for you to enjoy these great content pieces again on Techipedia. Again, it’s a fantastic tool: it analyzes all of your marketing — not just your website — reviewing over 30 different factors and then providing an overall Marketing Grade on a 1-100 scale, including:

Competitive Benchmarking: Is my marketing more or less effective than my competition?
Lead Generation: Are my marketing efforts generating enough leads and sales?
Mobile Marketing: Is my web presence optimized for mobile devices?
Social Media: How effectively are we using Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in our marketing?
Blogging: Is my blog driving results that justify the time investment, or are we wasting time doing the wrong things?
Overall Analysis: What are the strong points and shortcomings in our marketing?

Marketing Grader also outlines why you should take particular steps to improve and what your top priorities should be. With customized action items to help the top of your funnel, the middle of your funnel, and your analytics, Marketing Grader makes it easy for you to figure out your next steps.

Don’t forget that you can get this all monthly (plus more!) by signing up to my monthly newsletter, reduced 80% for a limited time

[ Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2011 is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Like this post? Get my Internet Marketing newsletter, buy my book, The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, and subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

Looking Back on the Year of the Panda: Google Algorithm Changes

Guest Author — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:09:29 +0000

This last year Google brought a large number of algorithm changes to the table. Although these changes helped increase traffic and rankings to many large corporations such as YouTube and eBay, it hurt a large majority of small businesses. According to Search Engine Land, some domains saw a 94% loss in visibility, and others were left picking up the pieces after they lost 80% of their keyword positions. Consider this graph by Sistrix, created to describe where mahalo.com’s keywords landed on Google search engine results pages (SERPs) before and after one of the Google algorithm updates:

Although there were several Google algorithm changes (some with more impact than others), all of them left businesses scratching their heads. One minute their tactics were working; the next minute they must change their approach entirely. If you found your business scrambling to stay afloat during these changes, you may not realize just how much treading you had to do to stay alive. In case you missed it through all the chaos, below lists all of the crazy Google changes that occurred in 2011and just what they all meant:

Top 10 Google Algorithm Changes of 2011

Jan. 28: Attribution Update – Designed to help reduce spam levels on SERPs. This specifically targeted sites with unoriginal content; a way to make sure these pages are not ranked higher than where the content was originally published.
Feb. 23: First Panda Update (Farmer Update) – Aimed at finding sites that write irrelevant content and then optimize it for rankings; often referred to as “content farms.” The launch initially impacted 12% of U.S. queries according to Search Engine Land.
April 11: Panda update 2.0 – This incorporated Google searcher blocking data. If a user blocked a site during a search, Google would then take this into consideration when determining the worth of a website.
May 9: Panda Update 2.1 – This update was very minor and many people did not notice a change. For this reason, the exact changes that occurred during the update were not discussed by Google.
June 21: Panda update 2.2 – Once again, Google focuses on what experts now call “scraper detection.” The update focuses on content that is duplicated without your permission, or scraped (diversion and then republishing).
July 22: Panda update 2.3 – This was another minor update that was pushed out manually. Google claims the update “incorporates new signals.” Quality score is determined now by a blend of unique content and link score for that content.
Aug. 12: Panda update 2.4 – This update stated that all algorithmic search improvements will be rolled out to other languages. According to Google, the change impacted 6-9% of queries. Oddly enough, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages were omitted.
Sep. 28: Panda update 2.5 – This was supposed to be a minor update according to Google. However, many small businesses lost visibility and traffic while many larger businesses, such as FoxNews.com, benefitted from the change. This caused an uproar from small businesses who saw it as a way to keep the “big names” on top.
Nov. 18: Panda Update 3.1 – This update was named “3.1” because many felt that some of the minor updates after 2.5 (labeled 2.51, 2.5.2, and 2.5.3) should have been labeled “3.0.” This update was considered a minor algorithm date refresh and didn’t get much attention.
Dec. 1: Ten More Updates Announced – Although the updates are over for 2011, ten more updates were announced for 2012. This will affect businesses in the coming weeks, so many spend their time now, in 2011, trying to get ready. The new updates are said to focus on keyword density, keyword relevancy, and broken links.

What the Updates Mean for Your Company

Each Panda update meant something different for each company. While some were hit hard by 2.5, others remained stable until 3.1 hit. However, it is safe to say that the majority of small businesses were affected by at least one of the Panda updates in 2011. The graph below was taken from Search Engine Roundtable and illustrates the types of sites that were hit hardest by Panda 2.5:

Unfortunately, many small businesses are still trying to recover from all of the updates. According to Search Engine Roundtable, over 70% of those who took their online poll reported that they have still not recovered. Nonetheless, 2012 is the time to take these Panda updates seriously and make SEO changes for the better. Consider a few of the ways your company can follow the new Panda guidelines:

Create new and original content
Promoting that content through social media
Make sure that all links are relevant.
Google also introduced the “+1” option for individuals and businesses to utilize. This overlaps with utilizing social media; it will help show Google that your site is popular.
Do not duplicate/copy another site’s content. While this might be okay every once and a while with the sites permission, do not make it a habit.
Don’t bite off more than you can chew. In other words, if you don’t have the funds or the staff to create new content for three domains, consider selling one. It is extremely important to listen to these Google Panda updates and try and abide by their standards.

Although it may take a while to get your sight back to where you want it on those Google SERPs, it will be worth it in the end. After all, Google makes these algorithm changes in order to give users the best possible experience while online. Your site should have unique content and it should have relevant links. There is no reason that only the well-known websites should make it to the top of Google. If you follow the rules and optimize your website correctly, you have just as much a chance to be seen as any other business.

Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from social media to merchant services. She writes for an online resource that gives advice on topics including phone systems to small businesses and entrepreneurs for Resource Nation.

[ Looking Back on the Year of the Panda: Google Algorithm Changes is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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HOW TO: Guide to Performing Website Audits

Guest Author — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:14:27 +0000

This is a guest post by Harrison Jones.

Onsite optimization of websites is the most important factor in ranking better in search engine results. You can build all the links you want, but if your website isn’t optimized, Googlebot won’t be able to crawl the site properly. Over the past several years, Google and Bing have released guidelines for webmasters to make websites more crawlable. This is a consolidation of all the guidelines released by Google and Bing over the years to improve onsite optimization. Audits should be performed before the launch of any new website design, and at least twice per year to keep up with changes in industry standards.

Canonicalization and URL Structure

www or non-www, that is the question. Rather than wasting your time rehashing this topic, I have written a handy guide that explains URL structure best practices in full. To summarize the article, there should only be one URL used to get to the homepage of your website. Whether or not you choose to use www is your choice. Just make sure there is only one version, and it’s not followed by an index.php, index.html, etc… URLs should contain words only and no numbers or symbols. The words should be separated by dashes instead of spaces or underscores. All words should contain lower case letters. Each URL should contain a keyword phrase, and should be no longer than 5 words in length overall.

Content Optimization

Every page on the website should have unique, high-quality content using proper optimization techniques. Homepages should have a bare minimum of one paragraph of keyword-rich content. A good rule of thumb would be around three or more paragraphs. Without quality content, Googlebot will have a tough time determining the relevance a page has to the keyword you want to target. The title of the page should be contained within an h1 tag, and should include a keyword – preferably a keyword similar to the page’s title tag. Use plenty of keywords in the body, but avoid keyword-stuffing. There’s no real rule of thumb about keyword stuffing, but if it looks like keyword spam, it probably will be read as spam by Google.

Each page should employ a content hierarchy to establish importance of key phrases. Titles should be in h1 tags and only one per page. Subhead titles should be placed in h2 and h3 tags with a keyword included in it. Bolding and italicizing text within paragraphs will show importance of the phrase to search engines. Linking to other pages on the website using good, keyword-rich anchor text as well as other trusted websites will also increase the value of the content. Every page on a website should have around one hundred links. If a page contains too many links, it will be penalized for being spammy. Non-navigation links on pages should look natural to the content. Follow this content optimization checklist before publishing content to ensure it is properly optimized.

Cloaking or duplicating content is a huge no-no for SEO. Cloaking content is a very risky practice which will get your website heavily penalized by search engines. Matt Cutts recently did a wonderful video explaining how cloaking works and why it’s bad. Duplicate content on pages is another way to get on Google’s black list. Internet leeches love scraping content from websites and reposting it on other websites to collect advertising money. Google grew smart to these practices, and changed the algorithm to filter out duplicate content. Even having two pages on the same site with duplicate content will get your site penalized.

If you absolutely must have duplicate content on your website, which is necessary in rare cases, use the rel=canonical attribute to tell the spiders to only pay attention to one of the two pages. Copyscape and Plagiarisma are two great tools for finding content-scraping leeches that stole your content. BluePay is a credit card processing company that has fallen victim to content scraping. The bottom half of this competitor’s page was completely scraped from BluePay’s homepage. Scary, isn’t it? To check for duplicate content within your own site, do a search for a snippet of your content within quotation marks. This will show you instances where your content appears twice on the website, and may point you to possible bugs on the site. If you do find another website that has scraped your content, you can fill out a request for Google to remove the content.

One last key point to mention about content optimization is advertisements. If your website is oversaturated with advertisements, Google may penalize it. If your website is about GPS tracking for trucks and you have text link ads about online poker, you might get penalized. Avoid creating a mosaic of advertisements on your website. Use ALT text with keywords liberally for all advertisements, links, and images. This will help search engines better understand the content.

Geo Redirects

Geo redirects are a great way for international websites to forward its visitors to the correct language version of the site. Keeping that in mind, it may be the worst SEO mistake of your life. If your site is accessed by going to www.mysite.com and all backlinks point there as well, why would you want it redirecting to www.mysite.com/en/index.html? By automatically redirecting people away from the root domain that all backlinks are pointing to, you will be cutting your link value in half. Create a language selection option on the homepage instead.

Image Optimization

Image optimization is a commonly overlooked practice, but it does carry a lot of SEO value if done properly. Read my article on image optimization best practices for a full guide on optimizing images. This practice is mainly important for getting images indexed in image searches. Add captions and ALT tags using keywords for each image. ALT tags should be no longer than 50 characters. Filenames should include keywords, and should be separated by dashes.

Internal Linking

Each page should contain around one hundred links per page. You may think that number is outrageously high, but it’s really not hard to achieve. Before getting started, run Xenu Link Sleuth to check for broken links on the site, and fix them. Make sure all internal links are text links. This is especially important with navigational links. Any halfway decent designer will be able to put together some nice text-over-image links with CSS. All category and main pages should be linked throughout the global navigation. Include footer links at the bottom of the page as a secondary form of navigation. This area should link to subcategory, terms of use, social media, privacy statement, sitemap, and contact pages. Be sure to use good anchor text for the subcategory links in the footer. Also be sure to include good links with anchor text throughout the page content. Breadcrumbs are another great form of internal linking, and greatly improve a site’s usability.

Microdata

Microdata is a little-covered topic in relation to SEO, but it does pack a powerful punch. Microdata creates a mode of communication between your content and search engine spiders. You can define the meaning behind sections, elements, and words on each page. This helps build a trust with search engines – especially Bing. I have put together a couple articles on this topic already. If you run an e-commerce site, check out my article on e-commerce microdata. If you run a B2B corporate site, check out my other article about corporate B2B microdata.

Noindex and Nofollow

Depending on the type of website you are building, there may be some pages you specifically do not want indexed or ranked for. Any irrelevant pages like terms of use, PDF files, privacy policy, and sitemaps should be nofollowed. Use your own discretion as to other pages you may want to nofollow. Site search results should also be nofollowed and noindexed. Site search results can be indexed, and will create duplicate content issues if you don’t add the nofollow and noindex attributes to them.

Title and Meta Tags

Title tags should be unique for every page, and contain a primary keyword phrase that is relevant to the page’s content. If you have room for two keyword phrases, separate them with a comma. If the site is a well-known brand, you may want to include the brand name in the title tag. Title tags should be 50-65 characters in length. If the string is longer than 70 characters, it will be cut off in SERPs.

Never use meta keywords. Meta keywords are used by spammers and scrapers all the time, so Bing has decided to flag all pages using meta keywords as spam. Meta descriptions should be included on every page. They should include a keyword phrase similar to the title tag. Descriptions should not exceed 160 characters in length. Never reuse the same description for two pages.

Webmaster Tools

Google and Bing Webmaster Tools have a few tools necessary for SEO. The most important tool is the sitemap submission feature. First, you will need to generate a sitemap for your website. Once you have generated a sitemap, upload it to the home directory of your server and submit it through Google and Bing Webmaster Tools. Sitemap submissions will tell search engines that you have new content, and it should be crawled on a regular basis. Submitting RSS feeds to the sitemap will also carry a lot of SEO value since Google and Bing love RSS feeds. Both webmaster tool suites have an option for doing this.

Webmaster tools can also be used to set the crawl rate, check for crawl errors, and to instantly submit the site for indexation. If your content is updated on a daily basis, you may want to change the crawl rate to run Googlebot on a daily basis. Another great tool is the “crawl errors” feature. This will check for errors found while indexing the site. All errors found should be fixed immediately. If you have just launched a new design, site, or just write a very important blog post, you may want to consider using the “Fetch as Googlebot” tool. Bing’s equivalent is called “Submit URLs”. This will instantly index the page you submit and give it a nice bump up in SERPS, but beware – if the click-through rate is very low, that page may get penalized.

Website Architecture

Two or three clicks from the homepage is all it should take to reach any page on a website. Search engines are a lot like human readers when indexing pages. If it takes four clicks to reach a page, Googlebot will place low importance on that page. Likewise, a page reachable from the homepage will carry the most weight. When designing a site, determine the importance you want to place on each page, and create a content hierarchy for those pages when planning out your website. Pages containing your top keywords should be placed towards the top of the hierarchy while long-tail, less important keyword focusing pages should be buried towards the bottom. Now that Google indexes AJAX and JavaScript, there are lots of options to creating a navigation menu where you can implement an effective content hierarchy.

Website Design Mistakes

Three common web design errors that will wreck your website’s crawlability are frame usage, using all-Flash, and not setting up 301 redirects after moving content. Designers are not SEO professionals, so cut them some slack. Although, it is imperative that you review their plans before they implement any changes. If your designer wants to use frames, ask them if they plan on using Comic Sans while they’re at it. Much like Comic Sans, frames are completely outdated from a design and SEO standpoint. Frames require three html files to create the design while normal sites only use one html file. This confuses the heck out of spiders when crawling your site. Most of the time, none of the pages will end up getting indexed.

Flash is an eye-catching way to build a website, but if you plan on building an all-Flash site, then you might as well go sit in the corner, talking to a brick wall because that’s what you would be doing to search engines. Flash cannot be crawled, so don’t implement any site elements in Flash. Flash should be used sparingly, and for decorative purposes only. Another thing to watch out for is whether or not your designers set up 301 redirects after moving around any content. If they did, make sure they used 301’s instead of 302 redirects. If a page has already been indexed and gets moved without a redirect set up, it will come up as a 404 error, which will hurt the indexation of your site.

Website Security

Providing a safe and secure experience to your website’s audience will not only make them feel more confident in your site, but also search engines. If your company owns several domains, make sure none of the content is duplicated across the domains. If you run an e-commerce site, make sure a secure server version of the checkout process is available. Set up robots.txt to block certain pages from being crawled by spiders, but be careful not to block any pages that will hurt your internal linking structure. Check your website to make sure it isn’t infected by malware. Google Webmaster Tools has a free malware diagnostic tool. Web page errors will also cause search engines to mistrust your website. Run your site through the W3C Markup Validator to check for bugs that may cause indexation issues.

Summary

When performing a site audit, it’s helpful to create a checklist of violations to watch out for on the website. You can create one using this article, or you can use SEOmoz’s pre-made site audit checklist. Keep in mind that SEOmoz’s checklist is a few years old and is missing a few elements. Once the audit is complete, you may find it helpful to write up a list of structural recommendations with brief descriptions to help the client understand what you want to do for them.

Harrison Jones is an SEO Analyst at Straight North – a full-service Chicago marketing and web design firm. Harrison writes frequently about link acquisition, SEO, and video marketing. He has been published in several industry publications including Reel SEO and Search Engine Journal. Follow Straight North on Twitter for industry insight and conversations.

[ HOW TO: Guide to Performing Website Audits is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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How to Hire Your SEO Partner

Guest Author — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:52:33 +0000

This is a guest post by Brad Shorr.

Hiring an SEO specialist is one of the most important decisions you will make in your pursuit of online marketing success. It is also one of the most perplexing.

There are two enormous issues with search engine optimization that hinder your ability to zero in on the right partner:

Rapidly changing, constantly evolving rules. Google’s algorithm – the formula it uses to determine page ranking – has undergone significant changes recently, and I believe we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg.
Lack of industry standards. Lawyers pass the bar, doctors have diplomas, but SEOs have nothing of the sort to give you confidence in their level of training and talent.

With this in mind, the first two things you want to evaluate in a potential SEO partner are:

Methodology. Are they are using today’s SEO best practices or yesterday’s?
Results. Do they walk the talk? Are they surgeons … or butchers?

Let’s take these decision-making factors one at a time, and then move on to a few more very important factors that need to be addressed once these two are nailed down.

Getting a Handle on SEO Methodology

SEO is an extremely complex Internet marketing discipline, involving a great many moving parts – parts that are constantly changing, as I just said. Without an up to date blueprint for conducting your SEO program, results are likely to be subpar at best, and potentially counterproductive.

The first thing to do on is ask if the SEO has a methodology. If the response is a blank stare or some rambling, semi-coherent, jargon-laden ad-lib, it is a telltale sign that they have no systematic approach to strategy or execution.

Ideally you want to see the SEO’s methodology in writing. This should not be a difficult thing for the SEO to deliver, and you’ll want the document to explain:

Strategy: How does the SEO determine the goals of your program, and how success will be measured?
Onsite SEO activities: How much time is devoted to onsite optimization, and what specific activities are undertaken?
Offsite SEO activities: How much time is devoted to offsite optimization, and what specific activities are undertaken?
Keyword analysis: How, step-by-step, does the SEO evaluate which keywords to include in your program?
Analytics and reporting: What information is collected in report documents, how is it presented, how often is it presented, and how will the SEO help you take action on the data?

Of course, unless you are very knowledgeable about SEO, you will not necessarily know whether the information provided is spot-on or miles off the mark. However, once you have a document in hand, you can ask questions about things that don’t make sense. You also have a way to do comparative shopping, and to validate the SEO’s approach by doing your own online research into SEO best practices.

Getting a Handle on Results

A lot of people (perhaps a greater than average number in the world of marketing) can talk a great game. But can they deliver? Over the years I’ve talked to many entrepreneurs and marketers at larger firms who have experienced disappointing SEO results. Most of them skipped – or went through the motions on – the very important step of checking references. Here are a couple of suggestions for doing it properly.

