You want to write smarter web copy to attract better organic search engine results. You want to know how to write blog posts and website copy that is optimized and makes it easier for prospective customers to find you. You want to be a good at SEO copywriting. But the layers of technology knowledge you assume you need are intimidating. So where do you begin?

Here’s a quick way to get started with smart SEO copywriting without having to know a lot about search engine optimization. Let’s start simple. Drop your website’s URL into the free Google Adwords Keyword Tool to see a list of what Google thinks your website is about. (Don’t worry with what this tool is supposed to be used for. That’s for another blog post.) What you’ll see is a listing of keywords, grouped by major subject, that Google thinks represents the content on your website. Some of them will be spot-on. Others will be a little off.

A keyword report for Social Media Explorer, for example, returns these subjects, with lists of suggested keywords in each subject:

how to make (6), public relations (28), social media (13), email marketing (13), a blog (8), bulk email (6), blog (31), email (13), marketing (6), social (5), money (10), pr (14), blogging (7), blogs (5)

I’ll toss out “how to make” “bulk email” and “money” because they aren’t really relevant, combine the similar ones and I’ve got the following general content topics for my blog:

• Public Relations
• Social Media
• Email Marketing
• Blogging

Not too bad considering social media and public relations are my two largest subject matters here. I’ll continue to write about advertising and marketing and even search marketing. Remember this is what Google thinks your site is about, not necessarily what it is about or you want it to be about.

Now, make a list of the major groups which accurately represent the content on your website or the products or services you sell. Go through the keywords Google suggested under those topics and pick out 5-10 keywords or keyword phrases from each grouping. Put those keywords in a spreadsheet or list under the appropriate heading. (See my sample one on the right hand side of the page.) Print that out and keep it handy when you’re writing. Refer to this keyword glossary to remind yourself of the keywords you wish to win and that you need to incorporate them into your content.

Obviously, this is a very simple approach to SEO copywriting and there are many more tricks of the trade to learn. As you target a more broad base of keywords or are writing content for a more well defined topic, you’ll adjust your writing and keyword focus accordingly. But this is a good start for someone who doesn’t have time or inclination to dive into learning SEO but still wants to improve their content’s chances of being found by the Googley Googs out there.

For more advanced techniques and education around search engine optimization and SEO copywriting, I recommend SEO Book from Aaron Wall. By signing up to the subscription learning community, you have access to more knowledge about search engine optimization than you’ll know what to do with. It’s not cheap, but worth every dime.

Disclosure: The link provided here and the ad below are affiliate program links. I subscribe myself, recommend and endorse it for others and present it here as a qualified product you should consider.

The social media purists will tell you that a corporate blog serves as a community hub for your brand. They say it gives your customers a connection point to your company and engenders a sense of community. In some cases that’s true, but you’re going to see me exploring corporate blogging a lot more this year to follow up on a theory that your “community” or “audience” for your blog isn’t what you think it is. That, and the ultimate judge of a corporate blogging effort must be more closely tied to success metrics than making everyone feel good.

As you know, I’ve partnered with Compendium Blogware, Debbie Weil and Jay Baer for a research project and some other extensions of that project this year. Part of that partnership gives me access to case studies of Compendium clients in addition to the external research we’re doing. One such case study caught my attention recently.

Aprilaire’s corporate blog has seen a 1,000 percent traffic growth in the last year. Yes, that’s 1,000 PERCENT, not people. Pretty strong. (For reference, Compete.com says their corporate site in total had 50,000 unique visitors last month, so we’re not talking 4 visitors to 4,000 either.) The social media purists will probably jump on that statistic and say, “See! Building community and engaging in conversation is what social media success is all about.”

Don’t jump to conclusions there, hippie.

Aprilaire approached corporate blogging with capturing leads through search engine optimization and winning keywords as their primary goal. Using Compendium’s system, which turns a blog into a keyword and search-driven model rather than a single-author, ego platform, the company began climbing the organic search rankings. Of their 1,000 percent traffic increase, 80 percent of it came from organic search results. Mission accomplished.

What Aprilaire did is approach corporate blogging with business metrics in mind. Community and conversation are part of the effort, sure. But even if they all but don’t exist — at this writing there was but a single comment on their last 10 blog posts combined — your corporate blog can (and should) drive your business. The Aprilaire blog features good content focused on targeted keywords and drives traffic. This traffic isn’t their “community” but rather web searchers trying to find content on the keywords Aprilaire is writing about. When they arrive on a blog post, there are clear calls to action on the page and links to action items (more information requests, landing pages, etc.). The blog converts more readers into customers.

Don’t get me wrong! Engaging in conversation, building community around your brand and bringing humanity (and human-ness) back to the marketing table are all vitally important to a company’s social media success. But please know this can be done in one or many channels and others, even a corporate blog, can focus on driving business.

Go look at your blog’s traffic. How many of your visitors are finding your content for the first time (through search or referral links)? How many are your, “community?” What does this tell you about your blogging approach? The comments are yours.

If you subscribe to the notion that social media is a discipline that is most appropriately aligned with public relations, customer service, customer relationship management and similar business channels, you probably have a hard time seeing social media’s link — pun intended — to search engine optimization. SEO probably comes across as a very scientific process, heavy on paid search strategies and with little relevance to the warm and fuzzies you get with social media.

