Get Found Online

Do you love good music? Yeah yeah!…

No, wait. I mean: Do you love Social Media?

If so, drop me a line via email or comment at the end of this blog post - I’m looking for a few good men/women to augment my company’s online research, strategy, training and metrics - all focused on Social Media.

PROsocialmedia is a Hamilton-based company that teaches companies how to join the online conversation with their existing and prospective customers. The tagline of PROsocialmedia pretty much says it all: Consumers Rule.

The  Jobs

We have several positions open - both full-time and part-time. Generally speaking, the jobs cover the same work, which is:

• Web research, using Google and various other search engines.
• Analysis: making creative connections between the research and social media ideas for clients.
• Brainstorm ideas with fellow employees in a non-confrontation manner.
• Express potentially technically frightening information in a palatable way, re: Instructing clients how/when/why to use social media platforms such as Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, blogging, Digg, wikis, forums, etc.
• Measure success of our social media strategies for the client using Google Analytics and other systems and tools.

Attributes and Skills Required

• Strong research skills, really enjoys hunting for information online
• Passion for digital marketing
• High degree of literacy
• Creativity in spades
• Works well in a team in a small space, with fluid job roles
• Eager to get deep training in the Web 2.0 (social media) space

Start date: Jan. 5, 2009 or as soon after that as you can.

Contact: Heather Angus-Lee, president. Email or phone 905-308-0038.

Shown here is a diagram of our company hierarchy - just kidding! But, actually, this colorful cluster does represent the kind of hugely varied array of media and ideas we mash together every day to create Social Media Marketing success stories for our clients!

Be a part of a bright, beautiful world of social media minds! Join us at PROsocialmedia!

(That could be YOU, second yellow cube from the top!)

I am writing SEO copy for a B2B site right now, for which the client has requested no photos or other illustration for his pages. Sigh… the poorly underestimated visual element.

I picked up this postcard in Vermont last June, on a business/pleasure trip. (I would have paid for it, but it was free at a state park.)

Why did I keep it? It rocks in terms of originality! Who knew Vermont was such a cool place to be bovine?

CONS: The postcard is not optimized:

• No mention of Vermont on the front (nor any sell copy at all there)
• No mention of Vermont on the back, except for obtuse inclusion of vt in 2 out of 3 web addresses (and the second of those goes to a non-existent site!)

Image Optimization 101

1. Use images!! Photos, or illustrations, or graphs, or all of the above.

2. Teach yourself how to code each image so it is Search Engine Optimized - or hire someone to do it.

(The postcard shown here is optimized; its meta-tag reads “image SEO”, matching the title tag of this page, “Search Engine Optimization of Images.”)

3. Add your photos to Flickr, a massively popular photo-sharing site, so that people trolling for your subject (like, Vermont) will come across the image, which is clickable, and go to your site.

4. Be creative. If Cows can Waterski, and Pigs can Fly, then why oh why can’t I… ? I mean, paint a rainbow with your web images!

A friend just popped my blog url into a beta site called Typealyzer - a cross between Myers-Briggs personality test and digital calligraphy. (They call it “automatic personality analysis of blogs and online texts.”)

Typealzyer found the blogger at writingseo.com (me) is a Duty Fulfiller (the picture shown here came with the diagnosis):

The responsible and hardworking type. They are especially attuned to the details of life and are careful about getting the facts right. Conservative by nature they are often reluctant to take any risks whatsoever.

The Duty Fulfillers are happy to be left alone and to be able to work in their own pace. They know what they have to do and how to do it.

The Myers-Briggs personality Type that Typealyzer assigns to Duty Fulfillers like me is ISTJ. Funny, I’ve taken that particular test in years past and was diagnosed then as a ENTJ... I guess I’ve (d)evolved…?

I just LOVE this caveat on Typealyzer:

“Note: writing style on a blog may have little or nothing to do with a person´s self-perceived personality.”

What’s your type?

A little ditty I wrote, inspired by a recent blog by SEO mentor Rand Fishkin (I was lucky to be one of his trainees):

The economy’s down, around our knees, and sinking further still.

But through the doom and gloom of fiscal chill,

A cardinal rule holds true:

No matter if the banks and stocks should be more foe than friend,

To get consumers going forth… Marketing spends should never end.

