We are looking for a design savvy Web Developer that also understands the technical side of SEO. This role requires proficiency in web publishing applications, web design and their impact on search engine visibility.  It also offers a chance to learn and grow as web technologies and search optimization continue to evolve.

Primary Functions & Responsibilities:

• Design and development of websites, email landing pages, blogs, social media backgrounds and more for clients
• Developing web, social and blog templates
• Supporting website SEO audits for clients
• Supporting web analytics and search marketing reporting
• Creation and testing of email campaigns and response tools
• Identifying and troubleshooting SEO issues with content management systems (CMS) and other dynamically generated websites

Qualifications:

• Three to five years of web development and design along with technical SEO experience.
• Experience working in an agency setting.

Proficiency in the following:

• PHP & MySQL
• WordPress
• Dreamweaver or similar
• Google Webmaster Tools & Analytics
• Forms/Landing Page Development Skills
• CSS, ASP & HTML
• Content Management Systems
• Photoshop or Fireworks
• Website Analytics & Performance Reporting

This Web Developer candidate should also have strong aptitude for client support and:

• Understand how to prioritize and manage multiple projects/tasks in a deadline-driven environment
• Strong written communication abilities
• Excellent analytical and reporting skills
• Time management skills
• Good communication skills for internal discussions
• Excellent organizational skills
• Work well with an internal team of marketing professionals to develop strategic, integrated campaigns to drive client success

TopRank Online Marketing is a leading digital marketing agency based in Minnesota that helps clients increase sales and brand visibility online as well as improve customer relationships through search, social, email and content marketing. TopRank offers a strong opportunity for advancement, extremely competitive time off policy, IRA retirement plan, premium health insurance, and a creative office environment overlooking Lake Minnetonka.

If you feel that you posses the skills that we are looking for, please contact us: Human Resources with “Web Developer 111″ in the Subject line.

On April 10, 2012 Social Media Club Chicago (SMC Chicago) will be hosting an exclusive event based on Odden’s new book as well as his experience as a veteran online marketer.

What Will You Learn?

In an age of information ubiquity, consumers and technology have shifted the way we discover, consume and share information in amazing ways. Now more than ever, businesses have a tremendous opportunity to leverage the convergence of search, social media and content marketing to “optimize” brand messages and consumer experiences whether they happen on a social network or a search engine.

From 30,000 foot strategy to practical and actionable tactics, this presentation will provide attendees with a framework for optimizing their digital communications to better attract, engage and inspire communities to take action.

Key Takeaways:

• Learn the importance of creating customer segments and buyer personas
• Optimize your content for all stages in the buying cycle
• Different content ideas for multiple platforms

Event Details

Tuesday, April 10, 2012
5:30pm-7:00pm (CST)

Location:
ITA/TechNexus
200 S. Wacker Dr.
15th Floor
Chicago, IL 60606

Register Now

We hope to see you all at SMC Chicago’s event next week in Chicago.  Also, keep an eye out for tweets from TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden (@leeodden) and TopRank Online Marketing (@toprank).

On April 2nd, 2012 at PRSA’s Annual Digital Impact conference in New York TopRank CEO Lee Odden will be presenting a session on “Content Marketing & Public Relations: Optimize & Socialize to Persuade Your Audience to Act.” This session will teach you how to use marketing best practices to create a strategy that inspires your audience to share, purchase from, and recommend your brand online.  Other key tactics that will be discussed include:

• Developing personas for your target audience
• Instruction on researching social topics and keywords
• Discover tips for leverage your social networks to create strong relationships and promote your content

This isn’t Lee’s first time speaking at a PRSA conference.  Check out this video’s from last year’s PRSA International conference in Orlando, FL where he discusses ways to reach your consumers and integrate your social media strategy.

We hope to see you all at the PRSA Digital Impact Conference next week in New York.  Be sure to follow the conference buzz on twitter and if you’re interested in learning more about specific sessions be sure to visit the Program page on the PRSA website.  TopRank CEO Lee Odden and Jolina Pettice will be interacting and and tweeting at the event @LeeOdden and @TopRank for those of you who do not already follow us.

At this years conference TopRank CEO Lee Odden will be giving a solo presentation titled “Optimize This: Integrating Social, SEO, & Content” and co-presenting a session titled “The Convergence of Search, Social, & Content Marketing”.  Want to learn more?

Online Marketing Summit 2012

Tuesday, February 7, 2012
11:45 AM – 12:30 PM – Optimize This: Integrating Social, SEO, & Content
Location: Sapphire H
Solo Presentation by: Lee Odden, TopRank Online Marketing CEO and author of “Optimize”

Lee Odden is a firm believer that If it can be searched it can be optimized and that it’s far more valuable to optimize for customers before keywords.  This session will provide principles and best practices for attracting and engaging more customers through an “Optimize and Socialize” approach to Content Marketing. You’ll learn:

• Strategies for integrating content marketing with SEO and social media across the enterprise
• Develop customer persona-driven content that attracts, engages and inspires action
• Killer creative content ideas for websites, blogging, social media and re-purposed content

As the online marketplace evolves and becomes increasingly competitive, marketers around the world are searching for advantages that can increase their efficiencies, and improve the performance of online marketing efforts.  Many companies are implementing Content Marketing, SEO and Social Media programs but few are integrating them or coordinating optimized and socialized content across the organization. This session will provide a valuable perspective, roadmap and tactical mix for integrating Content Marketing, SEO and Social Media in ways that you can implement today.

Event Details
OMS San Diego
February 6-10, 2012

Hilton San Diego Bayfront
1 Park Boulevard
San Diego, CA 92101

More Info & Register
(Use Discount code TOPRANK10 and save 10%)

SES Accelerator

Tuesday, February 9, 2012
10:00 AM – 10:50 AM – The Convergence of Search, Social, & Content Marketing
Location: Sapphire I
Presenters
Lee Odden, TopRank Online Marketing CEO and author of  “Optimize”
Arnie Kuenn, Vertical Measures President and author of “Accelerate”

What makes great content?  Content does not become great until your audience finds it, reads it, and shares it.  Curious to know what you can do to increase your odds of being found in both Search and Social Media?  This session featuring Lee Odden and Arnie Kuenn will present an approach to content optimization that emphasizes the convergence of Search, Social Media and Content.  Lee and Arnie will provide step-by-step advice and examples that can be applied by an organization of any size to increase relevant website and social media traffic.