But measuring the warm and fuzzies can be challenging. CEOs understand the value of spending $1,000 on paid search if those clicks can translate to 100,000 website visitors and $10,000 worth of conversions. They don’t often nod and smile when you say, “Well, we have 40,000 Facebook Fans this month!” Unless, of course, they aren’t any more focused on the bottom line than you are if that’s your proof point.

Chris Baggott and I have discussed search engine results and corporate blogging a lot recently. We’re working on a research project together you’ll hear more about soon. In a couple of conversations we’ve had, he has shared with me some ways he shows the value of corporate blogs to clients of Compendium Blogware, his company. I’ve been kicking around the idea and thought this might be useful for you to see.

To prove the value (at least part of the value anyway) of what you’re doing in social media, let’s see what the search traffic equivalency of your organic keyword rankings is. (Hang in there, it’s a process, but easier than it sounds.) There’s a lot of disclaimers I need to throw in about this (largely so the SEO dorks don’t set fire to my blog) but I’ll save those for the end.

To find out the monetary value of your organic search rankings, use a keyword research tool like SEO Book’s Competitive Research Tool or SEM Rush (which actually powers SEO Book’s tool) to get a list of the keywords your website ranks for. (If you know of a different tool, particularly a free one, please recommend it in the comments. Both of these offer some free results, but not a full report without paying for a subscription.) The results will give you a list of keywords your site ranks for, the position it ranks in a given search and the cost per click (CPC) value. (It gives more info, but these are the relevant pieces for now.) That value is what a paid search click sells for in a similar position in a paid search advertisement. (Bear with me.)

For example, SocialMediaExplorer.com ranks No. 2 for “social media strategy” which goes for $0.05 per click; No. 1 for “corporate messaging” which goes for $6.04 per click and No. 3 for “educational blogs” which sells for $2.49 per click. (It ranks for more, but I’m keeping the examples short to explain the point succinctly.)

Now go to your website analytics software. Click through to traffic sources, then search engines to view the keywords that bring you organic clicks. My analytics shows that I generated 644 visits in the last 30 days from the keyword “social media strategy.” The corresponding paid ad goes for $0.05, so my blog generated $32.20 in search traffic equivalency (organic value compared to paid search cost per click).

Simply put, if I had to go out and buy 644 visits from that keyword search in paid advertising, it would cost me $32.20.

SME had 11 visits from users clicking on our listing under the keyword “corporate messaging” which is worth $66.44. The keyword “educational blogs” brought 44 visitors last month, which is worth $109.56 in equivalent paid value.

So, for those three keywords alone, my monthly efforts generated $208.20 in search traffic equivalency for Social Media Explorer. I didn’t have to spend $208.20, but did invest time and attention to those subject matters to write the posts that garnered those rankings. (More on this in the disclaimers.)

If you added up all your organic traffic value based on this equation you could say to your boss, “Our social media activity brought in (let’s say) $45,000 in website traffic value this month.”

But wait! There’s more!

Organic search results draw in roughly 85 percent of all clicks on a SERP. Paid search is, to most users, less trusted and not clicked on as often as organic search results. So while our equation above makes sense if you’re comparing apples to apples, you’re actually comparing apples to oranges. The good news is that because organic search results are more trusted and clicked upon with more frequency, you can argue that your monthly value is not worth $45,000 in website traffic, but $45,000 AT A MINIMUM. It’s probably worth much, much more than that. The value of the additional? Not found a brain that big yet. If you have ideas, please drop them in the comments.

Hopefully, this will give you some ROI fodder to think about or even incorporate into your reporting for your social media activities. As you give this process some thought, however, please keep the following disclaimers in mind:

• This is easy to do if your analytics are measuring a corporate blog or a devoted social media channel. It gets complicated if you want to be all-inclusive and measure the value of where your social outposts rank. (Maybe your Twitter account ranks high for a valuable keyword. You should measure that, but it’s going to take more work to do so and the results will be muddy since you don’t have Twitter account analytics.) It’s also complicated if your social media efforts take place on your corporate website as the social content (blogs, etc.) adds value to the overall domain’s search results. Unfortunately, so do the sales pages and other static content, the age of the site and more. But once you set up the spreadsheet or report and do the research the first time, it’ll go smoother the second go-around.
• Paid search advertisements normally deliver better conversions because, if done right, they lead searchers to exactly the type of information they’re seeking or at least the absolute type of message you are delivering. Organic results are served up based on what Google thinks your content is about, traffic to that page, the number and types of links that page has and from where, how recent the content is compared to other results and more. You don’t have much control over what Google serves up as organic results. So your $45,000 in traffic equivalency might have cost you that in pay-per-click ads, but with those ads, you might have converted customers at rates 30-50 percent higher (or more) than where the organic results sent folks.
• On the flip side, I wrote the SME post on the top education blogs one year ago this Wednesday. I pulled in $109.56 worth of search traffic equivalency last month without doing a single thing. It’s the long tail of good web content at play. That post drives search results for my blog to this day. And will continue to do so. If it has produced the same amount each month in the last year, then I spent 2-3 hours writing a single piece of content that has now driven $1,314.72 in value to SME.
• On a similar note, the history of your content’s ranking matters as well. I’ve ranked No. 1 or No. 2 for “educational blogs” for 12 months now. If a new post on another website hits tomorrow that suddenly has a ton of links, etc., it will still likely take that post a while to knock mine down a notch. The value of ranking high for a term over time has merit.

