Social Media 101: Q & A Essentials

On Thursday I took part in a Social Media 101 panel, held by Business Wire where I met lots of interesting people; some new to social media and some more experienced. There were many good questions asked by the audience. Here's a small selection of some of these.

Should businesses use Facebook or Twitter?
There is a view that you should just jump straight in, use the tools, and see where it leads. Personally, I disagree with this approach. The question shouldn't be about whether to use Facebook, or Twitter, or both. Rather, the questions should be:

• What is it you want to achieve?
• Can social media help you to achieve this?
• Are your customers using social media?
• And if so, what social media channels they are using?

This can help form the beginnings of your social media strategy, from which tactics can be derived. Maybe you do find that Twitter is more suited to your business than Facebook (or vice versa). But maybe you find that blogs and community forums are better at achieving your objectives. At least by approaching it this way, you aren't deep diving into tools or losing sight of what it is you are trying to achieve.

Also check out:
The "5 Knows" of Social Media
There is no Twitter Strategy.

Do you have any tips to get started?
I always recommend to read the book Groundswell, if you haven't already. The POST method (People, Objectives, Strategy and Technologies) in this book will really help to structure your thoughts for your social media strategy.

Also if you don't fully understand the workings of some of the tools, a good way to gain a practical understanding is to simply experiment and try them out personally in order to get familiar with the workings and nuances of them.

How do you separate work from personal?
For myself, it is very easy to keep work and personal separate in the social space. For business, I share content related to the company I work for, that helps solve our customer's challenges, and for personal I focus on my interest in search and social media. There is a very clear line.

However, the line is more blurred for someone who may be a consultant in the social media field. Adding in non-business related information helps to make them and their personal brand more human. But there are ways to make businesses more human also, including a person picture, using conversational language, and having a person update tweets rather than just using it as an RSS feed.

Also check out:
10 Tips for Using Twitter for Business.

How do you get lots of followers on Twitter?
One view to get lots of followers is to follow lots of people in the hope that they follow you back. However, sometimes it's all too easy to get wrapped up in number counting. What is more important is to focus upon quality of followers over quantity. As an example, you may get a high number of responses from a demand generation Email, but if those responses don't convert into a lead or a sale, then the number of responses you get is almost arbitrary.

A better approach is to provide interesting content and make use of popular keywords within your tweets so that you show up in searches. This way you attract followers who are interested in your content, rather than the "I'll follow you and you follow me" approach.

What are common mistakes in Social Media?
Probably the biggest mistake is thinking that you can't make a mistake. I think Charlene Li put it best by saying that at the end of the day, mistakes are inevitable because social media is about relationships, and no relationship is perfect. The key is to learn from your mistakes and learn from them quickly so that you don't do it again.

Another common mistake to make is to believe that you are in control of social media. Just because you have a plan in place doesn't mean that you are in control. People will always be having conversations about you, your brand, your products, your competitors. The best you can do is to ensure that you are listening to these conversations so that if anything negative does get said, then you can address the problem quickly and in a positive way.


Thanks again to Business Wire and @laurentoday for inviting me to take part in the event.

How to Make Search Optimization a HABIT

In search, there are technical people and there are marketing people. My roots are in marketing, and one thing I know about us "Jack of All Trades" marketing-types, is that we aren't too good when it comes to technical stuff.

Many marketing people, whose primary role is not search marketing, often see search as black magic. HTML and GIF is about as technical as we get. Laugh as you may, but very often, these are the people who own and write the web content within companies. This is why it's important for content owners and writers to understand, and apply, the basics of search engine optimization (SEO). This way, everyone is a winner. The key is making optimization a habit so it becomes incorporated into people's everyday way of working.

Help is at hand. Time to pull out the HABIT checklist - A simple checklist that applies basic on-page optimization to help content owners optimize content, without having to get too bogged down in some of the technical aspects that we, the search marketers, can more easily influence. So without further ado, here's to making HABIT a habit.

The HABIT Checklist:

Headline
Make sure your keyword is included in your Headline. This is obvious, but you'd be amazed how many times I've had to pull people up about this.

Anchor Text
The Anchor Text is the label given to a link; essentially it's the link name. Make sure that when there are links pointing to your page content, that it matches the keyword you are optimizing your page for.

Body Copy
Make sure that your keyword appears in the first sentence of the Body Copy, as close to the beginning as possible.

Inbound Links
Make sure that there are links coming into your page from...

• Easy: Important pages within your site (EG: Your homepage and popular hubpages)
• Less easy: Prominent industry sites and sources (EG: .edu and .gov sites)

...and make sure these Inbound Links use the keyword in the Anchor Text. The more links into your page from prominent sources, the more important the search engine perceives your page to be, and so will rank it higher.

Title Tag
The Title Tag of your page also needs to include the keyword. The format that I've found works well is - [Company name] : [Keyword]

And finally, here's a bonus tip for the marketing people who want an extra power-up:

Meta Description
The Meta Description is the copy that appears when your listing shows up in organic search. Again, try to include the keyword as close to the beginning as possible, and try not to exceed 155 characters, making sure to include correct punctuation.

HABIT provides a really basic checklist that is easy to follow and apply. It does, however, assume that you know what keyword you are optimizing your page for. So in the next blog post, I will be providing some tips for keyword research.

Search Marketing Basics (Part 2) - The Digital Hook Up

Now that you are all clued up on the reading front, it's time to move on from old school methods of learning to something more fun.

One of the issues I've found is that things move so fast in the search and social world. This means that most printed materials get dated, and quickly. Even news that appears in an industry magazine ends up being "So two days ago". In this environment we need a real-time way to keep up to speed.