Event Details
SES Search & Social Accelerator
February 9, 2012

Hilton San Diego Bayfront
1 Park Boulevard
San Diego, CA 92101

More Info & Register
(Use Discount code TOPRANK10 and save 10%)

We hope to see you all at the Online Marketing Summit and SES Accelerator in San Diego next week.  Be sure to follow the conference buzz on Twitter under the hashtag: #OMS12.  If you’re interested in learning more about the specific sessions or workshops be sure to visit the Schedule page on the OMS website or the Agenda on the SES Accelerator site.

TopRank will be live blogging, Tweeting and networking at the event of course and can find us on Twitter at: @LeeOdden or @AZeckman.

Looking for some interesting things to do while you’re in San Diego?  I found this great list of “25 Fun & Free Things to Do in San Diego.”  Also, I don’t know if there are any other “Top Chef” fans out there but I have heard a lot of great things about Chef Brain Malarkey’s restaurant Searsucker and it’s less than a mile from the conference.  Hope to see you all there!

Search Engine Optimization and Social Media are no longer distinct channels. They are forever intertwined, each affecting the other in terms of how digital information is discovered, consumed and shared. The subsequent impact on reach and engagement means the integration of these channels is as relevant for Public Relations as it is for Marketing.

I was asked by Melanie Mitchell, SVP of Search Marketing at Digitas to give a presentation on holistic SEO at ad:tech San Francisco where I caught up with another amazingly smart friend, Susan Bratton. She recorded an interview with me on the Social & SEO for Public Relations topic for her popular DishyMix podcast and shared the transcript with me to repost.

Be sure to sign up for SES San Francisco mid August to see Susan give the opening keynote. In the meantime, read on for our discussion about SEO and Social Media or listen to to full interview on DishyMix:

Susan Bratton: Welcome to DishyMix. I’m your host Susan Bratton, and I’m with Lee Odden. Lee is the founder and CEO of TopRank Online Marketing. He’s a friend of mine and we’re here at ad:tech San Francisco live to hear Lee’s latest thinking about something we’ve decided to call the ying and yang of search and social. So welcome Lee.

Lee Odden: Thanks Susan. It’s great to be here.

Susan Bratton: I know it is. You love to talk with me don’t you Lee?

Lee Odden: Of course I do.

Susan Bratton: So you just, you were on a panel this morning…

Lee Odden: Yes

Susan Bratton: and that was, what was the title of that session?

Lee Odden: Modern Search Optimization.

Susan Bratton: Okay great. And really your unique market differentiation is that you have both a deep knowledge of public relations, PR strategy, online news dissemination and also search engine optimizations, and you’ve taken those two things and laid in all of the new social ramifications for online marketing. So now you have these kind of three things that are really the domain of what you do and what you like to do is take those three things and optimize them all together so that they become a greater possibility than siloing them as unique disciplines, right?

Lee Odden: Exactly. And that’s what’s happening with a lot of companies is that you have marketing for example, investing in search optimization to increase visibility of product information, customer acquisition, that kind of thing. A lot of times public relations is managing the social media effort. They don’t always talk to each other. And that’s really unfortunate because the opportunity for them to work together can really amplify the outcome of each. The other component to this, the metaphor I used in the presentation of course was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which is…

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Lee Odden: one of my favorite things still to eat [inaudible].

Susan Bratton: Me too.

Lee Odden: Yeah, it’s fabulous.

Susan Bratton: It’s ridiculous.

Lee Odden: Macaroni and cheese and… Anyway, so of course the peanut butter was the SEO and the jelly was the social media and what holds it all together is content in media, and because that really serves as a vehicle, you know. In terms of search, the reason search exists of course is because of all that content out there, we’ve got to organize it, make it easy to surface what’s most useful, the best answer, if you will. And social plays a really big part in terms of things like Link Acquisition. If you’ve got really great content that’s worth linking to no one will know about it unless you promote it, and one of the most effective ways to promote really great content, like yours, is to create channels of distribution or – well for example, RSS feed gets published when you make a blog post or your email newsletter goes out.

Also making it very easy for search engines to come and visit, make a copy of your stuff and then there you are in the search results. So by promoting content through social channels to your social network, for example, it gets visibility to the population that, there’s so many people empowered to publish. They’re bloggers themselves. They can make comments on blogs, and those activities can result in links back to your stuff. Links drive traffic, and you can get a latent lift in traffic by those links being recognized by search engines. So the other side of this of course is that a lot of the outcome of social interaction is content. So on the one hand, the yen maybe, it’s an SEO that’s using social networks as a way to promote their content so they can attract links and grow further an audience.

The yang might be the social media person that’s really more interested in engagement but they could actually optimize their social content to make their social network more easily discovered by people who are searching. I mean for example, I talked about a client who’s selling fabric, it’s an online fabric retailer. And the persona of target was a crafter, do it yourselfer. And so there’s people out there looking for how-to articles. They’re looking for videos or instructional information or ideas, and what a great thing to have in the search results. Not just somewhere where they can buy stuff, but where they can connect with other people. So it’s a great way to grow social network by optimizing that social content and make it easy for people to find that are looking for what the community has to offer.

Susan Bratton: Lets just assume that we’re talking about any brand that has some content. It could be that they’re a content producer, like a publisher, or it could be that they’re a consumer packaged goods company that has currated some content or created some content. If they only had an hour a week to screw around with it what’s the best thing they could do with an asset of content – and I know it’s going to be different for video than it is for written. I think there is more written content created, so lets just say it’s like a blog post or a white paper or something like that, like a piece of tangible information that’s to be read…

Lee Odden: Sure.