The great news about all this information is that many smart SEO professionals read this blog. And every time I write about SEO, they provide as much, if not more, value in the comments. If I’m wrong on any of this or missed a few disclaimers you should keep in mind, they’ll tell you below. Feel free to ask for clarification from me or them in the comments, too.

And when you get around to trying it, come back and tell us if you were surprised at the equivalent value of your efforts.

Bing and Google recently announced partnerships with Twitter and Facebook to provide elements of real-time and social search to their respective search engine results. On the surface, this probably blew past most business owners and marketers as not much in the way of being important. If the information is online, aren’t Bing and Google supposed to find it?

And, frankly, the partnership has some interesting implications, but isn’t phenomenally noteworthy … yet.

Keep in mind that I am not a search expert. I don’t have coffee with Matt Cutts … or his cats. Nor do I have insider information about what search engines are doing. But I know what’s possible and think this is what we as social media thinkers and marketers need to be thinking about moving forward. For more of an industry analyst view, Jeremiah Owyang and Charlene Li have some great ideas that partially contributed to my ideas here.

What Bing and Google are tapping into are the message we post on social media sites. Those messages, at their core, are not Wikipedia pages or articles on newspaper websites, blogs or company sites. They are little pieces of social capital we trade with one another. Bing and Google are saying these little innocuous tidbits are relevant, to some degree, in results for certain keywords.

In other words, a popular Tweet about Ford Mustangs (Retweeted, linked to, etc.) could rank (and thus rank high) in search engine results for “Ford Mustang.”

Couple that thought with the fact that most search engines prioritize results based on recency and in-bound links (or how many third party people think that piece of content is good) and you start to see an indication that social search may be emerging as more relevant than we think. Quite frankly, it may be becoming more relevant than it should be.

The future of search seems to indicate that the most relevant content presented by the search engines will include, and perhaps prioritize, recommendations and referrals from our social graph. So when you search for “cheap hotel Chicago” the No. 1 result may not be the hotel that wins a search result for the term like you would see today, but the cheapest hotel in Chicago that someone you know has reviewed online. Or perhaps the top result will be a Tweet a friend sent out about a “good, cheap hotel in Chicago” just 10 minutes ago.

This is both promising and problematic. Promising because we care about our friend’s recommendations more than strangers. Problematic because for many, social media has changed our definition of “friend.” Promising because real-time and socially powered search has the potential to deliver more relevant results. Problematic because it also has the potential to deliver user-generated blather as opposed to qualified, quality information.

What social search means for marketers now, however, is this: If you do not start now building a network of fans, followers and friends who trust you, your company or your brand, you may quickly become irrelevant in not just social media, but in search too. Tell your curmudgeonly CEO if your company doesn’t participate in or prioritize social media, you’ll soon lose your search standing and see if that doesn’t help.

I could be wrong. The search engineers at Bing, Google and others may have a more (in my opinion) responsible way of incorporating social graph data points into our search results than this premise indicates. But if I’m even close to correct and the wisdom of crowds mentality of the Google world we live in prevails, your lack of participation and prioritization of social media may just bite you in the SERP. And that’s gonna hurt.

Related articles by Zemanta and Jason Falls

• The Rapid Evolution of Search (briansolis.com)
• Defining Real Time (menro.me)
• Bing Goes Real Time with Twitter (marketingpilgrim.com)
• Google to launch new search engine (thestar.com)
• Google Caffeine Test Suggests Too Much Emphasis on Real-Time Indexing (marketingpilgrim.com)
• How To Build an Authority Site the Google Way (costpernews.com)

Zakta

In July, I told you about a new experiment in search that was refreshing. Zakta is a new search engine — I know, I know. Who in their right mind would try and compete with Google, Bing, Yahoo and so on? — but one that has some legs. I mentioned it in one of my Pitch Log Mashups but with their recent full launch, I revisited them and want to make sure you understand the implications of what they’re doing.

Zakta allows you to do two things with your search results that other engines do not: 1) Edit and cull your results to be more reflective of what you’re really searching for and 2) Share those results with other users. There are a bunch of other interesting facets to the tool, but these are significant for a couple of reasons.

1. If you find yourself searching for similar terms over and over again, you can save and simplify your searches.
2. Sharing your searches with others, and following the searches of those on the network you trust is, at least theoretically, a powerful feature.

Imagine needing to know something about the New York Jets. You know Gary Vaynerchuk is perhaps the biggest Jets fan on the planet. If he were a connection on Zakta and had saved a search about the New York Jets (you know he would), wouldn’t you trust his editing of the search results better than keyword-based or even semantic-powered search results of some computer? I would.

The reason this is significant for businesses is that, if (and it’s a big if … more in a moment) Zakta takes off and becomes a relevant player in the search business, your company could become a go-to resource for relevant search results in your industry. By building trust with an online audience, providing relevant links, information and resources, you could be looked to as the thought leader or authority for your industry or location. If you then share your curated search results for the topics people trust you for, you’ve provided them with additional value and reason to trust you.

The key is not abusing that trust, of course.

Here’s where I think Zakta has challenges, and it is a fundamental point I hope many start-up types are paying attention to:

The biggest challenge you face with a new product is if the success of it depends on changing people’s behavior.

Zakta will have to prove, through relevancy, immediacy and usefulness, that changing people’s behavior from starting at Google, Yahoo, Bing or some other engine, is worth the switch. Will they do it? I’m cautiously optimistic.

