Guidelines for marketing with social media aren’t all that new. In 2006 five members of the digital marketing community collaborated on 16 rules for “social media optimization”. Fast forward to nearly 2010 and social media has begun to take a more significant role in the marketing mix.

The original “rules” were posted by:

• Rohit Bhargava (1-5)
• Jeremiah Owyang (6 & 7)
• Cameron Olthuis (8-11)
• Loren Baker (12 & 13)
• Lee Odden (14-16).

Let’s revisit these 16 rules for social media optimization (SMO) and see which are still relevant.

1. Increase Your Linkability

This is the first and most important priority for websites. Many sites are “static” – meaning they are rarely updated and used simply for a storefront. To optimize a site for social media, we need to increase the linkability of the content. Adding a blog is a great step, however there are many other ways such as creating white papers and thought pieces, or even simply aggregating content that exists elsewhere into a useful format.

Is this still relevant?

Increasing your linkability is definitely still relevant, and adding a blog is still a great tactic. With the popular areas of the web acting more and more as aggregators rather than destinations the value of unique and useful content just keeps going up.

Will white papers and thought pieces necessarily increase linkability? All depends on the content, but consider the time it takes to create them plus the fact that they aren’t social. Many produce white papers and thought pieces, so this is a highly competitive landscape to expect decent returns without an audience to share it. It’s a perfectly fine tactic, but a publishing platform feels like step one. To merely create white papers without already having an audience to share them with means they may have a hard time getting links in the first place.

Check out what Darren Rowse recently created as a great example – he built a workbook that was made up of content already published on his blog, and yet his community still supported him in sharing it even though it’s material that is already public. He repurposed blog posts into a more formal/packaged format and is now selling the final product. This makes a lot of sense – publish the content bit by bit to attract links, traffic and subscribers as you go, then at the completion turn it into something polished.

As far as aggregators are concerned, so much of the web these days is made up of aggregation sometimes I wonder if enough is enough. Do we really need more? At this point my sense is that compelling content is in greater demand than new aggregators. Unless you can serve your niche is an incredibly useful or interesting way you may spend a lot of resources on this tactic with lukewarm returns.

2.Make Tagging and Bookmarking Easy

Adding content features like quick buttons to “add to del.icio.us” are one way to make the process of tagging pages easier, but we go beyond this, making sure pages include a list of relevant tags, suggested notes for a link (which come up automatically when you go to tag a site), and making sure to tag our pages first on popular social bookmarking sites (including more than just the homepage).

Is this still relevant?

Yes, and the ReTweet button is the button du jour as Twitter has fast become a hotspot for the sneezers of the web to share quick links. We have heard of some bloggers receiving a 100% increase in Tweets from adding this which gives a nod to the button approach being a direct reminder to visitors to share content.

With that said if your content is really that good people will always find a way to share it. Sharing buttons might help a little and act as social proofing if you get a lot of Diggs or Tweets, but realize people naturally share great content with or without prompts. Also prompts are not going to help uninteresting content get shared.

[Lee: With Online Marketing Blog, we've had a good amount of traffic from Twitter for over a year but the addition of the "Tweet this" button enabled many more impressions of our content through Retweets and links. As Adam says, the bottom line with "linkability" is the quality of the content more than the visual prompt to save, share or bookmark it.]

3. Reward Inbound Links

Often used as a barometer for success of a blog (as well as a website), inbound links are paramount to rising in search results and overall rankings. To encourage more of them, we need to make it easy and provide clear rewards. From using Permalinks to recreating Similarly, listing recent linking blogs on your site provides the reward of visibility for those who link to you

Is this still relevant?

I’m not convinced you need to provide “rewards” per say to people linking to you – if you earned a link through great content then you earned it. Reciprocate if their content is worth a link, but just because someone sends you an inbound link isn’t by itself a reason to take action or reward. This may be a strategy but I would be hesitant to classify it as rule, there are wildly successful web brands that don’t reward inbound links. As a blogger, I would be hesitant to say that things like automatic trackbacks are a reward.

[Lee: There are many ways to implement a quality link recognition process. Here are two examples that we use at TopRank:

1) The BIGLIST of Search Marketing Blogs suggests to other blogs that the only way to get on the list is to be noticed by TopRank. One effective way to get noticed is if other blogs link to BIGLIST. There are about 74k links to BIGLIST so far.

2) Each month and recently, each week, we post a roundup of media and blog coverage that TopRank gets on a newsroom blog post. Each time a mainstream publication or prominent website/blog mentions our brand or key staff, we include a link back to that source in our roundup.

Neither of these tactics involves any kind of outbound effort on our part. Other web sites decide to link to us on their own. We decide to link back when it makes sense for our purposes. If that "recognition" helps others who were already thinking about writing about our company or our blog to link to us, then so be it. However, using a WordPress widget to display recent inbound links or as Adam says above, using automatic trackbacks only invites manipulation by others.]

4.Help Your Content Travel

Unlike much of SEO, SMO is not just about making changes to a site. When you have content that can be portable (such as PDFs, video files and audio files), submitting them to relevant sites will help your content travel further, and ultimately drive links back to your site.

Is this still relevant?