Susan Bratton: by someone and they had an hour a week to both – not include in the creation of it – but an hour a week to promote it in some ways. Give me the rank order of how you would tell them to spend their time. That’s a good question.

Lee Odden: Yeah.

Susan Bratton: Isn’t that a good question. I really.

Lee Odden: [Makes crowd cheering noise] That’s the crowd cheering for your question. So…

Susan Bratton: People hear the crowd cheering [inaudible] but no pressure.

Lee Odden: Well, you know, I think it’s going to be different if it’s B2B versus consumer oriented content, but lets…

Susan Bratton: All right, well lets start with consumer oriented content.

Lee Odden: Sure. Well…

Susan Bratton: ‘Cause I think B2B, I think B2B people, they know a little bit more…

Lee Odden: Yes.

Susan Bratton: about how to find their market than, you know, a bigger market of the consumer.

Lee Odden: Yes. So if it’s this content answer some questions…

Susan Bratton: Mm hmm.

Lee Odden: then I would look for people asking those questions. I might go to blogs or Twitter and perform some clever queries and identify in a more real time sense people who are actually asking questions that are answered by our content and actually make the connection. Make the recommendation. So hypothetically, I’ll go back to the fabric example of someone saying, “Hey, how do you do this thing with pillows?” I don’t know. You know, I market the stuff I…

Susan Bratton: You know nothing about pillows.

Lee Odden: Yeah. But if we’re able to be there at the right time with really useful information and it links back to our stuff and we’re actually, you know, we’re providing a service, and the timeliness of it really makes a difference. So if you can use search.twitter.com or other blog search tools or even Google Search, the real time or the update filter on the left hand side, you could probably find some places where you could be useful. And also on comments, forums, boardtracker.com is a forum search type of tool and…

Susan Bratton: Oh, okay. That’s good. I didn’t know about that.

Lee Odden: And those are ways that you can, you know, be a resource and by being a resource you’re kind of making a promise that wow, you know, you’re really well known for being a resource for X or for Y. And I think in order to do this kind of thing you should think ahead a little bit about what you want to be known for, and that messaging would then guide subsequent search, research and interaction for you to be a resource, you know what I mean?

Susan Bratton: Yes, I do.

Lee Odden: Because people could look at it and just go, “Oh yeah, that’s a great tool. I’ll go try that out,” and they’ll have no methodology behind it. They’re two or three or four weeks into it and they’re like, “Ooh. Everything thinks that we, you know, we only sell bar cloth fabric, but we sell NFL fabric dammit,” or whatever, I don’t know. But you have to think ahead about that, what’s the long-term outcome of your behavior, and not just in its ability to reach your goal, but how you’ll be seen through this type of activity.

Susan Bratton: Go back to a couple things here. I want to go a little bit deeper into this question. So you’re going to search on whatever your thing is and you’re going to go to Twitter. Lets just say you go on Twitter and you search for people talking about crafting, whatever. Lets make it something really straightforward like curtains, sewing curtains for your kids room. So you go into Twitter and you search for kids curtains or whatever, and then you see that, you know, five people have talked about it. What do you do with that information? If they’re not following you how do you respond to them or what are you doing?

Lee Odden: You can act, you can add a message to them…

Susan Bratton: Mm hmm.

Lee Odden: and just say, “Hey, I notice that you’re asking about, you know, how to do a certain thing. Well just here’s an article that might be of use to you…

Susan Bratton: Okay.

Lee Odden: “You know, we are a company that does this.” I mean you can, you know, in your bio on the Twitter account, the company or branded Twitter account or whatever you’re using. Of course it needs to be transparent what it is.

Susan Bratton: Mm hmm.

Lee Odden: I think that’s really important.

Susan Bratton: Of course.

Lee Odden: “I guess we do want your business, but, you know, here’s something that you might find useful…

Susan Bratton: Okay.

Lee Odden: “A lot of our customers have found it kind of cool, so you might check it out.”

Susan Bratton: So you add them on Twitter. Obviously we know how to comment on a blog.

Lee Odden: Right.

Susan Bratton: You said boardtracker.com, what is it like a meta search on bulletin boards?

Lee Odden: It’s a meta search on bulletin boards, yeah.

Susan Bratton: Okay.

Lee Odden: And a lot of people in the reputation management business will use that to find people talking in a certain way about their brand forums.

Susan Bratton: Okay.

Lee Odden: You can also use it as an opportunity to search for engagement opportunities.

Susan Bratton: Mm hmm. And are there other places that you would look or search to get into the conversation? What other kinds of conversations could you get into?

Lee Odden: So interestingly enough when we talked last time [inaudible] situation…

Susan Bratton: I know, it’s been a while.

Lee Odden: we talked about social media monitoring…

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Lee Odden: at the time. So and we talked about ironically – I don’t mean to sidestep – but we talked about wouldn’t it be great to marry social media monitoring with web analytics. Why doesn’t that exist? And ironically it kind of exists today, doesn’t it, with Radiant 6 and Web Trends and other companies. But so to answer your question, it would be through a social monitoring tool. That’s going to give you a more robust measurement or detection tool to identify conversations occurring according to particular topics. And that will give you some opportunities for engagement in this way, probably more efficiently but expensively than something like Twitter or blogsearch.google.com.

Susan Bratton: What is the Gorilla social listening tool that people use the most besides Google Alerts? Is there something that’s like…

Lee Odden: Google Alerts sucks. I mean…

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Lee Odden: so bad.

Susan Bratton: What…

Lee Odden: Socialmention.com…

Susan Bratton: Okay.

Lee Odden: is a free one. And Social Mention, I mean as far as those that are free. Trackur.com is really low cost, and…

Susan Bratton: That’s Andy Beal’s product.

Lee Odden: Yes that’s Andy Beal’s.

Susan Bratton: and that’s like I think $18 bucks a month.

Lee Odden: Yeah…

Susan Bratton: Mm hmm.

Lee Odden: it’s pretty low cost. He keeps adding to it, enhancing it and the price stays the same, so that’s pretty awesome.