I don’t know that my friend’s curated search results are the deal-breaker for me. Bing has changed my habits a bit, but only if I notice the first few Google results to giving me what I want. I still start with Google. Zakta’s connection tool only yielded one friend on their network for me. Granted, Pete Blackshaw’s search results are worth looking at. Dude is smart. But without a wider net, Zakta becomes less appealing.

Still, I’m fascinated at the possibilities. Sundar Kadayam, Zakta’s CEO, is the former founder and CTO at Intelliseek and was also with Nielsen Buzzmetrics. He knows how to build successful web-based businesses. There’s a ton of relevance and power behind the Zakta idea. I just wonder how the masses will come. If they do, it has game-changing possibilities. If they don’t, they still may have enough technology and juice to get sold to someone big with big money.

Either way, it’s a tool worth looking at and spending some time with. My friend’s search results, culled and curated for my edification, are useful. If we all did it, we’d have something, now wouldn’t we?

What’s your take? What search feature would change your behavior? Is someone you know editing search results for a certain topic relevant? Why? Why not? The comments are yours.

Related articles by Jason Falls & Zemanta

• Zakta Is No Ordinary Search Engine (AltSearchEngines.com)
• Is Zakta The Facebook Of Search? (Doug Ross)
• Zakta – The New Way To Organize Web Knowledge (Matthew Hurst)
• New Search Engine Holds Promise (Cincinnati Enquirer)

Bing has made quite a splash branding itself as a decision engine. You type in a question or topic, you get results that are, at least in my limited experience, more closely related to what you’re looking for than other search engines. But where Bing might miss by casting such a wide net, a tool that has been around a few months called Aardvark is trying to capitalize on with a small, very purposed one.

Aardvark (http://vark.com) essentially allows you to ask a question. Instead of searching the whole web for an answer, the service connects to people touching your social graph to find answers. Instead of relying on a search engine algorithm, you’re asking people you know. Using instant messenger, email and Twitter, users can ask questions and get answers back from other users. The first one I posted was to ask someone if they found Aardvark useful. Within minutes, I got an answer from a young lady in California who really liked the service but was still new to it. Turns out she is a couple degrees separation from me through LinkedIn contacts.

Running another test, I IM’d the Aardvark engine a question about webinar solutions. What cheap and even white label type solutions are best in class? No longer than two minutes later, I had a response from a contact, also in California, recommending WebEx because of its robust user base which would indicate bugs and what-not have been vetted. Within 10 minutes, I received recommendations for Elluminate and DimDim from other users as well, one response included an indication that the person answering was connected to me through Warren Whitlock. I’m assuming that one degree of separation responses, thus, indicate who connects you.

Intrigued by the utility, I reached out to Aardvark CEO Max Ventilla to explore some technical and business questions I had. After that conversation, I like the tool even more.

The default settings for new users means you will only be contacted to answer questions once or twice a day, so it’s not intrusive to be a resource to the community. You can change those settings to your liking. Users can ask as many questions of the community they like. There has to be some supply and demand math there that might cause there to be not enough answers for questions some day, but math makes my head hurt. If you are a math person, ponder and let us know in the comments how that might turn out.

The service ties into your social graph however you’d like it to. You can use Facebook Connect, Twitter or other services to give Aardvark permission to see who your friends are. It only reaches out to those friends who have signed up and doesn’t spam people. If you want to invite your friends to use it, you can, of course. And Facebook Connect places your use of Aardvark in your news stream for all to see.

Ventilla declined to reveal user numbers, but I could see this community resource of community resources being very popular if they can overcome a couple of environmental factors working against them:

• People are conditioned to search for answers on search engines when they’re on a computer. Remembering there’s a social connection solution to find answers from friends dictates a change in behavior for the user. Anytime you’re trying to change behavior, it’s an uphill battle.
• Posting your question on Twitter is probably just as easy and you’ll get more responses. While the answers will be random and not from someone who has indicated an interest in a particular topic (one way Aardvark routes questions), it’s likely you can find a good response just as fast.
• Advertisers can try to game the system and become the qualified answer supplier for various categories.

While the advertising scenario isn’t likely, it would be a concern of mine. Those with ulterior motives have gamed their way to the top influencer positions on social news sites. Why wouldn’t this be different?

When I asked Ventilla about the possibility of advertisers getting involved and how that reflects itself in any revenue model they might have, he was prepared:

“People that are commercial entities would have to label themselves as commercial answerers and they would get certain additional capabilities or tools as such,” he said. “We want brands, companies and professionals to be able to answer questions in a parallel fashion to how actual friends and friends-of-friends can answer questions. This is still a work in progress but at scale we feel we can support many different motivations for answering while addressing spam, brand and user experience issues that will inevitably arise.”

He also said when people recommend an item to purchase, Aardvark can link to sites where you can buy the product and get affiliate payments for conversions they deliver. Another revenue opportunity might revolve around lead generation for larger scale products and services. He was clear to delineate that brokering those kinds of business-to-consumer connections would dictate transparency in letting the user know it was from a commercially biased source but there is real utility in the answer, much like Google AdWords.

The tool certainly puts a new spin on social search, but is, at its core a recommendation and referral engine. Still, the seamlessness of the tool and easy communication bridges from Twitter to IM to email for users makes it wholly useful and a tool with some potential. The only thing that might make it better is if you could choose which friends you ask questions of … but then again, that’s takes some of the seamless experience out of the tool.

