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Day 7 Wrapup: Social Media Success Summit 2010 (#SMSS10)

Randy Duermyer — Wed, 26 May 2010 14:22:44 +0000

Social Media Success Summit 2010 came to a close yesterday, May 25, 2010.

The final day pulled plenty of information from previous sessions into a capstone of sorts. While only the last session was intended to do that, the first session of the day on blogging also included a number of tie-ins to demonstrate how different aspects of social media can work together with a blog to create a powerful social media presence.

The two sessions featured on Day 7 of the Summit were:

Watch for my entire Summit wrap-up post here on Friday. For now, here are my takeaways from Day 7.

Session 1: Making Your Blog a Social Media Destination

Presenter: Denise Wakeman

A quick overview of the power of blogs began the discussion.

The theme of the discussion was integrating your social media efforts by using a blog as your “home base” to serve your audience, and other social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as “outposts” or “embassies” to bring the audience to you blog.

Interesting Stats

eMarketer.com estimates that 31 million people worldwide now write on blogs and 104 million are reading blogs.

When asked what benefits they receive from their blogs, bloggers surveyed in Technorati’s 2009 State of the Blogosphere (discussed in Market It Write’s white paper on content marketing), cited:

Greater visibility
Increased sales of products or services
Establishing themselves as thought leaders
Getting asked to speak at conferences

Main Session Takeaways:

Unlike Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., you OWN your blog and thus have complete control over it.
To make your blog effective, you need to be a “content machine”.
Your content needs to be wherever your target audience hangs out.
When creating content, use targeted keywords, create compelling headlines and tap into what your readers want.
To get your content found, you need to use effective search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.
Provide a mix of content on your blog, including How-Tos, case studies, reader Q & A, opinions, link roundups, polls, videos and interviews.
Repurposing content from your blog and publishing it elsewhere extends your reach and allows your audience to consume your content in their favorite format (written, printable, audio, video) and place.
Making it easy to share your content amplifies your message. Syndicating your content (via RSS and tools for LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, iTunes, YouTube, etc.) extends your reach and facilitates sharing and re-use by others.

Session 2: Easily Integrating Social Media Into Your Marketing Mix

Presenter: Chris Garrett

The goal of Chris Garrett’s presentation was to tie all of the previous sessions together into a cohesive whole on using social media to benefit both your online and offline activities.

Specifics he offered were:

Attract your audience by sharing valuable content and using social media to boost your visibility.
Retain your audience by lavishing attention on them so they remember who you are and keep coming back.
Convert your audience into customers. Use social media tools to build relationships and establish trust to turn your visitors into long-term customers.
Build referrals through social media. Your fans can become a referral machine that will attract new people to you and keep the cycle in motion.

Main Session Takeaways:

Social media is NOT a quick fix. Look for long-term value, not short-term gains.
Don’t rush in. Social media is all about integration and adoption, with all channels (such as marketing and customer service) working together.
Make sure at least every customer facing employee is aware of your social media strategy.
Find out what your audience is interested in, what they really want to know and then deliver it to them.
Social media can really help with your SEO efforts and help you get traffic. Social media and SEO are NOT mutually exclusive, and you shouldn’t plan to do one without the other.
Network, network network to build contacts with the webmasters and bloggers who already speak to your audience. Treat these contacts as people, not news outlets.
Keep your audience (prospects) coming back by giving them a reason to return, including awesome customer service, engagement and rewarding loyalty.
Encourage sharing, but try to provide something in return.
Use social media to promote and report on offline events before, during and after the event. Promote your online presence, content and events offline.

Social Media Success Summit – Index of Session Takeaways

Did you attend any of these sessions at the Social Media Success Summit 2010? If so, what were your takeaways? If not, what are your thoughts on making your blog a social media destination and integrating social media into your marketing mix?

Website Traffic and Search Engines

Randy Duermyer — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 20:21:27 +0000

The ultimate goal for nearly anyone with a website is to attract more visitors. Because search engines can account for as many as 80% of those visiting a website (and sometimes even more), taking proactive steps to get your website found in the search engines is a no-brainer if you want more traffic.

Some Quick Search Statistics

The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) estimates that 14 billion searches are conducted around the world during the average day.
As the chart shows, Hitwise estimates that for the four-week period ending December 4, 2009, Google handled 72% of all U.S. search volume. Just three search engines – Google, Yahoo! and Bing – accounted for 96% of all U.S. search activity.

Position Matters

It stands to reason, and studies have confirmed:

The higher a website ranks within the search results, the more likely it is to draw traffic from searchers.

Again, a no-brainer.

The default setting for Google, Yahoo! and Bing is to return just 10 results per page. However, most searchers don’t realize they can set their preferences to return as many as 100 results per page (50 in Bing), and some of those who do know figure that returning more results will just take more time. And who has the time?

Like any average consumer in today’s high-tech society, attention spans and patience levels are at a minimum with those who use search. They really don’t want to leaf through 60 or 70 pages of search results to find what they want.

If searchers find what they’re looking for on the first page – great!
If searchers find a result that looks like what they want without even having to scroll down the page – awesome!

So what does that suggest?

To get the most traffic from search engines, pages from your site need to rank as high on the page as possible. Ideally on the first page, but at least within the first three.

But how do you do that? Two words: search marketing.

Next up: Part Two – Website Traffic and Search Engine Marketing
Part Three – Website Traffic and SEO

Have you taken steps with the search engines to get your website or blog found? What were the results?

Blogging Tips from the Noveling Front

Mistina Picciano — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:53:04 +0000

It’s November 5, which means a select few of you (probably those who consider sleep and hygiene nice, but optional) are giddy from the heady, early throes of cranking out 50,000 words in just 30 days. Yep, it’s National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, and I, too, have joined more than 100,000 participants in rearranging my priorities to focus on writing until 11:59:59 p.m. on November 30, or 50,000 words, whichever comes first.

My novel is shaping up slowly. At the time of this writing, I’m not quite 1,600 words in. But the process has made me think about writing, both as career and avocation, in a different light. Specifically, it’s got me thinking about blogging.

So far, three painful writing stints over the last four days have reminded me of the following lessons that apply equally to blogging, one of my personal marketing goals for the months ahead:

You have to write to become a better writer. You can only read so many books on technique or examples of excellent blog posts. At the end of the day, the only way to become a better blogger is to put fingers to keyboard and do it.
You’ll write a lot of garbage. Just because you’ve written 20 blog posts doesn’t mean that they’re all fit for public consumption. The same goes for novels. (In fact, I’d sooner throw myself in front of a bus than think that anyone might actually read my previous NaNoWriMo manuscripts.) At the same time, your posts don’t have to be perfect, either. Part of the blogging process is watching your blog evolve as you start to discover your personal voice and style.
You have to listen. In noveling, you listen to the still, small voices of your characters as they claw their way into existence. With blogging, you listen to everything from the ponytailed barista at Starbucks to those three loyal readers who routinely revisit and even comment on your blog. If you view writing as your personal soapbox, prepare to be ignored.
You have to persevere. If you’re serious about writing, whether it’s a novel or a blog, you have to overcome resistance. Writing is hard work. It’s like going to the gym. Regular workouts (or writing sessions) will make you stronger or improve your conditioning, but you have to keep up the effort. And something more fun will try to tempt you away from that next workout. Don’t give in.

I still have 25 days and more than 48,000 words to go with the novel—and hopefully quite a bit more with this blog. I’m sure many more lessons await in the weeks ahead.

What’s your best blogging advice? Or noveling advice? I’ll need all the help I can get to cross the 50,000 word mark.