Susan Bratton: Mm hmm.

Lee Odden: I think using Google Reader and RSS feeds on queries that occur when you’ve done a search on some type of news site like Google News or Bing can be pretty effective. A lot more effective than Google Alerts.

Susan Bratton: What is it about Google Alerts that’s so ineffective?

Lee Odden: Matching is crap. I mean, you know, I’ve had a Google Alert account for a long time like all of us have, and it can’t possibly be that no one’s talking about me anymore.

Susan Bratton: I’m talking about you.

Lee Odden: Yeah. No, the things that we monitor there are related to industry topics, keyword topics or whatever, and I just noticed the types of matching is really poor, very, very low quality. A lot of scraper…

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Lee Odden: content. I mean there’s always been some of that but…

Susan Bratton: Yeah, it’s gotten worse. It’s interesting isn’t it.

Lee Odden: It’s gotten worse. Yes it is. And so for whatever reason, when you subscribe to an RSS feed in Google Reader – what I mean is go to Google News or Blog Search, do a search, find the RSS icon at the bottom of the page, bring that into Google Reader, and now whenever a news item appears then you can see it in your reader. Speaking of, there’s a really creative way to, if you import that RSS feed into Twitter Feed you can automatically populate a Twitter account with news that matches a certain keyword query, which is kind of an interesting thing to do.

I do that with a Top Rank Twitter account and it posts maybe once or twice a day with that kind of news item, and then of course 90% of the rest of what happens on that Twitter account is people. But it’s a nice way to automatically add something that’s relevant because it’s a keyword filters it out into your Twitter stream.

Susan Bratton: So with your clients right now, where are you putting most of your emphasis? Thank you first of all for answering the question about if you only had an hour a week what would you do. I really think that was a very sound piece of advice. And I think it’s extremely realistic to think that we probably only have an hour a week to triage our businesses in the best way we can unless we have, you know, a large staff of people supporting us. So thank you.

Going back to this yin and yang of search and social, what is it that we should be doing intelligently and strategically to leverage the combination of the two together the way that social and search manifest on the web right now, ‘cause it’s constantly changing? So again, going back to that kind of, you know, one hour a week, where are the holes in our system from the way we used to do things to the way we should be doing them now in our approach to maximizing the combination of search and social?

Lee Odden: Well I think one of the starting points is in the planning of it, right. A lot of SEO activity starts with keyword research, and I talked about persona development, that kind of thing, in terms of consumer information needs, creating a profile for what characterizes that kind of person you’re after, what do they search for, what kind of information and in what format do they engage with that sort of thing. Developing a keyword glossary in terms of an SEO best practice is still a great idea. What is it that people are looking for indicative of the product and services you have to offer? But at the same time doing some social keyword research makes a lot of sense.

So a keyword glossary from an SEO perspective is a list of keyword phrases, how popular they are, how relevant they are, they have scores associated with them, and how competitive they are. A social keyword glossary is basically topics. In fact we don’t even use keywords, we just say Social Topic Glossary. What does that mean? What topics are people talking about relevant to our mix of products and services?

So we have these two lists and we reconcile them to see if there’s any crossover and we know those are really phrases we want to go after, not only in terms of content were creating as terms of articles, press releases or whatever can be crawled by Google Bot, but it might also be useful for social media teams that are out there tweeting and blogging and updating Facebook status updates and that sort of thing, because links that are including in Facebook updates and in tweets do count when it comes to standard SEO on Google, especially with real time results. So the text next to the link is pulled and influences how the destination of the link is perceived by Google Bot for example, or Bing.

Susan Bratton: Okay, I didn’t follow that at all. Say it again.

Lee Odden: So if I made a tweet…

Susan Bratton: Yeah?

Lee Odden: it said Minnesota Vikings Sports Fabric, Get It Here, you know, and then there’s a short URL to it, then the destination page is optimized for that, lets say. Then the text that’s included in the link, in the tweet, is sort of associated with whatever the link is pointing to.

Susan Bratton: Mm hmm.

Lee Odden: So…

Susan Bratton: It came from your social topics glossary, people looking for Minnesota Viking fabric.

Lee Odden: Right. And so the social key, the social topics or social keywords are going to influence social media teams use of language when it makes sense, right.

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Lee Odden: So they’re not going to…

Susan Bratton: When it’s human.

Lee Odden: Yes, exactly. They’re not going to compromise being human or creative…

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Lee Odden: for that, but you might, it’s like seeing synonyms. I mean…

Susan Bratton: Of course.

Lee Odden: that just, that’s when you’re, you know, when you’re writing copy…

Susan Bratton: Speak the language of your customers.

Lee Odden: Exactly. So and there can be some real time opportunities. You might see something trending, you know. The Winklevoss twins might be I might say, Five Things Winklevoss Twins Can Teach Us About SEO. I would do that, but it would be taking advantage of the rising trend and queries about that particular keyword today, right. When that’s relevant to your business though, that can be very, very powerful.

Susan Bratton: So going back to this social topic glossary, what are you doing to discover these queries?

Lee Odden: Social monitoring tools. And on the cheap of course Socialmention.com is a great tool for that. When you do a query on Social Mention on the bottom left hand side it will show you a list of phrases that are most often present and comments or tweets or whatever as the query you put on the top. And you can export that as a CSV file and bring it into Excel. And that can be useful to you as you construct a social topic glossary. From a paid side, any of the major social monitoring tools. [Inaudible] 2, Radiant 6, Scout Labs, whoever, they all product keyword clouds, or maybe if you’re lucky they’ll provide it in a tabular format and allow you to export it into a CSV file. And then you can use that to guide your content, social content, creation teams with language that’s being used by your customers. You can also inform editorial decisions about writing blog…

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Lee Odden: posts or tweets…

Susan Bratton: Advertising your blogs, mm hmm. All right, so we were talking about again this kind of like one hour what do I need to put my attention on to make sure that I’m leveraging the way search and social interoperate now on the web. So can you recap what your first piece of advice was that you just gave me? How would you restate that?