Go sign up and give it a try. Tell us what you think of the experience in the comments.

And I’m not the first person to talk about this tool. Check out the related links below for some good insight from others.

Related articles by Jason Falls with Zemanta

• Aardvark Is Completely Changing How I Get Answers To Questions (Hard Knox Life)
• What Happens When An Aardvark And A Twitter Bird Mate? (Marketing Pilgrim)
• Aardvark’s Personal Touch To Online Advice (New York Times)
• Aardvark Open For Business Via Facebook Connect (Techcrunch)

If your company wants to know the philosophical basis of social media, many resources indicate it rests in the notion that consumers grew tired of advertising and marketing messages all day, every day. They turned to the Internet in the late 1990s and early 2000s when the access and technology barriers to entry conveniently dropped. There, they found like-minded others to share recommendations and information with.

Social media has its evolution in the notion that people don’t like being marketed to, or at least they don’t like being marketed to the way they have been for years.

Through foundational writing like The Cluetrain Manifesto, The Anatomy of Buzz, The Wisdom of Crowds, Naked Conversations and others, plus early industry blogging from folks like Shel Israel, Shel Holtz, Mike Masnick, Brian Solis, Todd Defren and more, we’ve learned that success in the social realm is predicated on sharing. You earn trust by giving of yourself, contributing to the community or conversation or both and only after trust is earned can you then ask for something in return. It’s no longer about one-way communication but a dialog, or as I have argued, a multi-logue where your customers talk with you, you with them, but them with each other in your line of sight. Advertising and similar promotional communications aren’t welcome without some other sort of interaction or engagement.

But gaining clarity in what that actually means for businesses, brands and even individuals is not simple.

Social Media Marketing Balance (click for larger version)

First, the rules change depending upon the platform. It might be fine to be 100-percent promotion or sales driven on a blog that you author. It’s not well received if you treat your Twitter interaction that way. But then again, if you state your purpose, it can be well received on Twitter. The Twitter account @delloutlet has been successful to the tune of $2 million as, primarily, a sales driver. While @StephanieatDell mans (womans?) the account and does engage with people, the original purpose was to drive people to buy product. There are different levels of tolerance for sales and promotion for each platform (blogs, forums, microblogging, wikis) and then even variations on the norm within specific communities built on those platforms (Posting sales messages is accepted on some forums, not on others, etc.).

To add another layer of complexity to the sharing vs. promoting argument, there are different rules and expectations for individuals versus businesses, and even a variety of expectations from a business depending upon its industry and purpose. An independent consultant can be somewhat self-promotional and it is expected and understood since it’s his or her livelihood. There might be less tolerance for the CEO of a company to throw around the same types of drivers in conversations. I think there is a general level of understanding that someone representing a company in the financial services, healthcare, insurance or pharmaceutical industries or even some government agencies can’t always speak freely about products and services because of regulations and public safety concerns. The expectations of the audience then change.

So how do you know what’s accepted and what’s not. How do you walk the fine line between using social media for a purpose and participating in social media to have that permission?

Social media purists and philosophers will wax poetic about listening. And it is true: You must listen to the conversations and understand the societal norms for each community in which you participate. You must also listen to know who is talking about you and what they are (or are not) saying. From Google Alerts to the paid services like Radian6, Scout Labs, Techrigy and more, the tools are there for you to listen and learn what is and is not acceptable when communicating with consumers there.

But listening isn’t always enough, from a speed or information perspective. So how can you learn more, faster? How can we participate here and now without considerable risk to our reputations? Here are some thoughts:

• Ask
  You can monitor conversations about Twitter all day without a single person saying, “It’s not appropriate to be 100-percent promotional on Twitter. Only X percent is acceptable.” So ask. Ask other company representatives what they’ve learned. Ask the social media folks you follow what’s on- or off-limits. Or, even better, ask your followers what is acceptable to them. The same holds true for Facebook, forums, blogs and other platforms. Ask those who interact with you there. They’ll tell you what works and what doesn’t.
• Tell
  Clearly state the reason you’re engaging in a particular platform or tool in a place that’s easy for the community to find. Your Twitter background or bio, the signature on your forum or message board entries, the sidebar of your blog or website are all easy places to say, “This is what we use this medium for. If you’d like to reach us for other reasons, here are the best ways to do so.” If you wind up with a low number of followers or respondents to what you do, you’ll know the audience isn’t down with what you’re using it for. Adjust and move forward.
• Answer
  Make sure you tip a cap to the spirit of social media marketing and give consumers an avenue to reach out to a real, live person with your company. Sure, it can be a phone number or an email, but consider a Twitter account for direct interaction with people, a Facebook page where someone actively responds or a blog/forum/message board where someone from the company interacts regularly. So long as people have SOME way of having a conversation with you, they’ll probably be pretty happy with your company’s availability.

Those are my thoughts. What are yours? Furthermore, what are acceptable levels of promotion for brands? Small businesses? Individuals as businesses? Individuals promoting personal passions or hobbies? Is there a threshold or tipping point or does it always vary based on sender and/or receiver and we’ll never know?

Lots of questions … share your answers with us in the comments.

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• Using Internet PR Like You Use Twitter (Justin Levy)

Confession time?  I hate the term “social media marketing.”  It’s one of those phrases that could mean nearly anything.  Depending on the context, it might mean spamming Digg or creating a blog or building up a Facebook fan page or a hundred other things.  By contrast, if I say “social media monitoring” or “traffic generation” or “conversation marketing,” you have a much firmer fix on what we’re actually trying to accomplish.   