Request case studies with details. Almost every SEO I know is a statistics junkie – it goes with the territory. You should be able to get something more detailed than “We got ABC Company on Google page one.” Ideally, you want specifics relating to what keywords were targeted, how competitive they were, and what changes in rankings were accomplished over what period of time. Most important, you want to see numbers relating to increases in non-branded traffic, because in the end that is what you are really trying to achieve with SEO.

Talk to their clients. It’s always helpful to go to the source. If the SEO is ready, able, and willing to let you talk to their clients, it is a very good sign in itself. When you talk to the referral, have a handful of specific questions ready, relating to keywords, rankings and traffic, along the lines of what I described in the bullet point just above. If you fail to ask the right questions, you may not get helpful insights. Believe it or not, a client can be “happy” with an SEO’s service without really understanding what the program looks like or even what results are being obtained!

Other Important SEO Selection Issues

If a potential SEO partner doesn’t pass the methodology and results tests, I don’t see much sense in taking a deeper dive. However, if you feel comfortable at this point, these issues should also weigh heavily in your decision.

The Right Fit

SEOs tend to specialize based on the size of the client’s business. When I was freelancing, I worked with entrepreneurs and small firms. I was a jack-of-all-trades, performing a number of onsite, offsite, research, and analytical tasks.

At the agency where I work now, we focus on the middle market, working with relatively complex firms that do things like credit card processing and GPS vehicle tracking. We have a staff that specializes in the various types of SEO activities, because the complexity and volume of work is too much for a generalist.

There are other SEOs staffed to handle large organizations with mid six-figure SEO budgets and tremendously complex needs. These shops would be ill suited to handle smaller clients, in terms of both responsiveness and execution.

The best SEO partner is one that targets your type of business. If the SEO has no particular preference in terms of client size, I would view this as a major negative.

Longevity and Stability

Achieving results takes a fair amount of time, so your ideal partner is someone who has been around and will be around. Does the SEO have a long-term business plan? Adequate funding? Consistent profitability? Don’t be shy about asking questions along these lines. It may save you the extreme headache of having to start all over again six months or a year into your program.

Relationship Factors

The best results come when you, the client, are actively engaged. This means you will be communicating with your SEO on a regular basis. There will be disagreements and misunderstandings, challenges to overcome and opportunities to exploit. If you feel there is a good chemistry, it counts for a lot. If you sense that every phone conversation is going to be an ordeal – keep looking!

Over to You: What factors have I overlooked? What do you look for in an SEO?

Brad Shorr is Director of Content & Social Media for Straight North, a Chicago Internet marketing firm. He is an experienced SEO copywriter and content optimization specialist. Follow Brad on Twitter.

[ How to Hire Your SEO Partner is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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Is Your Business Worth An Extra Hour Per Week? 5 Reasons Why Your Business Should Blog

Guest Author — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 12:35:36 +0000

This is a guest post by Preston Ehrler.

As a business owner, do I really have time to blog? I’m a business owner too, and I realize that we are already pressed to our limits for time. We are responsible for everything, including finding new business, working with our existing customers, interfacing with suppliers, running our books, and infinitely more. Attempting to convince a business owner that we should add yet another task can understandably seem like a herculean endeavor. For anything that is going to take more time, the rewards must be tangible and immediate. As many of us cannot clearly identify what the rewards are that can be reaped by blogging, it is not placed high on the list of priorities. It should be.

So, you ask, how important could blogging really be for my business?

My answer: Instead of spinning out a list of theories we’ve heard again and again, what if we looked at blogging from a different perspective? Employing a new paradigm by utilizing real data, what can we learn about how blogging, coupled with an effectively constructed website, can affect your company? What, specifically, can we extrapolate? How do we know blogging is worth the effort?

Fact: According to a recent survey by HubSpot, businesses that blog increase their site visits by as much as 55%. My personal experience with my company has been even higher:

Providing your site works hard to convert your visitors (using “Siloing” techniques to push your visitors to the correct interior pages along with quality well-written content, and “Calls to Action” on each page), a single additional visitor can be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars for your business. If you only spend an hour each week blogging and it helps bring in only an additional $20,000 of revenue, your blogging is worth $400 per hour. Interested?

Let’s look at what, exactly, blogging can do for your company.

1. Enhance Your SEO

The most popular question I hear when speaking to a prospective customer is “We want to be number one on Google, how can we do that?” People want it easy and they want it yesterday, and why shouldn’t they? A high organic ranking on Google virtually assures your site more traffic. And while there are certain aspects you can undertake, if you have a small website (under 20 pages), what SEO can do is very limited. Proper title tags, inbound links, and meta information are important, along with keyword placement on your pages. Yet, the most important aspect of SEO for a small site is blogging. Simply by creating a new blog post, you add a page to your website that will be indexed at some point. Therefore, the more posts on your site, the more pages your site becomes, the much greater chance your site has to be identified and ranked accordingly. Although Google’s algorithms are a secret, it is widely believed that there has been a manifest move toward identification of quality content, and away from “junk content.” What does that mean if you blog? It means that Google will notice your posts and will rank you accordingly. Therefore, the very act of blogging, adding great content, and keeping your site “moving” vs. “static,” will enhance your SEO ranking.

2. Interest New Customers

By enhancing your site’s optimization and increasing your site’s number of visitors, you will have the opportunity to convert more visitors to qualified leads and even customers. At the same time, through your blogging, you will be creating quality content that your visitors will appreciate in many ways, some of them very simply. By posting content such as your restaurant’s specials, or your bar’s live music, or items you have on special at your furniture store, you’re enticing new customers to come and visit you. Finally, if you go so far as to give your site the ability to sell certain products or to take advantage of an offer, you are already creating new customers. Let’s say you own a local restaurant that keeps its content moving by posting a weekly blog about your specials. Before blogging, you were averaging about 100 visits per day, and from those visits you booked 5 reservations online per day average. When you started blogging your visits jumped to 150 visits per day, and your conversion rate of 5% remained the same, and you booked 7.5 reservations per day. On average each reservation is for 3 people, and each reservation averaged $40 per person. Therefore on average, that’s $300 more revenue per night, and over a month, that’s $9000, and over the course of a year, that’s $108,000 of top-line revenue. Yes, blogging works for brick and mortar businesses!

3. Engage Existing Customers

Everyone knows new customers are difficult to find, especially in this economic environment. As one of my friends recently said, “it’s a slugfest for new clients out there.” What are you doing to keep your customers interested? How are you creating value for them? One of the most important yet overlooked aspects of blogging is that it allows you to reach out and offer quality-content vs. a static site. A static site, which most sites are, is a site with seldom, or never changing content, offering little reason to return. Quality-content offered through a blog creates an engaged customer base that will return to your site to access that content. Therefore, the act of blogging creates a customer who values your changing content and therefore values you. Through the content, your customer will be much more difficult for one of your competitors to poach by simply under-cutting you on price. Without the content you create by blogging, the perception of your company’s value, over time, can wane, and your product or service will become commoditized, putting you at great risk.

4. Highlight Your Expertise

This past weekend, I had a twenty-minute conversation with two owners of a fireplace shop who possessed an incredible amount of knowledge on their products. As they had been in business for thirty years, there was no question that they had the ability to create a blog on their all aspects of their business. They knew everything, and I was impressed. Everyone, to some degree, is an expert in their field, and blogging allows you to leverage your expertise for the whole world to see. Selflessly imparting the knowledge you have through a blog will quickly begin to highlight you as an expert in your field. The deeper your level of expertise in your niche, the more your blog will be read and passed on, therefore growing your traffic, minimizing bounce and increasing your conversion rate, all of which equates to more business. Even if you just post one high-quality blog, from an expert’s standpoint, per week, over time Google will index those posts and when people search for keywords contained in your posts, up comes your site, and you have an opportunity to convert yet another visitor. Impressive, most impressive.

5. Create Online Revenue

Ultimately, the goal of any business oriented website is to augment revenue. But why then are so many sites not built to easily enable the creation of revenue? Recently, we had the chance to discuss redesigning a website for a prospective customer who sold their product by the pound. They had a very enviable margin (65%) and sold approximately an average of 900 pounds of their product per order at $0.65 per pound. Essentially their website would pay for itself after a handful of orders, yet the key aspect became their concern that existing customers and new customers would not find or embrace their website. The solution offered was to create a blog on their website that would enhance their SEO, interest new customers and engage their existing customers, all while highlighting their expertise—which was significant. Meanwhile, by creating the ability for customers to order their product right from their computer or smartphone, in conjunction with the additional traffic created by blogging, a new revenue stream would be created where one had not previously existed. Giving their customers the ability to place an order 24/7/365 would also enable the company to leverage technology where their competition had not, therefore strengthening their client relationships. How wonderful to have orders flowing to you, without having to ask for them, while simultaneously making ordering quick and seamless for their customers.

Conclusions

Of course, all businesses want to climb the Google ladder up to page one of organic search, and while SEO has become the buzzword for CEOs and presidents, the fastest way for a small company to achieve this is by blogging. While most of us don’t want yet another task to add to our list, when closely examined, blogging is worth the effort. By simply keeping new content flowing onto your website Google, new customers and existing customers will take notice, and engage you at a much higher level—as the expert you are. Additional revenue, the ultimate goal, will undoubtedly follow.

Preston Ehrler started Webvantix to bring professional website design to businesses that need help. The Webvantix blog also discusses ideas for marketing your business online.

[ Is Your Business Worth An Extra Hour Per Week? 5 Reasons Why Your Business Should Blog is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2010

Tamar Weinberg — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 13:43:48 +0000

Want more than what you see here? Get the monthly newsletter, new for 2011.

As many of you know, I have an annual tradition of giving back to the community on my birthday, which is why this year is no different. Of course, then, today is my birthday, & it’s a big one. Today, I’m 30.

I started this “best posts” idea 5 years ago & it’s grown huge. 2010 by far was the biggest year yet in the Internet Marketing realm. That’s why this is the biggest post I’ve ever written (with over 10,000 words). In honor of my 30th birthday, I have 300 posts.

Here’s how I do it: I read & review hundreds — thousands — of articles yearly, on all Internet Marketing topics from SEO to social media to general entrepreneurship (new for 2010!), also gathering intelligence via their rankings on top social sites & by stumbling upon new items in my feed reader. Since I can’t read everything written by the Internet Marketing community, I ask my Twitter & Facebook followers for their own recommendations. Based on specific criteria, normally actionable takeaways & evergreen content, I review the content & post it here to share with Techipedia readers & new visitors. The content is typically introductory but occasionally more intermediate/advanced, so there’s a mix that should work for everyone.

This list is very long, but I hope it’s not any less valuable. I’m sure you’ll have a year (or more) of reading to do, but it’s worth it to empower you with all this great content that has been written by brilliant peers. Enjoy!

Special note: This is the LAST wrap up post you’ll ever receive via Techipedia. If you found this content valuable & would like to receive new articles on a monthly basis, please subscribe to the monthly newsletter, available at a super low rate for a limited time.

Social Media: Getting Started, Implementation, and Execution

How to Develop a Social Media Strategy: A Roadmap for Integration (Very Official Blog): Shannon Paul did an amazing job on this post, presenting questions & answers that help companies consider their goals for a social media strategy.
Preparing a Social Readiness Gameplan in 7 Steps (Logic+Emotion): How can companies adequately prepare for social media monitoring & marketing? David Armano tackles the issue.
An Open Letter to Marketers Who Abuse Social Media for Selfish Gain (KISSmetrics): Jon Morrow shows how do to social media right.
Definitive Guide to Social Media Strategy Before Tactics (Online Marketing Blog): Lee Odden asked dozens of digital marketing experts for their take on social media strategy vs. tactics.
Social Media Toolkit (Michael Fruchter): Here are tools to use to get the most out of social media.
Social Media: What it is, How to Use It, and Where to Begin (One Man’s Blog): John Pozadzides introduces everything that rocks about social media.
How to Write Your Social Media Plan in 8 Steps (Skyline Trade Show Tips): Need inspiration to get your social media plan in play? These 8 steps will guide you.
5 Ways Companies are Using Social Media to Lower Costs (Mack Collier): What are the benefits of social media? See how companies gain.
100 Thoughts on Social Media (Conversation Agent): This may be one of the shortest blog posts I’ve added to the list.
How to: Optimize Your Social Media Marketing Strategy (Mashable): Using AIDA (awareness, interest, desire, action), you can set expectations, decide what you need to monitor, & visualize relationships.

Social Media (and Beyond): Small Business

6 Key Benefits for Using Social Media for Small Business (OPENForum): Improved search results, better brand management, innovation, and other benfits are explored in this article.
The Ultimate Resource for Successful Small Business Websites (Samir Balwani): Here’s how small businesses can benefit from online marketing.
Growing Your Business: 5 Tips from the Founder of Foursquare (Mashable): Dennis Crowley knows his stuff and shares good and creative tips to build visibility to business. Hey, Foursquare was pretty small once!
9 Expert SEO Tips for Small Businesses (Small Business Trends): Anita Campbell asks 9 people (including me) for their thoughts on online marketing.
How 4 Small Businesses are Using Location-Based Services (Mashable): Mashable’s Erica Swallow asked 4 businesses how they’re using Foursquare and other geolocation services. It’s interesting to hear it from smart businesses.
11 Practical Business Uses for LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (GigaOM): Some lesser-practiced tips are suggested here.
How to: Get the Most from a Small Business Social Media Presence (Mashable): Generation Y entrepreneurs tell all in this piece on what a small business can do to get the most out of social media.
Why Twitter is a Big Win for Small Business (Mashable): Three small businesses explain how they’re using Twitter and how it’s helping them grow.
5 Ways to Introduce Social Media to Small Businesses (AEXT.NET): The social media niche is a big echo chamber. Frankly, not all businesses know about social media marketing. Here’s why social media is an important extension of a website development strategy.
5 Big Social Media Questions from Small Business Owners (Mashable): This post tackles common business questions as it relates to social media marketing.

Social Media: Hiring and in the Workplace

How to Get Any Job You Want Using Social Media (Blog Godown): Social media can be a forever changing resume of sorts.
10 Ideas to Keep Your Social Team Motivated (The Future Buzz): I love this post by Adam Singer. I’ve nodded my head on every single point since I have stories for each and every one!
How to Nail a Job Interview (and Actually Get the Job) (Brass Tack Thinking): This particular article actually doesn’t talk about hiring via social media, but has some good advice for general job seekers.
5 Ways to Get a Job Through YouTube (Mashable): Did you know how Justin Bieber got to be so famous? Yeah, you guessed it. Here are other examples about how to leverage the popular video sharing site to get a job.
11 Ways to Lose Your Job on Facebook (Jeffbullas.com): This section is about social media and hiring, but how about the opposite? Here’s to firing via social media.
How to Hire Social Media Strategists (Creativity Unbound): Edward Boches of Mullen takes a tactical approach toward hiring for social media. For him, it’s not just about Klout or following numbers.
20 Real Tips for Hiring a Social Media Consultant (Pam Moore): Looking for a consultant? Pam’s post has some great examples of how to find those “social media experts” who just don’t deserve to be hired. Ever.
6 Ways to Score a Job Through Twitter (Mashable): My online friend Shankar Ganesh got an internship with Zoho. They’re lucky to have him!

Social Media: Measurement and ROI

Sexy Numbers: Measuring ROI in Social Media Campaigns (ReveNews): The elusive ROI question is dissected.
5 Objectives for Social Media Measurement (Brass Tack Thinking): Explore objectives measuring social media efforts and ROI.
Are We Ever Going to “Get it”? (Peter Shankman): Peter rants about what companies are doing wrong when they think about what they can get out of social media.
Can You Measure the ROI of Your Social Media Marketing? (MIT Sloan Management Review): Want an amazing article on ROI of social media? This is it.
How to: Calculate the ROI of Your Social Media Campaign (Mashable): Jamie Turner offers suggestions on understanding qualitative, quantitative, and ROI metrics.
The Perfect Social Media Measurement Plan (Search Engine Land): Brian Massey illustrates a system that automatically and reliably stores conversion data in a spreadsheet.
Evidence that Social Media Really Does Drive Sales (The Next Web): Big companies prove that social media works.
This is How You Measure Social Media ROI (Samir Balwani): Samir Balwani offers a nice analysis of how you can calculate social media ROI and suggests some great ideas for the future of social media.
Practical Social Media Measurement: Awareness, Attention, Reach (Brass Tack Thinking): Amber Naslund shares how to measure social media with actionable things you can do today.
Get Your Social Media Strategy in Shape with Spreadsheet Aerobics (Beth Kanter): Beth Kanter uses Facebook as the example in this post that explores how she evaluates the effectiveness of social media engagements.
How to Measure Social Media Marketing Performance (Social Media Examiner): KPIs. Predictable Results. Incentivized sharing. That’s how you are accountable for your social media involvement.

Social Media: General

How Social Media Drives New Business: Six Case Studies (TechCrunch): Businesses will benefit from reading about these creative ideas employed by other businesses to build traction and online visibility boosts.
The 10 Stages of Social Media Integration in Business (Brian Solis): In his unabridged version of an earlier Mashable article, Brian Solis explains the various transitions a company might encounter when involving itself in social media marketing.
30 Tips for Using Social Media in Your Business (Inc.): Inc’s article has a lot of small ideas you can use to make social media more effective in business.
Share Well with Others: How to Get Social Content to Go Viral (Search Engine Land): This post explores the motives behind content sharing, the ways content spreads, and tips for creating viral content.
Social Media Supremacy: 10 Experts Reveal Their Strategies (ViperChill): Here are tips from 9 excellent social media practitioners (and me) who give advice on social media strategy.
Social Media Etiquette: 20 Do’s and Don’ts to Avoid Looking Like an Ass (Directory Journal): I write another social media etiquette handbook, but I like this version with general but helpful things to consider in social media.
Integrationg Social Media into Your Email Marketing (RhinoSEO): Some people are all about email. Some others are all social. Here’s a good way to mesh the two together.
The 5 NEW Rules of Social Media Optimization (Influential Marketing Blog): In 2006, Rohit Bhargava formulated the concept of SMO, or Social Media Optimization. This is the 2010 version.
How to: Pick the Right Social Media Engagement Style (Mashable): You might want to be a game show host, a friendly neighborhood service rep, a community builder, beehive, or friend. What’s YOUR style?
5 Steps to Dealing with the Relentless Pace of Marketing (PR Squared): Exhausted yet by social media? Have no fear; alleviate the load.
The Expert’s Guide to Keyword Research for Social Media (WordStream): This guide discusses how you can benefit from diverse keyword research strategies, which you’d think is for PPC & SEO only. Nope!