If you are a social media power user or have a strong relationships/reputation, you can probably give it a nudge to help make it successful. With that said it’s not up to you if your content travels, it’s up to your web community.

[Lee: Building channels of distribution for content can be a very effective way to gain exposure and attract links. Email newsletters, RSS subscribers, status updates, Twitter updates, content syndication and promotions can all improve reach. Exactly how far that content travels depends on how congruent it is to the needs and interests of the network empowered to pass it along.]

5.Encourage the Mashup

In a world of co-creation, it pays to be more open about letting others use your content (within reason). YouTube’s idea of providing code to cut and paste so you can embed videos from their site has fueled their growth. Syndicating your content through RSS also makes it easy for others to create mashups that can drive traffic or augment your content.

Is this still relevant?

Yes, and in fact it’s interesting to note how traditional media entities such as the AP outright ignore the power of this by attempting to DRM to the news. Encourage reuse, remix and sharing for ideas to spread – at the end of the day the benefits still flow back to the originator of said content. People are going to reuse your content anyway, it’s the nature of the social web. Better to embrace it than fight it. Trent Reznor is a great case study of an artist who understands this philosophy.

6. Be a User Resource, Even if it Doesn’t Help You

Add value to users, including outbound links to areas that could help them with their goals and purposes. Deployed corrected, even if you link to competitors you stand to gain as the communities first source of information finding. How will this help SMO? Folks will link to your social site and tag is as helpful or the ‘ultimate’ guide in that space. As this adds up, it will become more and more relevant in search engine results.

Is this still relevant?

Yes, highly – I don’t have anything else to add as Jeremiah says this rather well.

[Lee: I like succinct and so I'll put it simply: Social media success depends on a "give value to get value" perspective.]

7. Reward Helpful and Valuable Users

Often helpful or popular users will be influencers and champions within your social site, devise ways to elevate them by promoting their works on the homepage, or develop a rating system. Sometimes a quick email or note in private telling them you appreciate them can go a long way. Some folks have done that to me, and for communities I run, I do that as well. Only do if sincere. Perhaps this is not truly SMO, but it will help to keep the most valuable members of a community closer to your site.

Is this still relevant?

This is not only relevant, you can go beyond a quick note and actually forge a relationship with those people by connecting with them in a deeper way than a mere “thank you.” Engage them in a dialogue and show your true passion for the subject at hand. If you’re really interested in what you’re creating this is such a natural. In other words: go beyond telling people you appreciate them, form a relationship with them.

8. Participate

Join the conversation. Social Media is a two way street, lets not forget that. By conversing with the community you are creating awareness and prolonging your buzz. You are keeping it going and this often results in a snowball effect. Participating helps your message spread further and faster.

Is this still relevant?

I don’t see any other way to be successful long-term here, this is a huge rule that is core to social media.

[Lee: Since the original list was published, many marketers have made the mistake of dumping content, links and other advertising content with social networks to find their efforts fruitles for marketing and very productive when it came to being called a social media spammer. Participation is central to effective social media marketing and is probably the most important.]

9. Know How to Target Your Audience

If you don’t even know your target audience you are in trouble. I would love to have everyone using my product too, but you need to be realistic. There is always going to be a certain audience you can appeal to and others that you can’t. So know your appeal and who it is appealing to.

Is this still relevant?

There is no other way to create content or marketing ideas compelling to a niche, you have to understand both the subject matter and the community living and breathing it. The most effective way to do this is to become a member of the community yourself. Anything else will always be second-best to those living/breathing the material.

Create ideas which resonate with your audience, and you can forge great relationships and build vital brand allies, such as EA sports connecting Tiger Woods directly with gamers (the reaction by the Digg community, one made up heavily of gamers, says it all – EA really connected with them). Misunderstanding your audience is dangerous and can put you down a negative path, such as when Motrin missed the mark of their target audience of moms.

10. Create Content

There are certain kinds of content that just naturally spread socially. It does not matter what industry you are in and what boring products you sell, there is always some kind of content that can be created that will work. Whether it is creating widgets, making people laugh, or writing a white paper, it can be done. Know what type of content can work for you and create it.

Is this still relevant?

This is synonymous with law 8 – being a participant of the social web requires you create content. With so few who actually create content and stick with it, this is a tremendous opportunity if you have the persistence and passion to go the distance.

We have more data here since the original rule was written which really backs this rule up. Consider that Technorati has indexed 133 million blogs since 2002, yet only around 76,000 blogs have a Technorati Authority of 50 or higher. In other words, less than .06% of the blogosphere garners all the attention, links and authority when stacked up against the rest. If you want attention, interest and links, you absolutely must be in that .06%. And to get there you have to consistently create useful and unique content, there is no escaping this.

11. Be Real

The community does not reward fakers.

Is this still relevant?

Yes – the social web only continues to get sharper at shining the light on those who are inauthentic.

[Lee: Do you really want your brand to become the next "Dell Hell", "Walmarting Across America" or other fake social persona that gets outed by the community? Of course not and that makes this "rule" timeless in its relevance.]

12. Don’t Forget Your Roots, Be Humble

Sometimes it can be easy to get carried away being a BlogStar or industry talking head. Remember those who helped you along the way, and that respect will help all involved.

