TopRank Internet Marketing News

If you weren’t one of the 300 or so digital marketers attending the SES Hong Kong conference this week, then you missed out on a great mix of search and social media content, networking and social events. Incisive Media’s Mike Grehan asked me to present at the all new SES Hong Kong conference on social media and a little bit of deliberation, I signed on.

The digital marketing scene in Hong Kong is growing rapidly even though there is a sense of conservatism when it comes to marketing. The SES Hong Kong conference showcased best practices, case studies and discussion from a mix of accomplished online marketers from the region like Adrian Toy from Bausch & Lomb, Eden Lau from Brandtology and Jonathan Liu from Moonlight Marketing.

Do you wonder about the business value of social media marketing? Will you also happen to be in Hong Kong next week?  If so – you are in luck.

Search Engine Strategies, the leading search and social marketing event, will be traveling across the globe to host SES Hong Kong on September 13^th and 14^th.  Joining the event will be TopRank® Online Marketing CEO and SES Advisory Board Member Lee Odden as he contributes to the panel The Business Value of Social Media.

Odden Contributes To Panel At SES SF

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:

So many business blogs suffer from tactical execution without understanding the power of search engine optimization and social media for attracting traffic and engaging customers. The following presentation outlines how TopRank Online Marketing worked with it’s own blog Online Marketing Blog and with a B2B marketing client to  achieve phenomenal increases in reach, traffic and a positive effect on the bottom line.

TopRank will be offering a new set of TopRank Guides specifically focused on B2B Social Media, B2B Blogging and B2B SEO. We’ll also be conducting several webinars to explain these guides and how best to use them.

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.

If an online marketing program were to be compared to an airplane, one could make the analogy that the left wing is a strong Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program.

Important as it may be, a left wing alone will not complete the elements needed to launch an airplane, just as SEO alone will not be enough to make up an entire online marketing program.  As social media becomes more prevalent, a social media marketing strategy becomes the right wing to help the online marketing program launch and maintain flight.

Below are three ways social media marketing helps support an online marketing program:

Online distribution of optimized press releases is a vital and impactful component of any holistic digital marketing program. As reported by Online Marketing Blog, multiple studies document that consumers and journalists search for and read news releases online, making online press release distribution a tactic that can influence everything from media exposure to website traffic to sales.

PRWeb, named by TopSEOs as the top press release distribution company, is perhaps the first provider that comes to mind when companies choose to supplement their marketing mix with online news release distribution.  When companies distribute releases through PRWeb, they trust that their content will benefit from being posted to a search engine optimal site that possesses a high degree of brand recognition.

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.

Whether you’re launching a new product or a new blog, reaching early adopters is essential.

Early adopters may be small in number – for example, only 11% of web users know how to use RSS. But this small group packs a big punch. Using the RSS example, those 11% of RSS subscribers are by and large active web publishers.

By attracting the attention of this early adopter crowd, you can achieve:

• Search Benefits: Early adopters make up the “Linkerati,” a group of web influencers who regularly link to worthwhile content from their highly trafficked websites and blogs. In most cases, the more quality links to your website or blog, the better the search visibility.

As social media helps to boost online awareness for an ever-expanding list of companies, it poses the simultaneous challenge of measurement.  In an interview with eMarketer, Carol Kruse, Vice President of Global Interactive at Coca-Cola, stated, “Before you have ROI, you have to really understand how social media is driving your business.”

For B2B marketing programs, marked by traditionally longer lead times, the social media measurement challenge becomes even more pronounced. In essence, how can a company connect the dots between the online awareness generated by social media marketing and eventual sales?