Ideas for Business

This Halloween do you think social media will bring you tricks or treats? For some marketers, every day is Halloween when it comes to social media marketing. These marketers expect the bogeyman to be hiding behind every piece of consumer-generated content and assume their customers and the public only use Facebook and Twitter witchcraft to create bloodcurdling tricks. Yet the reality is that most of the social media conversation about your firm isn’t scary.

For your Halloween treat from TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog, here are the top five tricks in my social media goodie bag you can easily integrate into your marketing efforts.

1. Shock Them with Killer Headlines

Grab the attention of your business’ witches and wizards to lure them into your social media content. Otherwise they’ll take off on their broomstick. A magic headline casts a spell over your visitors and entices them to read on. According to Copyblogger’s Brian Clark only one out of five visitors will read your content. It’s a pretty scary statistic considering most of your time is spent creating the body of your content, not the headline. Since quality counts, a strong headline can tempt more readers in. Additionally it’ll come as no shock that the more powerful your title, the more it encourages social sharing.

2. Thrill Them with Spine-Chilling Content

Your content doesn’t stand a ghost of a chance if it doesn’t deliver value to your readers. Even worse, it won’t support your sales process because people don’t like to troll through shadowy content. This means content that’s a rehash of other information or recycled marketing promotions.  Don’t be frightened but 60% of consumers research online before they buy.  So show some wizardry and create quality information your prospects desire and need. Want to enhance your content marketing’s magical powers? Make it mobile friendly since 55% of smartphone owners use their device while shopping according to research by Chadwick Martin Bailey.  If nothing else it’ll give your competitors a fright since the shoppers may be checking your information in their store!

3. Scare up Some Treats

Bewitch your customers and social media followers with a special deal. Forget the over-hyped Groupon and similar group coupon offers. These promotions can be very scary for small business since Rice University found that one-third of these offers were unprofitable. Instead create a targeted offer to entice social media followers to engage with your firm. Exact Target research found that roughly one out of four respondents followed a company (pdf) on Facebook to take advantage of a one-time offer. Beware– you need to keep these prospects engaged once you’ve lured them in or they’ll just disappear with their discount never to be heard from again.

4. Spook Them Into Doing What You Want

Incorporate a call-to-action into your social media. This old direct marketing trick is easy to overlook in social media yet it can reap significant returns. The secret is to make it contextually relevant to what you want your social media followers to do next and the specific environment or platform in which it appears. Remember persuading prospects to purchase isn’t magic. Think baby steps that help move prospects towards your ultimate goal. Use appropriate colors and graphics to make your call-to-action stand out. While you’re creating your call-to-action, don’t forget to develop a targeted promotion code so you can track your results.

5. Offer Halloween Visitors Candy

Decorate your content with social media icons to encourage social sharing. It’s Halloween—who doesn’t want to share their haul so they don’t get sick? But don’t scare your visitors by making them think, or work too much or they’re off. You want to cast a spell over your visitors so they’ll spread the word about you to their social media friends.

Even though it’s Halloween, don’t creep your customers and the public out with a lot of me, me, me marketing-speak. Instead, pay-it-forward by offering some social media treats that yield real marketing benefits for your organization.

Do you have any special social media tricks to share?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | Five Social Media Marketing Tricks for Halloween | http://www.toprankblog.com

Google has announced that it will soon add 100 new channels to its video website YouTube. These channels are being produced by some top-tier entertainers including Jay-Z, Ashton Kutcher, Shaquille O’Neal, and CSI creator Antony Zuiker.

There is really nothing surprising here. Google is on track to take over the world – or at least to unseat Howard Stern as the “king of all media.”

OK, all kidding aside, this looks like an opportunity for advertisers. These channels will need sponsors and who do you think they are going to go after? You, of course.

This is no time for cynicism. Many of these shows will be perfect places to advertise your business. For instance, if you sell medical products directly to consumers – particularly sports athletes – then Shaquille O’Neal’s channel could prove to be a profitable advertising medium. I hope you can see where I’m going with this.