Twitter

5 Steps to Build a Twitter Marketing Strategy (Online Marketing Blog): Lee Odden provides tips for Twitter marketing.
10 Indicators Your Business Should Rethink Its Twitter Strategy (Klout): Megan Berry of influence analytics provider Klout gives best practices on building loyal followers.
10 Ways to Increase Your Twitter Followers & 10 Essential Tools to Do It (State of Search): I’m not going to be the first one to tell you (and it’s not even the first time) that numbers aren’t everything, but wait…
What Type of Twitter Account Should You Create? (Small Business Trends): I face this question all the time: should I create a personal account or a mixed business account? I say it’s up to you. See what Lisa suggests.
How Twitter Can Make You a Better (and Happier) Person (Delivering Happiness): Here’s to the success of Zappos on Twitter. Tony Hsieh says certain values grew him as a person and made him happier in life.
9 Ways to Build a Twitter Community with Substance (Brass Tack Thinking): Building community on Twitter isn’t that complicated with this easy-to-read list.
21 Twitter Tips from Socially Savvy Companies (Fast Company): For those of you who have not seen this or read Brian Solis’s Engage!, here’s how Twitter is being used by businesses.
7 Sneaky Ways to Use Twitter to Spy on Your Competition (KISSmetrics): Hopefully you already do this. If not, get started.
7 Insanely Useful Ways to Search Twitter for Marketing (OPENForum): Targeting users by location, occupation, and more is the premise of John Jatsch’s article on Twitter search.
Tweet, Tweet: 9 Steps to a Successful Twitter Strategy (Business News Daily): Assess your challenges, plan your goals, listen, set objectives, & do more to get a solid Twitter strategy in place.
9 Ways to Use Twitter Lists (StayOnSearch): Ah, Twitter lists, the once-hyped products that now seem stagnant. You might elect to reevaluate, though, if you knew what you could do with them.
Twitter Chats and Twitter Parties for Brands (Stephanie Schwab): Here’s how brands can get involved.
10 Practical Twitter Tips for Publishers (Adam Sherk): Adam works with some of the biggest publishing media companies on search and social strategy, so his advice is sound.

Facebook

Facebook SEO Ranking Factors, 2010 Study Results (aimClear): Wow, the depth of this report is incredible. There are great insights on assessing the value of SEO for your Facebook profiles and pages.
How to Better Engage Facebook Fan Page “Fans” (Social Media Examiner): Mari Smith on how to keep your Facebook Page lively and engaging.
The Business Guide to Facebook Part 1: Your Brand Page for the Social Web (Brian Solis): This is part 1 of a 2 part piece that explores the importance of Facebook for businesses and why e-commerce (or f-commerce) is a business’s future.
Facebook SEO (Blind Five Year Old): This post looks at Facebook SEO from the angle of Facebook’s Open Graph, so it’s more than your typical post about Facebook SEO.
How to Build Your Facebook Landing Page (If You’re Not a Programmer) (SocialMouths): If you want tips on how to set up a Facebook landing page and have a graphic to work with, this is a good guide. For more, check out my post on How to Build the Perfect Facebook Page.
5 Facebook Fan Acquisition Strategies (Search Engine Journal): Brian Carter’s “complete Facebook marketing system” covers the gamut of getting fans that translate to revenue.
13 Simple Ways of Increasing Your Facebook Likes (The Next Web): Want people to Like you? Give them reasons to.
Cracking the Facebook Code (The Daily Beast): News Feed Optimization explained.
6 Tips for Running Promotions Within Facebook’s Guidelines (Inside Facebook): Given the risks of running contests on Facebook due to some unexplained terms of service, Inside Facebook clarifies what is within reason and what’s disallowed.
10 Ways to Rock Your Facebook Campaign (Kommein): Here are practical tips on how to use Facebook to promote your business.

5 Ways to Make the Most of LinkedIn (LinkedIn Blog): Ambassador Lindsey Pollak has some good tips for you to make the most out of the service.
How to Improve Your LinkedIn ROI by Tweaking Your Profile (Sharisax): Make yourself findable by optimizing your profile. Should we call this LIO (LinkedIn Optimization)?
20 LinkedIn Case Studies and Examples for Professionals (Kyle Lacy): How are YOU using LinkedIn? Kyle features some LinkedIn gains from 20 pros.
10 Ways for Small Businesses to Use LinkedIn (OPENForum): With so many small businesses on LinkedIn, it’s imperative that you leverage that for maximum gain. Guy Kawasaki shares tips from LinkedIn’s employees.
How to Make LinkedIn Answers Part of Your Routine (Social Media Explorer): Get qualified leads via LinkedIn by following Jason’s steps.
Using LinkedIn for Online PR (Social Small Biz): I like that this post has some not so standard tips, such as connecting with journalists and influencers right after you’ve met them.
Use LinkedIn Effectively (Chris Brogan): Know how to take advantage of LinkedIn? Probably not. Here’s a simple list of how to take advantage of the site.
Top 5 Ways to Marketing Your Business with LinkedIn (Social Media Examiner): I have a client who said that this worked. Enough said.
5 Ways to Weave LinkedIn Into Your Marketing Mix (Online Marketing Blog): The personal account & company group create an effective LinkedIn marketing plan.
10 Ways for Small Businesses to Use LinkedIn (LinkedIn Blog): LinkedIn is a viable social network, so businesses of all sizes need to leverage it. The post has small business owners in mind but is relevant to all companies.
10 Terrific LinkedIn Tricks to Grow Your Business! (OPENForum): Steve Strauss discusses more ways to maximize LinkedIn.

Leveraging Other Social Media Sites

How to Promote Your Business on Flickr (Influential Marketing Blog): Rohit Bhargava introduces you to Flickr and shows how to build a strong account on the site.
Case Study: How to Use Foursquare to Draw a Crowd Into Your Restaurant (Steffan Antonas): An orchestrated Foursquare meetup meets its match.
How to Succeed on Yelp (Without Really Trying) (WebRanking): Local businesses should pay attention to what’s being said about them on Yelp. Be proactive & win.
Advanced Delicious Search Operators (Modern Journalist): Even though Delicious is in turmoil, it is still a helpful social bookmarking site with useful search operators that improve your experience.
How to Use Foursquare Effectively for Your Small Business (Business Insider): This is a slideshow/article combo with tips on how even a non-seasoned Foursqaure user (& business owner) can get the most out of it.
5 Ways to Leverage Foursqaure for Business (Penn Olson): One of the tips I don’t see very often is in this article: encourage shout-outs!
Foursquare Business Strategies You Don’t Want to Miss (Samir Balwani): With only (!) 5 million members, Foursquare is still new enough to take advantage of. Local businesses, take note!

Blogging

How I Really Built a Blog with 6,500 Subscribers (ViperChill): Mentioning Glen’s post should double his subscriber numbers. You’ll see why when you read it.
17 Important Things to Do After Starting Your WordPress Blog (Gloson): I love Gloson — he’s so smart (and so young!)
How to Write a Blog That Matters (Justin Kownacki): Justin’s post is an excellent blog-building driver. Read it & you’ll see what I mean.
100+ SMB Blogging Ideas to Kick Start … 2011? (Small Business Trends): This post has chock full of great inspiration for your next blogging project. You can’t run out of topics.
How I Create and Manage a WordPress Website (Wolf-Howl): WordPress can run more than just blogs; it’s great for standalone sites. Here are some great plugins that you can use to optimize WP. The only thing it’s missing is W3 Total Cache, which I HIGHLY recommend.
34 Reasons to Start a Blog (Conversation Agent): Why should you blog? Let us count 34 ways.
The Power of Uniqueness: 19 Starting Points (Problogger): Darren Rowse helps set you apart from other bloggers.
How I Wrote 270 Guest Posts in 8 Months (YoungPrePro): Onibalusi took a lot out of his time to write some great guest posts (including two featured here). Learn his process.
The 7 Traits of Highly Successful Bloggers (Dragos Roua): Authority, creativity, persistence, connectivity.
6 Things I Wish I Knew About Blogging 4 Years Ago (ViperChill): As you’ve seen earlier, Glen writes amazing posts, and his tips for budding bloggers are no exception. You can learn a lot from him.

Reputation Management

5 Extreme Tactics for Removing a Reputation Attack from Google’s Index (Trackur): I like Andy Beal’s tactics: find a real violation & get them kicked out of Google. Works for me.
5 Reasons NOT to Delete Negative Reviews (Outspoken Media): Lisa argues why to leave negative reviews up.
What to Do if You Are Attacked Online: Setting a Social Media Policy for Your Business (Small Business Trends): What types of things can you do when you’re faced with an online attack?
Reputation Management SEO: 6 Advanced Tactics (SEOmoz): Rand Fishkin helps with reputation management: manage a handful of strong social profiles, speak at events, start an alternative blog, & more.
What Trolls Can Teach You About Reputation Management (Flowtown): Trolls can be jerks, but sometimes wanting the attention they command is justified. JD Rucker highlights scenarios when you might just have to take the bait.
5 Ways NOT to Handle Reputation Management (Conversation Marketing): Here are mistakes you’ll make when your company gushes oil into the ocean.
10 Ways to Deal with a Social Media Explosion (Simon Lilly): Predict, plan, filter, rotate, evaluate.
Turning Lemons into Lemonade: 11 Components of a Social Media Crisis Plan (Huffington Post): Since you’ll probably find out about a crisis nowadays on Twitter before you get official word, put out those fires quickly by following the checklist.
36 Reputation Monitoring Feeds You Can’t Afford to Ignore (aimClear): If you’re in the business of reputation management, keep tabs on what’s being said. Here are 36 places you need to look.
5 Online Reputation Management Mistakes (VeristLabs): These are mistakes most businesses commit when dealing with reputation managemnet crises.
That’s Not Nice! Top 10 Tips for Responding to Negative Comments (NTEN): One big rule: don’t take it personally.
A Practical Guide to Online Reputation Management (Target Internet): What’s ORM? What can you do to track it? How can you manage it?
Online Reputation Management 101 (ClickZ): Like the post above, learn the ORM basics.

Content Development/Marketing

14 Lessons Learned from One of the World’s Highest Paid Copywriters (Copyblogger): This is a 3-part series that talk about how to get the most out of your marketing from Dan Kennedy. Here’s part 2 and here’s part 3.
The 7-Step Process for Writing Enticing Product Descriptions (Marketing Words): E-commerce copywriting gets simpler with tips by Karon Thackston.
Simple Strategies for Engaging Your Visitors (Six Revisions): What kind of content do you need? Fresh, targeted, valuable, concise.
The Oatmeal Guide to Getting 5 Million Unique Visitors a Month (Content Converts): Matt Inman was just a regular guy a few years ago (I knew him!), but when he launched The Oatmeal, his life changed. Now, with over 5 million monthly uniques, he’s amazing.
18 Ways to Walk the Talk on Content (Conversation Agent): Good content can help your site soar to great heights, but if you are having trouble getting there, read this.
Why You Shouldn’t Write for Other Writers (Copyblogger): Stop writing for bloggers. Write for your customers. Hugh MacLeod shares a personal story.
The Creation and Promotion of Social Content (Search Engine Journal): Jordan Kasteler explains that content must stand for something to succeed.

Web Development and Website Strategy

18 Simple SEO Items Commonly Missed in Web Development (SEO.com): SEO is important when building a website, or it’ll be impossible find you.
The Psychology of Web Design (Web Designer Depot): Psychology & web design go hand in hand. Understanding basic principles can help you build amazing sites.
How I Grew My RSS Subscription Count by 243% (Quick Sprout): Neil Patel suggests tweaks that increased his RSS subscribers. There are takeaways here even for non-bloggers.
4 Design Elements Behind a Good Call to Action (letscountthedays): This post teaches you good calls to action on websites with visual examples to see exactly what you’re supposed to implement.
4 Tips for Search (and User) Friendly Design (Search Engine Land): Ian Lurie suggests that SEOs need to be more immersed in the design process.
6 Ways to Eliminate Pesky Duplicate Content (Search Engine Guide): Duplicate content can mean search engines sending visitors to the wrong pages. Removing them is important and should be considered in a web development strategy.
The Ingredients of a Successful Website (Six Revisions): Passion. Talent. Partnerships. These are the true ingredients for websites that have tremendous growth potential.
How to Put Your Small Business on the Web (Chris Brogan): Two words: home base. I disagree about GoDaddy and recommend Namecheap (client). But I don’t say that only because they’re a client; I’ve been a customer for 6 years!
Removing Pages from Google: A Comprehensive Guide for Content Owners (Search Engine Land): Vanessa Fox writes a detailed step by step on how your content could be removed from Google — because sometimes you don’t want to be found.
5 Web Files that Will Improve Your Website (Six Revisions): Have you ever heard of Dublin.rdf and OpenSearch.xml? If not, read this article and you’ll see why they’re recommended.

Video

How to Become Famous on YouTube (BlueGlass): What’s been successful on YouTube so far? Stephanie has answers.
Video SEO: A Technical Guide (Yoast): Joost de Valk gives you a technical walkthrough on how your videos can see high rankings.
YouTube SEO Experiment & Useful Tips (Distilled): Ever wanted to rank #1 on YouTube? Read about David’s analysis.
10 Killer Tips for Creating a Branded YouTube Channel (Mashable): A video agency expert gives advice on creating the best branded YouTube page.
How to Add Captions to Your YouTube Videos (Small Business Trends): Captions help give videos an SEO boosts & captures attention of those who would otherwise not care about watching videos..
How 12 CEOs and Founders are Leveraging Web Video (Mashable): Still think online video is for a bunch of amateurs? Think Blendtec or Garyvee. Think of the people who gained popularity using nothing but the Internet & their camcorders to spread valuable marketing messages.

SEO: Strategy

5 Strategies to Maintain and Improve Your #1 Rankings in Google — After You’ve Reached the Top (Winning the Web): SEO isn’t “set it and forget it,” because someone else can steal the throne. Stop them by reading & heeding this.
The Definitive Guide to SEO for Images: 6 Steps to Image-Ranking Success (ZDNet): Learn how to get the most out of your images while adding specific SEO value to your pages.
The Ultimate Guide to Keyword Competition (Wordstream): WordStream asked 35 experts how they evaluate the competition.
Conversion Rate Optimization for SEO (Distilled): This is a nice actionable guide with helpful Excel formulas.
9 Steps to Diagnosing Lost Search Engine Traffic (High Rankings): Jill Whalen evaluated sites that saw a traffic decrease & shared her discoveries.
WordPress SEO: The Only Guide You Need (ViperChill): Want to optimize your WordPress blog for search engines?
SEO for Google News: Ranking Factors and Recommendations (Search Engine People): If you have a multi author news website, you are eligible to be a Google News source. Once you’re there, it’s harder to get ranked within Google Universal search.
6 Ways to Optimize Your SEO for Misspellings – and Why it Pays to be a Bad Speller (Winning the Web): Using examples, Gyutae Park shows the benefits of SEO for typos and how to get traffic.
News Search Engine Optimization Tips You Should Know (Online Marketing Blog): I think that Lee Odden is onto something with these questions & answers.
SEO Benchmarks and KPI (Huomah): Key performance indicators, you say? This is all about measuring the success of your efforts. The article is essentially a primer on making that happen.
Cloaking is Good for You. Just Ignore Bing’s/Google’s Guidelines. (Sebastian’s Pamphlets): Sebastian X makes a good argument about the benefits of cloaking for user experience.

SEO: Information

8 SEO Myths Debunked (High Rankings): People don’t have a good sense of what SEO is. This High Rankings article addresses common misconceptions.
SEO 101 Common Mistakes (David Naylor): Paul Carpenter shows 101 mistakes made on SEO campaigns.
The Inside Line on SEO (SEO Book): Aaron Wall helps you find the signal from the noise when learning SEO.
A Comprehensive, Intro to SEO Powerpoint Slide Deck (SEOmoz): New to SEO? After these 150 slides, you’ll feel like you’re ready to tackle the rest of the articles in this “best of” post. Enjoy!
The 6 Flavors of SEO Your Company Needs (Outspoken Media): Your company needs SEO. All companies do. Here’s how you can visualize that need using people who are likely already working at your company.
9 Common SEO Campaign Mistakes (Econsultancy): Beginner SEOs, take note.
Common B2B SEO Mistakes and How to Solve Them (Online Marketing Blog): B2B’s slow adoption of new technologies often costs them in viable leads. Perceptions need to change.
The Simple Guide to Freelance SEO the Successful Way (SEO 2.0): Feelancer SEOs, this one’s for you.
25 Super Common SEO Mistakes (Search Engine Land): If you’re getting on SEO, you might want to read this.
Google Experts Answer Your SEO Questions (Digital Inspiration): The “Google experts” are actually Google employees!
10 Things to Put in Your SEO Proposal (Conversation Marketing): Ian Lurie sets expectations early in the SEO process by putting things like labor sources in his proposal. I’d love to see one.

Link Building

Guest Blogging Tips: Link Baiting vs. Guest Posting (Wiep): Wiep talks about content and how to promote it to build links.
The Link Party is Never Over (Link Spiel): I like how Debra Mastaler “links outside the box.” She says, “I think it’s uber important to be different and push your marketing efforts in areas your competitors are not.” Totally agree.
10 Ways All Employees Can Contribute to Link Building (Search Engine Journal): You don’t have to outsource your link building efforts entirely. Your staffers might be able to do things out of the goodness of their hearts… really. Mark Thompson explores the possibilities.
30 Link Builders Discuss Backlink Analysis for Campaign Design (Search Engine Land): Ask experts a question, get some great insights. This post shows why link builders should analyze the competition.
How to Really Build Backlinks and Dominate Google (ViperChill): A great article on how you can build backlinks — with some unique ideas.
62 Streps to the Definitive Link Building Campaign (WordTracker): WordTracker wants you to buy an eBook. I just want you to read the tips.
74 B2B Link Building Queries for B2B SQO Link Prospecting (Ontolo): B2B websites need link profiles too. Want to find sites to link to? Here are queries you can perform to get some new sites to send requests to.
10000 Search Engine Queries for Your Link Building Campaign (SEO Himanshu): As long as these search operators work, you’ll be busy for a LONG time.
5 Reasons Why I Won’t Link to Your Website (Wiep): Want a link? You may not get it if your site meets these criteria.
“Inkbait”: A Case Study in Linkability (Search Engine Land): Infographics and linkbait: what makes them resonate among their target audience? Two pieces of linkbait are compared and key takeaways are shared.
Link Building with the Experts Interview (Outspoken Media): A really great interview with top notch folks on link building.
Link Building Tips for Personal Blogs (SEOmoz): What I like about this post: lots of deep information, some non-standard tips, and more.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing

Developing a PPC Strategic Plan (The Adventure of PPC Hero): Don’t just take on PPC & immediately jump into keyword research. Critical analysis toward the creation of a strategic plan is paramount.
Understanding & Improving Google AdWords Quality Score (RedFly Marketing): This really is an ultimate guide.
3 Steps to Mid-Tail PPC Profitability (Calculate Marketing): If your keywords are highly relevant, you’ll probably see the biggest PPC gains. But what about if the keywords aren’t so relevant?
Google AdWords Suicide (1upDigital): Some advertisers get so immersed with Google AdWords that they threaten to commit suicide. Don’t let it get that far.
How to Simplify PPC Management Using Google AdWords Editor (Web Marketing Today): This is a basic but helpful post from Christine Churchill on why the downloadable Google AdWords Editor is valuable for bid management.
36 PPC Myths (The Adventure of PPC Hero): A lot of PPC misconceptions explained.
The Ultimate Guide to Quality Score: 15 PPC Experts Discuss the Nuts and Bolts of Google AdWords Quality Score and How to Improve Yours (WordStream): We’ve got SEO factors from SEOmoz, local search factors from David Mihm (below), and we might as well thank WordStream for their new introduction of PPC factors. Excellent stuff from the biggest experts in the industry.
PPC Testing Part 2: Optimization Cheat Sheet (Search Engine Land): Want higher CTR? Lower CPCs? More traffic? Better ROI? These considerations from Josh Dreller will help you achieve those objectives.
Match Types & Quality Score – The Truth at Last (ClickEquations): Craig Danuloff talks about the elusive Quality Score and shows how to improve yours.
Top 10 PPC Campaign Mistakes (ClickZ): Kevin Lee’s reprint from SES Magazine covers frequent mistakes done in PPC by those just starting out in PPC account management.