Lee Odden: Well in the planning I would make sure that you’re doing your standard keyword research using Google’s keyword tool, Keyword Discovery or Word Tracker or something like that. But also using a social monitoring tool to identify topics of interest…

Susan Bratton: Mm hmm.

Lee Odden: topics that are relevant to your business products and service mix that people are talking about. And put that together, and then use that as a guide, as an editorial guide for social content, and of course also optimization. That way you’re using language in your social content that’s of interest from a word of mouth standpoint and it’s also something that people are searching on.

Susan Bratton: One of the things that I’ve done that’s really helped me is an Ask Survey. In my auto responder series I send out an email to my customers like four or five days into them joining a list, and I say, “I’d like to get your opinion on a few things, and if you would take this survey I’ll give you a one time 60% discount on my top three products, ‘cause I want to inscent you to talk to me.” And then I ask them all the questions with a lot of open-ended questions. I get their way that they establish their problems…

Lee Odden: Nice!

Susan Bratton: and then that’s how I drive the social topics and the keyword searches and the copywriting that I do and all those kinds of things. Do you have any ideas about how to make that even better?

Lee Odden: Well look into your web analytics data and do a search against all the keywords that have ever driven traffic and search for things like how-to or just the question mark, and you’ll see the queries that are question format that have actually driven traffic to your website. And if you start to see, “Look, you know, a lot of people are asking about this,” and, you know, if that content isn’t recent or robust on your site then that’s an opportunity to create it.

Susan Bratton: What’s your level of interest in Facebook versus Twitter right now for your customers?

Lee Odden: For our customers? You know, the retail customers were using both in most cases. For B2B customers there’s a maybe 50% or 60% of them are just using Twitter, they’re not using Facebook as much. They’re using LinkedIn and blogging more so actually.

Susan Bratton: That makes sense. And what about press releases? What’s happening with PR and press releases in the world these days?

Lee Odden: So I think of PR and public and media relations as something entirely different than press releases as a information distribution vehicle. That’s actually how I think of them now. You know, I’m bias because we’ve been working with PR Web for about four years helping them optimize their platform, and then also helping to market their business to acquire customers. So the people that are customers of PR Web have benefited with press releases now that actually have much better distribution. We track the ranking of press releases and just after the Panda update, traffic is, press release traffic has actually gone up for releases hosted on PR Web. So other services like Market Wire and PR News Wire and Business Wire and whatever are great and obviously peoples with earnings, announcements and that sort of thing have an obligation to do distributions.

But what I’m noticing, or what we’re noticing is more, especially with PR Web, ‘cause we work with them so much, is press releases written a little more in article format getting picked up by some pretty attractive syndication partners. All these wire distribution services have pretty good relationships for content syndication and distribution, and you know, some of them come into an editor of some kind and they look at that feed and they see things that they could actually repurpose as is, and we’re seeing some very – I mean it’s to the point where I went to my own folks and said, “Hey, I want you to start doing this for us ‘cause this looks really good,” and it’s just something I found, it’s a behavior that was being – and it was recommended, I found out that PR Web was recommending this to the customers, but being able to use it as, not as an article marketing thing so much…

Susan Bratton: Mm hmm.

Lee Odden: Because there’s credibility that’s been built up over the years between the wire service and those publications, those news publications that just use their stuff to create ad inventory or whatever. But there’s in some cases an intermediary, a human being that’s actually looking at those feeds and going, “Oh yeah, that’s actually good,” and they’ll put it in a place where if it was a PR firm doing this they would count it as a hit, you know. It’s not a high level hit…

Susan Bratton: You know what it reminds me of, it reminds me of those old Naps releases? Do you remember Naps?

Lee Odden: Yes.

Susan Bratton: It’s like Naps, right?

Lee Odden: Yes, yes.

Susan Bratton: It’s like you write an article and you send it out and a bunch of little, little news, little family newspapers from all over the country pick it up and they use it as content.

Lee Odden: Yes.

Susan Bratton: So that’s what you’re saying…

Lee Odden: Yes.

Susan Bratton: It’s essentially, it’s like articles authoring has merged with press release to create a new Naps?

Lee Odden: I think so.

Susan Bratton: Mm hmm.

Lee Odden: I think it’s an opportunity. It’s fairly informal right now…

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Lee Odden: but bottom line is if it creates value, you know, if it’s well written, it is news worthy…

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Lee Odden: but it’s a resource, why not use it?

Susan Bratton: Definitely. Absolutely. Yeah, that’s good. Any other things like that that you’ve discovered recently that you’ve said, “Hey, we’ve got to use this for Top Rank Marketing”? Those are the best ones.

Lee Odden: Yes. Yes, and nope.

Susan Bratton: Okay. I just thought I had to ask in case there was another one that was super simple. Awesome! Okay, so anything else on the search and social integration that you want to end our conversation with? Any words of wisdom or good advice or things that aren’t working anymore that people are still doing that are just like not effective anymore based on something that’s changed?

Lee Odden: Well I think over reliance on any one channel is something that, you know, it just, it’s not sustainable. There’s this sort of moving window of interest amongst the early adopters, right. They move from one thing to another to another to another, and people who adopt after that, markets of companies might get the misperception that, “Oh okay, yeah, Twitter’s a hot thing” and “Okay, finally I’m convinced,” and they stick to it, and that’s an eggs in one basket sort of thing.

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Lee Odden: So they’ve got to always be looking out for signals from what’s the next thing, right. And they can get that information through social monitoring and web analytics, and through their own firsthand participation. So I think over relying on too much, on a particular social channel, is something that I see people doing and they’ll pay for it, because when the time comes for them to be involved in other applications or whatever…

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Lee Odden: they’re going to be behind. They could be ahead, I’ll put it that way. It’s not so much that they’re behind, but they could be a lot further ahead.

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Lee Odden: So they need to allocate resources to testing in experimentation.

Susan Bratton: Absolutely. Plus that’s always the most fun stuff. It’s the shiny new thing. And we like shiny new things.

Lee Odden: Yeah. Yeah.

Susan Bratton: I know. We’re such nerds, huh? I do. I definitely do. All right, good. Well Lee, what I would like you to do is tell me what kind of a client is a perfect client for you, in case there’s someone listening who thinks themselves, “Oh I really like that Lee Odden. I’d like to know him more.” How can you best help a brand?

Lee Odden: You know, the companies that were really hitting a lot of homeruns often tend to be B2B companies. I mean we’re working with, just companies here in San Francisco, companies like Market Tools, McKesson, Marketto’s in San Mateo near here, and you know, we’re providing consulting to their internal SEO and social teams…

Susan Bratton: Mm hmm.

Lee Odden: about how to play nice together…

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Lee Odden: get rid of those silos, here’s not only information on content marketing strategy, but also operational advice, process, and training. And those are the things that have been I think most appreciated by our clients for, in terms of what we do for them. It’s not just a, you know, “Here’s our advice and away we go,” it’s, and it’s also…

Susan Bratton: But you’re powering them at a systemic level…

Lee Odden: It is because the more, the better able they are to implement our recommendations and the more successful they are, and then we can still focus on the things that they simply don’t have expertise for.

Susan Bratton: Operationalizing…

Lee Odden: Yeah.

Susan Bratton: and SEO and social and…

Lee Odden: Yes.

Susan Bratton: PR, right?

Lee Odden: Yes. Exactly.

Susan Bratton: Really those three things coming together.

Lee Odden: Yes.

Susan Bratton: And, you know, if you don’t have a big media budget that’s what you’re relying on, the three things that are essentially unpaid, you know…

Lee Odden: Mm hmm.

Susan Bratton: I’m not sure, I wouldn’t call them free, but they don’t, they don’t have as big a cost in general as media.

Lee Odden: Right.

Susan Bratton: Mm hmm.

Lee Odden: And then the cool thing is that people that do have budget for media…

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Lee Odden: can get extra value…

Susan Bratton: Definitely.

Lee Odden: using the kinds of things that we do, right, to augment and repurpose or whatever, things that they never would’ve thought of before.

Susan Bratton: I love it. Lee thank you so much. It’s really great to see you at AdTech. You look super handsome by the way. That’s a great looking outfit you’ve got on.

Lee Odden: Well thank you Susan. You’re looking pretty awesome yourself.

Susan Bratton: And it’s really great to have you back on DishyMix. I want you to come on as often as you’d like. We’d love to have you.

Lee Odden: Thanks a lot Susan.

Susan Bratton: You got to meet Lee Odden. He’s the founder and CEO of Top Rank Marketing, and a delightful human being, obviously knows what he’s doing, got tons of information and I would really recommend that you go check out his blog because he tells you what he knows. He’s a really awesome information sharer. And he has a very clear style of explaining things, in the written word especially, which is very good. So I really recommend that. All right, I’m your host, Susan Bratton. We’re here live at AdTech. I hope you enjoyed this interview with Lee Odden, and I will look forward to connecting with you next week as well. Take care and have a great day. Bye-bye.

See Susan Bratton give the opening keynote presentation at SES San Francisco August 16, 2011. 

You can find me at SES San Francisco presenting on “Content Marketing Optimization” and “The Convergence of Search, Social & Content Marketing”.  I will also be programming the Marketing Masters Search Marketing Track at ad:tech New York November 9, 2011.

Ken Horst has joined the agency as an account manager to assist clients in meeting increasingly critical online marketing goals including content marketing, search engine optimization, and email strategy.

Ken has been involved in Internet marketing since the mid 1990’s, before Google,  when he as doing keyword research, content optimization and pay-per-click for an IT training company. Since that time, he has provided Internet consulting in the areas of strategy, site design, content plans, social media integration and more to both billion dollar companies and small businesses with a hyper local focus.

Dave Folkens will join the agency to serve as director of marketing communications in January 2011. A veteran communicator with an established background in traditional strategies as well as online development, Folkens brings both agency and corporate communications history along with a deep understanding of social media to TopRank.

Dave will be responsible for leading efforts to expand the agency brand and highlight the work of leading TopRank clients along with providing counsel on future growth opportunities for the organization. Prior to this new role, Folkens has worked at Fleishman-Hillard International Communications, Medtronic Inc., Orphan Medical, and the Minnesota AIDS Project providing a wide range of experience across industries.

Lee Odden, TopRank CEO, stated “Thanks to a strong list of creative, forward-thinking clients we have been fortunate to continue to increase our capabilities over the past few years despite a challenging economic environment.  We’re excited to be in a position to add some very strong, experienced staff to assist us with future growth and to serve increasingly savvy digital marketing clients. Ken will add great direct client service to our existing team and Dave’s background in public relations and marketing will be an asset to us as we seek to add new opportunities to build and lead our industry.”

Be sure to watch TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog for contributions from both Dave and Ken on search, social and content marketing topics.

In a test of your micro-content writing skills, all you need to do is post a creative tweet using ALL of the following:
@TopRank @garyvee @baratunde http://tprk.us/mima-2010 #mimasummit

The responses were pretty amusing. We compiled them and shared in a super secret manner to the TopRank super-secret-voting-on-contests-involving -Twitter team.  Apparently Justin Bieber struck a chord because Dan Monfre racked up the votes for his tweet, which was tied by panelectric, whose real name we don’t know yet, with an ode to the cool kids.

Winning Tweets from TopRank  Online Marketing Ticket Giveaway for the 2010 MIMA Summit:

@danmonfre: Justin Bieber is NOT performing at this year’s #mimasummit He is being replaced by @garyvee and @baratunde http://tprk.us/mima-2010@TopRank

@panelectric: RT!: Help a geek win a seat with the cool kids @TopRank @garyvee@baratunde #mimasummit http://tprk.us/mima-2010 #SinceWereBeingHonest

Other tweets that received votes from the TopRank Online Marketing team (in order of votes received most to fewest)

• @rohnjaymiller: I refuse to have any part in @TopRank @garyvee @baratundehttp://tprk.us/mima-2010 #mimasummit social media promo just for a free MIMA pass!
• @annesteja: I need a break frm trashy daytime TV Plz RT 2 help me win @TopRank#MIMASummit free pass 2 see @garyvee & @baratunde
• @MNPlanner: Support the cure for Bieber Fever: @TopRank @garyvee@baratunde http://tprk.us/mima-2010 #mimasummit
• @SEONickLeRoy: Please Help Me Become a force In Search by winning#MIMASummitt free pass from @TopRank 2 see @GaryVee & @baratundehttp://tprk.us/mima2010
• @JLBraaten: My wish: to sit with @TopRank while watching @garyvee &@baratunde at #mimasummit: http://tprk.us/mima-2010
• @ChrisNalty: REALLY? RT @ChrisNalty: Watch @TopRank @garyvee @baratunde Jello-wrestle for lutefisk @ #mimasummit http://tprk.us/mima-2010 #StrangeGames
• @joeleyba: If I win the free #mimasummit pass I will buy @TopRank @garyvee and@baratunde a Summit Oktoberfest. http://tprk.us/mima-2010
• @pamelamuldoon: @TopRank @garyvee helps me Crush It, I grew up w/The Onion@baratunde & @leeodden is my MN SEO hero;-) ohttp://tprk.us/mima-2010#mimasummit
• @sanna_lee: @TopRank + @garyvee + @baratunde = #MIMASummithttp://tprk.us/mima2010 (doing my best to win a free pass!)
• @LisaMyers77: It would be swell to win a free mima pass from @TopRank @garyvee@baratunde http://tprk.us/mima-2010 #mimasummit
• @NSBRadioNetwork: @TopRank We didn’t get a media pass! Small Biz needs to hear from @garyvee & @baratunde http://tprk.us/mima-2010 #mimasummit pls RT

Thank you everyone (those listed here and in the Twittersphere) that entered. We appreciate your creativity and look forward to seeing Gary Vee, Baratunde Thurston and all the breakout speakers at this year’s MIMA Summit. If you see someone from TopRank Online Marketing, be sure to say hello!

How do you feel about social media, particularly as it relates to your brand?

Better put, how would you feel about social media marketing if you knew search engines took your company’s social activity into account when determining your search ranking?

Hallie Mummert of Target Marketing recently wrote an excellent piece titled Search: Get Real About Real Time SEO.  The article, featuring quotes from TopRank Online Marketing® CEO Lee Odden, opens with an example of a real time search conducted in the light of recent riots in Oakland, CA:

“Searching Google for “Oakland riots” led to a page of blended search results—one could find news stories, videos, blog posts and tweets. That’s right, Twitter posts showed up in an automated scroll box about halfway down the Google search engine results page.”

Mummert goes on to state that query-based, real time search is not unique to Google as other major search engines, including Yahoo! and Bing, are also integrating social media content into search rankings.

“You have to wonder, if you’re making it into the real-time results,” Odden ponders, “does that add another layer of signal to the overall signal to tell Google, Bing and Yahoo! that your content is of high value to the marketplace?”

Odden helps tie real time and social media results into the larger sphere of a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program by stating, “Search is already a moving target and real-time just escalates that. This makes it important for marketers to pay attention to the overall search landscape.”

Advice Odden provides to marketers in this article includes:

• Branching out beyond  Web analytics reports to see how the search results pages are composed
• Noting what content topics and types tend to rank highly
• Searching for patterns in search results
• Leveraging patterns for either immediate opportunities or to shape long-term search strategies

Read the rest of this article by visiting Target Marketing online.

Stay up to date with news from TopRank® Online Marketing by subscribing to our newsroom RSS feed, following @TopRank on Twitter, or becoming a fan of Online Marketing Blog on Facebook.

Learn more about B2B SEO and social media marketing programs offered by TopRank by downloading our Social SEO Guides.

(Who also doesn’t mind having meetings on the lake once in a while)

TopRank Online Marketing has a great opportunity for a talented writing professional to join our content marketing team. Business blogs, websites, social media content and other types of online promotional copy are core skills for this position that helps our clients win on the web.

The search and social media savvy writer we’re looking for knows online marketing communications and messaging from working client side, at an agency or both. Prior experience (2-3 years) with Blogging, Article Writing, Social Media Content Creation and Promotion as well as Search Engine Marketing will win big brownie points.

This position carries with it a number of potential benefits including: the opportunity to write for an agency blog that has over 36k subscribers & 120k visitors per month, attend 1-2 industry conferences each year (NYC, Vegas, San Francisco), work with a mix of Fortune 500-1000 clients and the opportunity to learn SEO and Social Media Marketing from some of the most talented consultants in the biz.

TopRank Online Marketing is a collaborative group that works in a team environment. We offer a significant opportunity for advancement, extremely competitive time off policy, IRA retirement plan, premium health insurance and a creative office environment overlooking Lake Minnetonka.

If you’re interested, please email us: hr at toprankmarketing dot com or get more info here: Online Marketing Copywriter

OMS conference organizer Aaron Kahlow arranged to shoot a quick video interview with Lee, Rick Burnes of HubSpot and Joe Pulizzi of Junta 42 and the Content Marketing Institute to discuss leave behind online marketing tactics, online trust/privacy issues and conference feedback:

Liveblog posts of the keynote came from TopRank’s Adam Singer and fom Mike Corak: ”Lee Odden rocked as always – great keynote – see him if you haven’t and check out TopRank for certain”.

Here’s a bit of OMS Minneapolis keynote feedback from Twitter:

@myklroventine: @leeodden Congrats again on a great #OMSMIN keynote.
@medallionfinder: @leeodden Very dynamic speaker at #OMSMIN . Good stuff!
@PriorityResults: Excellent presentation from @leeodden at #omsmin. Thanks!
@AaronKahlow: Facebook get’s more search traffic than AOL…Lee Odden says at Keynote at #OMSMIN @OMsummit… great session to kick off the day here

Thanks to Amanda Miller Littlejohn of Mopwater PR + Media Notes, below is a video from the first 10 minutes of Odden’s presentation outlining how SEO can boost the value Public Relations provides to organizations and how both SEO and PR can work together to achieve media relations and marketing goals.