YouTube channels have the potential to reach a larger audience than most TV and cable programs considering that it’s a global delivery system. Advertising will likely cost less per viewer than traditional TV advertising. So it looks like a win-win for advertisers and channel producers. I think the future of TV advertising could very well go by way of radio advertising in the late 20th century. It will develop into a small niche of its own.

I’ve been liveblogging conferences since about 2005. While I had personally liveblogged SES and Pubcon, the first time I ever liveblogged for a conference itself was ad:tech Chicago thanks to Steve Hall. I was then able further develop my liveblogging skills observing and sometimes working with Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable. Since then TopRank has liveblogged nearly 100 events from SES Hong Kong to Intel’s first Social Media Summit.

When Mack Collier asked me to join #BlogChat to talk about liveblogging in anticipation of the upcoming BlogWorld Los Angeles conference, I had no hesitation. Liveblogging has helped TopRank Online Marketing and myself personally achieve numerous business and marketing goals at a fraction of the cost of many traditional marketing, advertising and content creation tactics.

Despite the practice being around for quite a long time, many people have no idea what liveblogging is. In fact, technology and tools have evolved to change much of what it means to liveblog events. It used to be that you’d sit in on a session, write notes into an article and file the story/blog post within 1/2 hours or so after the presentation ended. Now, liveblogging can take the form of live tweeting and then taking those tweets and compiling them into a post later or curating tweets through tools like Storify.

During the #BlogChat focused on Liveblogging on Sunday night, Mack wanted to focus on two key questions. I’ve taken a stab at listing insights, advice, processes and suggestions for each.

What are the Top 2-3 things you should know before you attempt to live-blog an event?

Thanks Mack! Appreciate the opportunity & really looking forward to this. I have a lot more than 2 or 3 (fortunately and unfortunately) I’d like to split my 2-3 things answer into suggestions relevant to pre, during & post even liveblogging. This is by no means a comprehensive post about liveblogging – but a summary and elaboration of what came up during the #blogchat about it.

Let’s get a handy link out there right away: 12 Live Blogging Tips for Better Event Content Creation

Pre Event Live Blogging:

• Answer why, who, what, when, where – Plan for specifics but be open to spontaneity. It’s really useful to have firm ideas about the purpose of liveblogging. For some it’s just a way to capture content for personal use. For others, it’s a way to create content for a blog or even repurpose into a compiled guide of tips for conference attendees. Or it might serve multiple purposes as in my case where I needed to build my writing skills, attend events on a budget and create content. Also, liveblogging can create connections with speakers.There’s an expression I’ve used many times – If you want to get into the media, become the media. Liveblogging was the proxy for me to do that here with Online Marketing Blog.
• Create suspense - Write a pre-event post, reach out to session speakers for tips, crowd source sessions to cover. I learned this from Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable. Create a grid of sessions you (and/or your team) will be covering during an event.  Pre-event posts will inform your readers and subscribers what’s coming. This can be important if your blog posting frequency goes way up. It also gives you the opportunity to mention the speakers in the post. Their Google Alerts for their names will put you on their radar.I’ve had success with reaching out to speakers beforehand, advising that I’ll be liveblogging their session and to see if they have any tactical tips to share for a pre-event blog post that will promote their session.  A small number of tips from each speaker is easy for them to do, and results in a great compilation.  Here’s an example of where I’ve done that: 37 Tips for Optimizing Blogs and Feeds – SES New York. Obviously it helps if you a c0-speaker or moderator, or if you know at least one of the presenters.
• Be a media sponsor. TopRankBlog was the 1st Blog Media Sponsor for SES, Pubcon, SMX, eMetrics. Although, we are currently only sponsoring SES and OMS. Being a media sponsor is more than a press pass. It’s mutual exposure for the blogger and the event: online, offline and through email. Advertisers pay huge $$ for sponsorships and media sponsorships used to be reserved to print magazines and large email lists.Not just any blog can become a media sponsor. You really need to be a credible blog in the category with a pre-existing audience. Size and quality of other social networks come in to play besides blog subscribers as well as a healthy email subscriber list. However, getting started liveblogging events that you’re already attending is a great start.
• Duplicate yourself. There’s only so much you can cover on your own, so recruit other people to liveblog with/for you and you’ll provide mutual exposure as well as another source of great content. Find out if other people are already going to attend the conference or if you have secured a media sponsorship, see if you can give away a free pass as part of your event promotion. Then require the winner to liveblog with you.
• Be open minded about what “event” means for live blogging. “Real world” conferences, workshops, press events and training sessions are common situations for liveblogging, but also consider virtual conferences, webinars, tele classes (where allowed). There’s a ton of archived content that’s never been blogged. In fact, if you can’t afford to attend conferences, get started with free webinars.  Video archives of conference presentations are also a great opportunity to practice liveblogging skills with the added benefit of being able to replay the video as often as you want.  With webinars, be sure to mention speakers, the event and link to the brand site that hosted the webinar in your blog post. That can get you on their radar.As a speaker in webinars, I’ve suggested to participants that there’s nothing wrong with liveblogging the presentation I’m giving and that has turned into blog posts (and links).
• Identify specific sessions, topics, approach and a “hook”. Think about style: transcription, running commentary, pure reaction, real time article. There are a variety of formats for liveblogging, so pick a format and even an angle to the session beforehand if you can. This will provide structure to fill in the blanks, providing you know about the topic and the speakers.
• Live tweeting running commentary can be used as liveblogging. It was suggested during the #blogchat that maybe live tweeting has replaced live blogging. That is true to some extent. As you’ll see from the links at the bottom of this post, curating those live tweets has also replaced roundups and liveblogging to some degree.  It’s easier to do, but not quite as valuable as summarizing highlights and takeaways.  There’s no reason you cannot mix a little of both live tweeting and blogging together.
• Pre-write portions of the post such as intro, speakers and other language that is fairly predictable.  Having static information pre-written can save time and also adds to the format you’ve decided to follow for liveblogging.
• Use Evernote then post to WordPress or your blogging platform of choice. Evernote is awesome because you won’t lose your work as can happen with a WordPress glitch or bad internet connection – an inevitability at most conferences. Plus Evernote synchs between devices, which can be handy.
• Have the right equipment – charged laptop, camera or phone, backup internet source and a power strip. A computer that runs out of battery power just as the keynote speaker finally says something interesting can ruin your entire morning. Same for internet access if posting in a timely manner is important to your liveblogging goals.

During Event Live Blogging:

• Get yourself in the right frame of mind and bring the skills. Focus on what you’ll be doing and type FAST. If you don’t type very quickly, then learn. Or you’ll be miserable. Same goes for multi-tasking. Taking photos (and resizing them), live tweeting and writing a 800 word liveblog post within 45 minutes is very doable, but only with lots of practice.
• Sit in front, take photos, (video is usually a no no at conferences). Smart speakers love livebloggers and may even call you out during their presentation, which helps when you network with others. I’ve never left a conference thinking I’ve taken too many photos or networked with too many new contacts.  I have however, regretted not sitting closer to the front to get a decent photo.  Most people are afraid to sit up front and those are the best seats. Do what others are unwilling or unable to do and you’ll create a competitive advantage from the start.
• Follow a format. Trying to capture everything that’s said can be boring & impossible, especially if speakers don’t follow any kind of structure. To get a good liveblog post from a session with speakers that ramble, or a topic you’re not super familiar with, just listen for the best quotes, stats and highlights for a “10 tips about topic XYZ post”.
  You can also use some of those nuggets to live tweet with the conference hashtag during the session.

Post Event Live Blogging:

• Share your post via social channels & use the event hashtag in the title tag and the body copy. Great content isn’t great until it gets consumed and shared. Over and over again. Help that along by promoting your liveblogging efforts and of course, make it easy to share.
• Do a roundup post of all that you covered each day or at least at the end of the conference including images, video interviews and tweets. Link to other livebloggers that are covering the same event.
• Add a post-session video of yourself giving commentary. Do an interview with speakers or with attendees.  Adding multiple media formats can really spice up your liveblogging efforts.