Affiliate Marketing

How I Make Thousands of Dollars Per Month Online (Jonathan Volk): Super affiliate Jonathan Volk wrote an incredible resource. This exhaustive guide covers a lot of great ground!
Getting the Most Bang for Your Buck (Finch Sells): This post gives beginner affiliates some nice tips on where they should focus their energy.
Newb Guide Pt 1: What is Affiliate Marketing? (NickyCakes): NickyCakes wrote an 8-post guide to affiliate marketing. At the bottom of each article, there’s a link to progress to the next section. If you’re looking to get started, check this out.
The Ultimate Guide to PPC Affiliate Marketing (PPC Blog): An introductory article on affiliate marketing — and how your pay per click campaign can benefit the bottom line.
The “Ugly” Truth (Mr. Green): Ugly ads (and websites) may perform better.
5 Mind-Blowing List Building Techniques (Zac Johnson): Building an email marketing list is pretty important for many affiliates. You can do many different things to grow that list, including employing triggers throughout your site, running a list swap, and more.
15 Affiliate Marketing Questions Answered by 3 Experts (Daily Blog Tips): Learn affiliate marketing from 3 guys who know their stuff.
How I Make Thousands of Dollars Per Month Online (ViperChill): Glen Allsopp introduces you to affiliate marketing.
Kirsty’s Affiliate Analysis Pack – Measure Your Success (Affiliate Stuff): Beginner affiliates will appreciate that Kirsty created these spreadsheets for you to see how you’re doing as an affiliate marketer.
Top 7 Tips to Make More Money with Amazon Associates (Make Money on the Internet): Chris Guthrie shows you what worked (and what didn’t).
How to Be an Affiliate with $5 a Day (Justin Dupre): This is a beginner post for affiliates explaining how most of the big players in affiliate marketers got started.
The Top 6 Pitfalls of Affiliate Marketing for Advertisers (Marketing Pilgrim): Affiliate marketing campaigns may be very challenging. Here is a list of headaches you might be up against.
How to Find Valid Affiliate Program Reviews (by Real People) (Ace Affiliates): If you do want to go into affiliate marketing, see how other people are rating various programs.

Analytics

Beginner’s Guide to Web Data Analysis: 10 Steps to Love & Success (Occam’s Razor): Avinash Kaushik gives a tactical and humorous approach toward your first step into evaluating your website’s analytics.
Examining Site Search Results in Google Analytics (Vertical Measures): Give me a show of hands if you don’t have the site search function enabled in your Google Analytics. Figures. Take a look at the benefits of this functionality.
7 Ways Google Analytics Can Help When Redesigning Your Website (iCrossing): Find out who your visitors are & how to develop a great website.
Small Business Tips for Reporting Web Metrics (Online Marketing Blog): The tips provided in this article are not only applicable to small businesses. They serve a much broader purpose.
Make Love to Your Direct Traffic (Occam’s Razor): Your direct traffic consists of people who proactively seek you out, so acknowledge them.
4 Questions with Avinash Kaushik: Kick-Ass Web Analytics (Bruce Clay): Avinash Kaushik is the father of web analytics as far as I’m concerned, so he can dominate this section all I want.
Google Analytics: Event Tracking vs. Virtual Pageviews (Web SEO Analytics): If tracking users is important, implement these suggestions to improve site performance.
Segmenting Social Traffic in Google Analytics (SEOmoz): Ever want to know how to tweak Google Analytics to get some deeper data on social traffic?
Using Real Time Analtyics to Enhance Viral Campaigns (The Google Cache): If you’re active in the social networking scene, especially on some of the social news and bookmarking sites, real time data helps you understand and continue the momentum. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.
Using Google Analytics to Prove the SEO Long Tail Theory (Neil Walker): Neil tackles the question, “Does a longer keyword actually give a better conversion rate?” and shows you how to process that data for the answer.
10 Fundamental Web Analytics Truths: Embrace ‘Em and Win Big (Occam’s Razor): Lots of people spread misinformation about analytics. This post sets them straight.

Usability

Emotional Interface Design: The Gateway to Passionate Users (Think Vitamin): Psychology & design are closely associated. Rewarding your users with positive emotion builds trust & engagement. It allows people to be your brand advocates.
The Ultimate Guide to A/B Testing (Smashing Magazine): Two versions of a website: which performs better?
Does Your Website Add Features or Solve Problems? (Brian Cray): Twitter is one of the simplest sites and is worth billions. Simplify & succeed, says Brian.
What is User Experience Design? Overview, Tools, and Resources (Smashing Magazine): The detail in a Smashing Magazine article is extensive. Just take a look at the information here!
10 Usability Tips Based on Research Studies (Six Revisions): Common sense + data = news you can use. That’s what this article gives you with graphs to back up every claim.
Overcoming the Obstacles of Usability Testing (UX Booth): Usability testing is here to stay, and the problems of the past no longer plague us. There are easy ways to implement usability tests on your site, so take advantage of them.
The Definitive How to Guide for Conversion Rate Optimization (SEOmoz): Stephen Pavlovich gives wonderful tips on how he’s successfully improved conversion rates of his clients, even in highly competitive fields.
Usability Testing is Broken: Rethinking User Research for Social Interaction Design (Usability Testing): Dana Chisnell points out flaws in designing the social web, referncing Google Buzz privacy violations. There’s a lot more to consider in today’s Internet.
Designing for a Hierarchy of Needs (Smashing Magazine): This post takes Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and shows how it can be translated to design.

Landing Pages

101 Landing Page Optimization Tips (Unbounce): In this post, Oli Gardner provides “our authoritative, definitive, essential, and ultimate collection of 101 Landing Page Optimization tips.” Take a look and tell me if you agree.
How to Design a Landing Page to be Conversion Focused (The Web Squeeze): This article takes you into landing pages vs. land & jump pages vs. microsites and debunks some of the myths surrounding great landing page design.
How We Made $1 Million for SEOmoz with One Landing Page and a Few Emails (Conversion Rate Experts): Some case studies are just too good.
How to Maximize Your Click-Through Rate and Add More Control to Your Landing Pages Using Ad Sitelinks (Redfly Marketing): This is a combination of paid search and landing page optimization, where you can create ad sitelinks and then choose the landing pages that appear to the user. It’s an interesting tactic because your ads get more real estate & higher CTR.
Landing Page Optimization Tips: Analysis of 50+ Sites to Find Out What Increases Sales and Conversions (Visual Website Optimizer): Ask a social network and you shall receive. One company got requests to evaluate 50+ sites and found out some flaws in their landing page design. Here are common errors and how you can learn from them to better landing pages.
10 Ways to “Guarantee” More Sales and Conversions (KISSmetrics): Which landing page designs ensure you get sales? There are at least 10 out there!
25 Google Website Optimizer Tips for Better Product Pages (The Official Google Website Optimizer Blog): Khalid Saleh writes an excellent piece on conversion rate optimization, addressing various things you can change to ensure your site gets the best conversions.
10 Techniques for an Effective Call to Action (Boagworld): I read Boagworld when keeping up with one of my clients’ industries, and the content is top notch.
10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Landing Page Conversions (Performable): Get some immediate results with these takeaways.
3 Tips for Building an Effective Landing Page (HubSpot): Encourage users to click on your calls to action.
Why Landing Page Optimization is Crucial and How to Start (Bruce Clay): Ever have good rankings but an awful bounce rate? Time to consider landing page optimization!

Local/Mobile Search

13 Questions to Ask Before You Hire a Local SEO Consultant (Search Engine Land): I like the variety of questions by Andrew Shotland, though I think it’s not a locals only discussion.
Mobile Search: What You Need to Know (1upDigital): With more smartphone users in the wild, mobile optimization becomes increasingly important.
Local Search Ranking Factors (David Mihm): As always, David Mihm comes out with a fabulous guide on what SEO experts believe are the elements that impact local search engine rankings.
Principles for a Review Plan: Considerations in Encouraging Customer Reviews (Blumenthals): Mike Blumenthal created a matrix of considerations should you be interested in implementing reviews on your (local) website.
Local Search Marketing Using Foursquare (Rynoweb): All brick and mortar companies should start seriously considering a social media strategy that includes Foursquare. If you’ve glossed over the social media sites and came here, hopefully you’ve considered the importance of using some social media elements to connect face-to-face with your customers!
How to Launch that Web Site in 2011 (Outspoken Media): If you know anything about Google Local, you’ll know that every tip Lisa gives you in this post will be applicable for months or years to come.
23 Ways to Slam Dunk Your Mobile Conversions (for the Holidays) (Search Engine Land): Even though this headline is about the holidays, the takeaways from this article are good for all time. Shift your perception if you have a website; mobile is here to stay.
Online Reputation Management Strategies – The “Rate Us” Page and Local Reviews (BuzzMaven): Scott Clark covers the gamut of customer reviews and explains why they are necessary.

(Personal) Branding

When YOU Are the Brand (Chris Brogan): Chris Brogan’s food for thought for building your personal or business brand.
How to Build Your Brand Working for Someone Else (Bruce Clay): There’s always fear that you can’t build your own brand when you’re not your own boss. Some employers might not let you. Others might once you get the permission. Here’s how to make it work while respecting your company.
Madonna’s 6 Secrets to Personal Branding Mastery (Copyblogger): Yes, Madonna. Despite her reputation for whatever she’s doing, one can learn a few lessons from her for their personal OR corporate brand.
Managing the Conflict Between a Personal Brand and a Corporate Brand (Britopian): If you want to build one brand while promoting the other, such as your personal brand while focusing on a corporate brand, it’s important to mend the 2 together by putting ego aside & being aware of your surroundings. It can be done. Michael Brito did it, didn’t he?
Are Personal Brands for Moguls, Morons, or Megalomaniacs? (Jonathan Fields): Deep thoughts by Jonathan Fields on personal branding.
How to Build a Potent Brand (6 Clues) (Personal Branding Blog): Here are questions and answers to evaluate when building the brand.
50 Seriously Great Tips to Elevate Your Personal Brand (Thought Changer): Cindy Yantis has a long list of things you can do to strike a home run in the personal branding department.
You Don’t Know Jack About Branding (Hyder Media): Kenny Hyder gives us things to consider when building and consistently promoting any type of brand.
Top 10 Branding Mandates (Branding Strategy Insider): Personal or corporate, a brand must live up to these expectations to thrive and survive.
Personal Branding – Make Yourself the “Go To” Person in Your Local Niche Market (Small Business Advertising): …or how to be the Kleenex of your niche. (Or Band-Aid. I like Band-Aids.)
The 7 Keys to Social Branding (Conversation Agent): Tamsen McMahon explains the elements to building a strong brand, and that it’s important to look at it through a social lens.

Building a Brand/Brand Evangelism

Why Social Media is Perfect for Brand Ambassador Campaigns (Mashable): Fifteen years, five case studies, and their takeaways.
Humanizing Business & Brands: Your Ambassador Ecosystem (Logic+Emotion): Instead of focusing externally on creating ambassadors for your company, focus your sights internally. David Armano lists the various company segments that can be tapped into the role of ambassador for the marketplace.
How to Convert Your Facebook Superfans into Brand Ambassadors (GigaOM): Because Facebook always comes up when discussing just about everything brand evangelism nowadays, we must take advantage of those fans.
How to Create a Customer Advocacy Program (Forbes): Tapping into the voices of your customers is an important way to scale, increase credibility, and demonstrate commitment to customers, according to Jeremiah Owyang.
How Do You Recognize and Attract Heroes and Champions for Your Brand? (Successful Blog): Liz Strauss tells you how you can identify those folks who are “waiting to lead,” because then they already love what you do, and they can help bring your business to much greater heights.
How to: Activate Your Brand’s Super Influencers (Mashable): Ben Straley teaches you how to evangalize your community.
4 Great Examples of Brand Ambassador Programs (Ignite Social Media): Don’t understand what this section is about? Here are some companies that are leveraging their community as brand ambassadors and succeeding.
Toolkit for Launching a Social Media Ambassador Program (The Social Workplace): Elizabeth Lupfer on how a company can build enthusiasm about their products/services via an advocacy program.
Understanding and Activating Your True Fans (Conversation Agent): Looking at buisnesses as the tribe, is it possible to build fandom around such an entity?

Public Relations

Why PRs Can Be Better Link Builders than SEOs (Econsultancy): Lots of link builders do nothing to work on relationships with the people they’re asking for links from, so they don’t have that edge that public relations folks do.
25 Tips from 25 PR Experts (eReleases): Here are short tips from the experts in public relations.
Developing a PR Plan (Entrepreneur): How to get publications to talk about you: create a solid PR plan.
Getting Press for Your Website Application or Service (Shoemoney): This is a humorous post on how to get press mentions. Take (most of) it to heart.
The Most Overused Buzzwords and Marketing Speak in Press Releases (Adam Sherk): Techipedia, the top leader, has been awarded the best unique solution with its award winning posts. That’s the idea of this list. I don’t think it will change through 2011, I have to say, so it qualifies as evergreen content.
Katie Paine’s Dirty Dozen Public Relations Measurement Mistakes (The Measurement Standard): In PR, you might mess up, and chances are, you’ll pick up and be all the more better for it. If you can share the lessons learned with everyone else, that’d a really generous and wonderful thing.
How to Write a Social Media Press Release (Inc.): In this day and age, press releases need a little more oomph to stand out among the crowd. A social media press release is the answer to this problem.
10 Easy Things You Can Do Right Now to Get Publicity (Get In Front Communications): Whether it’s leveraging your internal staff or doing a bit of research into the industry, there are many things you can do to get publicity for yourself or your clients.
5 Reasons Why You Should Leave PR to the Pros (BNET): Here’s why public relations should be handled by pros.

Community Management/Engagement

How to Build an Online Community for Your Business (Flat Rate Biz): How to build online communities: help others and they’ll help you.
12 Keys to Building Your Online Community (The Rise to the Top): David Garland explains how to make your community rise to the top!
Gamification: What is it and Why Do You Need to Know? (Stephanie Schwab): Brands should create community-focused game experiences out of their marketing efforts.
How Are You Measuring Your Community (Outspoken Media): Are you taking advantage of your community? Here are metrics to track.
8 Things to Avoid When Building a Community (Mashable): Leah Betancourt talks about the things to avoid when engaging community participants.
Building An Online Community: How to Start from 0 Members (FeverBee): If you have an audience, you’re pretty lucky. If you’re not, this guide should explain how to get to a community that actually has a few people.
The Mind of a Community Manager (CommunityGuy): Jake McKee looks at two well known quotes & applies them to the job of a community manager with thought-provoking takeaways.
How to Prevent a Community from Growing On Your Site (Small Business Trends): Building community is great, but you could also stifle the growth of your community too. Pay attention to Lisa’s tips.
10 Fresh Tips for Community Managers (Mashable): If you’re managing a community (in Jolie O’Dell’s words, you’re “social media junkie with oodles of personality who’s trying to balance marketing-driven execs with ego-tripping power users while still trying to maintain some semblance of a personal life”), then you might want to read this to preserve your sanity.

Entrepreneurship

8 Pivotal Lessons for the Budding Entrpereneur (EpicLaunch): Starting off as an entrepreneur might be a huge challenge, but pulling through it could reap huge rewards. Here’s the advice from someone who has been at it for 18 months.
The 12 Dysfunctions of an Entrepreneur (Jonathan Fields): This post needs needs an introductory paragraph, but in its absence, I’ll say that these are the missteps you might make when you’re going into entrepreneurship.
7 Lessons Learned from Monetizing Quick Sprout (Quick Sprout): Neil tells us about the lessons made when monetizing his site, which is a lot more than just a blog. Since many entrepreneurs here are likely focused on online properties, I thought it’d be a good category fit.
How to Quit Your Job When You’re Flat Broke (Even When Your Wife is Scared Shitless) (Escaping Mediocrity): I really like Genuine Chris Johnson’s post on how he’s been able to make debt into profit.
How To Become Legendary- 23 Things Michael Jordan Taught Me About Entrepreneurship (OnStartups): Sports fanatic Jason Baptiste applies his knowledge of the basketball great to how to grow farther as an entrepreneur.
Are You Making These Business Mistakes? (Quick Sprout): Successful business owners are asked about some of their biggest mistakes — so that you can avoid doing the same thing.
Young Entrepreneur Advice: 100 Things You Must Know (Under30CEO): The question “what do you wish you knew before you started a business?” is asked to 100 different business owners. Here’s what they said. (Unfortunately, I’m not under 30 anymore…)
Interview: 12 Top Entrepreneurs Share How Hard They Work (Daily Blog Tips): Think it’s easy being on your own? Think again. Very few entrepreneurs see a <40 hour work week.
5 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Take on Big Companies (EpicLaunch): A niche focus or avoiding attachment to one model — these are ways you can take entrepreneurship to the next level.
Commit To Your Core: 9 Reasons Why Every Entrepreneur Should Outsource (OnStartups): Scott Dinsmore explains why entrepreneurs will move ahead when they outsource. I’ve always been afraid to do it mostly for a fear of losing control, but I have also seen the benefits!