Right now, I find myself talking a lot about content marketing, because content marketing is the most natural fit for an advertising agency’s existing abilities. Content marketing requires creative talent, good process and organization skills, and strategic thinking.  

So with that said, and bearing in mind I get sucked into watching a lot of Charleton Heston movies this time of year, I’d like to offer you the Ten Commandments of Content Marketing. 

1. Thou shalt make thy content portable.  The beauty of the social web is that if you make good content easy to share, real live people will be your “channels.”  If your content is really good, the persistent will figure out a way to share it even if you don’t make it easy.  But why make them work that hard?  
2. Thou shalt remember that “content” is not just text.  Photos, audio content/podcasts, and video should be included in any content strategy.    
3. Thou shalt not use the word “viral.”  It makes you sound like the middle-aged dad trying to use his teens’ slang, and is generally running about 2 years behind.  Good, portable online content can become popular.  A virus on your computer is generally a bad thing, remember?
4. Thou shalt not refer to your program as a “campaign.”  Content marketing is a long-haul proposition, and really part of your overall communications plan.  Are you going to stop any other parts of your communications plan when their “campaign” runs it’s course?  No.  And as long as there’s a web, you’re going to need to provide content. 
5. Thou shalt not begin without an editorial calendar.  Unless you like beating your head pointlessly against a brick wall.  Then by all means, go right ahead.
6. Thou shalt delegate clear roles and responsibilities.  Or thou shalt be cursed to play “ownership hot potato” while your stale content just sits there on the web.  
7. Thou shalt honor thy legal department.  Nuff said.
8. Thou shalt match thy content to the environment.   Content strategy is no longer limited to the bounds of your primary URL.  Develop Facebook-y content for Facebook, etc.
9. Thou shalt not allow thy website content to get as stale as week-old bread.   Or thou art not allowed to whine when visitors go away to spend time elsewhere.
10. Thou shalt reward thy enthusiasts appropriately for sharing thine content.   That may mean sponsoring a blogger. It may mean sharing some high-PR link love to someone who is talking you up.  How you reward them is something to determine on a case-by-case basis, but don’t forget to do it.

Okay folks, what do you think?  Do I need to drop any?  Or expand from the  ”Ten Commandments” to rip off “America’s Top 40″ rather than the Bible?

Jason Falls

The more time I spend with clients analyzing their needs and making recommendations in the Internet marketing realm, the more I’m convinced that search is of utmost importance. And no, it’s not because I’m an Owyang lemming and he said so. It’s because ranking high in search is the ultimate reason I wind up giving for almost every recommendation I make. Whether it’s participating in social media, rebuilding a client’s website in a certain content management system or pushing for lighter motion techniques in lieu of the irrelevant-to-search Flash-heavy designs, I normally end up with, “and it can boost your search engine results.”

But while I consider myself to be fairly well learned in the ways of SEO (thank you to the wisdom of Aaron Wall, Lee Odden and Ryan Deshazer), the more I understand about search strategies and techniques the more I’m convinced that there exists a continental divide between the skills that make a good search engine optimization specialist and those which are the fundamental qualities of a strong social media marketing practitioner.

Though the end result of successful execution in each is similar — good SEO gets you more traffic, good SMM gets you more exposure, which actually supplements good SEO — the two practices are as fundamentally different as science and art, math and verbal.

Search engine optimization is the scientific application of keyword and link strategies to manipulate a given website’s algorithmic score as determined by a given search engine (Google, Yahoo, Live, etc.) The higher the algorithmic score in comparison to other websites ranking for the search term, the better the ranking of that website in results. SEO detractors would say that the practice is fundamentally unethical because that manipulation results in a website having a higher score than it perhaps should. But websites are no longer entities that benefit from the, “If you build it, they will come,” mentality. Telling someone about your website to drive them there would technically qualify as “manipulating” the search results if you listen to the SEO-haters.

SEO practitioners have, however, developed their own term and practice, “SMO,” or “Social Media Optimization,” which takes on the mindset that you participate in social media to drive traffic, in-bound links and other search benefits to a given website. This is essentially the same as SEO. lt is focused on manipulating the search engine result. SMO’s core objective is not about social media, but about search results.

Social media marketing, however, is the practice of engaging audiences in conversations about a given subject to foster greater volume, better sentiment or to gather intelligence from the participants about that subject. Certainly, a claim could be made that participating in social media marketing is also about manipulating something — in this case the tone of the conversation — but my point is not to say that one is better or more ethical than the other. My point is to say the two practices require extremely different skill sets.

SEO skills revolve around the mathematical manipulation of an equation. Put more keywords in the first paragraph. Add ALT and TITLE tags to images and links. While yes, the good search professional has copywriting skills, they have to only be polished enough to insert the keyword into a sentence or phrase that doesn’t read awkwardly to the search engine’s natural language processor.

SMM skills revolve around communicating with people and not just in a short fashion so the language processor doesn’t flag it as unnatural. Social media professionals must be friendly, sensitive, tactful, interesting and interested. They must have the natural charisma to inject themselves into conversations to which they were not perhaps invited, but not intrude. They must have the diplomatic ability to listen to a detractor’s concerns, acknowledge his or her frustrations and engage them in a solution-finding mission all while keeping their ego, intellect and factual knowledge in check.

