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The first big search conference of the new year, Search Marketing Expo West, is just around the bend. SMX West takes place March 2-5 in Santa Clara, California. Bruce Clay, Inc. will be there, with a team in the booth, this liveblogger in the session rooms, and Bruce Clay speaking at sessions and presenting SEO training.

As always, the upcoming conference boasts an impressive line up of speakers and sessions. In my interview with SMX co-chair Chris Sherman on today’s SEM Synergy podcast, Chris ventured to say that March’s SMX West might be the best search conference yet!

Needless to say there’s lots of excitement and planning happening in the BCI office as we prepare for what’s sure to be a great show. In fact, Bruce has blocked out a dream agenda fit for an expert SEO. You could use Bruce’s dream agenda as a guide in your journey to gain advanced-level SEO knowledge at the conference. You could also use it to track him down to ask him all your questions — though if you think that smacks of stalker, you can always attend the Ask the SEOs session, where Bruce is on the panel on Day 3 of the show.

Of course, Bruce isn’t the only one mapping out his schedule for the conference. Step one when liveblogging a fast-paced show like SMX West is to know where you’re going. So with that, here’s this liveblogger’s dream agenda for SMX West, which just so happens to be my actual agenda!

Day 1: Tuesday, March 2

Day 2: Wednesday, March 3

Day 3: Thursday, March 4

Plus, on Friday, March 5, Bruce Clay presents an action-packed one-day SEO training course that you won’t want to miss.

If you’d like to attend the show but aren’t sure you can swing the cost of a pass, the discount code smx10bruceclay gets you 10 percent off your conference pass. Otherwise, you can get that almost-there feeling by checking out the liveblog coverage here on the BCI blog. See you in Santa Clara!

SMX West 2010 Liveblogging Schedule was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.

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SMX West 2010 Liveblogging Schedule

Whew. The 3rd annual SEMMY Awards are finally in the books. The winners in all 17 categories were announced this morning, and it’s a really great collection of articles. I’m proud to say that there are several first-time winners on this list, from several blogs/sites that were never even nominated before. That makes me happy, and suggests to me that the SEMMYS are on the right track. (I’m also proud to see my guest post on Small Biz Trends from last year win — it’s the one in the Small Business category below.)

Here’s the full list of winners:

• SEO: Surviving and Thriving as an Ecommerce SEO
• PPC: Discovering Keywords On the Cheap
• Social Media: 7 Reasons Your Social Media Marketing Failed (and how to fix it!)
• Local Search: Google Maps’ New Rules – Thoughts on Assumed Names and DBAs
• Link Building: 10 Goals For Link Building Campaigns: Moving Beyond “Get More Links”
• Blogs & Blogging: Guest Blogging: The Ultimate Guide
• Viral Marketing: 5 Must Do’s After A Successful Viral Marketing Campaign
• Analytics: Google Analytics For Local Search: Tracking Traffic From The 10 Pack
• Reputation Management: Be Proactive With Your Reputation Management
• Small Business: If I Were Launching a New Small Biz Web Site Today
• Google: Google Enables Real Time Spam and More
• Search Tech: The SEO geeks guide to information retrieval
• Design & Usability: Everyday Usability – 14-Point Checklist for Success
• Online Marketing/General: Thinking Positively About Negative Reviews
• Industry: 10 Questions to Evaluate a Social Media ‘Expert’
• Copywriting: Does Your Copy Need a Makeover? 7 Tests That Measure the Verbal Impact of Your Business Message
• Rants: Ignore the Silly Man, SEO Still Matters For SMBs

What’s Next for the SEMMY Awards

Every year there’s some grumbling and griping about the SEMMYS and how they’re organized. (BTW, if you’re not familiar with how it all works, I had a good conversation with Kim Krause-Berg in the comments of her post here.)

There was a lot less griping this year, which obviously pleases me. But I’ll say what I’ve said before: If anyone has constructive ideas and suggestions for how to make the SEMMYS better, I’m all ears. There’s a contact form right on this blog.

For now, the eight-person nominating committee is already busy nominating articles for next year’s awards. The committee will do that all year, and then next January I’ll roundup the judges to choose finalists in each category and we’ll go through the process again. I’m thinking it would be nice to find some new judges next year, not because I’m unhappy with the folks volunteering as judges now — but because it’s been mostly the same group for three years now, and there are a lot of smart, new people in our industry who I think would add a good voice to the process.

Thanks

First, to web designer extraordinaire David Mihm for all his time and energy keeping the SEMMYS web site in great shape.

Thanks also to the volunteer judges and nominating committee members for their time. They’re all listed in the Contributors & Judges blogroll on semmys.org.

Thanks to the folks who voted for winners in any/all of the 17 categories. There were more votes cast this year than either of the last two years.

Thanks to everyone across the industry who chooses to embrace the SEMMYS, especially those who do so without taking it too seriously. It’s odd to me that some well-known sites/blogs ignore the SEMMYS, but that’s their choice. Life goes on.

And thanks to all the excellent writers and bloggers who continue to teach me and the rest of us with your great articles, blog posts, and other types of content. I hope you see the SEMMYS as a token of the industry’s appreciation for you, whether you win or not.

Advertisement: WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool delivers more keywords, faster than paid tools and always 100% free. Try it today!

This is a post from Matt McGee’s blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

2010 SEMMY Winners Announced

Related posts:

1. 2010 SEMMY Finalists Announced
2. Congrats to the 2008 SEMMY Winners!
3. 2010 SEMMY Nominations Announced (and they include me!)