Is this still relevant?

This is true in life and business as a whole, not just in social media.

13. Don’t Be Afraid to Try New Things, Stay Fresh

Social Media is changing and morphing by the minute, keep up on new tools, products and challenges in your social sphere.

Is this still relevant?

This is still and will continuously be relevant – the early adopter crowd is always interested in what’s fresh and interesting. Plus you never want to miss the competitive advantage of becoming proficient with something new ahead of others. Several of the 40 best brands on Twitter not only enjoy a following in the 6-figures for being unafraid to take the plunge, but brands like Comcast and Starbucks have been getting national PR because of it.

14. Develop a SMO Strategy

Define your objectives and set goals. Be fully aware of what your desired outcome is as a result of performing these tactics. Reputation, sales, influence, credibility, charity, traffic/page views, etc.

Is this still relevant?

Still relevant, there should exist clear strategy behind any and all marketing initiatives. Social media is no different. Starting with a social media roadmap will set yourself up for success.

[Lee: As this "rule" hits close to home, I would be remiss not to chime in. One of the most common blunders companies make with social media is to approach purely at a tactical level with no clear goals or strategy. Even an experiment has a hypothesis and if companies cannot commit to an overall strategic social media effort, they should at least make an effort to test in a structured way with goals, strategy, tactics and measurement in place.]

15. Choose Your SMO Tactics Wisely

Choose your SMO tactics wisely. Be cognizant of what actions will influence the desired outcome with the most impact.

Is this still relevant?

Definitely, what’s right for one brand or industry may not be for another. Everyone’s quick to choose the same tactics that are being used merely because they are “hot.” A reality check is always necessary – consider how will this tactic support your overall strategy. Social media marketing is about about ideas first and technology second.

16. Make SMO part of your process and best practices

Make SMO part of your process and best practices. As with good SEO, SMO tactics should become part of your organization’s best practices. Find ways to incorporate SMO tactics at the “template” level of document creation and as part of information distribution. Minor things like encouraging social bookmarks and rewarding incoming links as a standard practice across the organization can go a long way.

Is this still relevant?

Yes, as long as people are interacting in a way reflecting their individual personality and not merely acting in a robotic fashion because they were told to do so by management. There are no problems with encouragement and templates as long as the people who are participating actually want to participate. It is not the best reflection on a person or brand if all they did was hype their company all day and nothing else.

[Lee: Growing and maintaining social networks in an efficient way isn't going to happen accidentally. Educated and inspired participants of the social web can be far more effective with tools and processes that speed up, automate and make more efficient redundant and time consuming processes. An example would be using TweetDeck or CoTweet rather than the web version of Twitter. Another would be using Knowem to setup social profiles rather than doing so manually.]

Wrapping up

After thinking through these 16 rules, my sense is as a whole they hold up well. While the packaging of social media may be in a constant state of flux the core rules of digital communication do not change as tools/trends change. The reality is text is still king of the web and we’ve been socializing this way since the days of message boards and forums in the 90’s.

Good marketing itself is not about the platform, it’s about the idea. The platform is merely an enabler, but to utilize it effectively comprehension is vital. With social media gaining popularity daily it is necessary for marketing professionals and businesses alike to comprehend this dynamic communication enviornment. And the only true way to accomplish this is to become involved yourself.

What rules for social media marketing and optimization would you add?

For hands on Social Media Optimization training, sign up for the DMA Workshop “Social Media Marketing and SEO – Working Together for Dramatic Results” during the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose August 10th.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. |
16 Rules For Social Media Optimization Revisited |
9 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Social Media Smarts: Interview with Lee Aase, Social Media Manager at Mayo Clinic

By day, Lee Aase is manager of syndication and social media for Mayo Clinic and by night, he is chancellor of Social Media University, Global (SMUG). I first met Lee at a media relations conference in San Francisco a few years ago. He was kind enough to sit in on a presentation I gave to the public relations community on search engine optimization for news content. It was a pleasure to meet another Minnesotan at an industry conference and Lee’s savvy with social media was immediately apparent.

In the Q and A post below, Lee Aase provides insights into social media within the Mayo clinic, offers advice for other companies on his “MacGyver-style” testing , developing a strategy, winning management approval, measuring social media ROI and his work with SMUG.

Please share a bit about your background and what you currently do for the Mayo Clinic as a social media manager?

I have a B.S. in Political Science from Mankato State University, and worked for 14 years in politics and government at the local, state and national levels. I came to work at Mayo Clinic in April 2000 as a media relations consultant, and in 2004 became manager of the media relations team. As manager for syndication and social media, my team’s focus now is to create high-quality health and medical news content for mainstream media, while also creating more in-depth content for patients and consumers. Finally, we’re empowering employees and patients to share their Mayo Clinic stories and engaging in conversations.

What are some of the important questions to be answered when a company is first investigating whether social media makes sense?

The main questions are “What does the organization hope to accomplish or prevent?” and “Are those goals are realistic?” Both questions apply whether the company considers social media an opportunity or a threat. Questions of corporate culture and whether the organization is comfortable with openness and transparency play a role, but mainly in the pace of adoption.

