This article will show you how to easily optimize your blog for search engines.

Let’s be clear on few points before we begin. When search engine optimization (SEO) is done the wrong way:

• It’s a spammy attempt to manipulate the search-engine traffic.
• It’s SEO experts selling a guaranteed top-10 placement.

When SEO is done the right way, it’s NOT guaranteed and it’s NOT immediate, but it is ongoing.

Now let’s cover the basics.

What’s your blog about? The topic you cover will, to a large degree, dictate your placement. If you said “real estate” or “automobile” or “website hosting” or “SEO,” you will have a LOT of competition. You could help things a bit by focusing on YOUR geographical area (as in “real estate in Pasadena, CA,” for example).

But remember, some topics are extremely competitive and therefore more difficult to crack, making it on the first, second or third page of the relevant search. This part is paramount because most Google sleuths don’t make it past the second page.

On the other hand, if your topic is obscure and very specific, PLUS the space is not densely populated with competition, you can conceivably end up as a top search result for that topic. This is assuming that you’ve implemented sound SEO practices. And that’s what this article is about.

Who are you targeting? Who is your audience?

Having a crystal-clear understanding of who your audience is and what THEY’RE searching for helps you narrow your focus and increase your chances of having an effective SEO campaign.

If all this sounds too complicated, you could just pay someone to do it. If you do decide to outsource SEO, you should set aside a minimum of $3,000 to $5,000 monthly for a dedicated SEO professional.

Now that you know the cost, are you a little more motivated to learn how to do it yourself? I would encourage you to ask around and get some quotes. Here is what you would be paying for:

A good SEO person will have varying degrees of proficiency in:

• CSS
• Data analysis
• Blogging
• HTML
• Copywriting
• Link-building
• Search engine algorithms

Those are the skill sets off the top of my head.

As I see it, you have three options:

1. Hire a dedicated SEO person/team.

2. Hire a part-time SEO expert who can dedicate a portion of his or her time to your page rank. This might be all that’s needed for most small- to medium-sized businesses. (Note: Page rank is a non-geeky way of saying “Google search-engine algorithm.”)

3. Learn the basics yourself. The basics will get you pretty far.

In this article I’ll focus on the last one—learn the basics yourself. So how do you do this? Well, you’ve come to the right place. An important part of any SEO strategy will be keyword discovery and implementation. This article will focus on those two factors.

Harvesting and Piggybacking

I recommend a three-step process in your keyword discovery process.

#1: Get into their heads.

A great place to start understanding what keywords are desirable is to find out what keywords are used by your comps (comps is a real estate term for comparable properties).

We do this by first inspecting what keywords are used on your comp’s web page.

In your browser, usually under “view,” you can “view source” of the webpage. Here’s how:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=erjqTugMviI

Takeaway lessons from the video:

• There will be a LOT of gibberish in there. But all we’re looking for are “meta tagged keywords.”
• Manual research allows you to get into your comps’ heads.
• View several pages to get a good sense of what your comps are trying to rank for.
• Repeat the process for another 3-4 comps.

#2: Piggybacking: Leverage Automation and Your Comps’ Research.

Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and type in a word or phrase that is relevant to your business.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG-42LmFKNE

Takeaway lessons from the video:

• Google Keyword Tool will return related phrases, often many that you didn’t even think of.
• You can export these results, view monthly search numbers and sort phrases by popularity.

After you’ve performed this on your top five comps, collected the data and exported your finding into a CSV file, you’ll have a pretty good idea of:

• What people are searching for (it’s almost never what you think it is)
• What your comps are indexed for
• Where you fit in

Now that you’ve harvested keyword information and effectively piggybacked on your comps’ research, you should narrow your list down to a manageable number (100 or so keywords).

The keywords that YOU are going to use should reside at the intersection of:

• Most relevant to you/your post/blog/website
• Most highly searched for
• Least used by your comps

Note: While recommendation #2 is a good guideline, do keep in mind that less often searched-for phrases tend to have higher conversion rates.

#3: Implement: Apply What You Learned.

It’s time to install and learn how to use a nifty little WordPress plugin called All in One SEO to quickly, easily and effectively utilize the information gathered during the harvesting and piggybacking research phase. If you’re not running a self-hosted WordPress website, this is not for you.

Download and install All in One SEO plugin. Click on the video for a little bit of show-and-tell.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5RhfJJWHK8

Takeaway lessons from the video:

• WordPress makes it very easy to add plugins; however, you shouldn’t install any plugins that haven’t been tested. Here are instructions on how to set up a WordPress sandbox on your laptop.
• Some plugins (like All in One SEO) are must-haves. Others should be installed only if absolutely necessary.
• All in One SEO will have to be configured globally, on per-post and per-page basis.

All in One SEO Pack Configuration—Global Settings

Plugin status:

You can enable it or disable it.

Home Title:

If left blank it will default to whatever you configured under Settings/General/Site Title in WordPress. However, don’t leave it blank.

Note: According to SEOMoz.org’s SEO ranking factors survey, page titles are one of the most important factors.

Entering a bad or blank title is NOT advisable.

Home Description:

While description ranks lower on the page rank scale, it’s paramount to have it filled out appropriately. Search engines will display the description immediately underneath your web page. There it’s best to have a human-friendly call-to-action type of message.

Check out how Barnes & Noble have a human-friendly call-to-action message.

Home Keywords (comma separated):

What are the main topics covered on your site? That’s what should be entered here in the order of relevance. For example “blogging, marketing, WordPress, writing,” and so on…

Note: Home keywords were abused in the early days of SEO (stuffed with popular but irrelevant search words), which resulted in search engines deprecating their importance.