General Online Marketing

An In Depth Guide to Creating Small Websites that Rank Well (SEOish): An excellent writeup from Pat Sexton on getting websites to rank well… maybe for some monetary gain.
How to Use the “7 Deadly Sins” to Turn Visitors into Customers (Smashing Magazine): Showing examples with existing sites, this article goes great lengths to show how pride, gluttony, sloth, and other sins have helped companies convert visitors into customers.
10 Ways to Reduce Friction in Your Purchase Process (Problogger): By reducing friction or obstacles that may be hindering direct purchases, you might be able to get more people to buy your products.
Lessons Learned from Helping Over 150 Startups with Marketing Part 1: Fundamentals (insight.io): Ilya Lichtenstein has a good three part guide (you can get part 2/3 right above the headline of the article) on how startups can be successful with their marketing initiatives, with topics covering targeting, media buys, and building traction.
Launching a New Website: 18 Steps to Successful Metrics & Marketing (SEOmoz): I like this post for its sound advice; I also am about to launch a new website (stay tuned!) so I’ve found this checklist really handy.
How to Become an Email Marketing Genius: The Simmer (Andy Sernovitz): Andy Sernovitz has a very strong point when he talks about effective selling via newsletters. Get them to read forever. Simple.
Common Online Business Mistakes (from the experts) (SEO Aware): Melissa Fach asked some of the industry’s most well known folks what mistakes they see online businesses committing. Here’s the roundup.
What is the Best Way to Learn Internet Marketing? (Dream Systems Media): Mat Siltala has an introductory post on what you need to do to get started in the word of online marketing.
The Three Phases of a Successful Online Marketing Strategy (Samir Balwani): Samir discusses three phases of digital maturity broken down into owned/paid/earned/shared media elements, from creating a website to establishing an advertising campaign to building a strong online presence and more.
I Spread Your Idea Because… (Seth Godin): Or: why things are usually viral.

Everything Else Under the Sun

Leveraging Mechanical Turk, oDesk, Elance, and Craigslist for SEO (SEOmoz): This could go under SEO, but this post discusses interesting outsourcing tactics that have additional implications beyond just SEO. The comments provide additional resources as well. I’ll throw in a project I’m involved in called Entreave (US-based outsourcing) which is poised to be awesome.
The Great Influence Debate (The Mountaintop): What I like about this post is the detail put into assessing what influence really is, especially the 7 forms outlined in the article.
How to Organize a Retreat (Seth Godin): Just reading about the suggestions in this post by Seth Godin makes me want to attend a retreat. I’d love for conferences to be crafted this way.
15 Small Business Lessons from Richard Branson (OPENForum): Entrepreneur Richard Branson knows a lot, and now you’ve been imparted with his wisdom. Use it well.
10 Internet Legends Everyone Should Know (SEO 2.0): No, this isn’t about the people of the Internets that you must know about. These are the myths of the WWW.
Step-By-Step Guide for Launching a Virtual Product (StayOnSearch): Need help launching a virtual product? This guide shows you the entire process, from creation to launch.
Want to Invest in Domains? Here are 7 Golden Rules (Daily Blog Tips): How do you make the most money off domain names? An expert domainer tells all.
Top 10 Myths About Domain Names (DotSauce): Social profiles will replace domain names? Really? That and other myths are debunked in this article.
How (and Why) to Calculate Lifetime Value Per Visitor (Online Marketing Today): Justin Handley explains why customer lifetime value is important to your business & why it’s important for determine how much to invest into your paid advertising campaigns.

And in case 300 wasn’t enough, here’s the best 2010 posts on Techipedia:

3 Golden Business Rules for Social Media Engagement: The biggest flaws of social media are often repeated by well-intentioned businesses. These are easy fixes.
Internet Marketing Advice for Beginners: This is a great introductory post on all the various elements of Internet Marketing.
How to Get an Influencer’s Attention: The most popular post of 2010: I asked 40+ social media influencers how to get their attention, and they gave me their $0.10.
11 Characteristics of Highly Influential Blog(ger)s: Building a blog is not so difficult when applying these crucial skills.
7 Truths About Social Media Marketing: Everyone is being sold on the hype that is social media. I’d like to tell you the truth about it.
Social Media Strategy from A to Z: This is by no means a comprehensive guide of social media interaction, but it definitely should give you a thought process about your involvement.
No, You Can’t Automate Social Media: Automation is okay in limited quantities, but if you’re caught doing this, people will know.
How to Use Facebook for Business and Marketing: One influencer told her followers that I should have sold this post as an eBook. I’m giving it to you for free.
Is Social Media Becoming Boring?: Some people are sick of social media. You?
7 Traits of Highly Effective Viral Videos: How can you get your video to stand out?
Why Most People Fail in Social Media: In this post, I share a few stories about people who don’t get social media, and what they can do to change that.

Badges

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Closing Thoughts

It’s been a great year. My son is thriving and just started walking. He brings a lot of great joy to our family. My book has been published in three languages: Italian, Portuguese, and German, and the German editorial team is already working on a second edition. I’ve been involved in some incredible projects, including plans for my own social startup (to be announced), and I think there will even be another one in the works very soon.

I’m starting to act as an advisor on several new social projects created by some highly motivated colleagues and peers; the social space looks extremely promising and there’s no shortage of some excellent things coming our way these next few months. I’m open to working with you on your social startups, so please be in touch.

I’m always interested in hearing about how I can help you on your business at any level, so please do connect with me and let’s see what we can do together.

Best wishes to you, your colleagues, and your families this year!

Photos by Shutterstock.

This post takes me an entire year to write due to reading and reviewing the posts and ultimately compiling them, and therefore consumes hundreds of hours of time. Since it happens every single year, please do not reproduce this on your site in any format. If you’d like to share this with your audience, please link to the post.

Oh, and if you like this post and/or want to say happy 30, I’m finally throwing in my Amazon Wishlist.

[ Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2010 is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Like this post? Get my Internet Marketing newsletter, buy my book, The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, and subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

Advice for a New Internet Marketer (or How to Spot Internet Marketing Snake Oil)

Tamar Weinberg — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:23:06 +0000

I met her during my freshman year of college, though she was two years my senior. We’d exchange greetings when we passed in the dormitory hallways. Nine years later, we met again when we were assigned to the same tables at a local luncheon. She told me she worked in Internet Marketing, which I was quite excited to hear given that there was no marketing discipline taught at all in our alma mater.

We started talking about the last few years and our dreams for the years ahead. We then got into the nitty gritty of business. With Internet Marketing, there are many ways to go, from affiliate marketing to SEO to social media to email marketing. What was she doing? Her answer surprised me. Essentially, her focus was SEO, and her daily grind consisted of keyword stuffing clients’ websites.

Anyone who knows a good search engine optimization expert knows that keyword stuffing is not an approved tactic. Perhaps this is a fact that her agency overlooked, so as a good friend, I told her that it would be in her best interest to learn about approved tactics through the many free blogs, to engage in acceptable and informative (though not free) SEO training, and to read the best SEO book/training program (aff). Even though there is a cost for entry for some of the best resources, the solutions were highly worthwhile, I explained.

Over the next few months, I received multiple invites to various groups on Facebook and messages imploring me to participate in activities in which I had no interest. All social media etiquette rules were not heeded to. Rather recently, she told me that she had enough and was going to quit.

I was excited at the prospect that there might be some freedom for someone who was forced to clearly break every rule that was in the ethical Internet Marketing handbook. I suggested the same blogs and training courses and told her that she could potentially go out on her own and do her own thing after she learned the basics and knew how to apply them. But first, I cautioned, “you must learn the material. Your work environment didn’t allow you to do so.”

My friend ended up going out to do her own thing, offering “Internet Marketing services” to anyone who would bite. The instruction I gave her and resources I provided, though, were ignored. I am not afraid that she’ll find this blog post and know that she’s the subject of the story because I know she won’t. I’m honestly worried for her clients who are being cheated out of money and time.

A few weeks ago, another person connected with me on Facebook who was referred to me by a social media buddy I never actually met. “I am a relatively new internet marketer trying to break into the industry,” he wrote. “What are good companies to target? Should I learn a specific skillset?” Overall, the questions were basic and I worried that the individual was looking to target companies for clients before actually understanding the nuances of the culture of Internet marketing as a whole.

While this person’s intentions were more pure — I later learned that he was looking for agencies to target, rather than clients, and that he was willing to endure pain (learning) for ultimate gain (clients which would lead to money) — I began to worry that there are others out there like this college colleague of mine. There are others who sell internet marketing services who are ultimately clueless about changes in the industry that could ultimately amount to them not seeing any increased rankings or improved traffic. At all.

There Are Different Specialties in Internet Marketing

“What do you do for a living?” he asks. ”I do Internet Marketing,” I say.

“Oh.”

If you’re involved at all in Internet Marketing, “oh” is not a suggested response. Internet marketing is a vast field. There are different specialties to Internet Marketing. If you’re going to take “Internet Marketer” at face value, you’re being silly. In the study of medicine, doctors have different specialties; Internet Marketing is no different.

If you’re a brand new Internet Marketer, choose a discipline and a niche that you can tackle head on and be successful at. You can’t do everything at once. Sure, a basic understanding of different Internet Marketing elements is fine, but it’s not practical to be everything to everyone. Here are just some concentrations you can explore:

Search Engine Optimization: Someone involved in search engine optimization is focused on building out websites in such a way to be understood by search engines (and by people). A search engine optimization expert is usually focused on changing URL structure, optimizing title tags, and making code tweaks to a website to make sure the search engines find the site and the pages contained therein.
Link Building: Part of a search engine marketing strategy includes the process of building relevant links to your website. This often includes submissions to directories and contacting webmasters of related websites.
Affiliate Marketing: Affiliates are individuals who market a particular product or service and who get paid commissions by a merchant when they make the sale.
Pay Per Click Marketing: PPC is another search engine marketing strategy that utilizes contextual advertising; based on a search query or the content of a web page, ads will appear. PPC requires understanding of keywords, having appropriate landing pages, and other factors.
Social Media Marketing: In social media marketing, you are tasked with leveraging the social space through its media to market your products.
Email Marketing: Email marketing relates to the promotion of products and services through e-mail.
Content Marketing: Content marketing refers to writing relevant articles on your site (or having good site copy) that can bring awareness to your website property.

Most people that I know will excel in one discipline but have a working understanding of the others. If you know someone who is great at every single Internet Marketing discipline in the book, it’s likely too good to be true. If you’re studying Internet Marketing, learn everything you possibly can, but you’ll typically find an area you’re most comfortable in and end up going with it. For me, that’s social media marketing.

Get the Right Training Materials

Depending on the type of work you’re looking to do, your best bet is to learn everything you can on the subject matter. Some of the sites I recommend for educational materials include:

Free

Sphinn: Sphinn is an Internet Marketing social news site. Users submit timely news articles to Sphinn, and the community votes up the best stories to appear on the front page. Normally, the front page consists of high quality content, though even the upcoming queue has good stuff that doesn’t always get promoted.
There are hundreds of blogs on each specialty’s subject matter. How do you find the signal through the noise, you ask? Find those who influence you, and then find out who they are engaging with. And read this post from Mat with some good suggestions.
My top three forums include Cre8asite Forums, Webmaster World (which is mostly free but also has subscription-only discussions), and High Rankings Forum.

Paid

SEO Book: SEO Book is the bible of search engine optimization. Aaron Wall nailed it when he released his extremely informative PDF about a decade ago. In the last few years, he moved his forever-changing content online in the format of members-only training guides and forums. He also offers high quality tools, many of which are free.
SEOmoz PRO: SEOmoz PRO features a rich library of informative guides, a myriad of tools, and a strong active and close-knit community. If you’ve seen their free site and know what kind of great information is already provided, you can only imagine how much value is multiplied behind the pay wall.
SEO Dojo: David Harry’s SEO program is the newest kid on the block, but it already has a very active group of members and engaging online discussions, in addition to easy-to-read training materials and video tutorials.
PPC Training: Like its partner site, SEO Book, PPC Blog is an exhaustive resource of the best PPC offerings in the space, with audio and video tutorials to enhance your learning experience.
Exploring Social Media: From beginner to advanced, Jason Falls, Nick Huhn, DJ Waldow, and I provide great modules for learning everything about social media marketing.

If you like books, you should also check out Winning Results with Google AdWords, Pay Per Click Marketing, The New Community Rules (which was authored by yours truly), The Art of SEO, Search Engine Optimization, and Search Engine Optimization for Dummies.

Find the Right Agency to Work With

Unless you’ve been doing it for years, it’s never a good idea to go into Internet Marketing without an educational foundation. And most people won’t follow sound advice, instead eying dollar signs as soon as formal education ends.

If you’re serious about this kind of thing, beyond online training guides and books, you need to apply those skills. Any educational experience in the work world, thus, will help bring you to the next level. Consider working at an agency, even in an internship capacity. Being able to work alongside the brightest minds in the industry can be extremely empowering. Having hands-on experience — the much-needed application of your learned skills — is incredible, especially when working alongside brilliant minds and analytical thinkers.

Every newbie should start working for someone before he embarks on the journey alone. Learning among the smartest in the industry is a sure-shot way to get ahead of most playing the same game.

Not All Agencies are Created Equal

As evidenced by the the story I provided in this article, not all agencies are competent. Keyword stuffing, for example, might have worked 5 years ago, but it’s not a successful tactic anymore. If you’re about to start working for an agency, study it out before you actually work for it, because if you don’t, you might end up finding out that you’ve wasted years of your life learning the wrong strategies.

One of the easiest steps you can take is to look at their website. The first thing I normally look at for “SEO” firms is to see if their canonical redirect is in place. It’s one of the smallest things that can be done, but so many “SEO” firms, including the one I mentioned earlier in this article, actually don’t do it at all. Also, check the website’s footer: are there keywords stuffed there? If so, it might be a good idea to turn your back away from the opportunity.

Another thing you should do is to talk to people in the industry that you know to see if they can tell you anything about the company’s officers or about the company itself. If the right people have never heard of the company, that could mean that the company itself consists of self-proclaimed marketing experts who likely get websites banned from search engines rather than ranked higher. It could also mean that the company is keeping a low profile, so use the website check to see if the company is up to shady tactics not worth your investment — even if the job offer is there. (You never want to work for a company who has a bad reputation, especially if you plan to remain in this industry. Word travels. If you’re already there, get out while you’re still ahead.)

It’s probably a good idea to step away from the agency if you find out that the tactics employed in the company don’t match what is taught in the training materials I recommended earlier. These materials are written and maintained by real experts who know their material cold. You can do better.

Going Off On Your Own

Only after you have spent at least 18 months to two years at a reputable company should you actually go at taking clients alone. Keep in mind that it’s not as easy as it seems. Doing the solo gig requires you to be the sales department, the financial and accounting department, the secretary, and the person you were hired to do: the marketer. You’re not only doing everything, but your salary is variable as you take and lose clients on a month-to-month basis.

If you’re choosing this path because you’re unhappy with your current company, look for another. If you’re doing it because your freshman college friend is able to do so successfully, focus on the food on your own plate, Miss. If you’re ready to take on more responsibility, by all means, go ahead and do it.

Just don’t be the girl who leaves a company that wasn’t challenging you anyway — and then starts your own thing without the right educational foundation or skill-set. Be the student who mastered the subject through learning and application, and who eventually graduated to be the teacher. And keep in mind that the best teachers never stop learning either.

Internet Marketing Snake Oil

The Internet is rife with “experts,” but not all self-proclaimed gurus can actually deliver. A lot can talk the talk, but they can’t walk the walk. They might sound great on the phone, but they might not be able to actually increase traffic to your website through search engine optimization. They might not have any clue how to effectively manage your Pay Per Click campaign to actually increase leads.

Unfortunately, not all “clients” will be so savvy enough to know the difference between someone who knows his stuff and someone who doesn’t. As such, when the marketing dollars they invested actually result in nothing, they call the entire practice a scam. There will always be a few rotten apples who ruin it for the rest of hard working decent folk who are truly looking out for the entire industry.

Buyer beware. If you or anyone you know is looking to engage in this practice, do yourself a favor and do due diligence before going with your expert. Interview prospects. Comparison shop. Don’t just look for the cheapest option; it might be the worst. (“You get what you pay for.”) Then again, the most expensive option might not be better. High costs don’t always translate to better quality.

Don’t Be that Guy

Every single profession has “snake oil” salesmen. There are doctors who don’t really know how to practice medicine and teachers who don’t know how to teach. If you’re an Internet Marketer who genuinely wants to sell your services, consider being well-educated and well-rounded. Consider focusing on a specialty where you can excel — and know your stuff cold. It’s hard enough that there are con-men and scammers who bring the industry to shame, but if you care about the future of the profession, don’t.

There’s probably not a single one of you reading this who is that guy. However, you might have encountered individuals who want to be just like you but might be looking for a silver bullet. Give them the full truth. Let them know that this profession is real work, just like any other type of profession. If they want to protect the integrity of this profession’s future, they should consider being well-read.

For me, Internet Marketing is not just a profession but it’s a passion. I read books and blog posts on the subject not only to further my career but because I love what I’m doing and I want to feel empowered personally and professionally. If you’re like me, you’re in the right place. You understand that this kind of work comes easy, and that you were meant to do it. But someone might approaches you for direction despite the fact that they don’t have gusto to do the work and to learn the ropes. They might just try to cash in simply because they see that some other people can do so successfully, even though those are the people who consider this more than just work: it’s a lifestyle, and they had to climb a ladder to be where they are right now.

Those of you involved in Internet Marketing for a long time might have faced this dilemma. Be up front. This is a discipline and it’s not a walk in the park. Knowing the tools doesn’t make you an expert. Ignoring the tactics makes you even less qualified. Ignoring the paid (and free) learning materials makes you a failure.

Everyone needs to work for success. As your role is now of a mentor, be the guiding light.

[ Advice for a New Internet Marketer (or How to Spot Internet Marketing Snake Oil) is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2009

Tamar Weinberg — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 13:00:09 +0000

It’s my birthday! And like last year, I have a gift for you.

Every year, I read hundreds (thousands?) of articles on the topic of Internet Marketing, from SEO to social media to web usability and then some. And every year, I hand pick the best articles that I’ve read and compile them in a resource that I hope will last a long time. Here’s my list for 2008. Here’s 2007. Here’s 2006. I painstakingly go through these resources with the hopes that these posts will serve as references for you in years to come. Yes, that’s right. Despite the changing landscape, the articles I list here are typically those that I feel are “timeless” in that they could be referenced in the future and still have utility. These posts are not in response to newsworthy events, nor are they displayed in any particular order. They are strategic guides that hopefully will enhance your internet marketing experiences in the future.

Every year, I can only read so many articles. I try to keep this as exhaustive as possible, but even so, I don’t know every great resource. Like last year, I enlisted in help from my followers on Twitter, many of whom gave me some great posts to add to this list. If you’re looking to be included on 2010′s list, you now know what to do.

Like last year, if your article is highlighted in this comprehensive post, there’s a badge for you to proudly celebrate this achievement on your site. Thanks again to David Mihm who specializes in Portland Web Design for creating them. Scroll down to the bottom of the post to grab the code you need for your post or site.

Without further ado, I now present to you the best internet marketing posts of 2009.