What are the advantages to live-blogging an event versus simply doing a recap post once you get home?

Real time isn’t a luxury, it’s expected at events. People are going to get the information from somewhere, why not from you? If you can consistently provide quality live blogging coverage, you’ll win many new friends: speakers, event, media, subscribers and maybe even prospective clients and employees.

Live coverage meets a need for event attendees, speakers/brands (they view as news coverage) & those not attending However, there’s no rule that you can’t do some kind of real time coverage AND do a recap post once you get home.

Liveblog coverage is treated as media coverage by many Public Relations departments and that means a link from company newsrooms.

Live blogging events can take many forms and there are so many ways to gain value from it that there’s really no “right” or “wrong” way to do it. Like anything, if you set goals, make a plan to reach those goals, execute and evaluate the results to refine future efforts, you’ll undoubtedly discover what flavor of live blogging is right for you.

Thanks again to Mack Collier for having me on #blogchat and also for everyone that participated. I was great to see friends like @copyblogger, @heidicohen, @ed & @rochelleveturis stop by

Here are links to a few creative curation and recaps of the Live Blogging #blogchat:

• Mack Collier Tweet stats, contributors & transcript via Hashtracking
• Socialscraps curated and organized tweets from the #blogchat via Storify
• Kristof Top links shared via Tweetreports
• SmartCollegeVisit collection of tweets from the #blogchat via Storify

Are you a conference live blogger and what are some of your live blogging tips?

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | Liveblogging Tips from #BlogChat | http://www.toprankblog.com

For several years now the search engines have been obsessed with ranking web pages based on popularity. They use link popularity and other measures to determine whether a web page is relevant and useful to a search query. Bill Slawski, who writes about search patents on his blog SEO By The Sea, recently wrote about a Microsoft patent that is based on measuring authority. How is this different?

I think it’s a good question because popularity and authority are not the same. For instance, Lady Gaga is one of the most popular performers in the U.S. and much of the world. But that doesn’t make her an authority on anything. She may know quite a bit about music, but simply being popular doesn’t make her an authority.

So what would make her an authority? According to Bill, any combination of several factors including

• Educational degrees held by the source
• Where those degrees were obtained
• Citations of the source in scholarly or technical works
• Number of publications associated with a source
• Number of social network connections and/or followers
• Whether or not the source is employed by and/or graduated from a well respected and/or highly cited institution
• Social networking information such as a number of posts relating to the source and/or a particular topic addressed by the source
• Number of patents held by the source
• Number of links to content associated with the source
• Number of articles citing work associated with the source
• Ratings and Reviews associated with the source

Measuring popularity is a lot easier than measuring authority. All you have to do is see how many people like something. But authority is a bit murkier. One website can be authority on a particular subject yet own a deficit on another subject closely related. Such is the nature of authority.

It’s nice being popular, but I think you’ll get more long-term mileage out of being an authority. Not only is that important for the future of search, but it’s vital for the future of online marketing.

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s the process that webmasters use to get their pages ranked in the search engines. It’s not the only online marketing strategy available, but it’s still effective.

Even in an age of semantic language indexing, web page optimization strategies that involve keyword management are still viable and still effective.

Consider that most of your competition don’t practice sound SEO strategies in their content marketing efforts. If you do, that will give you a distinct advantage over your competition. So what makes for sound SEO practices?

Believe me, it’s not difficult. But the work is tedious. You must be able to determine which keyword phrases are most profitable for your niche and that match your marketing goals. Then, you’ve got to be able to implement a good SEO strategy that creates results in the search engine results pages. That’s getting to be more and more difficult every day.

You should probably start by ignoring the advice you see on the average SEO blog. Instead, focus on speaking in the language of your audience. Don’t count keywords. Just write naturally – BUT, ensure that you sprinkle (and I do mean sprinkle) your primary keyword throughout your content starting with your page title. Add a link or two (but no more) using your primary keyword or a variant as anchor text on that page. Build inbound links.

SEO is still an effective way to market web pages in 2011. And I’m sure it will be in 2012. Just don’t overdo it on the keyword targeting.