Don’t overstuff. Spend a few minutes configuring and it might help. It certainly can’t hurt.

Canonical URLs:

Enabled by default and should be left as such. This helps with duplicate content, which is a HUGE no-no. If you’re not familiar with canonical URLs, and would like to be, read this Google webmaster blog post.

Rewrite Titles:

This controls the title-related settings underneath. We’re not going to cover them individually. “Title” is what you see in your browser’s window title bar. If set, all page, post, category, search and archive page titles get rewritten.

Why would you want to do this?

The default title generation setting for WordPress is extremely anti-SEO. Depending on your version of WordPress, the default structure will most likely look like this:

Category >> Blog Name >> Post Title

This is suboptimal.

You should allow the SEO plugin to rewrite it to something more SEO-friendly, for example:

Post Title >> Blog Name

Note: This is all about specificity. The post title is likely to have specific keywords related to the post itself. Therefore it should be the first thing a search engine “sees.”

WordPress, if configured correctly, can now assign an SEO-friendly name to your blog post (see below) without the help of All in One SEO.

Description Format:

Four available options, leave the default as is. It will grab the description from whatever is set at the post level.

404 Title Format:

The box sets the page title for your “page not found” error page. The default is “Nothing found for %request_words%”. Leave as is.

Paged Format:

This string gets appended/prepended to titles when they are for paged index pages (like home or archive pages). Leave it alone.

SEO for Custom Post Types:

WordPress version 3.0 introduced the ability to create your own custom post types in addition to the default two (post and page).

I really haven’t used this, so I can’t offer much in terms of practical advice. If you would like to learn more about it, visit WordPress.org Custom Post Types pages.

Custom Post Types for SEO Column Support:

Related to above, disabled by default. Leave it alone.

Use Categories for Meta Keywords:

This is for those bloggers who are hyper-strategic about their category names. If you’re like most of us, you’ll leave this one alone and add your keywords manually for each post.

Use Tags for Meta Keywords:

Checked by default, it causes the tags you set for a given post to be used as the meta keywords for that post. What this basically means is that your tags and your keywords don’t have to be entered in both places. In fact, if you enter the same word in both the Tag and the Keyword field, you might get dinged by Google.

Dynamically Generate Keywords for Posts Page:

Related to the third type of post we mentioned above. Irrelevant unless you’re using custom posts. Leave it alone.

Use No Index for Categories and (Tag) Archives:

This is kind of a non-issue especially if “Canonical URL” is configured. It tells Google NOT to crawl duplicate content.

Autogenerate Descriptions:

This is very cool if you can squeeze all your relevant keywords within the first 150 characters of the article.

Capitalize Category Titles:

Other than visual appeal I know of no special benefit of doing this. Google doesn’t care if your titles are uppercase or lowercase but it looks pretty.

Exclude Pages:

Enter any comma-separated pages here to be excluded by All in One SEO Pack.

This is helpful when using plugins that generate their own non-WordPress dynamic pages. Forums are a good example. You may decide to manage the way your forum gets “indexed” using forum-specific tools.

Additional (Post, Page, Home) Headers:

These are not required for basic SEO practices. They’re used with various webmaster tools but otherwise uninteresting.

Log Important Events:

This is for developers only. Once the global settings are all done, every time you write a new post, you’ll have to configure All in One SEO tool on per-post basis. No worries though, this one is quick and painless.

All in One SEO Pack Configuration—Post Settings

All in One SEO will place itself on the bottom of your WordPress new post configuration.

Title:

By default, the title will be generated based on your setting under Settings >> Permalinks. You should configure /%postname% under “Custom Structure,” which will generate the appropriate post title automatically.

If, however, you decide to enter a custom title here, it will take precedence over any other. Why would you want to do this? Post title ranks high on Google’s “importance” scale and stuffing your title with keywords might better your chances.

Description (Meta):

You have 160 characters to describe your post for search engine meta analysis. Use them wisely. Remember our Barnes & Noble example? This should be a human-friendly call to action. Include most relevant words first.

Keywords (Meta):

Put your most important keywords (search phrases) up front. Your hard work during keyword harvesting phase pays off right here.

Note:

Your keywords should be relevantly spread across the main body of the article, tags, meta description, keywords, etc.

Enable/disable on per-post basis:

Self-explanatory I hope. Use it in case you want to hide from Google.

All in One SEO Pack Configuration—Page Settings

Page Settings has a few more options than Post Settings. Let's work through them.

Title, Description and Keywords and Enable/Disable are the same as before.

The new settings are:

Title Attribute:

Has no or minimal effect on ranking. It’s basically a tool tip when you hover over a link.

Menu Label:

This in effect renames your page without renaming the URL.

Keyword research and configuration are some of the most important aspects of a well-run SEO campaign. In fact, they’re among the top most important things you can do.

If you had to choose your top three most important SEO strategies, what would they be? Leave your comments in the box below.

Now social media takes it one step further. I not only can find your past exploits online, but I can hear the conversations that the entire globe is having about you, right now, with a simple click (and maybe some typing too).

Twazzup, Addict-o-matic and SocialMention are three free platforms that allow you to measure your social media mettle—or more simply put, see all of the buzz or conversations surrounding your brand online, at any time.  Never heard of these platforms?  No worries, I’ve got your back!

Platform Overviews

Twazzup, as stated by ReadWriteWeb , is a bridge between Twitter and a search engine.  Sticking with the “stay with what you know” mantra, Twazzup mostly plays in the Twitter sandbox, but plays very well there.  From logging Tweets per hour to giving mug shots of the top influencers of any search, Twazzup gives you a full-circle view of how your brand is performing in the Twitter space.