If you would like to experience the full presentation, be sure to check out the PRSA Webinar coming up June 15th: The Top 10 SEO Tactics for SEO Professionals.  Of course, you can also find out more by visiting the online PR category of Online Marketing Blog.

Odden is conducting a 1 day workshop in New York in partnership with PRNews for communications professionals that instructs how to leverage SEO and Social Media.  The event is currently sold out, but TopRank Online Marketing does offer onsite training and workshops for companies. Please contact us for more information at 1-877-872-6628 or info@toprankmarketing.com

Below is the full Powerpoint deck of the presentation including the Strategy & Tactics as well as the PRWeb case study. Below that is a video of the Strategy and Tactics presentation taken by Jeffrey L. Cohen of Social Media B2B.

The 45 minute video of Lee’s portion of the presentation covers: Content SEO Strategy, Core SEO Principles, SEO Best and Worst Practices.

Lee Odden and Content SEO Best Practices from Jeffrey L. Cohen on Vimeo.

The feedback received was very good, with several attendees rating it one of the best presentations of the conference. Watch the TopRank Online Marketing newsroom for our upcoming Optimized Content Strategy Guide – 100 pages of what marketers need to know in order to kickstart their content marketing and optimization efforts.

Much like trying to literally capture lightning in a bottle, haphazardly inserting social media tactics into a marketing plan in an attempt to force customer connection can be inefficient at best and dangerous at worst. In the article below, originally published in Target Marketing, TopRank® Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden offers three tactics that ensure better connection with customers on the social web:

The buzz surrounding companies investing in social media marketing to reach consumers has created a lot of attention for sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the recently popular Foursquare. Millions of consumers are spending their time online with social networking and media sharing sites instead of other media.

Some companies are wasting significant resources by chasing after too many different services without taking the time to figure out which social networks and Web sites their customers prefer. Why not fish where the fish are? Here are three tactics you can use to better connect with customers on the social Web:

• Ask Them! One of the most effective and accurate methods of finding out which social media sites your customers prefer is to survey them. That same survey can do double duty and invite customers to friend, fan or follow based on their preferences.
• Social Media Monitoring. Free services like trackur.com or socialmention.com can help uncover which sites customers are using that also discuss your brand. Paid services like Scout Labs or Radian6 are very useful for more advanced monitoring and social CRM.
• Web Analytics. Review your Web analytics to see which social media sites are already sending you traffic, and leverage that insight to decide where to participate.

Doing your homework on customer preferences for how they discover, interact and share on the social Web will shorten the time to reach the right people and help create a more relevant opportunity to interact.

Stay up-to-date with the latest news from TopRank® Online Marketing by subscribing to our newsroom RSS feed, following @TopRank on Twitter or becoming a fan of Online Marketing Blog on Facebook.

Learn more about the social media marketing programs offered by TopRank by downloading our Social SEO Guides.

Which notable industry publications and blogs mentioned TopRank® Online Marketing the first half of January, 2010? Here you go:

ClickZ Social Media All-Stars 2009 – TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden was included in this list of 20 “luminaries and pioneers of the social media frontier” by ClickZ author and author of Socialnomics, Erik Qualman. Erik got a little creative and blashpemous and assigned Odden as a DH for the American League of social media all stars. (The MN Twins are of course, in the National League)

SEMMYs 2010 – TopRank Marketing is helping with the judging for the 4th year in a row. Even better news is that TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog has 7 entries in various categories for top blog posts of 2009. Obviously, none of the categories we’re nominated for are categories we’re judging.

PostRank Top Blogs of 2009 – TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog earned 7 badges and 2 special mentions in the PostRank ranking of top blogs. A few of the category rankings include:

• Public Relations #1
• Online Marketing #1
• Content Marketing #4

Social Media Club Lousiville –  TopRank CEO Lee Odden will be presenting “10 Must Know SEO Tips for Communicators” at the Feb 16, 2010 Social Media Club event in Louisville, Kentucky.

American Express OPEN – TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden was included in this list of 80 Small Business Twitterers You Should Be Following along with Guy Kawasaki, Pete Cashmore and Mike Arrington.

CRM Mastery – How to Write Compelling Social News Headlines. Adam Singer’s post on headline writing gets due praises on Jim Berkowitz’s CRM blog.

Top 100 Most influential marketers of 2009 – TopRank’s (Not Top Rank) CEO, Lee Odden was ranked #16 in this list of most influential marketers in 2009 by Invesp.

SmartBrief on Social Media – Keep your Web site from becoming a “tombstone” – TopRankBlog was cited for a post on the need for content in digital marketing.

Techipedia – Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2009. Six posts from TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog by Michelle, Bowles, Adam Singer and Lee Odden were included in this coveted list of best internet marketing posts by Tamar Weinberg, Author of New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web.

Search Engine Land – 2010 Marketing Predictions & Resolutions. Three articles from Online Marketing Blog were included in this new year roundup of predictions.  BTW, that’s not a big list, this is a BIGLIST.

HubSpot – Must-Read Inbound Marketing Predictions and Resolutions for the New Year. TopRank’s coverage of eMarketer was included in this recommended list of 2010 predictions.

Social Media Today – Benefits of Running Polls on Twitter. Social Media Today syndicated a post from TopRankBlog gaining it an additional 100+ tweets.

MarketingVOX – Industry Buzz. A post by TopRank’s Michelle Bowles on Email Marketing was picked up by MarketingVOX

Penelope’s Trunk – Brazen Careerist – Penelope’s Guide to Blogging. TopRank’s advice on blogger relations was cited in this guide to blogging by the CEO of Brazen Careerist.

Compendium Blogware – Now here is someone who gets it!  Nice to see the folks at Compendium appreciating our advice on Blogging and SEO. We’ve been writing about it since 2004