See the original post here: 
2010 SEMMY Winners Announced

It’s the first day of Bruce Clay, Inc.’s annual Best of Search Conferences 2009, where we rally the most popular liveblog posts of the year from shows including SMX West, SES New York, SES San Jose, SMX East and SES Chicago.

Over the next three days, you’ll also find a guest post from an industry friend who offered to share PubCon knowledge on the blog, as well as an IM Spring Break presentation packaged into a blog-friendly form. And to top it all off, every day you’ll be served an episode of the SEM Synergy podcast, broadcast live from a convention hall.

So grab a mug of your favorite caffeinated beverage, throw on the Snuggie and get comfy in your cozy chair. You’ll require no travel, no hassle and no going anywhere for this bevy of search smarts. You’re about to enjoy a search engine marketing conference beamed straight to your glowing computer screen.

Keynote

Opening Keynote: Twitter as a Tool for Social Media – SES New York, Mar. 24-26
Speaker: Guy Kawasaki

Top Takeaways:

• On the Web, 1.0 was Web sites. Web 2.0 is blogging — anyone can do it. Version 3.0 of online marketing is a tweet. Currently it’s the most powerful tool in online marketing. Reach hundreds of thousands of people for free. However, there are new rules to keep in mind when participating in Twitter marketing.
• Forget the A-list. With blogs, you needed the famous to promote your stuff. Their wisdom would trickle down to the masses and get you in front of eyeballs. The new mental model is not trickling down but bubbling up from people in the community that love what you do and bubble up for you and become your evangelist.
• Get lots of followers because Twitter can be a numbers game. Here are some tips for getting big numbers: Step 1: Follow everyone back that follows you. Step 2: The best measure of how valuable your tweets are is the number of retweets. Step 3: Followers are not the best measure of how successful your tweeting is. Step 4: Find interesting stuff to tweet.
• Guy Kawasaki’s other recommendations include: monitor what people are saying about you; copy other people/companies; use search as research; use the right tools (TweetDeck, Twhirl, CoTweet and Tynt); make it easy to share; and don’t be afraid to take the heat.

Basic/Intermediate Search Engine Optimization

Top Takeaways:

• As Google’s ability to detect paid links advances, straight link building is becoming a less and less effective SEO strategy. Instead, consider press releases because the main difference between an online press release and a paid link is that the online press release offers quality editorial context.
• Reading in between the lines of search engine speakers at PubCon Las Vegas, it was clear that user engagement will influence ranking factors in the future. There’s an upcoming tidal wave of attention that will be paid to behavioral ranking factors and other search personalizations.
• 301 redirects permanently redirect users and bots from an old location of a Web page to the new location. Before implementing 301 redirects across a site: have a list or spreadsheet of all of your current site’s indexed pages; have a list of all of your current site’s indexed pages with backlinks; and know the relationships/translations from the old page to the new page.
• There are legitimate uses for a 302 redirect, including: geo-detection, rapidly changing offers (the base page will accumulate link equity while the offers change), bringing a microsite back into the fold, and in some instances, the use of vanity URLs.
• To create a news search optimization strategy, a strategy will follow if you start with research (e.g., What are the misconceptions of the company or service? If there is a shift of public perception by X%, how many sales does that represent?). Sample strategies include: product/category awareness (”did you know?”); corporate social responsibility (”watch a video of our green initiatives”); crisis management (”our product is safe”); community building; and “I just want links” (not a recommended long-term strategy).

Best of Conference Posts on Basic/Intermediate Search Engine Optimization:

Got That? 6 Compelling PubCon Takeaways – PubCon Las Vegas, Nov. 10-13
Guest post of overall conference takeaways by Marty Weintraub, founder and president, aimClear Search Marketing

301 Redirect, How Do I Love You? Let Me Count the Ways – SMX West, Feb. 10-12
Moderator: Alex Bennert; Panelists: Jordan Kasteler, Carolyn Shelby, Stephan Spencer and Jonah Stein

News Search SEO – SES New York, Mar. 24-26
Moderator: Mark Jackson; Panelists: Greg Jarboe, Lisa Buyer, Dana Todd and John Shehata

Basic/Intermediate Pay Per Click Marketing

Top Takeaways:

• A user’s traditional reaction to pay per click ads is as follows: Stimulus -> Exposure -> Response. In reality there are multiple stimulus, exposure, and response steps, and online each of these steps can be measured — from the advertising, to the landing page, to the conversion funnel. A visitor makes many mini-decisions on a landing page, and each tiny decision drives the action. Use multivariate testing to test many different elements all at the same time.
• Competitive research can take your PPC campaign from success to smashing success. Research competitors, take their ideas, and incorporate them into your landing pages, then test them against your own ads. Even if there is no lift in response, you’ll learn what doesn’t work. Keep in mind that the rules change every six to twelve months so test continually.
• When crafting a local PPC campaign, Google Analytics Map Overlay can help you drill down into goals by location. Look to Google Trends for info on local targeting — an area that searches most for a product often has a higher conversion rate for that product. If you have a limited ad budget, target just the areas where you have high response rates and create campaigns based on those geographies. Also, if you have a limited budget and want to reach a broad audience, increase your budgets in the areas where you have high ROI.
• Along with search, pay per click marketing occurs on ad content networks. Google’s content network has not traditionally performed that well, though that may be because PPC search marketers are trying to copy search strategies in content networks. Primarily, content advertisers lose money: when ads appear on irrelevant pages and get bad clicks (low conversion rates); when ads don’t distract attention from site content; and when search and content exist in the same campaign.
• “Tools can never replace human ingenuity but they can make the job a human does a whole lot easier.” There are many tools which assist a pay per click marketer in their daily tasks, with costs starting at free and going up from there.

Best of Conference Posts on Basic/Intermediate Pay Per Click Marketing:

Landing Pages & Multivariate Testing – SMX West, Feb. 10-12
Moderator: Gord Hotchkiss; Panelists: Jeremy Crane, Dan Darnell and Sandra Niehaus

Amazing PPC Tactics – SMX East, Oct. 5-7
Moderator: Matt Van Wagner; Panelists: Addie Conner, Brad Geddes, Dan Soha, and David Szetela

Tools, Glorious Tools – SMX West, Feb. 10-12
Moderator: Chris Sherman; Panelists: Ken Jurina, Stephan Spencer, Lauren Vaccarello and David Wallace

Basic/Intermediate Social Media Marketing

Top Takeaways:

• The goal of commercial Twitter accounts should be to connect with your customers, advocates, industry leaders, new customers and detractors; to make sales and generate leads; to promote content; and to solve customer problems. There are ways to automate an account without putting off followers, for instance by auto-tweeting blog posts when they publish; by scheduling tweets in the future with tools; by using virtual assistants; and by repeating tweets for multiple time zones.
• Each social media platform is different and you can’t leverage it unless you know it (the terms of service, the community’s preferences, etc.). Keep in mind that social media isn’t only about communication — it’s also about information sharing.
• Thanks to the Internet, there’s a new marketing cycle that’s based on the ideas that what a consumer says about a product has a greater effect than it did in the past. In social media, the intention of being black hat is to get better results faster, but the consequence is having to manage risk. When a company submits low quality content to social media sites, there’s no way around the fact that the community will reject it.
• Social media users can be categorized as creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators and inactives. Find out where your consumers play. Find out the kind of content that plays best on those platforms. Don’t be afraid of the niche. Set measurable goals before your campaign. And use an analytical approach to measurement.
• Great marketing starts with your team members. Use an inside-out strategy and identify insiders who are already active. Expand the inner circle and give them a reason to care. People want actual engaged ambassadors, not fake LinkedIn or Facebook “people”. Be authentic and holistic, whether using your actual name or not.

Best of Conference Posts on Basic/Intermediate Social Media Marketing:

Twitter Marketing Tactics – SMX East, Oct. 5-7
Moderator/Panelist: Chris Winfield; Panelists: Michael Gray and Tamar Weinberg

An Update on Social Media Optimization – SES New York, Mar. 24-26
Moderator: Kevin Newcomb; Panelists: Liana Evans, Dave Snyder, Benu Aggarwal, Marty Weintraub and Chris Winfield

Social Media: White Hat vs. Black Hat – SES San Jose, Aug. 11-13
Moderator: Dave Evans; Panelists: Beth Harte, Lee Odden, Dave Snyder and Chris Bennett

Basic/Intermediate Branding

Top Takeaways:

• SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, conducted their annual State of the Search Marketing Industry Survey. The top-level findings are as follows: in North America search spending will grow to 26.1 billion by 2013; in the near term there will be limited growth in search spend; Google has solidified its reign as market leader, however seven of ten advertisers are still running Yahoo! campaigns; SEM is poaching budget from other marketing channels, especially offline marketing channels; and advertisers are very interested in behavioral targeting opportunities.
• Nearly 75 percent of advertisers would bid more for behaviorally targeted ads. Advertisers are evenly split on their willingness to bid more to reach specific demographics. About 54 percent of advertisers are interested in video advertising. Meanwhile, 41 percent of advertisers have in-house staff promoting their brand on social media sites, and 5 percent pay an agency to manage social media marketing.
• There are traits that brands facing reputation crises seem to have in common. The big problem is often that search results are empty, so when something bad happens, it rises to the top. Also, when a brand won’t speak up, all the negative stuff will dominate the conversation. A client that isn’t willing to right the wrong is practically impossible to help. Or a company will sometimes follow up negative comments with a comment trying to speak up for themselves, but adding their brand name as fresh content on the page can actually reinforce the authority of that negative review.
• During a reputation crisis, social media is a useful tool for fighting back. Social media categories include professional social networking, social networking, social aggregation and informational sites. These various platforms can be used to push negative content off page one of SERPs, to generate strong neutral or positive content, and to push up good content through link building.
• The recession has affected the way consumers interact with brands. Brand esteem and regard is down 12 percent. Brand awareness has declined by 20 percent. The perception of brand quality has eroded 24 percent. And trust in brands has declined by 50 percent. Every recession ends eventually so how you act now will affect your future performance. Through empathy, respect, value, and community cooperation, establish positive associations with your brand.

Best of Conference Posts on Basic/Intermediate Branding:

Morning Keynote: The Brand Bubble – SES New York, Mar. 24-26
Keynote Speaker: John Gerzema

Social Media, Search & Reputation Management – SMX East, Oct. 5-7
Moderator: Chris Sherman; Panelists: Brent Csutoras, Rhea Drysdale, Jordan Kasteler, Chris Silver Smith and Marty Weintraub

The State of the Search Marketing Industry – SMX West, Feb. 10-12
Panelist: Gordon Hotchkiss

Live Conference Episode of SEM Synergy

SEM Synergy – Live from SES New York – SES New York, Mar. 24-26
Hosts: Bruce Clay and Virginia Nussey; Guests: Bas van den Beld and Mark Knowles

Top Takeaways:

• At search marketing conferences you can see more sessions geared toward the executive level. Likewise, more executives are making inquiries with SEM agencies. Two years ago, at the board level of most companies there was little understanding of SEO. Today, all the company boards know about it, they just need to figure out how to do it.
• Search marketing training is on the rise through conferences as well as individual training courses. The understanding that a search presence is crucial to doing business today has finally caught on in the mainstream business environment.
• Search conferences in Europe typically have a smaller attendance and fewer exhibitors than conferences in the U.S. There is also a greater focus on multi-lingual site optimization as many companies operate out of more than one European country.
• SEOs outside of the U.S. pay attention to what happens at conferences in the U.S. in order to identify upcoming trends. Interest in Europe around search marketing is growing quickly. The interest doesn’t come from an interest in entering the U.S. market, as the European market is a largely untapped market when it comes to search marketing.
• SEO and content management have been at odds over the years. By meeting with and gathering requirements from respected SEOs across the country, Pixelsilk was able to create an SEO friendly content management system.
• Most search marketers boast a previous life, from organizing missile operations in the military to roller skating in the circus. Discover the past lives of respected search marketers by visiting TheHistoryofSEO.com.

Best of Search Conferences 2009: Day 1 was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.

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Best of Search Conferences 2009: Day 1

Continuing our tradition, the third annual Best of Search Conferences 2009 is upon us. Over the last year there were five search engine marketing conferences that Bruce Clay, Inc. covered live on the blog, including SMX West, SES New York, SES San Jose, SMX East and SES Chicago. In the Best of Search Conferences 2009, you’ll find the most popular liveblog coverage from those five shows, as well as some other special posts and features.

Search marketer Marty Weintraub, founder and president of aimClear, guest posted on the blog, sharing his takeaways from PubCon Las Vegas 2009. You’ll also find BCI’s director of Eastern region operations, Christopher Hart, sum up his presentation from IM Spring Break. Plus, you can close out each day of the Best of Search Con by kicking back with a podcast of live broadcasts from search conferences this year. Here’s the agenda of what will be presented during this year’s Best of Search Conferences, coming to the blog all this week. Enjoy! And happy holidays!

Facebook Rockstars Roundtable: Marketing for the Other Internet

We’re in the home stretch now. I’m still nervously checking my flight status but at the moment I might just get home tonight. Score.

The panel is providing their own music as we get ready for a rock star session. Marty Weintraub is blasting “Never Let You Go” by Third Eye Blind and Muhammad Saleem requests “Beautiful Day” by U2. We get about a minute of that before we switch over to Vertigo and there’s some chatter about the original iPod ad. We got through a couple more U2 songs before switching to Rush. Marty, meanwhile, has been encouraging everyone to sit as close to the front as possible, promising that it will be worth our while. I hope there’s crowd surfing. Your panel, ladies and gentlemen. Here’s the official version:

Moderator:
Marty Weintraub, aimClear

Speakers:
Addie Conner, Avenue100 Media Solutions
Melissa Mackey, Fluency Media
Muhammad Saleem, ChicagoNow

This is a panel without slides, alas. It’s going to be about talented people who can cross channel.

What do the people in the room want to know about?

• Better metrics
• Advanced targeting features
• Job and talent search using Facebook
• Percentage of spend on Facebook
• Is it better to get a fan or a web site visitor?
• FTC regulations (it’s the wild west)
• Conversion funnels from Facebook
• Strategy for moderating speech from your advocates [Marty just laughs]
• ORM

Quick panel facts: Melissa Mackey is @mel66. Muhammad Saleem works with 150 different bloggers on the site. Addie Conner has a giant mug of coffee and I want it.

Marty calls Facebook the “other freaking Internet” — 350 million people that Google can’t index and who are fanatically engaged.

Q&A

What do you do when you first walk up to Facebook as a business?

Mu: They didn’t have anything when they started: no vanity URL, no profile, no call to action. Match your branding objectives to your actual platform.

How did you bring together many groups in Michigan?

Melissa: They did a lot of outreach and started a lot of conversations. The rules your mother taught you still apply. They could have been hard-ass about it and said, “Hey we’re the state of Michigan, take your page down,” but they had conversations instead.

How do you make money?

Addie: It’s all about knowing your audience. Do a survey, send e-mails, get the analytics. Get the users that have demand even if they don’t already know it. They’re in academic lead gen. They know who wants to and should be a nurse before they do.

Marty: Reputation defense is something you need to do for sure. Go into organic search and see what comes up. Then pretend you’re setting up ads and see what’s showing up for your company.

What should I do? Facebook page, group, profile?

Mu: We have a page for our corporate presences for the whole network. At the same time, some individual bloggers have groups because they need greater levels of control and more intimate conversations. Groups are limited to 5000 members and you can e-mail all of them. Admins on page have larger membership but can’t email.

Melissa: They started with a group and moved to a fan page.

Marty: Facebook gives marketers great tools to do classic human tasks. He used to have to feed photos to his mother by taking the pictures, developing them, driving them to her. Now he can post them on Facebook.

Is it possible to target people by Facebook Wall posts?

Addie: It’s not possible. It’s not one of the options.

Marty asks Addie: What information do you pull down from the Facebook API?

Addie: It’s not as robust as it should be. They use it for click information. They found that people who clicked on their ads were also interested in the Bible so they created a religious schools landing page.

Tell me about the word of mouth marketing. How do you greet people? How do you find the right people?

Mu: They didn’t approach Facebook as something different than the rest of their other social sites. They always put in a call to action to bring visitors from other sites to their fan page.

Melissa: They promote events. They played around with the number of things that they were posting and what time of day. Mid morning, lunchtime and mid afternoon are the best times to post.

Addie: User behavior patterns on Facebook are incredible. Users convert at night and on the weekends. Users browse during the weeks. More people convert coming in through apps (like Farmville). You can see which apps they came from and which converts best for you.

How do you integrate Facebook Connect with your blog?

Mel: They don’t use Facebook connect but they do cross-promote everything. They post snippets and links of all blog posts.

Marty: There are a lot of ways to cross-promote.

Mu: There are lots of ways to connect. Driving traffic, sign-ups, conversations. They don’t use Facebook Connect to use allow comments because they want the user information, they want those signups on their system. They don’t post everything — just snippets of highly focused content to capture interest.

Marty: Learn to market with your snippet. Compare Digg bookmarks to the actual titles. That’s marketing.

Mu: Customize your Meta information before you click the share button.

How do you guys feel about ping.fm?

Mu: Ping allows you to cross-post across multiple services. It’s not usually good because the messaging shouldn’t necessarily be identical.

How do you integrate Facebook into your marketing mix?

Mel: They didn’t get any value out of integrating their Twitter stream into Facebook. They wanted community and Twitter was just noise. It’s all about speaking the right language. If you walk into a room and everyone’s speaking Spanish and you start speaking English, they’re going to look at you funny even if they speak English.

Mu: Twitter-specific language doesn’t translate to Facebook. You have to optimize to each.

Addie: Facebook is a young platform. There’s a lot of testing that still needs to go on. She’s talking Facebook Ads. They drive people offsite to a conversion. Their conversion rates are similar to search.

Marty: Facebook is a conversation about paid, organic and social. A little bit of everything.

What kind of staff do you have dedicated to the running of strategy and not the paid element?

Mel: They don’t have a full time person on it. The client handles Twitter because it’s more time intensive.

Mu: It’s just him at the moment but they’re going to be moving to one hour and one person per vertical per day. The best way to look at it would be that right up front you’re going to be putting a lot of time into it matching demographics and building conversation, but once that’s good, it doesn’t take a lot of time.

How do you recruit/find jobs on Facebook?

Addie: Usually when you’re recruiting, you’re geo-targeting. Then you can target by job title, degree, passions, groups. It’s all about referring your friends on Facebook, right? So do an ad that refers your friends and get people to recommend their friends to you.

How can you use Facebook Groups for marketing?

Marty and Mel aren’t impressed with the performance of Groups but Mu thinks they have a place as a small local discussion platform. Marty says they do aggressive research in terms of marketing.

Addie asks Marty: Hey, Marty, can you pay an influencer to promote your stuff on their Wall? Is that illegal?

Marty: He doesn’t know but he does know that his clients would never stand for it.

Mel: You might not have to pay them. Some people are just enthusiastic.

Mu: He wouldn’t pay anyone to do promote your stuff. For him, it’s a matter of transparency. If you say it’s a paid tweet or something, it’s not a big deal. If he suspects you’re being paid and you didn’t say so, he loses trust.

How do you keep your fan page interesting if you don’t have content because you’re an e-commerce business?

Marty: Well, you have to be interesting.

Mu: Don’t sell the service, sell the lifestyle. Don’t just offer coupons, sell a frugal lifestyle.

Addie: If you’re not interesting in and of yourself, create something interesting and build an interesting community so that you can sell your boring product to them.

Facebook Rockstars Roundtable: Marketing for the Other Internet was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.

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Facebook Rockstars Roundtable: Marketing for the Other Internet

I just got off the phone with the one and only Andy Beal. Andy is an author, a tech-company founder and CEO, and an all-around expert of online public relations and reputation management. In his more than ten years as an Internet marketer and PR professional, Andy founded the social media monitoring solution Trackur, co-authored Radically Transparent: Monitoring & Managing Reputations Online and launched, edits and writes for MarketingPilgrim. You can follow him on Twitter, @AndyBeal.

Next week Andy will be sharing his expertise with attendees of Search Engine Strategies Chicago. But just now over the phone, Andy gave me the inside scoop on his presentations and what he’ll be talking about at the show. Transcribed for your reading enjoyment, here are six questions with Andy Beal.

1. One of the sessions you’ll be speaking on is “PR, Social Media and Search”, which will focus on integrating search and social media platforms into a PR strategy. What’s the biggest missed opportunity you’ve seen so far with regards to public relations and search and social media? What seems to give brands more trouble: proactive engagement with the community or reactive rep management issues?

I see a lot of, especially traditional public relations experts, looking at social media and search as just another distribution channel for them, and not realizing, especially with social media, that this is an opportunity for them to engage and to join a community. So a lot of their strategies will be along the lines of, “Let’s tweet our latest press release.” You know, that’s not going to get you too far if you’ve not built a community and you’re not opening a dialogue and starting a conversation surrounding the news that you’re launching.

So I think that it’s to be expected considering that we’re still in the very early stages of trying to figure out how to use social media as PR professionals. But I think that one of the things we’ll see in the future is public relations firms moving beyond simply using Twitter or Facebook or blogs as a distribution channel, and really diving in and engaging and building a community and having conversations with the company stakeholders.

I think right now what you see is a lot of companies responding to reputation management issues because they’ve not been proactive in their engagement. So you tend to see companies almost being dragged kicking and screaming into certain social media channels because they face a crisis on Twitter or a video of their employees at their pizza chain gets posted to YouTube and that kind of causes them to wake up and realize that they need to be involved in these channels.

And unfortunately they get thrown into the deep end because it’s usually a reputation crisis. Those companies then tend to realize the importance of those channels and start being proactive. And you can look at, for example, Dell as being a poster child of a company that went through a crisis and then became very proactive in social media.

I think that those companies that have gone through that trial by fire are becoming case studies for other companies and certainly for marketing professionals, PR professionals to say to their clients, to their employer, “Look, we don’t want this to happen to us. We’ve got two choices. We can wait until our reputation comes under attack and we can respond then. Or, much better is to be proactive, build a community, open up the lines of communication so that we are less likely to face a similar attack on our own reputation.”

2. You authored Radically Transparent, a book about online reputation management trends and tactics and tools for monitoring and engaging through social media. Before the Web exploded onto the scene, public relations (and business in general) followed a slightly slower pace. How has the PR community embraced the granular tracking and instant information tools like Trackur required of a professional today?

I think right now the majority of public relation firms that are using Trackur — which is our reputation monitoring tool — are using it along the lines of the traditional press clipping services that they offer their clients. And that is, they’re simply sending to their clients any instances that the client’s brand has been mentioned or a press release has been picked up, or a blogger or a journalist has written about an announcement.

And they’re using Trackur as an online version of the traditional press clipping service where — traditional PR folks will know all about this — and they send actual clippings to their client of here’s the story that ran in the Wall Street Journal. They send that to their clients on a regular basis. So they’re using Trackur merely as an accountability tool, just to demonstrate that it’s worth continuing to pay their retainer each month.

I think, though, as we move forward we’re going to see public relation firms and companies and marketing firms being a lot more intelligent with their use of social media monitoring. They’re going to start doing research to see what are the buzz terms, what are people talking about, what product features do they like, what don’t they like, and getting a better idea of how well received a particular announcement was so that they can maybe make improvements to their next product launch. And I think that we’re starting to see a few companies that are getting smart like that.

3. A highly debated topic in Internet marketing is that of “ghost” representatives on social networks. You’ll be speaking on the panel “Ghost Blogging, Tweeting, Content Production – Ethical? Does It Matter?” Can you give us a sneak peak of your views? What recommendations would you give to an organization interested in outsourcing their social media efforts?

I think that a lot of people will assume that having written a book titled Radically Transparent that my opinion’s going to be very much against ghost blogging. But the presentation that I’m giving is actually just a very practical, balanced look at the pros and the cons of ghost blogging and ghost tweeting. I still believe that the majority of companies should definitely look at being transparent with their efforts and, if possible, having their actual CEO or senior executive be the one that writes the blog post and updates the Twitter account.

But there are going to be times where that’s just not practical. I’m going to look at situations where you have a CEO that’s just not able to get in front of a computer — maybe they’re not tech savvy or maybe they’re just too busy. You’ve got the CEOs that are, really, if you put them in front of a camera or in front of a keyboard they’re kind of, dare I say, bumbling idiots. And you really don’t want them putting together the post and so it’s better that they get written for them and maybe approved by the CEO.

And then we’ll even look at the black hat side of things, or the dark side of things, and that is truly just pretending that it’s being written by somebody. And what are the risks involved with that and what could be the downfall if you’re discovered, and we’ll look at some examples. But my plan is, I’ve only got ten minutes to make a presentation so I’m going to basically open up the topic and talk about some different things, but look at it from a practical point of view.

My opinion is that I would prefer people be open and honest about this but I do realize that there are going to be many instances where you’re going to take a ghost blogging approach.

4. During the panel “Online PR: Where to Next?” you’re going to look at how social media and search will impact public relations in five years. The last five years saw quite a bit of change on that front. Do you think the next five will be as revolutionary or are the major shifts behind us?

My focus of that panel is going to be on monitoring and measurement. I’m going to take a look at the different things that have materialized over the last five years that really allow you to analyze the reach of your press release, the audience share of the influences, and really help you fine tune your PR message, and to make sure that you’re not just sending out a blast press release and hoping that you’re going to get picked up by a popular newspaper or blogger.

I look at that and then looking forward to the future, I think we are going to see technology playing a major role. We will see PR firms learning to have this dialogue, which we’ve already discussed, but I think technology is going to be just as equally important over the next five years. And we’re going to perhaps see things such as greater use of URL shorteners to make it easier for content to be distributed and tracked.

One of the things that I talk about is setting your content free. So forget the old way of hosting a press room or a media room on your site. By distributing that content to Flickr or SlideShare or YouTube you’re going to get a lot better idea of the reach of that, the popularity of it. A lot of these sites have great metrics that they’ll share with you if you post your content with them.

Then even looking at maybe the future of press releases themselves. Dynamic content you can change on the fly. So maybe multivariate testing with your press release headlines. Or perhaps you find a typo in your press release and you’re able to update it two hours after you’ve issued it and it gets updated across all of the different news wires. And then maybe even an opportunity to better track those press releases.

Who knows, we may even see performance-based pricing for press releases. Not just, here’s a flat fee, but if this press release gets picked up by X number of bloggers or gets featured in this particular news publication maybe you’ll pay on a performance basis. So there’s lots of different interesting things that we can only predict at this point, but who knows what will come in the future.

5. What should brand managers know about the reputation risks of emerging new technologies like SideWiki, Twitter Lists and tweets in SERPs? Do these formats raise any new concerns for ORM?

It is still very early days. The thing with SideWiki is that it’s still very new. Not a lot of people are familiar with it or are using it, so any reputational impact is going to be very limited at this stage, but that’s not to say that it won’t be important in the future.

Twitter Lists are useful because they’re great for helping you to identify influential Twitter users. So for example, if you know that there’s a technology writer that’s got 100,000 followers and they create a list of the technology writers that they admire and they follow, that’s a pretty good list, as a PR professional or as a marketer, to follow and to kind of dissect and to get an idea of who’s influential in the space. So those are all things that are going to empower us to really fine-tune our targeting of where we’re sending this message.

I think the biggest change for PR is going to be that it’s not just a case of, “Let’s craft a real catchy press release. Let’s send it off through our news wire. And then let’s just follow up with the most influential newspaper journalists.” I think you’re going to see that we’re going to get more granular.

And it may well be that the next time you break a story, let’s say we have a new product that we’re launching, it may be that we just give the exclusive to a particular person that has a huge following on Twitter because we know that we can reach our target audience a lot faster if we give them the scoop, as opposed to sending out a press release. So there’s a lot of interesting things to come.

6. Are there any sessions you’re looking forward to at the show? Where can people find you to chat while in Chicago?

I’m going to be busy with my own sessions, I think, so I’ve got a lot that I’m going to be doing. But for me, SES and any of these conferences are about the networking. So I’m looking forward to catching up with people, I’m looking forward to meeting new folks that are doing interesting things that I’m not personally involved with, or people that I’ve heard about that I’ve not met. So for me the networking is going to be a key thing.

I am doing a lunch thing on Tuesday. I believe they have a thing for authors and speakers where you can kind of find your favorite author or speaker and kind of sit down, have lunch and chat. So I’m hoping people will come out and find me for that. I’m happy to talk about anything from blogging to search to reputation management, or anything that comes up over lunch.

Considering how awesome it’s been having you answer all my questions, I think that’s an opportunity SES goers should definitely take advantage of. Thanks, Andy, for taking the time out for this interview. Have an awesome time in Chicago!

If you like what you read here, remember this is just a taste of what you’ll takeaway from being at the real thing. Plus, get 20 percent off the cost of the conference (good for the show and for Bruce Clay’s SEO training course Friday) with the discount code 20BCLAY.

Six Questions with Andy Beal was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.

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Six Questions with Andy Beal

When twitter lists first came out and I commented about how awesome they are, I also warned they had the potential to become a tool for evil and create reputation management problems. Since no one paid attention, I figured what better way to illustrate the problem than to see it in action?

I wanted show how it could be used but didn’t really want to damage someone’s reputation (no one’s high enough up on my hit list for that), so I created a dummy list with only one person who didn’t actually do what the list says he did. Go ahead and check out my list on people who bought links and its ranking in Google [people who bought links]. To be clear: Matt Cutts never bought links and, according to Google, buying links is against Google guidelines. This list is fictitious and used as an example. It should be used for entertainment and educational purposes only.

So why did I do it? To show you, twitter, and Google how allowing user-generated pages on authority sites that are page rank black holes is an incredibly bad idea. My page was able to rank in less than 2 days with only 2 internal links/followers. A more competitive phrase will take more followers (aka internal links) and some external links, but by practicing parasite SEO you could rank for a lot of mid level terms.

Google wants you to believe they’ve defused “miserable failure” types of google bombs like this. If you are careful about how you construct them–in other words, avoiding negative words while still giving a negative halo–the only out will be a counter campaign or a hand edit.

So what are some takeaways:

• Monitor what lists you are on regularly. If something bad pops up, take steps to correct it before it’s too late.
• If you see this being abused, let a search engine representative know. Don’t expect them to take it down, but the sooner they see it being abused the sooner they will work to combat it.
• If you run a UGC site, be on the lookout for how people can abuse your system. The last thing you want is to end up with a  squidoo spam problem and have the search engines take action against you.

Advertisement: Efficiently manage your SEO and Social Media campaigns with Raven’s powerful suite of Internet Marketing Tools

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

How to Use Twitter Lists To Create Reputation Management Problems

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How to Use Twitter Lists To Create Reputation Management Problems

Last Friday I was in Atlanta, where I gave a talk on social media marketing at Dan Kennedy’s InfoSUMMIT conference.

I’m something of a fish out of water at a Glazer-Kennedy event. For example, unlike at Blogworld, I’m the only person in a room of 800 who has pink hair.

I wasn’t sure they’d be too receptive to what I had to say, but they surprised me.

They were warm, welcoming, and extremely interested in my no-shortcuts, no-magic-beans answers to their questions about how to use social media for marketing and business.

So in honor of Dan Kennedy, who sometimes styles himself as the “Professor of Harsh Reality,” I thought I’d talk today about some of the not-so-kumbaya aspects of social media marketing.

Harsh Reality #1: No one is reading your blog

As far as anyone can figure, there are about 200 million blogs around the world. Technorati tells us there are about 900,000 blog posts made every 24 hours.

The world is not waiting breathlessly to hear what you have to say about losing weight with acai berries, making big money as an affiliate marketer, or how to join your Secrets of the Breakthrough Millionaire Insider Guru Mastermind Platinum Club.

Me-too content gets ignored. Scraped and remixed junk won’t cut it. There’s too much good content that you need to compete with. And there’s no magic system that can replace sitting in front of your keyboard and producing something that somebody wants to read. (Or partnering with someone who can.)

If you don’t have a great answer to the question “Why should anyone read your blog?” you’re going to be pretty unhappy with your results. That’s why we spend so much time teaching you how to produce better, smarter, more effective content.

Harsh Reality #2: You’ve got to give (some of) your best stuff away

It’s very natural to expect to get paid for what you do. And you should have a business model that leads to exactly that.

But first, you’ve got some dues to pay.

Commenter Corree Silvera mentioned her favorite Brian Clark quote from this year’s Blogworld Expo:

Don’t sacrifice a lot of money later for a little money now.

The answer to the question in Harsh Reality #1, “why should anyone read your blog?” is that you’re going to give away some of your best, most valuable, most life-improving material away for free, within a well-defined content marketing plan.

Just remember Sean d’Souza’s bikini concept. You can give 90% of it away, but there will always be people who will happily pay to see that last 10%.

Harsh Reality #3: It will eat your life (if you let it)

Social media marketing would be pretty easy if we never had to eat, sleep, shower, or hang out with our kids.

But if doing those things is important to you, you’re going to have to set some boundaries.

Know what you want to do with social media, keep yourself focused, and set a timer if you have to. The tools are amazing, but so is their power to distract you from what you’re trying to accomplish.

Harsh Reality #4: Social media hates selling

Is there anything more pitiful than that guy who gets on Twitter and won’t shut up about how he can put you in a condo today with no money down despite your lousy credit rating? Even the spammers are blocking this dude.

It’s really hard to sell products and services in social media, mostly because this audience hates salespeople worse than they hate Microsoft. You may be able to get some limited success out of it, but more likely you’ll be banned, blocked, shunned, and abused.

Instead of promoting a product or service, promote fantastic content. Promote a great special report or an amazingly valuable email course. Promote wonderful stuff that you’re giving away.

Use excellent free stuff to build authority and trust. Then you have the right to make an offer and possibly do some business. Not before.

Harsh Reality #5: What they say is a million times more important than what you say

Your marketing might be beautifully executed. You might have a special report that goes more viral than H1N1, a great-looking blog that hits Digg twice a day, and an email marketing sequence that copywriting genius Gene Schwartz would have been proud to write.

If your reputation sucks, none of it matters.

People with lousy products, crummy business practices, and shady backgrounds get found out. And word spreads with frightening speed.

Treat people right, because if you don’t, you will be exposed. And it will not be pretty.

Harsh Reality #6: A blog is not a marketing plan

Blogs are cool, but a single useful tool isn’t the same thing as a solid business and marketing plan.

Blogs are just one way to get your best content out there, and they work best when you pair them up with email autoresponders, special reports, Twitter, and any of a dozen other powerful tools.

Just hanging out and being cool isn’t enough. If you’re in social media to do business, you have to develop a strategy for taking mildly interested strangers and turning them into raving fans . . . and customers.

Harsh Reality #7: You don’t get to opt out

Businesses that think they can ignore all this “Twitter stupidity” tend to get painfully rude awakenings.

The conversation will happen with or without you. You definitely don’t need to respond to every chucklehead with a Facebook account (and you shouldn’t), but you need to keep your ear to the ground, and you need a clue.

OK, enough about harsh reality already! If you want our best advice about what to do to create a great online business, subscribe to Internet Marketing for Smart People, the Copyblogger email newsletter. It’s some of our best stuff, no junk, no fluff. And of course we will never, ever spam you or share your information with anyone.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.

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The 7 Harsh Realities of Social Media Marketing

Ug. Lists. Sometimes I feel like they control my life. To-do lists, both at work and at home. Lists of groceries to stock up on, books to read, songs to download. And as the holidays approach, so does the annual list of presents to buy.

My relationship with the list is one of love-hate, to say the least.

Just as lists can keep us organized and to the task at hand, lists can also keep us captive to their rigid boundaries and lack of mercy. Even more disturbing, lists can actually hurt others.

The other day Christopher Hart shared his concerns with me. He’d seen a large number of Twitter Lists suddenly crop up as the microblogging site rolled out the feature to a greater number of users. The lists he’d seen so far had ranged from playful to helpful and were clearly being used as an organizational tool.

But oh, what if?! It wasn’t long before Chris got to thinking of all the ways Twitter Lists could be abused. After all, history has proved it’s only a matter of time before shady abuses are dreamed up for all new technologies.

And that’s when it hit him: With lists come great responsibilities.

As Chris mentioned to me, think of the lists throughout history that have caused pain and suffering to those included. Just a small sampling:

• McCarthy’s list
• The Hollywood blacklist
• Nixon’s enemies list
• And who could forget those cruel worst dressed lists?

Ouch!

Okay, as much as I’d like to joke about the situation and just laugh it off, Chris’s concern is a real one.

I’m a bit late to the debate as many bloggers, including Chris Brogan and Robert Scoble, have shared their initial thoughts. (For a great round-up of articles and posts on Lists as well as an intriguing argument about how Twitter Lists is proof that social media misunderstands itself, I recommend Justin Kownacki’s post on the subject.) But I haven’t seen much attention given to the reputation management aspect of Twitter Lists.

It’s only a matter of time until companies like Ripoff Report start creating their lists. And it’s likely that those are lists you and your company don’t want to be on. [It's a little like Facebook groups but instead of people joining groups they agree with, you're just labeled whether you want to be or not. --Susan] *Shudders* –Virginia

We can hope that Twitter will be quick to put protections into place. But as we know, spammers and scammers and those with a bone to pick are a rather determined bunch.

Then again, maybe there’s someone who stands to benefit from list abuse. Anyone think I should take bets on how many less-than-favorable lists everyone’s favorite cable provider gets itself on by month’s end?

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With Twitter Lists Come Great Responsibilities