Addict-o-matic, with the least D.A.R.E.-friendly tagline, “Inhale the Web,” is exactly the first thing you should think of when you say the words “social search.”  Addict-o-matic lets you see how your brand is being presented on a number of different social platforms all in one page.  With all search engines, aggregation sites like Digg, Flickr and YouTube for media-phile searchers, Addict-o-matic literally takes the platform we just reviewed, ItsTrending.com, and puts a more comprehensive spin on it.

Even Addict-o-Matic's robot looks like he's got drugs on him.

SocialMention, with its simplistic and very professional design, would seem to be the most mature of the three platforms at first glance.  All jokes aside, while the other two platforms are either very straightforward (Twazzup), or comparing their data to narcotics (Addict-o-Matic), SocialMention sticks to words that have been made popular by today’s social media thought leaders.  Measuring things like “sentiment,” “passion” and “reach”—then having the ability to quantify such usually subjective terms—makes SocialMention the platform that your boss would approve of you using daily.

Do not ask whose measurement this is...

Enough with the intros and wit; let’s figure out what’s the best platform. We’ll start with features:

Twazzup

Twazzup pigeonholes itself out of the gate by being Twitter-centered.  But the Twitter features it does have are nothing to sneeze at.  Looking for influencers?  Perhaps your topic is the Gulf oil spill.  Guess what? The top 10 or so people you need to talk to are right there. 

What are the links leading to your keyword search? No problem, there’s a clear list.  What’s the latest news on the subject?  It’s right at the top of the page.  Pop-up previews of links are an added bonus that will make you smile because your life just got a little bit easier.

On the other hand, I’m a bit confused with two things.  The Highlighted Tweet seems to be arbitrary.  Unfortunately, for those of us who are slow, clicking on the heading doesn’t give us any insight on why that tweet is so important, but I’m sure it’ll give a boost to the tweeter.  If you could only figure out how to get there…

Craig Ferguson? As you can see, Twazzup is not always 100% accurate with searches…

Addict-o-Matic

Addict-o-Matic, with its “more is more” approach, has features that continue that line of thought.  Not only can you create your own page and create a shrine for your selected keywords, you can also add tons of popular (and not so popular) social sites to give you as much or as little data overload as you require.

In terms of raw features, they keep it pretty simple; either add more info or take info away.  No cool previews, but you can move any content box around to position the most important info on top.

While the ability to see what’s being posted across many social sites is awesome, there seems to be one specific 500-million pound gorilla that’s been excluded from Addict-o-Matic, even though said gorilla has spent most of the year adding social widgets to over 100,000 sites.  Maybe they should call ItsTrending.com and have a meeting.  This is a big exclusion for me.

For a site with a drug theme, I expected brighter colors.

SocialMention

SocialMention gives you tons of features to play with, but unfortunately if you’re a beginner, you’ll need to see their FAQ to catch up before you get started really appreciating what they’ve done for you.  Instead of choosing one social network, or even grouping the info by network, SocialMention chooses to give you a streaming timeline including content from places like Twitter, StumbleUpon and Google Blogs.  They also let you know how many mentions and how many different people are mentioning you.

The most important feature, if I may be honest, is one that I call the “tattletale” feature.  Clicking on the word “negative” under the sentiment area sends you to a list of the so-called “negative” posts waiting for you to jump in the conversation at any time.  They’re not very specific on how they determine why it’s negative, but check them all out and be safe instead of sorry.

While I love the feature above, I am disappointed that I can’t click on the unique authors or retweets section. It would be a huge bonus to be able to see a list of those authors.  As a marketer, if I had a list of who was talking about me, it would be as easy as pie to connect and grow those relationships from there.  SocialMention makes you dig through their timeline for that data—good for them, bad for me.  You can export the top users, but the data still required some extra effort to turn into a hit list.

This page just LOOKS like work, doesn't it?

Who’s More Ninja?

All that is cool, but who should you use?  How should you decide?  And more importantly, what are the ninja features that nobody else is thinking about to put you ahead of the curve?

Twazzup

Ninja Tactic: Get in with the cool kids quickly

Twazzup lets you see who is talking about your niche quickly and painlessly.  If you were being ninja, you would quickly make a list of the cool kids and find a way to add value to them ASAP.

These people are not only already talking about this niche, but they are sharing the most content about it with their networks.  This is how you can create something that we call an “influence circle.”  If you want to get content shared faster and farther than your account can accomplish, you need to have a relationship with the people in your industry who do just that.  Especially valuable for new Twitter users with fewer relationships.

Addict-o-Matic

Ninja Tactic: Outcast platform awareness

Addict-o-Matic lets you get all of the latest info on a subject from tons of platforms, but you can get Facebook, Twitter and YouTube info from about a million different tools.  Addict-o-Matic allows you to customize an interface and keep track of a number of sites that, to be honest, nobody else is thinking about.  While SocialMention blends these platforms in a live stream, Addict-o-Matic makes it very easy to see the latest buzz from sites like Truveo, Blinkx and Twingly, which aren’t being harvested daily by most marketers/content sharers.

Use this tip to stand out in the content crowd by posting the most unique and diverse content in your niche.  Right now, many marketers are reposting popular content, but to build your own reputation, you need to find/create content that comes from you, or is found by you.

I hadn't heard of 30% of these sites before today… I promise.

SocialMention

Ninja Tactic: Sentiment timeline

SocialMention has a feature that should make any data-driven marketer smile.  They let you export the results of your search to a .csv file.  Why is this important?  It’s important because most companies are not properly measuring their social sentiment at all, and those that do measure are seeing snapshots over periods of a month, at most.