Social Media: Getting Started

Why You Have to Engage in Social Media, Even if You Don’t Want to (A Smart Bear): Jason Cohen (@asmartbear) makes a compelling argument into why social media must be considered, even if you have no interest in it. The article has examples of how social media worked too.
The Poetry of Social Networking to Court Customers and Invest in Relationships (Brian Solis): Brian Solis shares his foreword to Sean Percival’s book, MySpace Marketing. In it, he offers some thought-provoking insights into what must be understood before going into social media marketing. And… Brian Solis is the most eloquent writer I have ever seen in the blogosphere. This post is really poetry, as are all his other writings and blog posts.
40 Key Elements to Getting Started in Social Media (Louis Gray): Mike Fruchter writes an awesome blog post on Louis Gray’s blog about how to get involved in social media, from branding to blogging to Twitter to community. It’s definitely a worthwhile read.
Marketing on the Social Web: A Few Key Ingredients (Michael Fruchter): I love the graphic. But more than that, Mike’s post explains that social media is really about using social channels appropriately to communicate and converse — and as an extension of that, you might just end up being able to sell something. It’s really not that hard!
How Big Brands Can Start Testing Social Media (Conversation Agent): It’s really not that hard to get into social media marketing. It just requires a small shift in mindset.
Why Social Media is Scary (Steve Radick): Why is social media scary? There are challenges to be overcome by junior employees, developers, managers, and even senior leadership. Steve Radick tackles them all in this post.
The ABCs of Online Networking (Your Job Stop): I love Joanna Lord’s article — every single letter of the alphabet has an application in online networking. Don’t overlook these — at least consider them!
What Social Media is and What Social Media is Not (Louis Gray): So many people don’t get what social media is. Mike saves the day by straightening them out.
Is it Too Late to Catch Up? (Seth Godin): Seth Godin suggests ideas that will make social media slowly work for you as an organization.
Creating Your Social Media Plan (Outspoken Media): This good primer talks about securing your brand, setting metrics, knowing who you are, setting a presence, engaging, and assessing success.
6 Steps for Creating a Social Media Roadmap and Plan (Green Marketing 2.0): Lorna Li writes very introductory post on what social media is and what you can do with it with some great insights.
A Corporate Guide for Social Media (Forbes): Forbes actually gets it when it comes to social media strategy in the workplace. Have a read and see for yourself.
20 Ways to Drive Leads Through Social Media (Kyle Lacy): Here are some of the things you can do to start seeing some movement in this thing they call “social media marketing.”
10 Tips for Social Media Marketers (PR Squared): Todd Defren tells you how to jump into social media marketing. What can you do today?
How to Create Measurable Objectives (Altitude Branding): We’ve talked about goals and strategies as it relates to social media marketing, but let’s break them down even further.

Social Media: Implementation and Execution

7 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing Campaigns Fail, and How to Fix them (Stuntdubl): Todd Malicoat never blogs, but when he does, he writes great posts like this suggesting that if your social media marketing campaign is failing, you may have had the wrong strategies in place. Good thing he proposes how to fix them also!
Two Approaches: Shotgun vs. Laser (Web Strategist): There are two (of many) approaches you can take in your social media strategy. Which approach best suits you?
How to Make Social Media Work for Non-Consumer Brands (Mashable): This is a good B2B social media article which is chock full of examples.
Ways to Be Human at a Distance (Chris Brogan): Chris Brogan always talks about how businesses can be human again. So what are they to do? He breaks this article into some of the basics of presence, how to converse, how to add multimedia to those conversations, and the topics of conversation.
How to Manage Successful Social Media Promotions (Mashable): How can you get feedback from social channels to offer exclusive deals to your followers on social media communities? Read this Mashable guide.
How to Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet in Any Topic (ReadWriteWeb): Marshall Kirkpatrick writes an amazing guide on how you can find thought leaders in any industry.
The 12 Step Social Media Program for Traditional Marketers (HubSpot): Here are a few things agencies looking to replace different pieces of their business with social media can do.
10 Creative Contests Powered by Social Media (Mashable): You can use social media to do many things: build community, make business decisions, and more. Let a contest help make these ideas a reality.

Social Media: Small Business

Why Small is the New Big in Social Media Marketing (Jonathan Fields): Jonathan Fields explains why small businesses have a real advantage over large ones when it comes to biting the social media bullet. This is a great read.
5 Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses (Mashable): Here are five techniques proposed by Samir Balwani that go beyond the mere social media presence, including contests.
How to Promote a Small Business Website (Small Business Trends): This article isn’t totally social media focused, but it’s part of it. If you want to market a small business website, social is just part of your overall marketing mix.

Hiring for Social Media

How to Evaluate Social Media Street Cred (Logic+Emotion): Do you know if that person is able to handle a social media marketing initiative? How omnipresent is he? How well-versed is she? David Armano suggests to study out the candidate first; they shouldn’t just be focused on Twitter, for example.
25 Signs You’ve Got a Strong Social Media Consultant or Agency (The Buzz Bin): Beth Harte and Geoff Livingston explain that social media consultants need to know a lot more than about the basic tools out there.
Why You Shouldn’t Trust Social Media to SEO Consultants (Social Media Explorer): The fact that a few in the SEO community have a narrow approach with regard to social media engagement troubles me.
10 Questions to Evaluate a Social Media “Expert” (Conversation Marketing): Well, how did you fare in this quiz?
I’d Like to See a Social Media Consultant or Agency That… (Direct Marketing Observations): I really liked Marc Meyer’s post here. It was actually how he and I built up a relationship.
25 Tips to Choosing a Social Media Consultant (Kyle Lacy): How do you find a social media consultant? They might want to pass this test with flying colors.
Hiring for Social Media: What I’d Look For (Altitude Branding): Amber Naslund has a great series on good and bad approaches for social media job description and tops it off with what she’d look for if she were to hire for the position.

Social Media: Measurement and ROI

Measurement Strategies for 5 Social Media Goals (PR Communications): John Cass talks about the various goals you might get through social media and the various ways to measure these goals.
Are We Too Worried with Finding the ROI of Social Media? (The Viral Garden): What are big brand saying about the ROI of social media? Check Mack Collier’s post to find out.
100 Ways to Measure Social Media (Inside the Marketers Studio/David Berkowitz): Who said you can’t measure social media?
Social Media Metrics: What We Need to Track Sales (Samir Balwani): Samir Balwani writes a great post on some of the ways you get ROI from social media.
Measuring Social Media ROI: Does Size Matter? (Mark Hayward): Mark Hayward shows the ROI of social media. With a plan, you can measure effectiveness of SM.
Social Media: Who Can Show Us the Real Value? (Econsultancy): I like the measurements this article provides. The Online Consumer Engagement Value report idea is a good one.

Social Media: General

Web Promoters: What Qualities Make Up the Effective Ones? (The Future Buzz): Adam Singer writes an excellent piece on the qualities that make up the most popular “power users” of the social web — that is, those individuals whose content people want to consume always.
11 Ways to Lose Friends and Followers Online (Social Media Rockstar): This reminds me of my social media etiquette post; there are just so many things you can do that will not win you any friends on social networks. Brett Borders explores the behavioral triggers that don’t win you any new friends at all.
The A-Z of Social Media for Brands (Econsultancy): They say it’s “social media for brands.” I say it’s “social media for everyone.”
Is Social Media Overrated? (Samir Balwani): This post serves as a reminder that social media is just one part of the marketing mix, and you still need to strategize and allocate resources intelligently. What is social media about? At the end of the day, it’s about real connections to consumers. (No, it’s not about the tools!)
10 Ways to Be a Great Social Media User (Search Engine Journal): Vince Blackham writes a great post on Search Engine Journal about how to be a great social media user, with tips such as contributing, diversifying your efforts, being real, being meaningful, and more.
Experts Talk About Social Media Training (Samir Balwani): Samir has a great interview on the background on social media marketing with 5 experts. (Note: I was interviewed. Normally I don’t self-promote in this roundup, but the quotes are good, and Jason Falls, who was featured, is one of my role models.)
Social Media Tips for Optimizing Time Spent by Marketers (Online Marketing Blog): Social media takes time, but yes, you can optimize it with tips from Adam Singer.
Answers to Social Media Questions You Should Know (Online Marketing Blog): Here are some great questions and answers from Lee Odden on the typical questions you face in social media marketing.
The Social Media Conversion Scale (Logic+Emotion): David Armano provides a graphical chart showing the various stages of social media acceptance. Where are you on the list?
The Hardest Things to Teach Your Clients About Social Media Marketing (10e20): A collaborative list of what things you should or shouldn’t expect of social media marketing.
The Seven Deadly Sins of Social Media (Search Engine Journal): I love how Jennifer Horowitz equates social media with the 7 sins. She has some great comparisons.
23 Social Media Marketing Tips from Dell, Comcast, HP, Wells Fargo, Best Buy, General Mills, Ford, UPS, Home Depot, Cirque du Soleil (Online Marketing Blog): Lee Odden takes advice from the best minds in social media who have worked in the corporate world. This is a fantastic interview!
The Real Lesson in the Yelp User Review Lawsuit (Nine by Blue): The bottom line is that people need to realize that they can’t control the message. The best solution is to proactively address the situation and make it work for you.
5 People Who Broke the Rules of Social Media and Succeeded (Mashable): Real success stories and the experiences learned is the subject of this article.
Which Social Media Channels Should You Be Using? (The Jordan Rules): This is a great chart and article on the best social media channels for both B2B and B2C companies.
Share This or Else! What Makes People Share Content? (Samir Balwani): What prompts people to share content — and how does one capitalize on this? Samir discusses human psychology and explains how this correlates to content that is shareable.

Twitter

Twitter, the Most Important Website Since Google (97th Floor): Yes, Twitter is that important. Chris Bennett features some great parallels in his article.
Twitter, Customer Service, and Good Brand Management (Conversation Agent): Valeria Maltoni writes a great primer to why Twitter is important for customer service, but then goes a step further and tells you what tools you can use to monitor your brand (and some that cost money and let you respond).
A Twitter Basics Primer (The Buzz Bin): When you use Twitter for marketing or whatnot, you should consider why you intend to use it and what you plan on getting out of it. This is a basic article but goes into great depth.
Who Should Tweet? (Samir Balwani): Samir talks about the pros and cons of Tweeting by company representatives, from the CEO to a brand. He suggests a “character” to be the face of the brand on Twitter, sort of like a mascot.
8 Twitter Networking Tips: From Online to In-the-Flesh (Twitip): Whether it’s getting instant responses or meeting people in real life via tweetup, some Twitter tips are not to be forgotten.
The Ultimate Guide to Everything Twitter (Webdesigner Depot): This is a crazy in-depth guide on Twitter, but it’s already outdated since there have been a lot more news and apps that have come out since. Still, though, you can tell that there has been in immense amount of work put into it, and it definitely deserves recognition.
You’re On Twitter, Now What? (Conversation Agent): How do you want to use Twitter? There are many goals you can achieve with the site.
4 Real Offline Uses of Twitter (Dream Systems Media): Twitter marketing is happening online, of course, but it’s happening offline too. Just a few weeks ago, I saw a Twitter decal on a car. It was rather cool. Here are four other ways people are promoting their Twitter accounts.
How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Online Business (here.org.uk): This is a nice beginner business guide of the various things you can do in order to be seen as a credible and useful Twitter user.
101 Tweets on How to Use Twitter (SEO 2.0): Tad offers 101 ways to use Twitter in retweetable format. Tips include being active and tweeting daily, limiting using Twitter for broadcasting, focusing on company-wide social media policies, and more.
Connecting with Customers on Twitter: 9 Tips for Success (10e20): Jake writes a great piece on what you should be doing on Twitter in order to be successful.
Top 10 Reasons Your Company Should Not Tweet (BL Ochman’s Blog): Not everyone will be able to use Twitter. Here are 10 reasons why you as a company entity should avoid it.
How to Integrate Social Media into Product Marketing (Social Computing Magazine): This is a nice detailed guide on how you can market products via social media. (P.S. Sending products to bloggers helps too!)
The Tao of Tweeting (Mashable): Good art via Twitter is not that hard to achieve. Soren Gordhamer shows you how.
Breakdown: 4 Ways Brands are Earning — and Buying — Followers on Twitter (Web Strategist): Jeremiah Owyang explores the Twitter space to see how followers are being earned (or not) on Twitter.
The 10 Twitter Commandments (Econsultancy): Patricio Robles says that doing these sins is like shooting yourself in the foot.
How to Use Twitter to Find Local Blog Content (Hyperlocalblogger): Twitter can bring you local traffic, so use it wisely to build friends and a following in your neighborhood.
137 Small Business Twitter Tips (Small Business Trends): One hundred and thirty seven people were asked to offer their best Twitter tips, and this has been aggregated and put in a document (PDF, but not linked to this page) for all to see.
From Corporate to Personal: The Four Types of Social Media Profiles (Web Strategist): What kinds of brand profiles do you find on Twitter?
62 Ways to Use Twitter for Business (WebWorkerDaily): Be it credibility, growing your network, or marketing (and then some), this article is a good way to inspire yourself to grow your business Twitter presence.
8 Lessons Learned as a Brand on Twitter (tins/Rick Klau): Rick Klau works for Google. He talks about what he has learned by maintaining a brand presence on Twitter: specifically, Google’s Blogger account.
Make Tweet Love: Top Tips for Building Twitter Relationships (Brian Solis): This is an excellent compendium of tips to get the most out of Twitter, both by Brian Solis and then his own Twitter friends.

Facebook

How to Create Rich HTML Tabs on Your Facebook Page (10e20): I know Jesse just contributed an awesome article on this blog but Victor’s guide here is also pretty good.
Why You Need to Create a Facebook Fan Page (Quick Sprout): Neil Patel decided to build a Facebook fan page that was interactive, using it as a case study for why it would benefit you as a business to maintain one and what would be necessary to make it engaging.
10 Key SEO Strategies Every Facebook Owner Should Know (Inside Facebook): We all know Facebook tips and tricks, but did we know we can marry the schools of thought of Facebook optimization and SEO? Let’s dive into Justin Smith’s tips.
How to Build Facebook Community (Socialbrite): If you’re looking to meet some goals with Facebook engagement, you have to actually be able to engage your audience and participate. This article presents fourteen tips for achieving this goal, most of which are common sense but which may inspire you to get more active.
How to Win Facebook Friends and Influence People (All Facebook): Nick O’Neill’s post on how to become a Facebook power user (read: genuine) is great.
The Beginner’s Guide to Advertising on Facebook (Jonathan Volk): If you’re looking to advertise on Facebook, be it for your product for via affiliate marketing (in Jonathan’s case), take tips from this guy. He makes 6 digits a MONTH.
How to Violate Facebook Etiquette and Piss Off Your Friends (All Facebook): Sure, there’s no right or wrong way to use social networks, but there are still socially acceptable limits.
Are Your Facebook Fans Truly Engaged? (Conversation Agent): Valeria Maltoni shares the findings of a Frozen Frogs study with regards to engaging Facebook followers. It’s good to know that there are ways to bring Facebook community closer together.

10 Ways to Use LinkedIn to Find a Job (How to Change the World): Thought you couldn’t get a job on LinkedIn? Think again!
10 Tips to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile (SEOptimise): This is a beginner level LinkedIn howto, but it’s amazing to see how many people actually do not follow the basic rules of engagement for LinkedIn!
Top 10 Reasons Why Your LinkedIn Question is Getting Mostly Pitches (Conversation Agent): Valeria Maltoni writes a great piece about why your LinkedIn community involvement may not be so great for you when you start getting an abundance of pitches. What can you do differently?
7 Ways to Get More Out of LinkedIn (Mashable): Taking advantage of the professional network isn’t hard. Here are 7 ways to get the most out of it.
How to Ensure Your LinkedIn Profile is Effective (Web Worker Daily): Meryl Evans has a good writeup on how to optimize the features of LinkedIn to make a pretty spiffy looking profile.

Leveraging Other Social Media Sites

How to Get Media Attention and Traffic Out of BusinessExchange (Small Business Trends): Not many people know about BusinessWeek’s Business Exchange, but Anita does, and she explains how you can get visibility out of it.
10 Tips to Get the Most Out of Posterous (Make Tech Easier): Posterous is the new lifestreaming app. Shevonne tells you how to actually use it and take advantage of its features.
10 Useful Tips to Using FriendFeed (Make Tech Easier): FriendFeed is still going strong, and its community is pretty powerful. Shevonne Polastre tells you how to make the most of it. Big emphasis on point #9. That’s the way to maximize the potential of FriendFeed.
How I Use FriendFeed (Webomatica): If you wanted to know a little more about the potential of FriendFeed, check out Jason Kaneshiro’s post.
FriendFeed Groups – The Fast Track to Content and Community (Knowthenetwork.com): How can you use FriendFeed groups to your advantage? Easy.
Tools to Analyze Delicious Tags, Bookmarks, and URLs (Search Engine Journal): I normally do not put toolbox posts in my yearly roundup because I look for posts with actionable ideas to be put to use. However, how many of you actually knew that Delicious has tools to help you get the most out of it?
3 Easy Tips for Improving the Potency of Your StumbleUpon Account (Search Engine Journal): This post by Ryan Caldwell explains how you can improve your StumbleUpon account, but I’d argue that the information could be applied to other social bookmarking sites or social networks as well.
Getting Links AND Content from Flickr (Search Engine Land): Using Flickr to build content isn’t so hard once you get inspiration from this article which features a case study and suggested scenarios that you can use Flickr with to help.
4 Tools to Track Flickr (Search Engine Journal): If you are tasked with monitoring Flickr for the purposes of listening to the conversation or finding out statistics on the photos you’ve uploaded, you should check out these tools to make your job a whole lot easier.
6 Tips for Getting the Most out of Foursquare (Mashable): Foursquare is new for many, so learn it and soak it in while it’s still hot.

