Archive of Social Media Strategies Posts

Why 27?

Because, after hours and hours of searching, and using Google Alerts for months, that is how many worthwhile articles I have found regarding Blogging ROI so far. I’m sure there are more out there, and I hope that if you know of an additional resource that you will provide that as a comment to this post.

Why have I looked so hard for resources about this topic? Because getting marketers and C-level executives to put corporate blogging on the front burner is so darn difficult.

While there are many reasons why businesses who start blogging end up failing, in most cases it has nothing to do with the expertise and intelligence of the individual or team responsible for it. If your blog is not receiving comments, subscribers or traffic, you need to think about why this is the case.

Best practices for post formatting, compelling titles, linking and writing structure only get you so far in the process. When all else is said and done, if your blog is not living up to expectations, you can usually pinpoint 1 of 2 issues:

I am a self-admitted fan of celebrity gossip. I don’t know how it happened or when it happened but I have been sucked in and I can’t get out. Needless to say on Monday I was skimming through the various ‘entertainment’ blogs and I came across a few stories on how John Mayer Googles himself every morning and how he responded to the accusation. A lot of the authors were making fun of him but I don’t blame the guy one bit.

I am looking forward to participating on the panel next Thursday, March 13th, for Social Media Club Boston’s event titled “The Search for Results: Social Media and Search Marketing.”

Networking starts at 6pm and the panel kicks off at 6:30pm at 800 West Cummings Park in Woburn (MA).  Directions and registration are online at http://socialmediaclub.pbwiki.com/BostonMarch2008. 
 

The following is an excerpt from the announcement of the event:

This event will explore the following:

• Why SEO is an important component of a social media marketing strategy

• What are SEOs doing with social media on behalf of their clients

Why Social Media Scares Me 

Andy still likes to joke about how he came across my MySpace page when I applied for this job and saw messages from my friends congratulating me on a new job and a big move.  The funny part - I hadn’t gotten the job yet! 

As we have read time and time again, what you put on the internet can be seen by just about anyone.  Google “casie gillette” and what will you find?

• I work at KoMarketing
• I played basketball at Marietta College
• My Sphinn name is Casieg

Last Friday, Techcrunch posted an announcement that Yahoo would be testing and integrating del.icio.us social bookmarking numbers directly into certain search results.

In addition to the traditional information users see (titles, search descriptions, URL etc), searchers may also see the number of people that bookmarked any given page and what tags they used to “describe” that page.

I’ve been a strong proponent of del.icio.us for quite a while but often neglected the “social” aspects of the tool in favor of other social news and bookmarking services (Digg, StumbleUpon, etc). If this move proves successful, it could become a major reason to use del.icio.us for more than just a personal bookmarking tool.

I started using BloggingZoom.com (BZ) about a month ago after reading a post on Sphinn about how Courtney Tuttle had started a great new social community for bloggers, and how BZ encourages users to submit their own articles in addition to other people’s articles (very contrary to how users behave on other social media sites like Digg).  I can’t find that thread I followed on Sphinn, but here is a blog post on Jennylens.com that makes the same assertion.

Even though social media is a hot topic, intelligent marketers are asking the question about social media’s value in comparison to their other online marketing endeavors. If you’re following the buzz, you’re already understanding the fact that success in social media is not as easy as initially perceived; it takes time, strategy and commitment. Your time investment in developing networks in social media communities and content for these networks has to be measured against your time requirements elsewhere.





If you are concerned with immediate ROI and definitively “track-able” results, this presents a quandary of sorts. How can you justify hours of social media brand building with the expectation that at some point, it’s going to generate measurable traffic and inbound links?

Digg is a social bookmarking site that allows people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. Registered users can vote submissions up (”Digging” them) or down (the “Bury” feature) with a goal of collaborating (Digging) on what the best content is online. The most popular content appears on the home page of Digg.com as new stories and submissions are voted on by the community.

What that means for Website Marketers and Digg Users:

Derek and I attended a SEMNE event last night where Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR spoke on Universal search and in particular video. He discussed not only YouTube but the increased frequency of YouTube and other videos showing up in Google search results. He also provided us with a statistic that really caught my attention:

In September, YouTube was the 3rd leading search engine with over 1 million searches (ComScore Data)

First of all, I had no idea that many people were searching in YouTube. Second, with 1 million searches on YouTube, 5 billion searches on Google, and the advent of universal search, I don’t think the question is ‘Should I use video?’ but instead ‘How do I use video?‘.