A serious marketer will want data to examine change over months and possibly years to evaluate where the brand has come from, and if they’re progressing towards a predetermined goal.  SocialMention allows you to use their algorithms to track easy-to-understand numbers over time, and export them into your own internal system.  Once you control the data, you can manipulate it in any way that you see fit to benefit your brand, giving SocialMention another notch in the “most mature platform” belt.

Good to know that people aren’t letting the tropical storm get them down…

And the Winner Is…

SocialMention, for being the closest to a complete solution of the three.

Twazzup comes in second, but only for its focus on Twitter.  If they could find a way to integrate other platforms, or partner with other niche-specific platforms for a robust solution, they could vault to the top.  But at this point, you need about seven different solutions to use in conjunction with Twazzup to be completely covered.

Addict-o-matic, while awesome in name, falls short in this specific horse race.  Other than its fringe social network additions, there’s not much difference between Popurls.com or Alltop.com except the search bar.  Just like Twazzup, you’ll need more tools to round out your kit, and Addict-o-Matic is more of a role player than a starter.

See a feature, benefit or shortcoming that I missed? Know of an upcoming improvement that will rearrange these rankings?  Is there a completely different platform that should be in the race?  Let me know in the box below.

Think about it. Google is where most people go when they are researching. What if there was a way to get your company’s website on that coveted first page?  Well there is…

One of the best ways to gain that top spot is by blogging. Incorporating a blog into a website can have a huge impact on the overall website’s search engine rankings.

A blog does two important things in terms of the search engines:

1. Adds naturally occurring, keyword-rich pages.
2. Increases the potential for incoming links from high-quality websites.

This article will reveal the why and how for improving your search engine rankings with blogs.

Playing the Numbers—Static vs. Dynamic Websites

The average small business website includes anywhere from 10-20 static web pages. These are the basic pages you see on most sites such as the home page, an “about us” page, product descriptions and even pages with contact information. Once created, these pages rarely change. In some cases, even small changes on these pages can be an expensive proposition that involves bringing in a web designer.

If the site is well-built with all the appropriate code and metadata, the search engines will index these 10-20 pages of content.  If the site is highly optimized and focused on a limited number of keywords, the search engines may connect those 10-20 pages with the right keywords (the search engine terms used to find information). However, due to the inherent needs of a website, some pages aren’t indexed for the desired keywords (i.e., contact forms).

Best-case scenario, 10-20 pages are recognized by the search engines as possible returns for the targeted keywords.

The Impact of Blog Posts

Now let’s take our static website and add a blog. For the sake of this example, let’s say that there are five representatives in the company who have each agreed to write one blog post per week.

Here’s where our blog really starts to pay off. Each time a new blog post is added, a new page is indexed by the search engines. By the end of the first month, the website has doubled the number of pages originally indexed by the search engines.

Within a month, our website—which originally had 10-20 pages in the search engine pool—now has 30-40 pages that can possibly be returned in the top spot on Google. Stretch that out over the course of a year and our 10-20 page website now has around 250 pages indexed in the search engines.

And while a blog post a day is a lot of work, scale it back to one blog post per week and we’ve still more than doubled the number of indexed pages during the first year.

Each indexed page adds another ticket to the great Google lottery. The more tickets you hold, the better chance of winning the top spot in the search engine rankings.

The Power of Incoming Links

Now let’s say that our faithful bloggers have been adding their daily posts on topics of interest to their industry. Word gets around that they put up some valuable information and at the very least offer a voice for the company.  A couple of blog posts have been emailed to fellow colleagues and even better, fellow industry bloggers are starting to link to the blog. The site starts to appear on fellow bloggers’ blog rolls and specific posts are linked as references and points of discussion in other online publications.

Google likes these incoming links. Google likes them even more when the links come from sites that are relevant to the content in the blog.

Then one day, a mild-mannered New York Times reporter is conducting research for a story related to our company’s industry. Because the blog has added a number of indexed pages to the website and others have started to link to the blog, it pops up in the reporter’s Google search. Our reporter includes a link to the blog in his article.

Google really likes incoming links from big, high-traffic sites like the New York Times. Along with the initial traffic sent to the blog from the New York Times article, Google sees that the New York Times linked to our site in an article related to keywords indexed in our blog. Google recognizes that the New York Times is an important Internet site and makes the connection that because the New York Times has linked to our little blog, our blog must be important. Thus Google moves it up the search engine rankings.

Congratulations. Thanks to the addition of a blog, our little website of 10-20 static pages now holds one of the top spots in Google search results.

Indexed Pages + Relevant and Reputable Links = Search Engine Success

At the 2009 WordCamp San Francisco (a gathering of WordPress users), Google’s Matt Cutts pointed out the importance of being both relevant and reputable. Incoming links from reputable sites such as the New York Times in which the content is relevant to the content in the post are highly valued by Google.

A blog is one of the best ways to continually add pages to a website that generate relevant and reputable links.

In the scenario above, our business blog has managed to provide both relevant content and generate reputable links—two big keys to success on Google.

Real-World Example

Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at a real-world Google search to see the impact of a blog in action.

Let’s say that we’ve just moved to Baltimore and need a realtor to help us find a new home. We go to Google and search “Realtor Baltimore.” Once we get past the map-based search results (important to note), the national sites such as Realtor.com and the national brokerages, one of the first local real estate agents to show up in the organic search results is Wayne Curtis at www.charmcityrealestate.com.

CharmCityRealEstate.com includes a blog with posts dating back to November 2006. As you can see in the image below, Google has indexed 145 pages of CharmCityRealEstate.com. Many of these pages are blog posts filled with naturally occurring keywords related to the real estate market in Baltimore.