The more so for the SEO, social media and paid search,

So don’t be cornered by hard times, or get left in the lurch -

Remember folks are Googling still - it’s Get Found Online or Die!

(Please excuse the bad poetry!)

Wow, great blog post here, titled “Shut up, you’re helping the customer” with a sad little story about an employee who tried to build good customer relations using social media  - only to be punished by his boss and HR for his efforts!

Company buy-in is not always a shoo-in

With PROsocialmedia, we’re taking on somewhat more “edgy” project than with our writingSEO work- not quite as straightforward as finding keywords and writing web content to rank on Page 1 in Google search resuls.

So, one of the criteria we ask for early on - like, before we even sign a contract with the client - is for management buy-in for the Social Media Optimization (SMO) project…. as high up the food chain in the corporation as possible.

Not only is exec buy-in critical, but so is a clear policy on how employees may engage in social media spheres -both when they’re at work and when they’re not. It’s something we always of our SMO clients.

We don’t want to get anyone fired… and we sure don’t want to drag a company, kicking and screaming, into the social media world. You gotta wholeheartedly embrace it, take the (few) risks involved - to reap the benefits of engaging in conversation with your customers and prospects in ways that will change forever how you do business.

Good thing I hung onto that One Million Three Hundred Twenty Nine Thousand Sixty Three dollar bill… Might be coming in handy with the looming doom of the economy crumbling around our ankles. Guess it gives new meaning to the expression of “having a little ‘mad money’ to spend”!!

I don’t know if I can chalk it up to being busy, or lazy, or just really into cool beta-technology, but I recently signed up for Ping which streamlines all my blog posts/Tweets/Facebook and LinkedIn updates, Delicious feeds, etc.

I love the convenient streamlining of my online commentary: I type my thoughts into the Ping dashboard (it’s free to set up an account, natch) and presto - those words appear instantly and simultaneously across all my SoNet sites. Now… to come up with enough pithy words to merit all that exposure!

(The Ping thing is not to be confused with the Ning thing.)

I sometimes find it frustrating how the various facets of my work are put in silos: SEO vs. PR vs vs Social Media vs Link Building… when, in fact, they all overlap and bring benefits to each other. The chain of love goes something like this:
Get Found [search engine optimization]
Get Connected & Talked About [social media]
Get Visited [link building]
Get Orders! [ultimate end game]

Sometimes it’s unpopular with the Social Media Set to directly equate their ’special world’ with something as crass as search engine results. I call those folks snobs, and I happen to believe in the following statement:

Success in social media = getting noticed in search!

My services include SEO and SMO (social media optimization) and Link Building and Digital PR - and they’re all pointed in the same direction: at conversions and sales.

I’ll let you make your own decision on where/if the lines blur between the difference disciplines of web marketing; here’s some recommended reading:

• 10 Ways to Make Press Releases SEO-Friendly
• Use Online PR for Link Marketing
• Is Social Media & Search a Love Story or a War Story?
• The Social Media Press Release

My recent shots at mainstream media aside (remembering I was part of the MSM for decades!), I am happy to report that folks are still reading print. That’s the evidence of the Google U article in Biz Magazine Nov 2008 I authored.

Several businesses called me after reading the article - my outline of the business benefits of search engine optimization, including the case study of a retail website I helped get better page rankings. That company, Custom Orthotics Design Group, Ltd., is quoted in my article:

“…[Linda] Laakso turned to a professional SEO agency that conducted extensive keyword research, wrote the pages to SEO specifications and conducted linkbuilding – all with the purpose of getting those two [new product] web pages ranked high on Google’s list of search results. Within two weeks, Custom Orthotic was listed in the top five results for the search terms specific to her new products! The investment of a few hundred dollars gave her web exposure like she’d never had before.”

I think the sidebar I wrote to accompany this article, titled “How to Find a Good Search Engine Optimizer” was equally as popular with readers; any warning flags in a sea of SEO specialists are appreciated!

Anyhoo, I’m happy with any way I can get more businesses to embrace search, social media, digital PR and all other aspects of Internet marketing - heck, even print can be worth the effort!

Dozens of blog search engines exist, and you would be foolish to miss the opportunity to list your blog (for free) in the best of them. Remember, these search engines only accept BLOGS, not other kinds of websites - so be sure to submit the exact URL where your blog lives, e.g. http://www.company.com/blog.

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