Q and A: Does social media marketing have a place within the media agency?

Dear Kalena...

Just found your website today (I think from Sphinn), so I thought I'd see if you can indeed answer my big question, so here it is. Does social media marketing (SMM) have a place within the Media Agency?

As the online marketing industry continues to focus on Social media, with Social Networks getting all the buzz, should traditional media agencies venture into this field? Although I continually see a need for SEO firms to embrace SMM, and forecasts for Social Networks to reach massive spends, I struggle to see how the traditional media agency (which typically manages PPC/Display/Affiliate budgets for clients) fits into social media.

Are there areas where media agencies can benefit & monetize the market? if so, what kind of services do you see them providing and how?

Thanks
Matthew

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Matthew

I should start by saying that I have never worked for a dedicated media agency. I've worked for a large Internet agency that managed media spends for clients along the lines you discuss, but not for some years. So I'm not familiar with current service trends in such agencies.

However, I would think that social media marketing will play a big role in the service offerings of both traditional advertising and media agencies over the next year or two. For starters, blogging as a phenomenon is being take up at an unprecedented rate globally, with podcasting and video-blogging gaining momentum. The ability to quickly create and monetize blogs as well as advertise on other people's blogs has created new advertising channels that are laser-focused on niche markets. Being able to pick and choose channels where qualified leads hang out is a media agency's dream scenario! These new channels greatly expand the limited PPC channels that agency clients have been stuck with for the past 8 years or so.

Apart from the blogs themselves, there are the large social media networks such as Digg, Sphinn, Facebook, YouTube MySpace etc. Smart agencies and media firms are already taking advantage of these networks by running viral marketing campaigns and competitions designed to promote their client's brand or product via online word-of-mouth. Word travels fast in cyberspace but bad press travels faster so online reputation management should go hand-in-hand with any social media campaigns.

The book I'm reading at the moment Do It Wrong Quickly by Mike Moran would make excellent reading for media agency staff trying to get a handle on social media and how to leverage it.

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Stanford Startup Lets You Surf Blogs Geographically

I received an email today from Clayton Brown, Stanford MBA graduate for 2007 and CEO of a recently launched startup for bloggers called Verve Earth. He invited me to check out the site and spread the word if I liked it.

Similar to Google Maps, Verve plots the content of the Internet on an interactive map of the world to enable people to surf the net via a geographic interface rather than via traditional links.

Some of the things you can do on Verve include:

• Create your personalized "Internet world" of content by adding favorites
• Create a blog profile for your geographic region
  
• Subscribe to the content that is important to you; cut out the rest
• Surf the net geographically, check out what's hot in your city and the world
• Share cool content with friends

Destinations are available for a range of topics - everything from mainstream websites (e.g. YouTube), cities and countries, universities, newspapers, sports teams and famous people.


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Beginner's Blogging Resources

I've been collecting useful articles and blog posts for some months with the idea of putting together a beginner's guide to blogging. But I wanted to share with you a couple of gems I found that first-time bloggers will find useful in the meantime:

1) Patrick Schaber's Beginner's Guide to Setting up a First Blog Site

2) ProBlogger's Choosing a Blog Platform

Happy blogging!

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Q and A: How do I get on page 1 of Google search results?

Dear Kalena...

Hi. I am a novice with respect to SEO and have secured a company to help us. They've worked for us for roughly 5 months. I'm curious what your thoughts are about our site. From an SEO perspective, what do I need to do to get on page 1 on Google for the search term 'cufflinks'? Our major competitor is [URL removed] and it looks like they have a link farm.

Thanks,
Mike

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Mike

When I first viewed your site I thought "Uh Oh." Because it is a Yahoo! store and in the past, they have been notorious for causing search engine optimization issues.

With most Yahoo! stores, the home page sits on your domain, but the rest of the site content resides in a Yahoo! subdomain (store.yahoo.com) to enable you to edit it via their CMS template system. This means that search engines "see" your site as a single page and all the link popularity for the inner pages gets attributed to Yahoo.com and not your domain.

But according to this forum post on Search Engine Watch, having a Yahoo! store may no longer be an issue. According to that post, as long as you use the Yahoo! store platform for the back-end shopping cart and keep all your pages hosted on your own domain, you should be fine. It looks like that's what you've done, although the Yahoo! favicon on all your site pages worries me. To be sure, I would double check with your designer that all your site content resides on your own domain and not on a Yahoo! sub-domain.

Some reasons why your competitor site is out-ranking you for the keyword "cufflinks" could be because:

1) They have a Google PageRank of 4 while yours is only 3.

2) They have more backward links than you. Sure, a few of those look like bought links, but there's no law against that.

3) Their HTML code has less code bloat and smaller file size.

4) Their site is better optimized for the keyword "cufflinks" than yours.

5) They don't use a Yahoo! Store.

Sorry to throw that last one in, but I am still skeptical about the ability of a Yahoo! Store to outrank a fully hosted domain. If you really want to beat your competitor in the Google charts, I suggest moving your entire site to your domain and even upgrading your shopping cart to one used by larger retailers e.g. osCommerce, 2Checkout.