Now let’s take a look at another realtor in the Baltimore area. This realtor’s website did not rank in the Google search results and does not include a blog. As you can see from the image below, the site shows only 14 pages indexed with Google.

Measuring incoming links is a little more difficult as different tools return different numbers. You can get a basic overview by using the search term “link:yourdomain.com” in both Google and Yahoo. Using Alexa.com’s “Site Info” tool we can see www.charmcityrealestate.com’s top incoming links.  The very first link returned on Alexa is a link from HDTV.com’s television series House Hunters, a highly relevant and reputable real estate site.

Quality of Pages Indexed and Incoming Links

When conducting this experiment, you can find sites that don’t rank as well on Google yet have more pages indexed. This is often because the pages indexed do not rank for the keywords searched.  A topical blog naturally lends itself to keyword-rich posts just by the nature of the content.

The same holds true with incoming links. Too many incoming links from websites that are not relevant to the content on the site can actually hurt a website’s search engine ranking.

Consider Keywords When Creating Posts

Now that you can see the importance of keyword-indexed blog posts, you can begin to optimize your posts to include relevant keywords.

Going back to our example above, we can use the Google Keyword Tool to see that during the month of March, the phrase “Realtor Baltimore” was searched on Google 2,900 times in the U.S.; however, the phrase “Realtors Baltimore” was searched 60,500.

Since “Realtors Baltimore” was searched around 57,000 more times than “Realtor Baltimore,” it would be wise to use both terms when writing a post about choosing a realtor in Baltimore.

Incorporate the Blog

If the goal is to raise the search engine results of the larger website, it is important to incorporate the blog into the larger website. Use a call to action at the end of the blog post to direct the reader to other parts of your website. Keep it on the same domain and provide clear links that encourage visitors to explore the rest of your website.

Make it easy for your reader. If the path to your larger website isn’t clearly marked, they will never find their way.

ROI

Measuring the ROI of social media is tricky, but consider the value of the top spot on Google. How much would you pay for the top organic search return? Although it doesn’t happen overnight, a blog can be one of the best ways to get there.

Have you seen a jump in the search engine rankings since adding a blog? If your business is not blogging, what’s holding you back?

We relied 100% on social media tactics to drive traffic to this site.

In less than 5 months, Social Media Examiner was declared the #1 small business blog in the world by Technorati, added more than 13,000 email subscribers, brought nearly 100,000 people a month to the site and is ranked as one of the top 4200 websites in all of America by Alexa.

We didn’t advertise, didn’t rely on the press and almost none of our traffic is coming from search engines.  Nearly overnight, this site has become a top destination for businesses.

This all took place via social media.  We simply leveraged the power of sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to deliver the kind of results that would’ve cost us a fortune in the past.  We didn’t spend a dime on marketing, just our time.

Watch the above video to hear more of the story…

Only a few weeks ago we launched a Facebook Fan Page and already more than 2000 people are actively participating.

Here’s a very common sentiment we hear nearly daily.

“Have I told you lately that I love you? No, seriously. I found your site a couple of months ago and signed up for email. Now with all the info I subscribe to I know that 100% of the time yours will always be a great informative read…..so thanks!” Jo McDonald Hooker

Clearly we’re doing something right!

How Does Social Media Examiner Make Money?

One of the big struggles most publishers face is actually making money.  Maintaining a site like ours is a big team effort for a LOT of people.

We toyed with the idea of running display advertisements.  However, it quickly became clear there’s very little money in advertising (we might reconsider down the road).

Since our inception, a “lot” of folks have asked for recommendations to better their social media learning.  The common questions were, “What courses can I take?,” “How do I really master this important form of marketing?” and so on.

So the team here at Social Media Examiner decided to put together a conference just for you.  And it’s called Social Media Success Summit 2010.

So the answer to the question, “How do we make money?” is large online events.

What Is Social Media Success Summit 2010?

Social Media Success Summit 2010 is an event designed to to empower you to build social media marketing plans, track your social media results and learn from other successful businesses.  You’ll also discover how to use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare and Groupon to attract high-caliber customers and grow your business during this economic slump.

Twenty-four of the world’s leading social media superstars will be summit instructors.

Join Guy Kawasaki (author, Art of the Start), Chris Brogan (author, Social Media 101), Darren Rowse (author, ProBlogger), Mari Smith (author, Facebook Marketing), experts from Best Buy, Home Depot, Whole Foods, Foursquare and Groupon; Steve Rubel (Edelman), Ann Handley (MarketingProfs), Brian Clark (Copyblogger), Greg Jarboe (author, YouTube and Video Marketing), Kim Dushinski (author, Mobile Marketing Handbook), Jason Falls (Social Media Explorer), Jay Baer (Convince & Convert),  Ramon De Leon (Chicago Domino’s Pizza) and yours truly—just to mention a few.  Together this team of “who’s who” in social media will help you succeed using practical tactics.

This is the world’s biggest online event designed to empower marketers and small business owners to master social media marketing.

And the great news is it’s a live online conference you can attend from your home or office.  Click here for a free sample class.

I hope you’ll consider attending! And thanks for supporting Social Media Examiner.

What do you think about our story? Do you have any questions about the summit? Please comment below…

How many of us have created a LinkedIn account and left it dormant for months?

It was my goal recently to attend more LinkedIn webinars and teleseminars to learn more about this mysterious network. I have often thought to myself, “I’m a professional. Why am I not utilizing this site?” I’ve even heard LinkedIn referred to as the “red-headed stepchild” of social media.

