Social Media Blog by Michael Brito
Insights into the social web & real
time community engagement
time community engagement
This may seem obvious to some but I come across many brands (big and small) who have yet to optimize their content distribution network. A content distribution network is sometimes referred to as the “hub and spoke” model of a brand’s web presence. The hub serves as the “base of operations” and could be a web page or blog. The spokes are the brand’s “off domain” web properties and can include sites like Facebook, Youtube, Flickr and Twitter. One trend I have noticed is that many brands are using their Facebook fan pages as the hub and leveraging multiple media channels to drive traffic and awareness to these pages. Friend and colleague Steve Rubel calls these “Digital Embassies.”
An optimized content distribution network tightly integrates the hub and spokes so that users can connect with a brand in the communities they choose. For example, if brand X’s hub is a blog, [...]
I think it’s generally accepted by many social media folks that one characteristic of social media is transparency and disclosure, well … maybe that’s two characteristics but they almost mean the same thing.
Being transparent (or real) in a conversation and disclosing who you are is really the first step in building trust with people online. It’s the same dynamic when building relationships in the real world, not that online isn’t the real world of course but you catch my drift. If I wasn’t transparent with my wife when we were first dating, and then issues began to arise after the fact, there is a good chance that we wouldn’t be married today. Same goes for big companies.
Back in June, I attended a Blog Council event in Chicago and met some really awesome people from companies like Dell, P&G, Nokia and Allstate Insurance to name a few. It was great opportunity [...]
Thank you to my friend Linda who wrote about this last week. This rap was written by Chuck, a.k.a “m0serious,” who works over at Pop Labs; a search and social media consulting firm. Enjoy!
And, here is how I found this video…and I may be speculating on a few points. But, I blogged yesterday about the rise in budgets of conversational marketing; I also added the link to my Facebook news feed. (Here is where it is unclear) Either Linda subscribes to my RSS feed or she saw the link I posted on Facebook and went to my site. How do I know this? Well, the handy dandy MyBlogLog widget of course — and if you want to join my community, feel free to do so. I then decided to see what she was up to and found the video. So, it took me only one social network to find this [...]
If you have ever watched Law & Order, then you know who Fred Thompson is. He is also running for the GOP Presidential Nomination. Thompson and team are the first Republicans that have fully embraced the concept of social media. Let’s see, he has a Myspace and Facebook profile with about 2,500 friends each; and he’s on Twitter with 400 or so friends. He has a fairly new Youtube channel with 500 or so subscribers and 15,000 views; and his blog is completely optimized to ensure that his content travels; one characteristic of social media optimization. Lastly, he has an embeddable widget that allows for contributions to his campaign which is a great viral marketing strategy.
And, here is something really cool. It’s not his staff that is blogging, it’s actually Fred. And, it seems that his transparency (a characteristic of social media) on issues is helping him shoot up in [...]
Let’s face it, in today’s instant gratifying world, life is much easier when things are automated! Back in the good ole’ days, I used to check search engine rankings using an excel spreadsheet and dedicated about 2 – 3 hours a week searching each keyword in each engine (ugh). Then life got easier when search software began to hit the market. I have tried several software packages (Trend MX, Web CEO, SEO Administrator and Axandra, etc.) and for the most part they were all similar in price and features. However, I had the SAME issue with each one; and that is, the ranking reports were never-ever-ever-ever accurate. And then I found myself having to re-check the reports again. It was like living life without a microwave again.
And then came Advanced Web Ranking (and no, this isn’t a sponsored post). Every time I run my ranking reports, they are as accurate [...]
I am not going to get into the definition of social media optimization because, quite frankly, I am tired of talking about it. I have been spreading the gospel of SMO for months now across my organization. However, if you have a blog or at least a web page with killer content on it, I hope you are utilizing social bookmarks. Why? Because social bookmarking will help your web content travel across the internet in an effort to achieve true “omnipresence”. Paul does an excellent job in his SEO Blog emphasizing the importance of using bookmarks on your blogs/web pages and even points you to some cool tools you can use in an effort to do so.
What caught my attention though was the following graph (source: addthis):
It concludes, that 18% of people are still adding web pages to their favorites which is still a great source of repeat traffic; and [...]
Don’t be deceived by the title. Advertising will never ever ever ever go away. Despite what Al and Laura say in their book, Advertising still works and is here to stay! However, social media is taking the market by storm for several reasons. I personally think its customer engagement. When customers feel engaged, they become loyal brand ambassadors with a strong emotion of belonging. This is something that can’t easily be taken away by a competitor. When a company can create that dynamic of two-way communication between a customer and a company, they are more likely to help foster long term, profitable relationships with them. Here are some recent headlines about companies that are adopting social media strategies as a part of their overall marketing mix.
In the news this week it is reported that hgtv.com is launching a social networking site for their target consumer group. Users of the site will [...]
Over the last couple of months, there has been a allot of buzz around Social Media Optimization (the New Rules of SMO, the Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing and Treating Social Media Optimization as another Distribution Channel) and the list goes on. However, what I haven’t noticed is any discussion on how to measure social media optimization. We all know from Marketing 101, that the ability to measure the effectiveness of marketing initiatives and calculating a ROMI (return on marketing investment) is imperative to a company’s bottom line. In fact, just yesterday; Comscore announced a research and development initiative that is designed to provide comprehensive measurement of conversational media such as blogs and community-driven sites.
With that said, let’s jump right in on ways you can measure social media optimization today because we all know that Comscore studies can take anywhere from 6 months to 2 years before we can [...]