Blogging

13 Tips for Marketing Your Business with Your Blog (Problogger): Most businesses have one goal with their blog: marketing. Darren Rowse gives you 13 ways to do just that.
25 Things I Wish I’d Known When I Started Blogging (Web Distortion): Paul Anthony (@webireland) writes an incredible high-level blogging guide, which, if followed, will definitely bring you ahead of the competition. Guaranteed.
Do You Make These 10 Mistakes When You Blog? (Michael Hyatt): This is a good article on the common pitfalls facing bloggers, from not posting enough to posting too much and everything in between.
Blog Post Ideas that Always Generate Buzz (The Future Buzz): In case you needed to be inspired even more to write good blog posts, Adam Singer covers even more angles for the aspiring blogger.
A Crash Course in Comments (Chris Brogan): So many people don’t value the connections that can be had if you write meaningful comments on blogs.
How to Find the Best Free Images/Photos/Graphics for Your Blog Posts (Smackdown!): Some really great public domain image search tools are reviewed in this article. Plus, of course, there’s Creative Commons licensed images too. And I’ll add another favorite: everystockphoto.com.
10 Things to Do Before Launching Your Blog (Small Business Trends): Maybe everyone reading this already has blogs. Maybe you don’t. If you’re about to start, read this guide. If you’re starting a new one later on, read this guide.
How to Write a Review (Blogging Tips): This is a different kind of blogging post, one that pertains to writing reviews of products. If you want to write a complete review of something, be sure to follow the guidelines highlighted in this post.
100 Ways to Find Ideas for Your Blog Posts (LifeSnips): If you’ve lost blogging inspiration, Steve Aitchison will bring you out of the blogging slumps. You can’t really run out of blogging ideas after reading this article unless the motivation isn’t within you.
How to Make (and Keep) Your Blog Content in Demand (The Future Buzz): Adam Singer explains how you can keep your blog in demand, making it referenced and looked at regularly.
101 Ways to Promote a New Blog (Daily Blog Tips): Some of these ideas are rather unconventional, but I like ‘em.
19 Reasons Why You Should Blog and Not Just Tweet (The Future Buzz): Everyone Tweets nowadays, but there are reasons why you should blog instead. Some of Adam Singer’s points include demonstrating passion, getting full analytics, limits of 140 characters, and being in full control of the content and the website.
How to Make Blogging Work for Your Business (Wordtracker): This is a great guide by Chris Garrett into what blogs can do for you and how you can build your blog to be successful for your business.
Suggested Guide for Writing Effective Blog Posts (PMA Media Group): Blogging isn’t always just about opening a “new post” link and typing your thoughts. For some, it’s just not that simple. You might want to start with ways to inspire yourself and include some SEO keyword ranking tips as well.
10 Steps to Creating an Authority Blog (David Walker): Bloggers, take note: the presentation and the content of your blog is everything. There’s more than that, though, and David Walker walks you though it.
5 Ways to Increase Your Blog’s Search Traffic (Search Engine People): In Glen Allsopp’s guest post for Search Engine People, he says that you can increase your blog’s search engine traffic by applying some tactics to old (already published) blog posts.
5 Ways to Turn Blog Comments into Conversations (SEO Scoop): Blog comments should be ongoing conversations, but how do you do that? Barry Welford explores ways to make blog comments more engaging.
The Complete Guide to Video Blogging (Mashable): Ever wanted to be a video blogger? This in-depth Mashable article by Leah Betancourt talks about the roots of video blogging and how to get started.
How to Use Curation to Make Your Blog Better (Influential Marketing): I love how Rohit Bhargava compares PostSecret to success in blogging. He offers great tips here.
Starting a Blog? These 50 Lessons Will Help You Succeed (The Future Buzz): Using data gathered from the Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2009, Adam Singer gives solid actionable tips on how you can start a blog and why it’s important that you do.
22 Reasons for You to Blog (Gloson): The youngest person who will ever make it to my top posts is totally Gloson. He’s 11 and gives you 22 reasons why you should blog.
8 Tips for Building Community on Your Blog (Problogger): If you really have a strong blog, you have potential to also grow a strong community. But how? Darren Rowse provides the insights.
How to Create a High Quality Blog (Dan Blank): Pretty pictures and solid advice make this blog post a winner for anyone — companies and people — looking to craft a high quality blog.
A Short List of Content Elements for Your Consideration (Broadcasting Brain): Before you publish your blog, ask yourself the following questions. Due diligence, my friends.
How to Make Your Corporate Blog More Social (Social Media Explorer): Dan Zarrella shares small ideas but smart ones that can make your corporate blog a lot more approachable.

Reputation Management

Top 10 Ways to Save Your Online Reputation in 2009 (Small Business Trends): Business need to step up a notch and be a lot more personable to avoid a reputation management fiasco. Most companies need to start by simply acknowledging each and every incoming request from a customer as alluded to in #2.
Using Social Media For Reputation Management (DirJournal): Some of the tips here aren’t discussed in other articles, such as focusing on video and optimizing for local search.
How to Build a Reputation Monitoring Dashboard (aimClear): This is an incredibly huge post by Marty Weintraub on how to set up a reputation management monitoring dashboard, from doing the keyword research to finding additional keywords to monitor to actually building it. It has lots of screenshots and good actionable information that you can get started with today.
A Common Search Reputation Management Timeline (Search Cowboys): To summarize this post, if you don’t act to prevent reputation management issues, you’re doomed in the search world.
Be Proactive With Your Reputation Management (Vertical Measures): My book talks about how maintaining social media profiles can help you with your reputation management issues. This post echoes that sentiment and provides specific social networks that you should establish your presence on.
How Companies Should Respond to Negative Reviews (Outspoken Media): You shouldn’t always let criticism sit. Sometimes you can respond. What would you respond to, though? How should you do it?
The Dos and Don’ts of Online Reputation Management (Search Engine Journal): This article is a simple easy list to follow for reputation management issues. Yes, you can push down negative search engine results, but you need a plan. You can get some direction on that plan by reading this article.
5 Ways Negative Reviews are Good for Business (Small Business SEM): Matt McGee explains why negative reviews aren’t too bad after all. Just make sure you don’t get mentioned on Consumerist or Boing Boing. (Of course, if you get there, it’s probably because your customers exhausted all avenues, which you should’ve been abreast of earlier!)
Online Reputation Management in the Future (WebProNews): Chris Crum interviews several experts about the possible diminishing impact of reputation management services — that is, when everyone has a reputation management issue, is it going to be less of a concern?
The Online Reputation Management Guide (Outspoken Media): Outspoken Media has produced an incredible online reputation guide. Rhea Drysdale talks about the nuances of assessing, building, tracking, and monitoring your reputation online.

Content Development/Marketing

Writing Content for the Buyer’s Decision Journey (Conversation Agent): Valeria Maltoni talks about the buying funnel and gives good examples of companies that do it well.
10 Secrets for Creating Viral Content (The Buzz Bin): It’s all about others — NOT yourself.
The Doctor McCoy Guide to Healing Sick Content (Copyblogger): What do Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy of Star Trek and good writers have in common? Mark Dykeman offers a few parallels that just might get you thinking of your article-writing (or blogging) strategy.
Beyond Headlines: How to Get Your Audience to Read Every Word (Copyblogger): Dave Navarro’s article on Copyblogger explains how to entice an audience and force them to read every word. The idea is to communicate similar tastes, triggering a sense of need, and promising valuable information.
30 Simple Ways of Improving Bounce Rate and Conversion Rate (SEOptimise): This article has some great ways to convert visitors into members, buyers, or regular users of your site. Are you listening?
12 Types of Content Strategies SEOs Should Know and Use (Search Engine People): If you want to build traffic and links to your site, you might want to get some ideas from Jeff Quipp. Hint: this type of post is in the article, but that’s not really why I do it. At the end of the day, it’s great to provide a valuable resource for me and for you!
9 Strategies for Finding Incredible Content (Search Engine Journal): This post on Search Engine Journal actually proposes some pretty unknown sites that you can leverage for article content inspiration.
Practical Guide to Finding Link Bait Inspiration (SEO Smarty): Ann Smarty presents a pretty good guide for content inspiration, but not just any type of content: her guide gives you ideas on finding great link bait topics.
The Psychology of a Linkbait (Search Engine Journal): Loren Baker paraphrases this article by saying, “You can increase your chances of linking success by remembering one simple rule : the best links come from real human beings. Here are ways to appeal to those real human emotions in linkbaiting.”
Why Most Get Content Marketing Wrong (The Future Buzz): It’s a matter of formatting your content properly. If you miss the ball, you will fail.
Top 10 Reasons Why Your Content Marketing Strategy Fails (Conversation Agent): Might as well try to get it right, right? Let Valeria help.
The 10 Commandments of Content Marketing (Social Media Explorer): I like Kat French. She explains why your content marketing strategy might just not work in a nice list format with good descriptions.
49 Creative Ways You Can Profit from Content Marketing (Copyblogger): To be ahead of the game, you should be creative about it. Here are 49 things you can think about right now.

Web Development

The “Just Create Compelling and Useful Content” Lie (Sebastian’s Pamphlets): Sebastian highlights the elements of a successful website. Hint: it’s not just great content alone.
Things to Ask Before You Redo Your Website (Seth Godin): Seth asks thought-provoking questions that are to be considered in your next website redesign.

Video

Online Video for Business: The Three Types of Business Video (ReelSEO): We’ve heard about viral videos, but that’s only one type of business video. There are two other types of videos, according to Daniel Sevitt. He goes into each type by explaining what they are and providing metrics for success.
How to Succeed on YouTube (Search Engine Marketing Group): If you’ve been looking for some good ideas for how to achieve viral success on YouTube, read what Sheena Melwani says from experience.
5 Important Web Video Lessons for Small Business Owners (Mashable/OPEN Forum): How are you going to make your video stick? Josh Catone highlights 5 videos and explains the lessons learned.
How Video Promotion Launched a Rap Career: A Complete Guide (Shoemoney): This article might be specific to a rapper’s evolving career, but there are general video promotion ideas in here as well.
34 Ways to Use YouTube for Business (WebWorkerDaily): These tips are broken down into expertise, advertising, and customer service.

SEO: Strategy

The SEM Toolbox: 79 Tools and Tips Every Search Marketer Should Have (SEO Contrarian): Ari Ozick provides a list of the best tools ever needed to do your job as a search engine marketer. Categories include backup tools, backlink discovery tools, link management tools, competitive research tools, keyword tools, domain tools, and a whole lot more.
SEO Hierarchy of Needs (Bruce Clay Blog): What step are you on when it comes to your SEO needs? What must you do next? This article by Virginia Nussey features a graphic that mimics Maslow’s hierarchy with an SEO spin.
Search Engine Ranking Factors (SEOmoz): Every year, SEOmoz comes out with a list of search engine ranking factors, which is incredibly valuable if you do anything remotely related to SEO or search engine marketing. Of course, it’s not perfect since the algorithm is kept under wraps, but this information has been guesstimated by trial and error.
Big List of Search Engine Ranking Factors (Huomah): David Harry revisits the discussion of the factors that he believes affects search engine rankings. And since he just came out with the recent training course SEO Dojo, which has been an incredible success, it’s a good idea to read this and listen.
What Aspects of SEO Should You Be Spending Most of Your Time On? (SEO Book): Peter Da Vanzo gives a good beginner’s guide for how to get into SEO for your new website.
Google is the Other Woman: The Relationship Algorithm (Foot in Mouth): This article uses an interesting parallel to judge how Google judges your site for algorithmic preference, but I actually would contend that all search engines typically follow the same rules of thumb. I love the analogies!
Future-Proof Your SEO (Huomah): Here’s an article which will actually likely be outdated in a few years, but I thought it was still good enough for the purposes of understanding the search landscape today with regards to what works and what doesn’t in search engine optimization.
The 100+ Ranking Variables Google Uses, and Why You Shouldn’t Care (SEO Book): In January, Aaron Wall predicted that search marketing success will come from engaging people. This is absolutely starting to take hold, especially as people actually talk about their favorite websites and search engines respond in kind. Twitter integration in search results, anyone?
Big Project, Small Budget: Where to Begin Your SEO Campaign (Search Engine Guide): If you are trying to SEO your site, you may want to start thinking about the areas you should put more emphasis on–perhaps because your budget constraints may limit you to only one of these areas.
12 Easy Mistakes that Plague Newcomers to the SEO Field (SEOmoz): Even though this is a basic article on SEO, sometimes even seasoned professionals lose sight of this stuff. You can count on the “reciprocal linking” (read: link exchanges) to be a big mishap in “established SEO firms” from the amount of emails I get with that request daily across all my blogs. UGH
SEO for Large eCommerce Sites (AudetteMedia): Adam Audette is the SEO for Zappos. That means he knows a fair bit about optimizing billion-dollar business websites. He explores the techniques he uses for his big client in this article.
Creating a Sweet High Value Keyword List in 5 Minutes (SEO Book): Aaron Wall shows you how to create a high-value keyword research list in 5 minutes, then features a video on how to actually see what you just did.
5 Free SEO Tools You’re Probably Not Using Yet (Search Engine Marketing Group): Here’s my question. Have you even heard of these yet?
How to Optimize for Conversion in Organic Search Results (Search Engine Land): SEO should be ROI-centric. If that’s not on your agenda, read this article and start thinking along the lines of driving real conversions.
7 Rules for Writing URLs (Small Business SEM): If you do anything related to search engine marketing, understanding the URL structure and how to actually optimize it is important. Matt McGee offers tips on how to do this.
How Using Google AdWords Can Be the Best SEO Tool in Your Arsenal (RedFly Marketing): Dave Davis presents some pretty invaluable information on the potential for Google AdWords to be an incredible asset for search engine optimization. Yes, you read that right.
How to Up Your SEO Income by a Factor of 10 (SEO Book): Ari Ozick’s guest post for SEO Book is a darn good one – you won’t know until you test. It’s really that simple.
SEO Best Practices: New Policies Based on Updated Correlation Data (SEOmoz): It’s time to start reevaluating your SEO tactics. SEOmoz has looked at what works and reported on their findings.
5 SEO Essentials: Charting Effective Search Engine Optimization (Online Marketing Blog): Dana Larson’s approach toward effective SEO is great. Most people forget about that in such a social media centric world.
6 Key Tactics for Organic Success (Search Engine Guide): Jen Laycock provides six great tactics for organic success: keywords, content, code, optimization, links, and patience. Yes, patience is a big one!

SEO: Information

Small Business SEO: Costs, Expectations, Realities (Small Business SEM): This isn’t a “SEO how to” article. We always see enough of those. What this is is a good article by Matt McGee on what you should expect when you actually buy SEO consulting.
5 Tips for Avoiding Deceptive SEO Companies (Small Business Trends): Since we’re talking about SEO, we might as well tell you what to look for so that you do NOT do business with some of these companies. Look for reputable companies if you ever need to focus on search engine optimization. Your rankings depend on it.
Setting Up an SEO Shop Overnight! (High Rankings): Jill Whalen rants about the “SEO shops” that give SEO the snake oil bad name. There actually are good SEOs out there.
8 Short Steps to Forecast and Estimate SEO ROI (SEO ROI): Want ROI for your SEO efforts? Gab Goldenberg offers 8 steps on how exactly that can be achieved.
You Don’t Need SEO to Rank in Google (Sugarrae): Rae explains that SEO by itself simply isn’t the key to high rankings. Good content and marketing is really the key; SEO is just a secondary requirement.

Link Building

Get Your Link Building Requests Answered (Dream Systems Media): Matt Siltala writes an incredibly valuable article that answers how to get people to link to you once they’ve already established rapport with your competitors. He also brings in four experts who weigh in on the question.
Why Link Building May Not Work (Best SEO Blog): Sometimes your link building practices won’t work. Michael Martinez explains why beginning about 1/3 of the way down in this article.
How to Get Backlinks (Internet Marketing Techniques and Theories): Leo calls this post “very long.” I think I agree with him.
Secrets of How to Escape the Link Building Trap Now (SEO Theory): If you don’t want to build links, you might pursue these other opportunities to build links that don’t violate any guidelines. There’s also a service review in here for a link building program run by a pretty well known guy in the SEO space.
Buy Text Link Ads with these 101 Sneaky Tips (Search Engine Journal): Gab Goldenberg tries to stay under the radar when buying text links with 101 ideas that hopefully won’t get you caught.
Indispensable Link Building Applications (Wiep.net): Wiep Knol has a toolbox filled to the brim of great link building applications. If you do any link building at all, make sure to familiarize yourself with these applications.
Link Building Techniques, Interactive Agency Approach (Zeta Interactive): I get about 4-5 link building requests across multiple web properties a day. When reading this article, I realize that for 99.9% of these requests, none of these techniques (personalized requests, transparency, knowing the target website, etc.) are employed at all. Is that really so difficult? I guess it is when you outsource link building to interns.
A Big Bunch of Link Building Ideas (Search Engine Land): Debra Mastaler is a link building genius and when she talks, I always listen. In this article, she explores the consequences of actually linking out to other websites and what you can do to build other types of links.
Link Building from A to Z (SEOmoz): Wiep Knol is one of the foremost link building experts and has covered an entire alphabet of ways to get new links.
10 Goals for Link Building Campaigns: Moving Beyond “Get More Links” (Search Engine Land): Garrett French writes a great in-depth guide on how you can build links, suggesting countless tactics and link prospect sources.
Link Building Evaluation Journal (Search Engine Journal): Building links to a website? How could you enhance your link portfolio? Dave Snyder suggests different ideas for different metrics of the link, be them the age of a domain, the anchor text, or the relevant authority of the link page.
10 Link Building and Tracking Tools for SEO (Online Marketing Blog): Got links? Start testing them. This Top Rank Marketing blog post explores ten possible tools from which to do this.
11 Effective, Efficient Ways to Use Limited Time to Build Links (Search Engine Land): If you’re tasked with building links but yet do not know how to manage your time, you might want to read this and follow Debra Mastaler’s suggestions.
Link Mixology: The 12 Kinds of Links Your Site Needs (Michelle MacPhearson): Michelle MacPhearson writes a good point on what kinds of links you should be getting if you intend to market your website.
21 Link Builders Share Advanced Link Building Queries (Search Engine Land): Not all link building tips and tricks have to be Link Building 101. Here are 21 great advanced tactics that can help you get a little more out of link building.

PPC

PPC Advertising Pitfalls: Don’t Just Do What Simon Says (Search Cowboys): Lisa Myers talks about the common pitfalls when engaging in a Google AdWords PPC campaign and explains that most people fall into these because Google AdWords is so easy to set up that many business owners waste money every day.
The Golden Rules of Keyword Research (SEOptimise): Choosing keywords for PPC should not be too difficult, as long as your keywords are relevant, specific, local, smart, sneaky, and flexible. Explanations within.
Top 5 Mistakes Made by PPC Newcomers (Latitude Group): Maybe you’ve decided to go into PPC marketing. If you do, don’t make these mistakes in Google AdWords.
When Pay Per Click is NOT Right for You (Search Engine Journal): PPC? What’s that all about? Brian Carter explains why PPC is an asset and why it might be detrimental for you. If you have no idea what this is and might consider trying it, read this article first.
How to Write PPC Ad Copy (Search Engine People): If you’ve ever done Google AdWords or any other PPC, you know that the best copy is important to drive clickthroughs. Just HOW to optimize those messages is the subject of this article.
6 Habits of Highly Effective PPC Managers (NVI Solutions): If you do any Pay Per Click, you should possess these six traits at the minimum, which include the desire to test and tweak, leveraging your web analytics, and staying informed of policy updates.
Writing Your Best PPC Ads (Search Cowboys): If you’ve ever done Pay Per Click marketing, you might want to follow some of the tips Kate Morris offers on this post.
SEM Training Strategy: Overcoming Common Mistakes (SEO Book): Aaron Wall explains how to maximize your PPC and SEO campaigns.
How to Prevent Competitors from Seeing Your AdWords Ads (Jennifer Slegg): If you are really the competitive type and don’t want your competitors to see your Google AdWords ads, take Jen’s advice and lock ‘em out!
9 Tips to Write Effective Google AdWords Copy (Search Engine Journal): Saad Kamal knows his Google AdWords. Do you?
7 Incredibly Valuable but Underused Free Tools for PPC Marketers (Search Engine Land): Brad Geddes talks about some of the most useful tools to help boost your Pay Per Click campaigns.

