My February 2010 video clip of the month is a video by Erik Qualman, author of the Socialnomics – Social Media Blog, on social media return on investment (ROI). The video showcases several social media ROI examples along with other highly successful social media strategies. Here’s the YouTube video:
HOW TO: Arm a Press Release with Magic Magnets
January 30, 2010 by
A snappy, eye-catching headline used to be the most critical part of a press release back in the day when a press release was—shockingly—actually a release to the press. Now that the Web has allowed people to read press releases directly, even the cleverest headline is useless on a news release that doesn’t generate traffic.
In today’s Web 2.0 world, the most important thing your press release and its headline needs is keywords. Keywords are what Publicity Expert Joan Stewart calls the “magic magnets” that pull readers and journalists to your press releases. They are like magnets because they “flag” the search engines and pull in the right kinds of traffic.
Let’s say you are writing a press release about Montessori pink towers. You need to know that “Montessori materials” and “Montessori school” are your search engine optimization (SEO) magic magnets because people are nearly ten times more likely to search for “Montessori materials” than “Montessori supplies” and eight times more likely to search for “Montessori school” than “Montessori preschool.”
Google’s keyword tool can help you identify the magic magnets you need for free. Without being too obvious, use them in your press release’s headline, photo names, and photo ALT tags and other meta data. When you’re done, you can use HubSpot’s Press Release Grader and SEO Workers Search Engine Optimization Analysis Tool, two more free online tools, to verify your press release is optimized for top rankings.
What do you think about press releases and SEO? Please let us know in the comments section below.
Twitter: Pornography & Spam vs. Quality Contacts
January 10, 2010 by
I lost about a hundred Twitter followers over the holidays. “Alice” was on Christmas break, and I didn’t have time to review my new followers to decide if I wanted to follow them back.
I check every Twitter profile before I manually follow back, making it is easy for me to fall behind. I definitely do lose a few contacts that way. Some new Twitter followers will unfollow you in as a little as two days if you don’t return the follow. Of course, some of these can be spam bots (software applications running automated tweets) who I couldn’t be in any real “conversation” with anyway.
Many people who use Twitter simply follow everyone back who follows them, and you can completely automate this process. Last fall I briefly tried autofollowing, but, to my shock and surprise, that approach resulted in pornography polluting my Twitter stream. I hate having that junk on my computer screen, and I don’t even want to see it accidentally. Further, autofollowing resulted in a lot of unwanted spam about affiliate marketing and not paying for white teeth.
So I opted to go through all my followers and everyone I was following one by one and manually unfollow and block unwanted contacts. Since then, I’ve been sticking with individual manual vetting. It does take some time, but I actually like to see who is following me, so I can make my connections as productive as possible. Most of the time when I follow someone who is following me, I add the person to one of the groups I’ve set up to organize and categorize my Twitter contacts. Manually adding new followers into groups also is a little time consuming but worth it. After all, I am looking for quality (versus quantity) contacts.
Am I crazy to manually follow? How do you manage Twitter’s spam and pornography problem?
Your Brand: Taking Social Media Seriously
December 16, 2009 by
Now that Google has added live results from Twitter into searches, you need to face the fact once and for all that you can no longer control your organization’s online reputation. Negative comments on blogs, Facebook, or Twitter have the power to tarnish your brand overnight in ways unimaginable a few years back.
Even a small business should take social media seriously and try to influence conversations about its brand. A common concern, however, is managing social media takes too much time. Here’s a plan for one person from a small- to medium-sized organization to protect your organization’s online reputation in about 90 minutes a week.
The plan’s objectives are to build brand advocates and maximize your search engine optimization (SEO), so your messages—and not your critics’—fill the first page of search engine results about your organization.
- Counter any negativity about your brand (10 minutes). Using the 12-minute-a-day social media monitoring plan from my Dec. 9, 2009, post, identify social media sites that mention your organization’s name, services, products, executives, or brand terms. You don’t need to respond to every posting, but you do need to quickly offer support or resolve any problems you can.
- Always keep SEO and keywords in mind (ongoing). Use Google’s keyword tool to identify the keywords related to your organization being searched for most. Use these keywords in your organization’s blog posts, news releases, Facebook posts, tweets, and other digital copy.
- Make your Twitter account valuable to the people who follow you (50 minutes). Use your organization’s Twitter account primarily to share helpful tips, news, and information related to (but not about) your brand. Do send out tweets about your organization’s blog posts, media mentions, newsletter, etc. (at least twice per week), but try to spend on average 12 times as much time talking about other people and organizations as you do about your organization.
- Create relationships with bloggers (10 minutes). Figure out who the “thought leaders” are for your organization’s products or services. Read their blogs, leave comments on them regularly, and promote them too.
- Answer industry-related LinkedIn questions (10 minutes). Search for questions on LinkedIn that you or members of your organization can answer (to check once a day, set up an RSS feed using Google Reader). When you find a relevant question, respond and include a link to your website.
- Maintain a vibrant Facebook page (10 minutes). Leverage the time you put into Twitter using Facebook’s Selective Twitter application. By putting the hashtag #FB at the end of certain tweets (ones about your organization or particularly relevant to your organization), the tweets will also appear as daily updates to your organization’s Facebook page. At least once a week, post additional photos and useful information to make your page as up-to-date, attractive, and interesting as possible (while keeping unnecessary in-your-face sales-like links out).
- Use your blog to enhance your organization’s reputation as a “thought leader” (ongoing). Make sure your organization’s blog contains the kind of content that starts conversations and dialogue, gets forwarded to colleagues and friends, and motivates the people you serve to get involved and teach you how to serve them better (again, remember SEO keywords).
Any questions? Leave them in the comments.
Part One of my “Your Brand” series covered how to monitor your organization’s social media presence in 10-minutes a day.
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