Here are some interesting facts that I learned about this often misunderstood network:

LinkedIn is a search engine and has a ton of authority on Google and other popular search engines.

Likely if you Google your name and you have a LinkedIn profile, it will show up on the first page of Google. This demonstrates the ranking authority of LinkedIn on Google.

Here are the top 6 things that I learned about this powerful network:

#1: Boosting Your Search Engine Optimization

There are three areas to add website links to your LinkedIn profile. Instead of displaying “My Blog” & “My Website,” click on Edit and then click on Other.  Type in a keyword phrase that describes how people can search to find your business.

For example, I changed my main mortgage website to say Foreclosure Options

I changed “My Blog” to say Social Media Marketing

I changed my Facebook fan page to say Facebook Marketing

What an incredibly easy way to boost your rankings in the search engines! Be sure to optimize your LinkedIn profile as soon as possible before your next client enters your main keyword(s) and finds your competition.

#2: Promoting Your Blog Feed

It is also possible to import your WordPress blog feed to your profile by searching for the WordPress application. This is a quick way for others to scan your blog content at a glance.

There is also another blog application on LinkedIn—Blog Link—which supports TypePad, Movable Type, Vox, WordPress.com, WordPress.org, Blogger, LiveJournal and many more.

Promote your blog and develop your personal brand. Everyone knows blogs are the best way to cultivate your personal brand. Now you can share your thoughts and insights on your blog on your professional home, LinkedIn.

#3: Creating LinkedIn Ad Campaigns

I had no clue that LinkedIn has its own Direct Ads Campaign targeted to professionals. I felt like I found a hidden treasure at the bottom of a huge sea! Because LinkedIn is a professional site, there is less likelihood of views from random people; rather, more from people interested in business-related information. I will definitely be utilizing this advertising feature this year.

Reach a rapidly growing community of over 57 million professionals (average household income: US $108,000), and select your ad’s audience by seniority, industry, job function, company size, and more.

It is possible to write, target, and start your ad in minutes, pay by clicks or impressions and get started with as little as US $50. Be sure to leverage the power of LinkedIn by using your professional brand to put a face to your business.

#4: Utilizing Events to Engage Clients

I really love LinkedIn’s event features because I “plan” to be an event planner in my next life. It’s not required to be the event coordinator to create an event. An event can be created if you have an interest in going to an event or will be an attendee.

Invitations can also be sent to your LinkedIn network, which will give you an opportunity to meet face to face if they decide to attend. The best feature is the ability to view at a glance all of your network’s upcoming events. As an event planner geek, it rocks my world to promote business events online just like I do in my personal hemisphere.

#5: Using Groups to Connect With People

Most people join groups and never come back to participate in them. I can raise my hand and say that I’m guilty of this bad practice too. I’ve started changing and participating in a lot more groups lately. However, STARTING a group is a great way to have access to email and stay in touch with your group as it grows. It does take some focused effort to grow your group but a great place to start is to invite your current network. As the people from your network join your group, this is visible to their networks’ news feeds which can potentially pique new interest.

I’m really amazed at the size of various groups on LinkedIn. Then I remember that professionals really enjoy networking, so I really shouldn’t be so surprised. Let’s take a look at a few groups on LinkedIn:

Social Media Today—18,078 members at the time of this writing

On Startups—Community of Entrepreneurs—123,680 members at the time of this writing

Real Estate Open Networkers—17,795 members at the time of this writing

Can you imagine having access to this many people at your fingertips?

#6: Getting Recommendations to Attract More Clients

Recommendations are one of the unique features of LinkedIn that sets it apart from other social media networks. What better way to really market your business than by having your colleagues and clients share your expertise?

I’m sure your next question is, “How can I obtain recommendations?” The best way is to live by the old adage:

“Give and you shall receive.”

Recommend your peers and they will return the favor. This is one area that I need to work on this year. It doesn’t take that much time, but if we don’t make it a focus, it won’t happen.

So what about you? Do you feel that LinkedIn is the red-headed stepchild of social media? Do you have any plans for this network in 2010? Let us know in the comments.

With Twitter and Facebook updates appearing in Google search results, many businesses are trying to figure if this is good or bad—and what to do next.  Ziff Davis featured this blog post a while back.  It got me thinking about the implications of the real-time web and how businesses can navigate through these rough waters.

The Business Upside to Real-Time Search

Here’s what real-time search means for you:

• Increased reach of your messages:  With Facebook and Twitter appearing in the search results, branded social properties will now have the opportunity to share their messages to a broader audience on the social web.
• Growth in social equity: Businesses now have the opportunity to increase their Facebook fans and Twitter followers by strategically posting at optimal times and authentically engaging in conversation.
• Potential customer acquisition:  Google is a trusted source.  When it lists content on the first page, a lot people click.  It’s a fact. By actively participating and strategically posting content, you’ll have the opportunity to convert and/or upsell via social media messages.

Here is a quick video highlighting real-time search to get you up to speed:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRkYmx4A9Do

Now the Dark Side of Real-Time Search

The business challenges are clear. Not only do brands (small or large) need to be ready to engage online with their constituents in real time, they must also be willing to relinquish some control of their marketing messages.

The good news is you don’t have to give up full control as long as you are willing to participate. Participation can mean listening, watching and monitoring all the activity that happens on the social web, and in this case, Google search engine results pages.

You need to be ready to use Twitter Search to monitor trending topics, branded terms or any other keywords that may apply to your brand or business, and engage in the discussion.  Common reasons to engage include:

• Having something of value to contribute
• Intercepting a ticked off customer and changing his or her attitude
• Correcting false information

The caveat is that the technology today is still not fast enough to monitor live conversations.  Real-time search requires “real-time” monitoring which translates to “boots on the ground” brand participation.  If a brand is highly engaged and savvy with Twitter, it will be ready to respond when issues arise on the fly.

