Day one of the DMA / TopRankMarketing.com Social Media Smarts workshop kicked off covering a tremendous amount of information including defining social media, practical examples & case studies and blogging soup to nuts. Creating, marketing and measuring blog results was covered in 3 different modules. Social media and making sense out of the social web is [...]

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Central to the notion of social media is the ability to create, publish and share content. The sheer volume of information on the topic of social media marketing makes filtering and prioritizing what’s most important to a specific organization a challenging task. There’s a lot of excitement from marketers and companies but not everyone is exactly [...]

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Social Media Smarts Interview with Shonali Burke   I first ran into Shonali Burke right before she presented with Katie Paine at the PRSA International conference, “True Tales From the Social Media Measurement Trenches”. We had not met in person before but were connected on Twitter. Social media will do that - facilitate real world connections.  Based [...]

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There are more companies blogging now than ever. How do you measure results? Measuring the social web is a different thing than what most web analytics packages offer. It can be easy to start a blog, but making it successful requires an excellent feedback mechanism. Blog analytics is one of those sources of feedback to [...]

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The thing about internet marketing is that there is no “one right way” to solve a single problem. So much of the advice and commentary about content optimization for search engines at conferences and on blogs is tactical. Five tips for this and 10 ways to do that. We do it too, because people that [...]

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Recently I had the task fo creating a resource for direct marketers on social media marketing and print books are something many people rely on as a portable source of information. The challenge with print sources on internet marketing related topics of course, is that they can become outdated more quickly than other topics. As a [...]

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One of the opportunities from speaking at the Pubcon conference in Las Vegas recently was meeting many client side social media marketing practitioners. Jessica Berlin, one of my co-panelists and social media manager from Cirque du Soleil, offered excellent insights into online reputation management and social media. I’ve invited her to take part in our [...]

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TopRank Online Marketing is pleased to announce a parternship with The Direct Marketing Association to develop and present a series of 2 day workshops on social media marketing for direct marketers.  On December 4th in New York the new course entitled: “Social Media Smarts: An Introduction to the Social Web, Tools and Strategies” will introduce participants to [...]

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Editor note: In order not to overwhelm readers with posts during Pubcon, we’ve saved a few additional sessions for posting this week. Enjoy! Content is king. In spite of all that has changed in the online sphere since its inception, content is still the critical element to a compelling website. Providing relevant, fresh content on [...]

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Over at Junta42 Joe Pulizzi has announced the quarterly update of his Junta42 list of content marketing blogs. I’m happy to say Online Marketing Blog was again included in the list. This time in a slightly improved position as you can see below. I must say, being included on a list with Brian Clark, Jeremiah [...]

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Have you considered developing content specifically to drive traffic from social media sites? Have you also considered what you want from that social media traffic, and what to do with it once you have it? In a session titled, “Earning Big Bucks with Social Media Traffic“, Social Media Marketing advocates including Rank Fishkin, Vanessa Fox, Michael [...]

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Universal search has been touted as the biggest change to happen to search in recent years. Certainly universal and personal search have altered the search landscape to an extent, however to what extent is up for debate. In Universal & Personal Search: This Changes Everything, panelists moderated by Jake Baillie brought differing perspectives to the [...]

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Search engine optimization can be challenging enough, especially for large, enterprise organizations rich with digital assets.  They’re also rich with policies, procedures and often times a labrynth of  content approval and publishing processes. An effort to optimize and promote those assets to search engine bots can be even more challenging than standard SEO. And yet it [...]

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Social Media Smarts: Interview with Richard Binhammer from Dell - @richardatdell Photo Credit www.briansolis.com  Of all the companies known for making advances in the realm of social media, Dell holds a place that reaches both ends of the spectrum. References to “Dell Hell” are less about something wrong and more about one of the most popular [...]

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TopRank Online Marketing will have two speakers presenting on two panels at SES Chicago this week.   On Tuesday, Senior Account Manager Jolina Pettice (who recently spoke on a panel with Yahoo’s Ron Belanger and Anne Kennedy at DPAC) will be speaking on a session about how to use Public Relations tactics to improve SEO results.  On [...]

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Today kicks off another Search Engine Strategies conference, this time in the windy and bleeping cold city of Chicago.  Change has been in the air for SES with the naming of Stewart Quealy as VP of content development, responsible for creating conference program content for all SES events and training. Also, Marilyn Crafts (whom I like to [...]

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There are many benefits to publishing a business blog and improved search engine visibility is one of the most popular.  It’s pretty common advice to hear: start a blog and the fresh content will attract links, improving your search results.  Such tactical advice can be very effective. Unfortunately, the advice gets filtered and distorted, not [...]

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Yesterday I presented at SES Chicago in a session on SEO Through Blogs and Feeds with Stephan Spencer and Sally Falkow. I went first and presented the slideshow embedded below, a presentation in two parts: Why blogs created solely for SEO purposes will inevitably fail. Tips on how to create a successfully optimized company blog that will [...]

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Yesterday I posted “3 Reasons Why Blog SEO Fails” to help readers avoid the pitfalls of starting a business or corporate blog purely for SEO reasons  only to end up wasting time and energy. Without proper planning, oversight and passion for the topic, blogs implemented purely for SEO objectives are doomed to fail. Additionally, social [...]

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Social Media Smarts: Interview with Frank Eliason of Comcast aka @ComcastCares Photo by Shel Israel Twitter has become many things to many people and organizations for that matter, including Comcast.  It really says something when a company experiences the bite of consumer malcontent via social media and then turns around and becomes known as a best [...]

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