Also, why not start a blog about cufflinks? Send some unique cufflinks to celebs and write about it. Do a link trade with wedding sites for your cute bride and groom cufflinks. Use social media sites to gain attention and link popularity. There's lots of ways you can bring traffic to your site and boost that rank.


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Q and A: Why isn't my blogging helping my SEO efforts?

Here's a recent exchange on LiveHelp with blog reader Jerry, who is concerned that his blog efforts aren't paying SEO dividends:

Jerry: Hi kalena, I'm writing like crazy but not bumping my seo juice. I was hoping for advice
kalena : how are you syndicating your articles?
Jerry : I'm not. I'm just blogging.
kalena : Ah. Have you registered your blog with as many blog directories as possible?
kalena : Do you make it super easy for readers to find your RSS feed?
Jerry : technorati and blogpulse
Jerry : yes, I use addthis
kalena : do you Digg etc your own posts?
Jerry : No, i haven't figured digg out yet. That's one I want to work on
Jerry : What about syndicating?
kalena : If you think your post is unique enough, you should Digg it yourself. Digg will tell you if there are posts on the same subject, but usually you can Digg your own
Jerry : Okay. That sounds like a good tip. I think it's very unique
kalena : yes, if you can encourage other sites and bloggers to syndicate your own blog feed, that's a good way to get traffic
kalena : It helps if you can get bloggers in the same industry to link to or comment on your posts
Jerry : How do I find them to ask them? My blog about memoirs is so unique I have not found too many like it
kalena : Do searches for popular sites and blogs on your subject matter and simply email them and ask for a link. Or send them a post that you think they'd like.
Jerry : Okay. But I get stuck in blogosphere when I search. I've been doing this for 4 months and still haven't got the hang of finding similar blogs
kalena : Try writing a few longer posts or mini articles on your blog. They are the ones that usually get traffic. Or create a useful tool for other memoir writers to use
Jerry : They are ALL articles
Jerry : I'm cranking out some of my best writing ever
kalena : Try creating a free account at helium.com. They are looking for new writers and you can link back to your blog.
Jerry : huh. That's new. Okay I'll try that
kalena : Hold on for a sec, I have a great list of article distribution sites...
Jerry : NEAT!
kalena : Ok, here is the URL: http://www.searchenginecollege.com/hub/weblinks.php?cat_id=52
kalena : Also, you can join Yahoo Groups and do a search for Article Announcement groups. These are places where you can submit your articles for free to thousands of sites who will re-publish them with your link
Jerry : That sounds perfect.
kalena : Glad to help.
Jerry : Thanks so much for your time!! This is awesome. I think I already have you on my blogroll
Jerry : If you have a moment I have a couple technical questions
kalena : Just a quickie as I am grading assignments
Jerry : Thanks! I started with the ugly default slug
Jerry : Should I go back and fix them with pretty permalinks?
Jerry : AND another question. Can I repost them, or does that get me in trouble with google for double posting.
Jerry : permalink
kalena : Re permalinks, if you have a look at the titles of my blog posts, they are permanent links.
Jerry : yes, they look great. All my first 4 months were ugly
kalena : You can add code to your Blogger template to ensure all your article/blog post headings are permanent links
kalena : Don't know about double posting, but why would you want to do that?
Jerry : Two reasons. I had SO LITTLE traffic my first few months, I don't want them to be lost
Jerry : And 2, the permalinks the first time were those ugly looking ?p=232" or whatever
kalena : I'll email you the code to create permalinks out of your blog post titles:
Jerry : Thanks Kalena. You've been awesome. Thanks for taking the time.
kalena : ok I'll shoot it through when I get time.
kalena : You're welcome. Good luck with the syndication
Jerry : Thanks
kalena : bye


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Jennifer Plays Hide and Seek With Google

After the success of her 30 Days series, Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Guide has set herself a new challenge: See how well a new site can survive if it hides from Google and other big search engines.

Jennifer has built a new e-commerce site and (wait for it...) she's preventing Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask from indexing it. The point?

"Whether it's the struggle to gain strong rankings in the organic index or the razor-thin margins associated with running a paid search campaign, new business start-ups seem convinced that they can't get anywhere without Google. I'm here to tell them that they can... In fact, I'd argue that without the crutch of Google propping you up, you'll be forced to build the type of business that can ride the ups and downs of search.

I'm kicking Google (and Yahoo and Windows Live and Ask) to the curb and telling the world that you CAN build a business, increase traffic and drive sales all without the major search engines."

In lieu of major search engines, Jenn's going to be using the power of social media and viral marketing to help the site's growth. I'll be watching this one with interest.

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25 Tips to Optimize Your Blog

Jennifer Slegg over at Search Engine Land has just saved me a ton of research by writing an article called 25 Tips to Optimize Your Blog for Readers & Search Engines. I'd been planning a similar article - kind of a dummies guide to social bookmarking - but this article is all this and more. The only problem now is that her tips have added another 20 or so tasks to my MUST DO list.

Great stuff Jen.

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