A great example of a missed opportunity is when Motrin released the Babywearing ad (see below); and didn’t notice the negative groundswell in Twitter until it was too late.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO6SlTUBA38

With Facebook updates now appearing in search results, brands must be more strategic when posting messages. It’s going to require marketing and PR to work collaboratively with search engine optimization (SEO) or web teams within the organization. If that’s a challenge, there are tools like Google trends which display how often a particular term is entered into Google relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world.

Use Google Keywords

Another important data source is the Google Keyword tool that will determine the competitiveness of keywords and how many times that term is searched in Google in a given month.

Google keyword data is significant for many reasons. Marketers can use this data to strategically post messages on Facebook that can be indexed and eventually appear in the search results. Take the following as an example of the latest update from the Adobe Photoshop Facebook fan page:

A more effective status update might be to include the keyword phrase “Photoshop tutorial” instead of just “Tutorial” as seen above.

Now don’t get me wrong, this status update is really good. It’s concise; they are providing value to their readership by giving away free tutorials and they are empowering the community to share their work on the wall (disclosure: Adobe is an Edelman client).

However, by simply adding “Photoshop” to this update, Adobe would have the opportunity to have this particular update appear in Google real-time search results when someone searches for “Photoshop tutorial.” A brief look at the data in the keyword tool shows that the term “photoshop tutorials” yields approximately 301,000 monthly searches.

A Few More Concerns

Some may view the indexing of Facebook status updates as a threat of disruptive technology.  And while this may be true in some cases, there are definitely things that brands must think about and prepare for:

• Spam:  Spammers will continue to use Twitter and status updates by placing links within messages in hopes of their messages also appearing in the search results. This happened when the Skittles home page redirected to Twitter search for the term “Skittles.”  See http://www.socialcustomer.com/2009/03/skittles-social-media-experiment.html.
• Increased Facebook participation: In order to capture mindshare and search engine real estate, brands must now use Facebook status updates more often; especially around product launches or important announcements.  It’s just as important, if not more, than traditional website copy and blog posts.  Just be careful not to spam the community as balance is important.

So what are your thoughts about real-time search? Do you see it as an opportunity or a threat to businesses?  Please comment below.

Outreach is key to having a blog that actually works for your business, yet it’s the one element many professionals ignore. And it’s contrary to most competitive thinking because it involves spending time away from your blog.

Done correctly, however, reaching out to other bloggers in your field will actually create more business opportunities, increase traffic to your own blog, and enhance your business brand more than any other tactic you could employ.

Here’s how:

In taking this one step, you will be setting yourself apart from the majority of business professionals who skip implementing this important element in their blogging plan.

What do I mean by blog outreach? I’m talking about strategically participating in the blogosphere with the goal of boosting your visibility, driving traffic to your blog and enhancing your credibility.

It’s not just about spreading your own message, although that’s important. Outreach is about building community and personal relationships among your peers, your colleagues who are also writing blogs, and the people in the blogosphere who are reading blogs in your industry. And yes, some of those people may be considered competitors.

Don’t be afraid of your competitors; you can learn from them and connecting with them may present new opportunities for your business.

Find Blogs in Your Niche

Where do you start? First, you need to find a few blogs in your industry that you enjoy and will consistently read. Choose blogs that will give you content ideas along with the relationships you’re seeking. Blogs can be found in practically every professional and business niche, and a quick visit to a few websites can help you find them.

Technorati is the web’s largest blog search directory and is a good place to start. Be warned, this site can be overwhelming the first time you visit. You can search for blogs or blog posts by keywords in your field. I recommend you set up an account and make sure your own blog is listed so it can be found by others.

Use Technorati to find blogs and blog posts relevant to your niche.

Another site is Google Blogsearch. Like any Google search engine, it’s going to return a list of links based on your keywords, only this time the links will be sites for blogs and specific blog posts.

Use Subject-specific Directories

My current favorite for finding the best of the best in subject-specific blogs is Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop.com. It’s a curated site, which means blogs must be approved in order to be included. You can create your own collection of blogs to watch and read. Here’s an example of my Alltop list of business blogs.

TIP: Make sure you submit your blog for inclusion on Alltop.com!

There are more than 200 blog directories, some of which are subject-specific and others are general. Blog directories come and go, and each has its own list of criteria for which blogs it includes. You want more blog directories? A comprehensive list of blog directories is posted here.

Engage in Smart Commenting, Building Relationships

In all likelihood, you will find many blogs in your niche that have similar audiences. What do you do when you find one of these good blogs?

Start engaging! Read and comment on posts that interest you. Smart bloggers allow comments, although sometimes they are moderated to keep out the spammers. Always include your name, blog URL, your email address and your thoughtful, useful comment.

The guidelines for commenting are simple: use common sense and respect. There are no rules, but being courteous will help you establish positive relationships within the blogosphere. When you comment on a blog, follow the same etiquette that you’d follow in conversation at a cocktail party.

In other words, you’re not going to approach somebody at a cocktail party and say, “Hi, my name is Joe and you should buy my widget.” You would be a little more subtle. Listen and add to the conversation in a meaningful way. Talk with and get to know the other person first. Start establishing a relationship.

Share Expertise, Not Marketing Offers

Using blogs to promote your business requires you to act like a professional when commenting. And etiquette dictates that you don’t promote your business on another person’s blog. Instead, share your expertise.

You can demonstrate your expertise in many ways. Add something the author may have overlooked. Add historical context or suggest a book in which the ideas are discussed. Add your perspective, experience and opinion.