Given that Facebook has 200 million active users, any organization of significant size already has many employees and even more customers involved. Will the conversations be about the company or with the company? So in the end, I believe the real questions are whether the company engages only informally, or how quickly they move to officially sanctioned participation.

If your customers are basically happy with the products or services you provide, and if your employees are comparatively satisfied with their work, the potential benefits of active engagement are likely significant. If you have serious employee morale or customer satisfaction deficits, providing social media platforms will amplify those concerns. Don’t be deluded that avoiding official social media engagement will keep people from talking about your company. Consumers and employees will commiserate online whether you provide a site for them or not. But if you have these problems you should work first on addressing them before launching major social media initiatives. Social media mainly make existing chatter louder.

Mainstream media aren’t going away, but they no longer dominate the crowded market for consumer attention. Companies may be able to avoid official social media involvement for a time, but these platforms will continue to grow in importance. It’s better to become fluent in its language earlier and adapt, instead of clinging as long as possible to a more guarded communication style.

That’s approaching the question from a negative, risk-avoidance perspective. I firmly believe the more exciting and relevant view is how to take advantage of social media’s immense opportunities.

Do you test specific social media tactics or do you go full on with a social media strategy for each initiative? Knowing what you know now, what approach would you recommend that companies take when they’re starting out?

I recommend what I call the “MacGyver Mindset,” named after the TV character played by Minnesota native Richard Dean Anderson. Look at the tools and resources you have available and how you can adapt them to meet your communication and marketing goals, and empower staff to explore.

Focus first on the free platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, mainly because that’s where you will find communities already gathered. This also enables you to prove your concepts before deciding whether to launch a community of your own.

Strategic thinking can be an excuse for inaction, and just as it’s easier to alter the direction of a moving car than it is to get one started from a dead stop, I believe it’s best to build social media momentum through low-cost experimentation and iteration.

What process did you follow to win management approval for specific or overall social media programs? What kinds of data were most successful?

For more than 100 years, the most important factor responsible for patient preference for Mayo Clinic has been word of mouth; satisfied patients telling their friends and neighbors about their experiences. We’ve had strong data on that point, and that news media stories and physician recommendations are the second and third most significant reasons for Mayo Clinic preference. So in our case it wasn’t a “prove the value in advance” situation. We emphasized that social media are just the way word of mouth happens in the 21st century.

How do you handle the “social media ROI” question? What are some of the important metrics that you use to communicate social media success?

Our main focus has been keeping costs low and incorporating social media strategies into every communication effort. As the “I” in the ROI calculation approaches zero, ROI approaches infinity. We don’t represent social media as something radically discontinuous with our previous strategies; a blog is, after all, just an easy-to-publish Web site that allows comments. By keeping incremental costs low, it doesn’t take much to show solid returns.

We use our blogs partly for media relations, so accounting for increased news coverage is important. We also can track visits to our sites and click-through behavior to our “request an appointment” links.

What are some examples of companies that are using social media successfully that you admire the most? What social media work are you most proud of at the Mayo Clinic?

I admire how companies like Comcast and Dell have used social media tools to overcome customer service problems. If there’s one industry that’s known for poor customer service it’s the Cable TV industry; there’s a reason why Jim Carrey could make a movie called “ The Cable Guy.” And Dell’s original experience with the blogosphere with Jeff Jarvis’ “Dell Hell” rant is a classic. But both companies used social media to change their organizations and treat customers better. So while in general I recommend fixing service issues before embarking on a social media program, with the right kind of commitment both Comcast and Dell have show that social media can accelerate organizational change.

At Mayo Clinic, I think our most important accomplishment has been integrating the various platforms and keeping costs down. For example, we use YouTube as the video server for our blogs, so the videos can be found directly through YouTube or on our sites. We don’t have any server bandwidth costs, and our videos are portable and can be embedded elsewhere. Sharing Mayo Clinic, our blog that enables patients and employees to share their Mayo Clinic stories, is the hub that ties most of our efforts together.

How have you gone about forecasting resources for a social media program? Internally as well as choosing to hire an outside vendor.

By integrating social media into all of our communications, we have not needed to seek significant resources. We have a small core team that trains our staff and provides the backbone/infrastructure for social media, but the goal is to help everyone in communications and marketing be more effective by using these powerful tools.

In our earliest explorations we didn’t hire vendors for social media, but we did bring in external consultants to help us think through and validate our approach. This helped us with leadership buy-in because it brought a broader perspective.

We have some agencies working with us on major projects, such as our collaboration with Microsoft on Mayo Clinic Health Manager. In those cases we ask the agencies to incorporate social media into the strategies and provide some of the services, but we also work alongside them, using our blogs, Facebook and Twitter to spread the word.

What resources do you use to stay current and can you list a few smart social media savvy people on Twitter for our readers to follow?

Twitter is an excellent platform for staying current, and has practically supplanted RSS for me. In health care, the #hcsm and #hcmktg chats are excellent places to find people with interesting perspectives, and @danamlewis, @tstitt, @daphneleigh and @meredithgould are among the ringleaders, while @EdBennett has done a great service by pulling together the listing of hospitals using social media. It’s hard to know where to stop, so since you said “a few” I will leave it a that, but I did a post here where I listed several others.