Affiliate Marketing

Cut the Fat: Some Quick Tips to Instantly Gain Profit (Jonathan Volk): Jonathan Volk’s gives affiliate marketing tips based on his own trial and error.
Are You Ready for an Affiliate Program? (NVI Solutions): I usually talk about affiliate marketing on the hows of setting it up. But what if you’re a merchant who is considering it? Then read this and see if you’re ready.
The Most Powerful Way to Presell Any Product or Service (Dosh Dosh): Dosh Dosh discusses the way to lure potential buyers into buying your product like all affiliate marketers should really be doing.
PPC Affiliate Marketing 101 (Jonathan Volk): In case you were new to the affiliate game, here’s what you can do to get started with affiliate marketing using Pay Per Click.
Interview with Rae Hoffman AKA Sugarrae (SEO Book): Rae Hoffman talks to Aaron Wall about her success as an affiliate marketer. This interview is pretty damn good.

Analytics

6 Tools Every Google Analytics User Should Have (Unofficial Google Analytics Blog): I’ve never heard of any of these Google Analytics tools before!
Google Analytics Mega Post: 23 Google Analytics Tips and Tweaks (Search Engine People): Google Analytics out of the box is a powerful package. You can tweak output even further, though. To get started, read this article.
The Complete Google Analytics Power User Guide (VKI Studios): This is the most in-depth Google Analytics user guide that I’ve ever seen.
Using Analytics to Measure SEO Success (Search Engine Land): Jill Whalen explains that rankings aren’t good success metrics. Instead, focus on your analytics. Here’s how.
Google Analytics for Local Search (seOverflow): This is how you can use Google Analytics for some great local optimization. This article is choc full of great detail, and while it’s local-focused, there’s good actionable insight for anyone using Google Analytics in some way.

Usability

Is Your Website Easy to Buy From? Tips You Can Test to Improve Your Site’s Checkout Process (Conversion Room): Want to make sales on your website? You better hope it’s usable. Here are some areas you can test to find out if your site is good for the average buyer.
Are You Guilty of Crimes Against Usability? Let the Jury Decide (Search Engine Guide): In this usability blog post, Stoney deGeyter equates your customers with the jury. Business owners should study those juries to find out what judgments they are passing on your site.
Why Usability and SEO Go Hand in Hand (Search Engine Land): Search engines like usable websites, just like people do. It’s in your best interest to appreciate the value of this.

Landing Pages

9 Effective Tips for a Better Landing Page (Search Engine Journal): Saad Kamal offers good tips for great landing pages.
30+ Principles to a Better Landing Page Design (Landing Page Optimization): You’ve read about the types of landing pages, but how do you actually design one? You can follow the tactics tried by people who already have found success.
Landing Page Types (Lyris HQ): This article presents a concise list of landing page types, from PPC landing pages to transactional landing pages.
7 Tips to Increasing Landing Page Conversions (Search Engine Journal): Lauren Vaccarello explains how to craft the content on your landing page to actually see conversions. One great tip: avoid marketing speak and use simple English instead.

Local/Mobile Search

Mobile Search Guide (cellphones.org): Now more and more people are using their cell phones and searching on their favorite search engine. My phone is old as heck but even I do it. But if you’re a website creator, have you optimized for mobile search? If not, perhaps you should, since your visitors might end up going elsewhere.
Local Search Ranking Factors (David Mihm): Just like there are SEO ranking factors, there are also local search ranking factors. David Mihm gives you an exhaustive list of them for your perusal.
A Closer Look at the Local Search Data Providers (getListed.org): Any local business presence will want to make sure its information is accurate online. Take a look at the providers listed to figure out where your information needs to be updated.
Blocking and Tackling: 10 Fundamentals of Local SEO (Search Engine Land): David Mihm, our resident local expert, provides a basic list of what you should do as a local business to get ranked in search engines.

Personal Branding

How to Start or Start Over Building Your Personal Brand (Skelliewag): Skellie talks about why a brand is important and how you can do it.
How to Build Your Personal Brand on YouTube (Mashable): Dan Schawbel is a personal branding expert and shows you how to build a strong YouTube brand. Really, this is a pretty good general YouTube how-to article, but he ties it into the personal branding element, which works for me.
SEO Tips for Building Your Personal Brand (Search Engine Land): I don’t really consider these “SEO” tips, as they’re more social media centric. But they’re great for building your brand, that’s for sure.
7 Ways to Land Great Consulting Work While in Between Jobs (Personal Branding Blog): How to build your brand when finding a job, according to Monica O’Brien!
What a Personal Brand is NOT (Tom Peters): It is NOT a perk, among other things. You have the privilege of a personal brand. What are you going to make of it?
50 Ways to Make Limoncello When You’ve Been Laid Off (Conversation Agent): Valeria Maltoni highlights an incredibly inspirational video and gives you some great ideas to build your brand when you’ve been laid off — and I’ll add when you’re not. You should always be building your personal brand.

Building a Brand/Brand Evangelism

Checklist: Develop a Successful Advocacy Program (Web Strategist): Jeremiah covers some of the other aspects of a brand ambassador program, detailing the nuances and the like.
19 Presence Management Chores You Could Do Every Day (Chris Brogan): Chris Brogan shows how you can be involved in the conversations around you — tangibly.
What Do You Love? (Cranial Soup): This article is about marketing coming from the perspective of the consumer. Consumers have a duty to market their favorite products or risk losing them from store shelves. Marketers should do this for their favorite products for free. I would. (Call it brand evangelism if you will.)
How to Create Advocates for Your Business (Logic+Emotion): Brand evangelism. Customer Advocacy. It’s all the same. Now how do you actually get there?

Public Relations

The State of PR, Marketing, and Communications: You are the Future (Brian Solis): This is the longest “blog post” in the history of the world but it is one of the most brilliant things I have read in all of 2009.
PR Gone Bad: How to Anger Bloggers and Hose Your Client (Jonathan Fields): This story by Jonathan was so good that I even wrote a story about it which was published to Brian Solis’s blog as well.
Shift Your PR from Push to Pull (The Future Buzz): Why should you move to a pull PR strategy? Adam Singer gives you the lowdown.
3 Steps for Effectively Using Social Media for PR (Online Marketing Blog): Social is everywhere, and you can use it in your public relations efforts. In fact, you really should.
25 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a PR Firm (Idea Grove): These questions test competency, prioritization, cost-efficiency, and compatibility.
How to Use Social Media in Your PR Pitch (Mashable): Interaction is key, according to Susan Payton.
The Art of the Pitch (Jonathan Volk): Want to pitch a busy blogger? Follow these steps. This is a short read with good insights.
How to Woo a Blogger (and get coverage) (Outspoken Media): This is an excellent guidebook into what you should to in order to get a blogger to talk about you. If the proposed content fits the blogger’s audience and you follow these rules, you very well may see more mentions of your clients’ products/services in blog posts.
How to Write Effective Press Releases in the Age of Twitter (OPEN Forum): It’s not really just the “age of Twitter” – it’s the “age of social.” That said, where’s your multimedia? Is it in your pitch?
A Poor Man’s Guide to Finding Influencers (The Buzz Bin): If you’re not going to buy a Cision subscription to find the bloggers and people interested in talking about you, try this guide to get you to locating who to reach out to.

Community Management/Engagement

5 Myths of Community Management (Altitude Branding): This is a great post on what a community manager REALLY does. Newsflash: it’s not only about walking the halls of social media sites.
Community Manager Responsibilities and Goals (Connie Bensen): Connie writes a great post about community management (revised from July 2008).
Social Media Community Manager Job Description (aimClear): Here’s an “official description” for a social media community manager.
Community Engagement (The Buzz Bin): Geoff Livingston talks about engagement as discussed in his book, Now is Gone, and how it has evolved in the last 1.5 years.
How to Kick Start a Community: An Ongoing List (Web Strategist): Jeremiah suggests some great ways to build a real online community in your little neck of the woods.
10 Rules for Increasing Community Engagement (Mashable): A big point that Leah Betancourt makes here is the emphasis on user generated content (UGC). Other important points are identifying and nurturing power users and welcoming newbies.

General Online Marketing

Definitive Guide to Word of Mouth Marketing (Samir Balwani): Samir Balwani writes an awesome guide on word of mouth marketing, broken down and categorized into sections (why it’s important, elements of WOMM, web influence, what elements facilitate sharing, campaign tracking, and more!)
How to Send a Personal Email (Seth Godin): Seth Godin writes about email etiquette. My favorite? #14 (especially due to all the LinkedIn spammers who have been targeting me as of late).
6 Powerful Principles of Persuasion for Influential Internet Marketing (Winning the Web): In a post emphasizing the parallels of the book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert Cialdini, Gyutae Park applies these principles to Internet Marketing and explains why you need to apply them in any online marketing campaign.
6 Buzzworthy Laws All Internet Marketers Should Understand (The Future Buzz): Do you know what the long tail means? Probably. How about Metcalfe’s Law or The Streisand Effect?
11 Ways to Influence People Online and Make Them Take Action (Dosh Dosh): If you’re marketing to individuals online, you should target your messaging to the three brains of the human body. Don’t understand what I just said? Read the article.
6 Fool-Proof Steps to Make More Money With Your Website (Dosh Dosh): Dosh Dosh wrote another great article on how to monetize your most popular web pages. This is great for anyone, from the affiliate marketer to the SEO to the small online shop.
“Don’t Put Your Eggs in One Basket” is Bad Advice for Internet Marketers (Winning the Web): While I argue that you must not spread yourself too thin, I actually am going to take Gyutae’s advice on this one.
3 Reasons Why it Pays to Go Niche (Literally) (Winning the Web): Gyutae Park explains that some markets are saturated. You’ll be more successful if you focus on niche markets instead. (Good luck starting a brand new social media blog tomorrow!)
11 Internet Marketing Skills that Should be Second Nature (Conversation Marketing): Are you well versed in internet marketing? Being knowledgeable in social media doesn’t cut it. You should also know these 11 tips as suggested by Ian Lurie.
Social Impacts Every Customer Touchpoint (Web Strategist): This article touches upon the different elements of online advertising (and then some) and highlights market maturity and brand impact.
Internet Marketing Isn’t a Buffet: Why You Need Quality Traffic Over Quantity (Winning the Web): Quality is more important than quantity, and Gyutae explains why this is the case.
10 Things You Can Do in the Next 60 Days to Market Your Business and Close More Sales (Small Business Trends): This article was talking about how to end 2009, but since you’re probably reading it for the first time now, how about using these to begin 2010?

Everything Else Under the Sun

Being Socially Aware: Because a Smile and Fast Talk Don’t Work on the Internet (ob81): For a successful marketing effort, the bottom line, according to Howard O’Berry, is that you need to be socially aware of your surroundings and know who to pitch to. He even refers to a case study that impacted him to drive this point home.
12 Steps to Upgrade Your Business (Small Business Trends): Here are some great ideas to upgrade your business, from being more approachable to learning a new web technology to NETWORKING! woo!
Rage Against the Sales Letter (Jonathan Fields): The long sales letter is a tactic that you may not really appreciate, but some marketers swear by it. Read why Jonathan Fields considers long copy a must-have.
Business Ethics & Mistakes You Should Avoid! (Tony Adam): Tony Adam explores some business ethics moves that you should avoid. Some include reporting your competitors, burning bridges, and more.
Your Customers’ Hierarchy of Need (Ignite Social Media): Ignite Social Media writes a great post on how customers relate to brands using Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
How to Identify and Deal with Different Types of Clients (Smashing Magazine): If you’ve ever had a nitpicker or family friend as a client, what are you to do when issues arise? Smashing Magazine has your answer.
9 Reasons Your Online Business Will Fail (Shoemoney): Discipline and focus are two of the nine reasons.

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Closing Notes

The year 2009 was incredibly huge for me. I gave birth to my first child, a little boy, who is my pride and joy. I published a social media marketing book. I’ve made great relationships, big and small, and I’ve worked on some fantastic projects that I could have only dreamed of just a few years ago.

In the past decade, I’ve graduated college, married the love of my life, switched careers to find my passion, and now I live through it every day. Every morning, I wake up excited to see what the day will bring. I’m aiming higher for the next 10 years — let’s see if I can top this. I’m truly excited to see what next year will bring.

May you all have a happy, successful, and wonderful 2010.

[ Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2009 is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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Why SEO is Easier than Social Media Marketing

Tamar Weinberg — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:20:25 +0000

There are a fair number of excellent search engine optimization experts (SEOs) in the wild, but there are countless social media marketing experts, many of whom are self-proclaimed gurus in their field. However, the number of SEOs I’ve come across are much fewer and farther between than social media marketers. In fact, I hear the same SEO names every day; I learn of a new “social media expert” twice a day. Despite this, social media marketing is much more difficult than search engine optimization. Here’s why.

The Quest for Knowledge

What exactly does it take to become a search engine optimization expert or a social media marketing expert? In both of these aspects of search engine marketing, you begin by learning. As the ideal marketer, you gets your hands on every single search engine optimization and social media marketing book or blog you can possibly find, and then you absorb the information presented within like a sponge. You begin following the experts (you know, the real ones) online. After awhile, you’ll be book smart. You’ll know what to do and what not to do. Hopefully, if you’ve followed the right books, blogs, and people, you’ll be armed with pretty decent case studies and pretty decent material to embark on your own journey.

The SEO Angle

If you’re a brand new student in the school of thought of SEO, after you’ve learned about improving your web presence via search engines, there are countless opportunities to prove to yourself that you know what you’re doing. For you, this means practice and true application of acquired skill. It’s not that costly to buy a few domain names (brand new or aged), invest in web hosting, and start applying that knowledge you’ve learned to websites. You can build a website from scratch or set up something quickly via a WordPress installation. You can purchase neglected websites through auctions. At the end of the day, you have websites — your subjects — upon which to test. When it relates to SEO, you can start right away. And you should. After all, you can’t learn SEO just by reading about it.

Wait, Maybe SEO Isn’t So Easy Then

SEO is an art and a science and one that is extremely difficult to understand and perfect. In fact, “perfection” in SEO is an impossibility since SEO is an ongoing process. Why, then, is SEO really easier? The issue is that the assets for performing SEO are right in front of you. To become a successful SEO, it will be necessary for you to get off your butt and begin testing and retesting, tweaking and optimizing, working hard to improve performance and rankings over time. But the sites are there. The access is there. That’s the easy part. They just need you to apply your knowledge to them.

The Challenge for the Social Media Consultant

In social media marketing, you can easily become book smart. The problem begins when it actually relates to your street smarts.

See, it’ll take an incredible amount of time to engage in the education, but when it relates to social media marketing versus SEO, there’s something missing in the equation: experience. No, building your personal brand in social media does not count.

Social media marketing is a tremendous challenge, especially now that the market has become saturated with experts who clearly think that bringing their Digg front page success means that they’ve just launched a successful consulting business and can immediately sell their services to the highest (lowest?) bidder. In social media marketing, the assets are missing. The subjects are not there for you to test. You need clients. You need to be presented with a problem, one that you can actually analyze. You need to determine what kind of strategy you’ll implement. You then need to start executing. That’s not something you can easily do by just buying a few domain names and building up a real website presence. But that’s easy to do where SEO is concerned.

Just because your wonderful piece of linkbait that drove 30,000 visitors to via Digg succeeded once (or maybe twice) doesn’t mean that you’re ready to go at having those clients alone. You’re not yet a social media marketing expert, not unless you’re consistently applying your skills to different and unique campaigns and initiatives. Much like SEO. Except that in SEO, you’re lucky because you can get started immediately. In social media marketing, you need to start hunting for people who are willing to take the risk to have you promote content or to push a marketing agenda online in front of the right people. Or they need to find you. But when they do, they need to know that you have a proven track record of doing this on a regular basis and case studies to back that up.

Not All Experiences Are Treated Equal, Either

I do my own fair share of consulting by myself, but those who know me well know that I have been vocal about the fact that it’s great to work alone, but it’s even better to work with an agency where you can brainstorm with others and get access to some high level experiences not otherwise accessible as a sole consultant. Real experience with a wide array of clients opens doors of opportunities and gives you the ammunition you need to say you really do understand what social media marketing is all about. That’s why I am working as a consultant on some amazing projects at a social media agency too. There’s only enough I can do as a one woman show.

Learning is the easy part. Applying the knowledge is the hard part. When it relates to SEO, the ability to apply that knowledge is easy since you can either create or buy a website that lets you begin applying the skills you need to become an expert. When it comes to social media marketing, you need to build up a presence by obtaining clients of some sort. And you’ll soon learn that it’s not that easy to find them.

[ Why SEO is Easier than Social Media Marketing is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg » Search Engine Optimization

Attack of the Consumer! The Many Ways Consumers Can Put You Out of Business Online

Advertising Bans

Organic Search and the Voice of the Consumer

Social Media Mass Mobilization

So What Does This Mean?

Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2011

SEO

Blogging

Marketing Automation

Link Building

Local Online Marketing

Branding

Content Marketing/Development/Copywriting

PPC Marketing & Paid Search

Public Relations

Social Media

Social Networks

Usability

Conversion Rate Optimization/Landing Pages

Affiliate Marketing

Brand Evangelism

Web Development

Community Management

Reputation Management

Web Analytics

Domaining

Video Marketing

Email Marketing

General Online Marketing (and everything else)

Looking Back on the Year of the Panda: Google Algorithm Changes

Top 10 Google Algorithm Changes of 2011

What the Updates Mean for Your Company

HOW TO: Guide to Performing Website Audits

Canonicalization and URL Structure

Content Optimization

Geo Redirects

Image Optimization

Internal Linking

Microdata

Noindex and Nofollow

Title and Meta Tags

Webmaster Tools

Website Architecture

Website Design Mistakes

Website Security

Summary

How to Hire Your SEO Partner

Getting a Handle on SEO Methodology

Getting a Handle on Results

Other Important SEO Selection Issues

The Right Fit

Longevity and Stability

Relationship Factors

Is Your Business Worth An Extra Hour Per Week? 5 Reasons Why Your Business Should Blog

1. Enhance Your SEO

2. Interest New Customers

3. Engage Existing Customers

4. Highlight Your Expertise

5. Create Online Revenue

Conclusions

Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2010

Social Media: Getting Started, Implementation, and Execution

Social Media (and Beyond): Small Business

Social Media: Hiring and in the Workplace

Social Media: Measurement and ROI

Social Media: General

Twitter

Facebook

LinkedIn

Leveraging Other Social Media Sites

Blogging

Reputation Management

Content Development/Marketing

Web Development and Website Strategy

Video

SEO: Strategy

SEO: Information

Link Building

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing