TopRank Digital Marketing News

Whether you work in B2B or B2C, your prospects and customers are turning to online channels to learn more about you and your industry.  At last count, 346 million of them were turning to blogs.

Business blogging represents an unprecedented way to connect with prospects and customers more powerfully than ever.  What could be cooler than that? How about watching the CEO of TopRank® Online Marketing jump out of a flying plane?

Later this month, TopRank CEO Lee Odden will present ‘Boosting SEO For Social Blogs‘ at Open Ca.mp in Dallas, Texas. During his presentation, Odden will detail how a sound blog marketing strategy can help boost online exposure while increasing search and social traffic.

In an introduction to a post at Online Marketing Blog, TopRank® Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden writes: “…one-size Search Engine Optimization (SEO) does not fit all programs.”

The post was titled 5 Must-Read Tips for B2B Search Marketing and stressed the importance of content and developing websites that support longer sales cycles – a touchstone of B2B client programs at TopRank Marketing.

More essential B2B search marketing insight will be shared in detail by Odden this month during the latest entry in the Markeo Revenue Masters Webinar Series.

Between 2009 and 2014, the money spent by B2B companies on interactive marketing will double, per a recent report by Michael Greene at Forrester Research.  With this increased spend, how can marketers transform lists of tactics into holistic strategies that achieve results? And perhaps just as importantly, how will these same marketers demonstrate results, especially during conversations with the C-suite?

Solutions to multi-layered opportunities that exist within the interactive marketing space will be revealed this month during one of the largest search marketing conferences of the year.

Nearly every day:

• 14,000,000 gather on Twitter
• 60,000,000 connect via LinkedIn
• 346,000,000 engage through blogs
• 400,000,000 network via Facebook

The sheer numbers point towards an unparalleled opportunity to connect with your prospects and customers in social channels online, many of whom are eager to engage.

So what is the one social activity that your customers and prospects are eagerly awaiting for you to launch?  Why not ask them?

This July 29^th, Lee Odden, TopRank® Online Marketing CEO, and Chelsea Bucoy, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Zoomerang by MarketTools, Inc., present Engage Your Audience With Social Media & Surveys.

At its core, social media is the art of real-time engagement.  Less a business practice, more a throwback to traditional public relations, it is a tactic that when leveraged correctly can help any company achieve its PR and marketing goals.

But while the social media and traditional PR game may have the same goals, they simply cannot be played successfully with the same set of rules.

This July, the new set of rules that can help PR and marketing professionals succeed in social media will be unveiled during Retweet: Engagement Means Business, a free online conference hosted by Vocus.  Joining this conference as a presenter will be TopRank® Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden.

If your website were to disappear from Google tomorrow, what would that mean to your online marketing program?

With over 80% of search market share, in addition to highly popular properties such as YouTube, Gmail and Blogger.com under its umbrella, life without Google is an idea that grows more terrifying the more it is considered.

While a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program will focus heavily on Google, a holistic digital marketing plan will be built with an inherent understanding of the importance of channel diversification.   And in today’s online marketplace, this diversification can best be personified by the social web.

In a recent post, Online Marketing Blog equates content and links to the Yin and Yang of any healthy Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program. Post author, TopRank® Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden, states, “Active content creation, promotion and social participation are essential for building a significant and relevant inbound link footprint on the web.”

As such, blog and social media marketing related tactics are no longer simply additional options to consider when fleshing out an online strategy.  They are now vital tools required to get the job done.

At the Vocus User’s Conference in Washington D.C. last week, TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden gave a presentation on “Optimizing Public Relations for Web Search”. Studies by public relations software companies and Universities as well as informal polls by TopRank’s Online Marketing blog have show that journalists use search to report the news.  The opportunity for companies and media relations professionals to improve the visibility of their brands & clients through search is one that should not be ignored.

Search engines like Google have become the newsstand of our time.  And as more and more readers turn to search engines to find the timeliest news, journalists are following suit.

According to a recent survey by TopRank® Online Marketing, nine out of ten journalists and editors indicate that they use search engines daily as part of their jobs. As such, today’s public relations programs must include an online component, and this component must adhere to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices to be successful.

As loyalties shift away from traditional media as a preferred communications channel, there will be those who approach this evolution with fear and those who approach it with an embrace.

While many consumers embrace social media channels such as blogs and microcontent as legitimate sources of news and information, public relations professionals are oftentimes fearful to make a similar leap.  Those that brave the new online landscape, however, find they are able to significantly and positively influence the public relations goals of their clients or companies.

TopRank Account Manager & Social Media Pro Adam Singer