What social technologies do you use personally? LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Delicious, Twitter, YouTube, etc

Twitter is where I am most active because it is most open and enables me to broaden my interactions, making connections with people who have shared interests but whom I haven’t yet met.

I love Slideshare.net, which I call “YouTube for PowerPoints.” It’s a great way to disseminate ideas, and it enables me to do presentations in a much more engaging way. Instead of handing out slide copies (which may cause people to skip ahead), I can assure participants that they can just listen, ask questions and contribute to the in-person discussion, and that the entire presentation will be embedded in my blog. And I’ve had some people who didn’t attend my presentations embed the slides in their blogs.

Facebook is my general-purpose network, although in my evangelistic zeal for it I have been too indiscriminate in accepting friend requests, which has made it less useful for me…but I wanted to encourage people like me just getting started in Facebook, so I suggested that they add me as a friend. I’m not planning to “unfriend” anyone, but will likely start pulling some out of my news feed so that it becomes a more relevant stream to me. No one really has 900 friends.

I set up a MySpace profile just because in my role I thought I needed to understand it, but I have zero interaction there. I’m present on LinkedIn and connect with people there, but haven’t used it to anywhere near its potential. I would love to have someone become the visiting professor for LinkedInology at SMUG, which leads to your last question…

Tell us about SMUG (http://social-media-university-global.org/)

SMUG (Social Media University, Global) is my lighthearted, fun way of teaching social media to lifelong learners. It’s an unaccredited university of which I am the chancellor, and our students are called “SMUGgles.” Like the merely mortal “muggles” of Harry Potter fame, SMUGgles also are ordinary humans, but they’re learning to use magical social media tools to accomplish amazing feats.

I re-branded my blog as SMUG in early 2008 because I saw a need for systematic training to help mid-career professionals understand social media and see potential business uses. That’s why I organized posts sequentially so they could work through a course that would take them from novice status to comfortable confidence. For example, by the end of the SMUG Podcasting 101-110 series students can create a personal podcast and have it listed in the iTunes podcast directory, without spending a penny. That can give them confidence to propose podcasting for their company and to advocate for it fairly tenaciously, because no one can tell them it’s too difficult or complicated. Of course they will want to spend a little money on better recording equipment and production tools, but we’re talking a few hundred dollars or less.

Tuition at SMUG is free, but each student is responsible for room and board.

Thanks Lee!

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. |
Social Media Interview: Lee Aase of Mayo Clinic |
9 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Here in Minnesota it’s been a roller coaster summer with hot smacking up against cold in the blink of an eye. The irony of that observation is that our BIGLIST of online marketing blogs has been cold for about 4 months, but just like a Minnesota summer, we’re going to smack that BIGLIST with some hot. Hot SEO/SEM/Social blogs that is. Enjoy:

• B2B Online Marketing Blog – The folks at Business.com have put together a fine resource for B2B businesses and marketers with a problem/solution format that includes case studies, conference coverage and insights on search, social media and a few Business.com product posts from time to time.

• Adam Sherk Blog – Adam Sherk works as a Search/PR Strategist for Define Search Strategies, part of The New York Times Company and writes about the publishing industry, enterprise SEO and social media.

• The Acquisio Blog – Naoise Osborne writes this “Canadian Flavoured Marketing Soup” blog mostly on PPC but a little Foo makes it interesting.

• vervesearch blog – Lisa Meyers and Sam Murray write this new, yet classically written UK based blog (personal insights, practical tips, conferences, etc) about search marketing and their experiences as internet marketing consultants.

• Upright Communications Blog – As the name implies, this is an agency blog written mostly by Eric Frye and Allison Kulage with image a video rich posts on search and social media marketing topics.

• Three Minds on Digital Marketing – Two heads are better than one and in this case, three is better yet. The  folks at Organic blog about digital marketing topics and according to the tag cloud, “exceptional experiences” are the emphasis along with design, social web, user experience and marketing strategy.

• SEO.com Blog – The team at SEO.com blog definitvely about search engine optimization from some pretty creative angles from “If your SEO skills were a song, what would it be?” to movie references like “Transformers of SEO” and Wall-e. There are also plenty of tips and how to’s.

• Fresh Edge Media – Rebecca Kelley, Jason Arango and Josh Patrice contribute to this snarky new blog about Advertising, Branding, Business and Fresh Edge News. Who says “snarky” anyway? Ah, the same people that say “douchey”. I’m just wondering if that’s pronounced “doo shee” or the snobbish, “doo shay”.

Remember, blogs included in the BIGLIST should express their bloggy hotness with a hot badge.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. |
BIGLIST Marketing Blog Reviews Summer Edition 073109 |
7 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

It’s likely you’ve heard plenty about search engine optimization but what about “Digital Asset Optimization”?

Many companies that have applied basic SEO principles to standard web site content see substantial benefits. Adding new content and attracting links help maintain search marketing performance but is that all you can do to be competitive with SEO? No.

A natural progression of SEO is a holistic approach that considers all of a company’s searchable assets that can be keyword optimized and promoted online. Standard optimization of content in the form of web page SEO is a starting point that can be extended to various media types that are increasingly prominent in both standard search as well as media specific search such as images, video (see below for 5 video DAO tips) and audio. Digital Asset Optimization (DAO) can be applied to various document/file formats such as RSS, MS Office, Flash, PDF, etc as well.