With this in mind, here are 3 tips to help you stay up-to-date in search and social media marketing:

1. Get Yourself on Twitter
Where better to learn about search and social media than in the place where the Industry cool kids all hang out? A place where news travels faster than earthquakes. I'm talking Twitter of course!

Contrary to popular belief, it isn't just about what your neighbor had for breakfast or the bowel movements of your colleagues. Twitter - by far - has been the most valuable learning tool for me.

The trick with Twitter is about following the right people. Try to go for quality over quantity (both in terms of followers and followees). Here are few great people to follow. There are many, many more, but this list is based on the people whose tweets I have "favorited" the most, of late:

@mashable
The mashable machine just keeps pumping out real-time search and social news. Myself (and quite a few others, I've noticed) are guilty of retweeting a hell of a lot of mashable!

@jowyang
Jeremiah shares a ton of good insights, particularly in terms of what to expect from the future of social media. He also provides examples and case studies of companies successfully using social (lucky people!).

@mattcutts
Matt is the Google Guy - we must play by his rules! He shares links to helpful Google Webmaster videos on YouTube that explain things like "Why are .com sites ranking highly in UK SERPs?"

@socialmedia411
Lots of interesting social media tweets, with little fluff. Just the way it should be!

@simonmainwaring
Simon was a great find on Twitter. He's full of news and facts that span search, social and beyond. What's also nice is that he says thank you when you retweet him, and I'm a big fan of nice manners!

@eMarketer and @comScore
These guys provide useful data analysis reports on search and social. And as we know, facts and data are essential when backing up your points.

@logdun
Finally, a special mention to Logan - an up and coming social media dude, who shares good ideas, advice and encouragement.

2. Subscribe to These Blogs

Biznology (Mike Moran)
Mike's on holiday right now until September (lucky bugger) but when he is about to write, he talks sense. He knows search engine marketing and he's all about using data to become better.

• Mike's Blog: http://mikemoran.com/biznology/blog/
• Mike is also on Twitter: @mikemoran

Occam's Razor (Avinash Kaushik)
Avinash is the master of web analytics. What may seem a boring and complicated subject, is suddenly transformed into something understandable and (dare I say it) quite fun when Avinash is around to explain it.

• Avinash's Blog: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/
• Avinash is also on Twitter: @avinashkaushik

3. Go to this Conference
There are a bunch of conferences out there. But when times are tough and travel budgets get slashed, the one conference I choose to go to (if I can choose only one) is Search Engine Strategies (SES).

They provide multiple session tracks, so you can tailor sessions depending on your level and interest, and they always bag superstar speakers (superstars in "our" world, at least!). They also hold events all over the place, not just America.

• SES Website: http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/
• SES is also on Twitter: @SESConf
• Read tweets from the last conference in San Jose by searching on hashtags: #SESSJ and #SES

Search Marketing Basics (Part 1) - 3 Essential Reads to Avoid Looking Clueless

When I first started in search marketing, there was no hand-over, in-house expert or all round rock star that I could turn to. Rather disappointingly, I was it. So I pulled up my sleeves and blindly set forth on the journey to enlightenment.

If you are new to search marketing, or if it is a part of your wider marketing/communications role, then here are a few tips to get you started. In this post (Part 1 of 2), I cover essential reading on the book front. Everyone has to start somewhere, and although reading academic books can suck sometimes, being clueless sucks more.

Commonsense Direct Marketing (Drayton Bird)
What does direct marketing have to do with search marketing? A lot more than you may realize. The classical direct marketers, particularly those within the catalog mailing world, are masters in their field. Why? Because they test, they measure, they apply... and then they test, measure and apply, again and again.

Data is used to continuously improve results by tweaking headlines and copy, optimizing layout and reply coupon placements, sending response rates and ROI figures through the roof. Data and measurement are key in the direct marketing field. The same can be said with Pay-Per-Click search marketing, but instead of responses and responses rates, we measure clicks, click-through rates and quality score (and if we are really lucky, then revenue and net profit). The added advantage is that testing and tweaking can be done a lot quicker and cheaper. That's one of the great things about search. In the wise words of Mike Moran: It's ok to do it wrong, but make sure you do it wrong quickly and learn from your mistakes so you don't do it again!

Drayton's book "Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing" is now in it's 5th Edition. He may be an old bean, but this old bean knows what he's talking about, and he's a master copywriter; the last of a dying breed. This book also contains everything you need to know about writing good copy. Afterall, you can't write good, optimized search copy, without being able to write plain old, good copy first. This book will help you on your way.

Search Engine Marketing, Inc. (Mike Moran and Bill Hunt)
This was the first (and still the best) search-specific book I've bought. It provides a step-by-step guide to setting up and managing a search campaign. Straight to the point and easy to read, it could easily be re-named, "A Fools Guide to Search".

Groundswell (Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff)
I'm still shocked at how many people in the marketing/social field haven't read this one yet. It's not specifically search, but essential reading if your role also involves social media - which is becoming a lot more common due to increased awareness about the link between search and social (it's about more than just link juice).

What makes this book different to many other social reads is that it focuses on setting the objectives and framework around your social strategy first, and then figuring out the tools to make it happen. This is what helps to make this book timeless - tools may come and go, but what you want to achieve, and why, remains. So the next time someone asks you, "What's your Twitter strategy?", you can tell them with confidence that Twitter is a tool, not a strategy. Let's talk goals first, not tactics.


So that was my Top 3 essential reads. If you have any other recommendations of books that have helped shape the way you approach search (or social), I would love to hear about it.

In Part 2, I'll be sharing some smart ways that can help you learn and stay up to date in the search and social field. In the meantime, here are links to each of the books:

Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing
Search Engine Marketing, Inc.
Groundswell