While it would be incorrect and irresponsible of me to say there’s no such thing as a person with strengths on both sides of the aisle, my gut, not to mention my experience in engaging people in conversation, tells me for the most part, ne’er the twain shall meet. Still, there are hundreds of social media practitioners who claim SEO as one of their skills. There are as many, if not more, SEO specialists that say they also offer social media expertise.

But the fundamental personality and skill disparities lead me to say you shouldn’t trust social media to an SEO consultant. Their “social media” practice is probably more along the lines of SMO and is less about conversation, more about pushing inbound links. Their engagement with your audience is driven by those links and keywords and not by genuine information and opinion mining from your customers.

The issue has been debated before (see relevant links below) and this tome will certainly not put an end to the discourse. In fact, it should start a healthy discussion on the topic. While I do want your opinion in the comments, I’d like to take the opportunity to carry forward Len Kendall’s Blargument concept presented recently and ask Lee Odden of TopRankBlog.com, in particular, to respond. As one of the top search experts in the world, but also a mighty smart social media thinker, my guess is that his response will be thoroughly enjoyable.

Okay search fiends … tell me I’m wrong.

Follow Up Note (Added 3/10/09): It occurred to me after diving into the contents that the snappy headline’s insinuation, coupled with me asking Lee Odden to respond may have been misconstrued by some. Lee Odden is one person who proves the theory I’ve presented wrong. He is an SEO expert who is also a social media expert and knows better than most how they intertwine. There are a number of others out there I would consider similarly qualified – Chris Winfield and Andy Beal are two of which who have even commented here. My hope is that the discussion started leads us to a better understanding. There was no inference intended to say that you shouldn’t hire uniquely qualified people to perform both tasks. My apologies to anyone who might have read the post/headline that way.

IMAGE: “Beware of Teeter-Totters” by CarolinaChronicles on Flickr.

Related articles by Jason Falls (and Zemanta)

• Comparing SEO, SMM and PR Tactics Is Pure Poppycock (Micro Persuasion)
• SEO Consultant Required Skill Set (SEOPros.org)
• SEO vs. SMM Fight (Philly Marketing Blog)
• SMM vs. SEO (MoonLoh.com)
• Skill Sets For Social Media (Strike A Chord)

Kat French

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like a lot of free web services are either moving to a fully-paid Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, or they’re shutting down entirely. 

Jott, one of my favorite free productivity tools, announced last month that they were shutting down the free version of their service.  Values of n, which created “sticky notes that think” service Stikkit and its slightly kitschier evolution, Sandy, folded up shop altogether in December.  Ditto Pownce.

Of course, this isn’t terribly surprising–in fact, it was pretty much inevitable.  So why am I talking about it now? 

In the last few weeks, I’ve been migrating Feedburner accounts to Google.  Like lots of folks, it’s not been an entirely positive experience.  In fact, at one point, I was so frustrated with trying to get a fairly basic service to start working properly again, I started looking for alternatives. 

I have clients to report to, and repeatedly telling them “Sorry, I posted on the support forum, as have several other folks on the same issue, and there hasn’t been any response from Google,”  just doesn’t cut it.

Fortunately, we worked out the issue on our own, but the experience has left me concerned.  We’ve got some talented developers here at Doe-Anderson who were willing to drop what they were working on to help me troubleshoot and fix the problem. 

But here’s the deal: I had to ask a developer to drop what he was working on to help me troubleshoot and fix the problem.   That’s a problem. 

Michael Martine over at Remarkablogger has been ranting along similar lines lately.   

I know that there are some great web services out there that folks who work on the web rely upon.  In fact, we’re getting to work with a very cool SaaS provider on an upcoming project (that I can’t talk about here yet), and I couldn’t be happier about it.  I also just discovered Evernote, and I’m already in love with it. 

On the one hand, you’ve got smaller startups like Jott and Values of N, who have a great service that may or may not survive the current economic crunch.  Pownce was a paid service with a big name in tech backing it (Digg’s Kevin Rose), and still didn’t survive. 

On the other hand, you’ve got Google, who should have the resources to ensure even their free services are properly supported–but often don’t. 

So what’s an internet marketing geek to do?  I’d love to hear your thoughts, but here are a few of mine.

First, if you’ve got the option to control the source code for your mission-critical software, take it.   If Google or another SaaS provider drops the ball, wigs out, or goes under, there’s diddly squat you can do about it.  If you are or have access to a solid programmer, you can at least roll up your sleeves and deal with it if there’s a problem.

That said, if the best software is one you don’t control source for, be willing to pony up and pay for it.  We’ve been in love with quirky innovation for the past few years–it’s time to give some love to reliability, too.   To badly paraphrase Seth Godin, for some tools and services, it may be a good time to lean towards not annoying  as opposed to lovable. 

Lastly, wherever possible, double up.  If you provide web analytics reporting to clients or other constituencies, I would highly recommend installing at least one alternative to Google Analytics.  Preferably one that pulls data from your web server’s log files, rather than using a javascript include.  (Warning: installing multiple javascript-based analytics programs can cause problems). 

So what do you think?  What’s your contingency plan if a mission-critical vendor, software, or service fails?  Have you had to use the contingency plan in the last few months (or create one on the fly)?

Jason Falls

Maybe you’re a public relations professional looking for high-trafficked sites for outreach. Perhaps you’re a media planner and buyer and want to get a hold on which blogs and other online media sites should be in your client’s plan. Whatever the reason, finding a tool to help you research a site’s traffic can be a Godsend.