In the screenshot above from Google on the search query, “social media”, you can see images, video and news results are incorporated into standard search results. All are opportunities for optimization.

Search Engine Optimization is challenging enough for organizations rich with digital assets. An effort to optimize and promote those assets to bots can be both challenging and rewarding.  Digital Asset Optimization is how we describe for clients what new opportunities there are to enable their customers to pull themselves via search to client content.

Companies that are not rich in digital assets can leverage the variety of assets offline and online that they DO have for improved search marketing benefit. A common example is the repurposing of offline content and digital media for online marketing purposes.

For example, tradeshow or training videos used offline could be remixed & edited to provide online content in the form of online video, images and text. Each media type can be optimized for standard search such as Google or Bing, as well as promoted on distinct media sites such as YouTube and Flickr.

In particular, a video offers multiple media optimization opportunities:

1. Videos hosted with services such as Vimeo or YouTube can be optimized
2. Videos hosted with 3rd party services can be embedded into any web page, blog post or within a press release on services like PRWeb (if appropriate)
3. Screen shots of key moments in the video can be hosted on image sharing sites with links back to the actual video
4. Show notes can accompany the embdeded video to provide users and search engines with context and explanation of the video (using relevant keywords)
5. A separate article made up of a transcription of the video can be posted on or off site as a promotion for the embedded video page

The fundamental premise for good SEO or DAO or whatever you want to call optimizing content is that “If it can be searched on, it can be optimzed”.

“Searchability” implies an asset is crawled by a bot and subsequently available for sorting within search results when consumers perform queries. As such, each type of searchable content presents an opportunity for optimization and improved visibility.

The benefits of a more holistic optimization and marketing approach can be extended beyond content used to attract leads and sales. There other types of search that can drive or benefit business including customer service related content, job listings and news content. Each has it’s own audience to consider and therefore, a different context for optimization.

Making it easier for search engines to do find, index and sort content will bring benefits to most companies who make the effort to do so in the form of increased sales, recruiting, and news coverage as well as lower customer support costs. That is the new opportunity this year and next for corporate content optimization efforts.

Developing an interdepartmental process for matching up the various digital assets with corresponding channels of promotion gives companies with minimal content resources additional online marketing opportunities. It also gives companies that produce substantial content an overwhelming competitive advantage. They key to any successful SEO or DAO effort is developing the proper strategy, implementation and management to reaching business goals.

Is your company’s SEO effort focused on web pages or do you optimize and track search performance for other digital assets as well?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. |
What is Digital Asset Optimization? |
5 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

This afternoon I did a live chat with AdWeekMedia Connect, a social network for the ad agency set on the intersection of search and social media. Embedded below is the recorded chat stream:

Lee Odden Chat

Here are a few resources on the topic:

• Mashable: Social Media and SEO: 5 Essential Steps to Success
• IAB: Social Advertising Best Practices
• Forrester: Interactive Marketing to Hit $55B by 2014
• VentureBeat: Five rules of thumb for social media advertising
• eMarketer: SocNet Ad Spend to Hit Stride in 2010
• Wired: Is Social Advertising an Oxymoron?
• Knowledge Networks: Social Media Generates Hype; Fails to Deliver Marketing Punch
• Rohit Bhargava: 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO)

At the upcoming Search Engine Strategies conference, there are two events related to this topic worth noting:  ClickZ Video Social SES and a workshop specifically about integrating Social Media & SEO

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. |
Intersection of Search and Social Media AdWeekMedia Connect |
3 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

How to be successful on the social web? Be useful and helpful to others. Few people epitomize this principle better than veteran internet marketer, Tamar Weinberg.

I remember some of my first interactions with Tamar years ago, involving her making sure I had all my questions answered about something I posted on IM.  Tamar has blogged about search and social media marketing at 10e20, Search Engine Roundtable, Mashable and many other high profile web sites. A prolific and extremely hard working blogger, social media marketer and techie at heart, Tamar is also a “super user” of the social web. That firsthand knowledge of how to listen, engage and promote is clearly evident in her new book, The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web“, published by O’Reilly.

When I was in college studying abroad, I found my “Let’s Go Europe” guide to be priceless for getting a foundation of information about the cities and cultures I would be visiting.  With that perspective, The New Community Rules is a great “Let’s Go Social Web” guide for companies and individuals seeking to better understand the various aspects of social media, sites, tools, and rules of engagement.

Tamar lays the groundwork in the first few chapters with an introduction to social media marketing, listening, reputation management, participation, objectives and strategy. No book on social media marketing would be complete without a nod to Cluetrain and Tamar does a great job explaining the “markets are conversations” principle.

Using numerous examples, the rest of the book emphasizes specific social media including blogs, microblogging (Twitter), social networks, consumer generated media sites, social news, social bookmarking and shared media sites (images, video, podcasts). The final chapter wraps things up with practical advice on putting it all together with process/workflow and thinking outside the social media box.

I think what readers will find expecially useful is the straightforward and example rich approach Tamar takes in explaining how companies and individuals can succeed towards marketing goals through thoughtful participation.

