Moderator: Vanessa Fox, Features Editor, Search Engine Land Q&A Moderator: Brent Csutoras, Online Marketing Specialist, BrentCsutoras.com
Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz, Inc. is up first. Most the audience knows who SEOmoz is before coming to the conference. SEOmoz does a lot of social media, and the company has been built up on this model. He has 55 slides in nine minutes...
What is social media marketing? Before we ask that, what are the goals of online marketing? web site traffic, growing brand awareness, biz development. Social media can help with all these things. How? By interacting with the participatory communities on the web. You can create and promote viral content with social media. One method is Leveraging UGC sites for technical goals. Reach key influencers via blogs and social news portals.
Why is engagement with social media valuable? SMM supports branding and mindshare goals. SMM bolsters search engine marketing goals (via links). SMM helps with traffic and conversion goals.
Why now? Why social media now? Social media has grown tremendously growing 668% from April 2006 to April 2007. Blogosphere engagement has grown tremendously as well. US users are reaching blogs via links on other blogs.
How does SMM help with SEM? Links from editorial recommendations are the best. Links from education sites, news sites, niche sites, popular blogs, high quality social media sites.
Who creates these links on the web? The social media type of people do. We must reach these users. To get in front of them you must turn them on and not turn them off. How do you do it? He put up a URL to his site, I think seomoz.org/gopro
Neil Patel, CTO, Advantage Consulting Services is up next to give some case studies.
Hewlett Packard: - Photo Sharing - Social News - Social networks - Blogs
Lots of people like to read blogs on printed paper. So they created "print this blog post" buttons. They leveraged various sites to create buzz about them.
American Greetings: They did a viral halloween e-card contest. They put a dog head on a human body. They now rank well for halloween cards in Google.
Life Insure: They created an article about death for them. 19 Things You Need To Know About Death. They rank number one for life insurance in Google because of those links.
Gawker Media: They have lots of small blogs. Number one traffic source is Google, they get over 5 million visits from Gogle to Gizmodo per month, and Digg sent 3 million.
Barbara Boser, Social Media Director, 3 Dog Media is next up. Over 60 articles hit the Digg front page and stumbleupon picked her as a top stumbler and now she is speaking here.
There are hundreds of social media sites on the web and there is only one Digg. Digg sends more traffic and creates more links than any other. So she will review that.
You have to commit and participate, so you need to be active there. Be prepared, the first two months you can build your profile, get yourself noticed and learn the communities and understand what is popular there, look for tools to aid you and subscribe to as many new feeds you can that relate to the site.
YOur profile is important. MAke sure your profile is not similar to any top user. Be anonymous and likable. Choose a unique name. Choose a memorable avatar. Get a gmail account and IM that goes with your user name. Use the same identity on all the sites.
Add friends: - Start with top users - See how top users who have mutual friends - Add people to IM - Add friends who are super supportive - Avoid friends that will be high maintenance
Voting: - Be one of the first ones to vote - If you think the post will go popular, leave a comment - If someone asks you to vote, make sure they know you did it - Vote often - Stumble when you vote
Submitting: - Learn how to write titles and descriptions - Dont submit duplicate stories - Dont submit 2-3 stories per day - Dont submit from your site - Vary up your sources - Share your stories with users that sent you stories
Networking: - List the sites your a member of in your profile - Encourage people to contact you - Add Your IM
Don'ts: - Dont make multipple accounts on same IP - Dont ask random people to digg
Results - She hows some success sites
Michael Gray, President, Atlas Web Services is last up. He knocks the "other conference" jokingly.
Social Media Friendly Consumers: - Leading edge tech people - They are mavens
Using Social Media for Current Events - Playing the social media news game brings a lot of traffic in short term. The key is to convert them into subscribers for your blog and a way to keep them
He showed an example of a hot Digg story. He then showed a fashion blog example.
Twitter: - Twitter is a short micro blogging site. He explains it in more detail. - Short attention span people love it
Why Use Twitter for Marketing - Use as a permissive marketing tool to reach bleeding edge customers - Takes advantage of pull tech like RSS - Subscriptions are in control of the users
Twitter as a Traffic Generator - Tie your blog into your twitter account and post updates - Don't always throw your posts but also put other info posts in there - You can use twitter to facilitate to publicize your SMM efforts
Twitter as a Sales Channel - Drive customers to products or offers - Twitter has high CTR rates compared to email or PPC ads - You can use scheduling tools to promote and publish links to coordinate with your marketing and advertising efforts.
Lower the Barrier Between Your Customers - If people monitor your twitter, be in touch with them - Due to the short character limit, its fast and easy to communicate
Twitter Samples: - NY Times - Techmeme - Orlando Times - HDTV - Mixx - Yahoo Ad Buzz
Twitter Sales Channel Examples - JetBlue - Carnival Cruise - South West - Thisnext - Amazon Deals - Woot
Tips for Getting more out of Twitter - Build profile before getting friends - Decide on your information and sales blends - Use tools - Answer direct replies - Encourage people to subscribe to you