Be polite and add something new to the conversation. Writing “Nice post, I agree” is not adding to the conversation.

If you think this all sounds very basic, please just bear with me. Every business owner has a different level of familiarity with the online world, particularly the world of blogging. I see these mistakes every day in comments on my blog as well as on those I read.

So what does this all mean?

Resulting Visibility = Opportunity

By engaging with other bloggers (in other words, your colleagues), you are making yourself known (visible) and laying the groundwork for creating opportunities to partner with them.

Often you need to actively reach out and build relationships with the people you want to work with. Start slowly and see how your relationship unfolds. When you find a good match, you’ll know.

Keep in mind that opportunities can show up in many forms: new leads, new clients, more traffic, and media attention. A pithy comment on a colleague’s blog may attract the attention of a journalist doing research on the subject.

Blog outreach is an important part of effective business blogging. The more you’re connecting outward, the more you’re going to be drawing traffic and opportunities inward. It doesn’t require a lot of your time… 20 minutes a couple of times a week to read and comment on relevant blogs can pay off big in the long run.

Action Challenge: Since I know from experience with my clients that most business bloggers don’t comment very much on other blogs, I challenge you to find three blogs in your industry that are publishing top-notch content and subscribe to get their blog updates. Read and comment on the blogs two to three times a week for the next month. Let me know what shows up for you in the way of new connections, traffic and opportunities!

Have you tried any of these approaches? What are your thoughts?  Please comment in the field below.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dip108/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

But many brand and marketing managers responsible for social media don’t quite understand what social media monitoring is and why it’s important. Here’s a quick primer:

Social Media Monitoring Is Listening

Listening to online conversations is technically done without ears. Using search engine technology, social media monitoring tools scan the Internet looking for documents that contain keywords you select. They return those results in some sort of order that allows you to see where people have mentioned your brand, company, product or whatever you specified.

Seeing these results reveal which websites or blogs you should visit to either see what people are saying about you or actually participate in those conversations. Without monitoring, the conversations are happening without your knowledge.

Social Media Monitoring Can Be Free

The easiest way to start monitoring social media is to sign up for some free tools and services. Google Alerts allows you to search for a word or phrase just as you would in a regular search, and then notifies you when something new pops up on the web with that search term. You can subscribe to email updates of the new search results or add them to your RSS subscriptions. (If you don’t know what RSS is, watch “RSS in Plain English,” a video from CommonCraft.)

You can also search for your company or product name on Twitter to see real-time conversations that include mentions or discussions of your brand. Add Technorati to the list and your monitoring will cover the majority of blogs as well.

Paid Social Media Monitoring Solutions Are Often Worth the Investment

The one drawback to the free monitoring solutions is that manual work will be required to quantify the results for your executives or report your findings. Paid social media monitoring services like Radian6, Scout Labs and Techrigy pull all those conversations together into an organized, web-based dashboard and allow you to pull charts and graphs that explain the information with very little work on your part.

One big benefit to many (but not all) of the paid solutions is their ability to analyze sentiment and tone of the conversations through fancy computer algorithms using natural language processing. What this means is that you can log in to your service, see that there were 250 conversations mentioning your brand this week, and of those, 83 percent were positive, 10 percent were negative and the other 7 percent were neutral.

Paid monitoring solutions offer dashboard experiences like this one from Radian6 which makes monitoring your brand easier

Monitoring Is Only the First Step

Finding and cataloging the online conversations about your company is just the tip of the iceberg in social media monitoring. Once you know where conversations are taking place and what is being said about your company, you can then participate in the conversation. This is critically important for companies because today’s web-savvy consumer requires direct access to the people behind the products and services they buy or shop for.

Let’s say you find a customer upset about the service she received at your place of business earlier today. Letting the individual mouth off to her friends who have a natural predisposition to either agree or jump on the bandwagon of hate only guarantees your company will be thought of negatively by those involved in the conversation. However, social media case studies show time and time again that entering into similar conversations with a simple, “I’m sorry you had a bad experience. What can I do to help?” shows the disgruntled fan—and her bandwagon-jumping friends—that you’re truly interested in improving the situation. The customer response is almost always something like, “Wow. I didn’t know you were listening. Thanks for offering.”

Smart Monitoring Can Build Your Business

Please don’t think that social media monitoring is limited to mitigating online detractors. By analyzing the conversations around not just your company, but also your industry or even competitors, you can gain a significant market advantage and actually drive business.

Let’s say you’re monitoring mentions of your nearest competitor and uncover a trend that people are complaining that their product (say, a coffeepot) is great but not durable. You then change your advertising campaign to trumpet the fact your coffeepot lasts three times longer than the competitor’s.

For another example, suppose you have a national product that has inconsistent sales patterns from region to region. Your social media monitoring shows you what people in the Pacific Northwest say are the best and worst qualities of your product, but the answers are different in the South. This consumer intelligence helps you better market your product based on geographic and cultural specifics which can be the difference in customers choosing you or your competition.

Last but not least, sophisticated monitoring can even reveal individual customers who are at the point of making a purchase decision, enabling you to reach out and help them make a connection to your product at the absolute perfect time.

What Are You Waiting For?

Now that you have an idea of what social media monitoring is and what it can do for you, dive in. Start a Google Alert for your company or product. Add one for some general industry terms your customers might use when discussing your category. Add one for each of your competitors. As you feel comfortable, add Twitter and Technorati searches, then branch out and start exploring other social media monitoring tools. At the very least, you’ll have a better idea of what people are saying about you.

What social media monitoring tools are you using? What are your thoughts?  Please leave a comment below.