Getting advice from someone who has “been there, done that’ can save a substantial amount of resources, money and shorten the time to get up to speed. Knowing both the explicit rules of engagement as well as the unwritten social rules, helps marketers become more useful and productive with the social media marketing efforts and save themselves from what could be pretty embarrasing moments.

To get more insight on the book, Tamar has a good intro post on her blog, Techipedia.

Find other great books on social media marketing here.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. |
“Let’s Go” of the Social Web: The New Community Rules |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

Everybody’s still regrouping after today’s Denial of Service attacks against Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and other social media websites. Now, however, some further details about what happened and who might be behind it are coming to light.

According to Bill Woodcock of Packet Clearing House (a nonprofit organization tracking Internet traffic), the attack wasn’t a traditional DDoS attack using automated bots, but one conducted through a wave of spam email messages that hit Twitter, LiveJournal, and other websites. On top of that, it looks like YouTube was targeted.

There are also indications that the attack may be related to an ongoing conflict between Georgia and Russia.

The security expert spoke with The New York Times and gave his assessment of the situation:

Bill Woodcock, a research director of the Packet Clearing House, a nonprofit technical organization that tracks Internet traffic, said Thursday’s attack was an extension of the conflict between Russia and Georgia. It was not clear who initiated the attack, he said, but likely “one side put up propaganda, the other side figured this out and is attacking them.”

Instead of using a botnet, or a network of thousands of malware-infected personal computers to flood a site with traffic, Mr. Woodcock said this particular attack consisted of a wave of spam e-mail messages, which began infiltrating Twitter and other sites at 10:25 a.m. Eastern time. “It’s a vast increase in traffic that creates the denial-of-service,” he said.

YouTube and LiveJournal were also affected, Mr. Woodcock said, although “Twitter was definitely hit the hardest.” YouTube said it had not noticed any problems with its service.

In short, cyber warfare may be to blame for the attacks on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Livejournal, and others, though that hasn’t been confirmed by any of the companies targeted. However, Bill Woodcock is a respected Internet research expert, so his words likely have some merit.

If the attack was related to cyber warfare, then we could be seeing a lot more of this. Still, it’s tough to understand how these social media sites would be of any strategic value to either Russia or Georgia. Today’s events are certainly getting even more complicated, though.

Tags: blogger, ddos, DoS, facebook, Google, LiveJournal, twitter, youtube

The unfortunate thing about commenting on blogs is that it’s all too often basically a silo: your message lives in one place, requires a specific login for that site alone, and can be difficult to share out if you feel you’ve been particularly insightful.

Systems like Disqus (which we use on Mashable) have been developed to start addressing the silo problem, providing a unifying login for sites that employ it and a way to track and distribute the conversation more widely on the web.

Today marks another attempt to solve that problem: the arrival of the public beta of the Echo comment system from the folks at JS-Kit, featuring a number of new innovations in distributed conversation that help make your online identity and the comments you author more portable.

The Echo comment form takes a cue from email, with From and To fields that let you associate multiple digital identities (your Facebook, Twitter, OpenID, even your personal blog) with your comments. The To field then allows you to share your comment with multiple “recipients” — sending it to Facebook, Twitter, Google or Yahoo. This effectively makes the comments form distributed in both directions: your other networks travel with you, and your comments can be easily sent back out along them as well.

An aggregation feature also brings in responses to the post left on other services and incorporates them directly into the comment thread (note that this feature is actually not part of the free core service, but is available in the Echo Live paid tier). Much like Twitter will include a blurb that denotes the source of the tweet (web, txt, TweetDeck, etc.) or Facebook will display the source of a status update if it’s from an app, Echo will display where that particular comment came from (see illustration above).

Echo also supports integrated multimedia, allowing you to include a YouTube video right inline with your comment. You can also upload images from your desktop and display those inline too. In order to keep tracking the conversation over time, Echo allows you to subscribe to the thread by email or RSS.

JS-Kit is offering the Echo product under a freemium business model, with the core functionality available to web publishers at no charge. Three additional tiers of Echo Live, Echo Pro and Echo Enterprise are available with increasing feature sets such as real-time updating, aggregation from other services and white label options.

Embedding doesn’t seem to be enabled but you can check out a few screencasts about the Echo features on the JS-Kit site. If you’d like to check out some implementations of Echo feel free to head over to a few of the sites that participated in the private beta: Guy Kawasaki, LaLaWag, Brian Solis or of course, the JS-Kit blog itself.

Are you thinking of implementing any of the tiers of Echo on your own blog or site? Let us know in the comments.

Tags: comments, digital identity, disqus, distributed conversation, echo

Mashable’s #Hyatt4Good Tweetup Tour is on the road. Don’t miss us in Denver tonight and LA tomorrow! Following this week, we’ll be in DC and then Boston. Each event is free or 100% donation to our Summer of Social Good charity fund benefiting Livestrong, Oxfam America, WWF, and Humane Society. Please RSVP if you plan on attending.

Also, we’re proud to have local Ford Fiesta Movement agents at each event offering rides and transportation. First come, first served.

Mashable’s Summer of Social Good will conclude in NYC on August 28th with our Social Good Conference, a one-day educational event celebrating the finale of the Summer of Social Good, featuring presentations from well known and respected organizations and professionals.

Sponsor opportunity: we are looking for one local sponsor per city. Please contact hyatt4good at Mashable dot com for more information.

Denver – Grand Hyatt Denver

1750 Welton Street
Denver, Colorado, 80202

Thursday, August 6
Time: 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Room: Gray’s Peak Room
Mashable Presence: Ben Parr, Adam Hirsch, Brett Petersel
150 Tickets Available via Eventbrite – Free or 100% Donation
Share on Facebook | Tweet That You’re Going

Los Angeles – Hyatt Regency Century Plaza

2025 Avenue of the Stars,
Los Angeles, California, USA 90067

Friday, August 7
Time: 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Room: X Bar
Mashable Presence: Jennifer Van Grove, Adam Hirsch, Brett Petersel
250 Tickets Available via Eventbrite – Free or 100% Donation
Share on Facebook | Tweet That You’re Going

Thanks to our Local Sponsors:

“Demand Media is a leading Internet company with a unique combination of breakthrough content creation capabilities, enterprise class platform technology and a comScore Top 25 U.S. network of premium online brands—an unmatched combination of capabilities that makes it possible for more than 77 million people each month to create and engage with media like never before. Founded in 2006, the company is based in Santa Monica, CA with offices in Austin, Bellevue, New York and London.”

“Dot Eco is establishing a new .ECO top level domain to fund the environmental movement and to promote policies that fight the deterioration of our climate. Dot Eco has committed to donate over 50% of their profits toward environmental causes and has partnered with former US Vice President Al Gore, the Alliance for Climate Protection,the Sierra Club, Surfrider and a variety of other organizations. Together with these groups and individuals, Dot Eco is leading the fight to protect and defend the planet with the .ECO top level domain.”

SocialMediaMarketing builds social media campaigns that increase traffic, generate leads, positively promote a brand, and maximize ROI.

Washington, DC – Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill

400 New Jersey Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C., 20001

Thursday, August 13
Time: 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Room: Thornton Room
Mashable Presence: Adam Ostrow, Adam Hirsch, Brett Petersel
250 Tickets Available via Eventbrite – Free or 100% Donation
Share on Facebook | Tweet That You’re Going

Boston – Hyatt Regency Boston

One Avenue de Lafayette
Boston, Massachusetts, 02111

Friday, August 21
Time: 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Room: Nantucket Terrace
Mashable Presence: Josh Catone, Sharon Feder, Adam Hirsch, Brett Petersel
200 Tickets Available via Eventbrite – Free or 100% Donation
Share on Facebook | Tweet That You’re Going

Local Sponsor: A big thanks to Visible Measures

“Visible Measures is the independent third-party measurement firm for Internet video publishers, advertisers, and viral marketers. The company provides its customers and partners with unprecedented visibility into their online video audiences and how they engage with both content assets and advertising placements.”

A Special Thanks to Hyatt

“Hyatt Hotels Corporation, headquartered in Chicago, is a leading global hospitality company with a proud heritage of making guests feel more than welcome. Thousands of members of the Hyatt family in 45 countries strive to make a difference in the lives of the guests they encounter every day by providing authentic hospitality. The company’s subsidiaries own, manage or franchise more than 380 hotels and resorts under the Hyatt®, Park Hyatt®, Andaz™, Grand Hyatt®, Hyatt Regency®, Hyatt Place® and Hyatt Summerfield Suites™ brand names and have additional locations under development on five continents. For more information, please visit www.hyatt.com.”

A Special Thanks to the Ford Fiesta Movement

Each location will have local Fiesta Movement Agents at the event and will offer rides/transportation. First come, first served.

“The Ford Fiesta Movement is driven by 100 digital storytellers from across the web. During the month of August, all 100 drivers are donating their time and some money to non-profits and charities in their area. In addition, The Fiesta Movement has partnered with Mashable to support their Summer of Social Good – our drivers will even be in attendance at local events to offer transportation. Follow the Fiesta Movement at FiestaMovement.com.”

Thanks to Skype for the Giveaways

Tags: denver, Events, hyatt4good, L.A., mashable, social good, Tweetup

We now know that Facebook, Twitter, and LiveJournal were all victims of Distributed Denial of Service attacks that crippled each of their services for several hours today, with intermitted problems still being reported on all of them.

Now, a source close to the situation tells us that Twitter, Facebook, and Google – all rivals in the realm of social networking – are working together to determine the root of what has been exposed as a deliberate and simultaneous attempt to take down some of the web’s most popular social media sites.

Although we haven’t heard reports of Google sites being targeted in today’s attacks, as the Web’s biggest distributor of traffic, it would make sense for them to lend a hand in investigating the issue. As of yet, there’s no indication of who might be behind the attacks, though it certainly seems like all those impacted will do their best to try and figure it out.

For more on today’s events, check out our earlier coverage:

Twitter Outage Explained: What’s a Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDoS)?

Facebook Problems Also the Result of DDoS Attack

Twitter Down Due to Denial of Service Attack (DDoS)

Tags: ddos, denail of service, facebook, Google, twitter