As with most Internet research needs, there are a variety of companies that provide solutions, some good. Others not so. There are three free tools available to anyone: Compete.com, Alexa.com and Quantcast.com. Today we’ll look at Compete.com. Soon, we’ll cover the other two. The analysis of the paid solutions (ComScore, Nielsen, Hitwise) will come whenever they give me a free preview to try their tools. (Hint, hint, boys.)

Compete.com is a panel-based measurement service. This means they take a sample of Internet use statistics (called click streams) from users that have opted in to volunteer that information. Their data sample is from over 2 million U.S. consumers. This includes click stream data from a number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) which anonymize the data of their users, who have agreed to terms which allow the ISP to sell the data to firms like Compete. The sample also includes Compete toolbar users: People who have gone through the trouble of downloading a toolbar plug-in from Compete specifically to volunteer their web surfing data for measurement. There is an inherent bias in this portion of their data because it will skew geek. Generalizing a bit, only computer nerds and webmasters are going to download this toolbar. Compete’s third data point is what they call a proprietary panel. (Because what’s a good sales pitch without working in the word “proprietary?”) This panel is a group of users actively engaged with Compete to provide data, respond to surveys, etc.

Once all the data of web surfing activity, sites, etc., is collected, it is normalized, or weighed and skewed to correct biases like the geek-heavy toolbar users. The goal of the normalization process, which by the way is conducted and overseen by people with Ph.d’s in this sort of number crunching, is to have each consumer measured represent the average American consumer. The normalized data is then used to project metrics that are an estimate of how the average U.S. consumer behaves online.

The key thing to know here is that even though Compete.com has data from over 2 million users (more than ComScore and Nielsen, to my knowledge, which use samples of 200,000-300,000) they are still projecting results, a process I believe is inherently flawed.

Still, Compete allows users to compare these projected traffic numbers of up to three websites for free. While the numbers are inconsistent and far from accurate (see below), the tool can be useful for site comparisons.

Paid Solution

Smartly, Compete doesn’t offer just a free tool and that’s it. For subscription rates ranging from $199 per month to $499 per month, plus custom pricing for enterprise offerings, you can access additional site analytics reports (like visits per person and daily reach, which do not appear in the free version) and a trio of added value pieces to make you think you’re getting something for your money.

The Search Analytics suite offers tools to find sites that get the most traffic from certain keywords, keywords that drive most search traffic to a given site and comparisons of search keywords for sites so you can judge yourself based on your competitors.

There’s a Referral Analytics toolset that allows you to see a ranking of what sites point to yours, what sites your website sends traffic to and a comparison tool to see referral and destination traffic for any two websites.

The final piece of the paid component is ranked lists of the top websites. You can get the top 200 websites with any paid plan. Stepping up a notch on the plan gradient gets you the top 1,000 and then the top 15,000.

Frankly, I don’t think there are enough tools for $200 per month. Sure, those there are worth something, but similar information can be found online and probably for free. There are also some keyword and search specific tools out there that are much more robust than what Compete offers. Still, the toolset is useful and Compete at least provides everyone with the traffic comparisons, giving something to the greater web community. That should count for something.

Aaron Prebluda, Compete’s director of market development and to whom I’m indebted for his kindness in answering questions, told me, “Our paid product provides competitive intelligence and behavioral data that is actionable.” To the letter, that’s true. But companies that use Compete’s paid solutions will have to be savvy enough to know what actions to take. Seeing a chart that shows you the top search keywords that drive traffic to your site is one thing. Knowing how to analyze that data and use it to improve search results for certain keywords is something very different. What that means is the paid solution is only going to be worth your while if you have an SEO specialist on staff or on retainer to do something with it. (If you need one, let me know. Kat and David are really good.)

The Unfortunate Discovery

All that said, I decided to test Compete’s data against sites for which I have access to Google Analytics. Honestly, it appears Compete.com isn’t accurate at all. Here’s a comparison of Compete’s numbers and those of several sites whose Google Analytics reports I can access. (I’ve removed the names of the sites as I don’t own them and am not sure if the owners want their actual traffic numbers public.)

As you can see from this small sampling, there’s a big difference in actual and what Compete’s data and normalization produces. For the record, I did notice on one seasonal website a mirror of the peaks and valleys of the web traffic, but the metrics were way off.

What this tells us is that Compete’s statistical patterns might mirror reality, but the numbers are based on fuzzy math and unreliable. Folks from Compete may balk at that statement, saying I only looked at three websites. But isn’t taking a sampling of data and projecting it on the entire population kinda what they’re guilty of, too?

I would recommend Compete as a tool to compare the traffic of websites. And if you’re interested in a fairly economical keyword and search engine research tools, at least in comparison to a lot of solutions out there, it’s worth considering even if the price tag seems a bit disproportionate to the value you receive. Still, the primary focus of this series of reviews is to determine website traffic. Frankly, Compete.com’s vast inconsistencies with the web analytics I trust to be true makes me hesitant to do much more with the tool.

What’s your experience with Compete? Is there more to their paid solution I’ve missed? If you haven’t tried it, do so now and come back to report your thoughts on the tool. And what do you think about the comparison to Google Analytics numbers? Run sites you know the actual traffic for and compare your numbers to Compete’s. Let us know how far they are off. The comments are yours.