This not a good plan.  What works for others may not work for you, even if it seems like an obvious match. That’s about the only thing I’ve ever picked up watching others engage in social media.

If you are one of those companies who think what others do will determine your appropriate steps, Flowtown released this infographic that might help you realize just how behind you are.  Granted, this doesn’t really speak to strategy, just platform usage, but it’s indicates that after the last 3-5 years, social has pretty much validated itself as worth continuing.

Post from: Bill Sebald's Greenlane SEO 2.0 Blog

Fortune 100 And Social Media – How Engaged Are They?

I’m thrilled.  I always said it wouldn’t make sense for search engines – who value editorial linking – to not value tweets.  Yeah, there’s a lot of spam, but that holds true for the regular web.  Why turn away good links because of the bad?

Well, they don’t.

Search Engine Land (well, Danny Sullivan) posted this great article today.  ”Both Google and Bing tell me that who you are as a person on Twitter can impact how well a page does in regular web search. Authoritative people on Twitter lend their authority to pages they tweet.”

I always encouraged people to tweet for link love.  Yeah, yeah… I know the links from Twitter are nofollowed, but not always by the tons of Tweet aggregated services; nor are they often nofollowed by the publishers who use your links in their own blog posts.  Now, as it turns out, since Google and Bing get their tweets (and links) straight from Twitter’s feed, the nofollow value isn’t transferred.  In reality they do have some – not a lot – of PR influence.

But aside from PageRank, which is very much less than what it was years ago, I’m happy to see the authority signal continue it’s growth in Google and Bing – this time in the form of something like a “SocialRank” or “HumanRank” or “AuthorRank” score.  Why not just TrustRank?

To quote my colleague Ian, who I ultimately subverted into my way of thinking one beer-fueled night on my soapbox, “Too much of the link graph is in social (and therefore nofollowed) to be ignored.”  Well put, sir.

Post from: Bill Sebald's Greenlane SEO 2.0 Blog

If You’re a Good Tweeter, You’re Helping Pages Rank in Natural Search

Can’t Get Those Rankings?  Maybe Your Social Circle Can Help!

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SEJ: Can’t Get Those Rankings? Maybe Your Social Circle Can Help!

The Thinning Line Between SEO and Social Media

Post from: Bill Sebald's Greenlane SEO 2.0 Blog

SEJ: Thinning Line Between SEO and Social Media

Last week at a friend’s party, a drunkard mumbled, “Twitter is for idiots.  Nobody cares what you’re doing!”  Well, I don’t get offended that easily.  But I wasn’t about to bother explaining – he clearly enjoyed his obstinance.  But what I could have told him is Twitter is only what you make of it.  It’s a connecting tool between friends (like a status update on Facebook), or a news aggregator (follow those who post nothing but up to the minute news).  Maybe it’s an entertainment tool?  I know I like to follow people that make me laugh every day.  Maybe it’s a customer service tool (@ComcastCares).  I practically IM my coworkers with DMs using ChromeBird.

Granted, the 24 billion searches are probably from Twitter power users, of which I am one.   I routinely search for content and links via Twitter.  I think Twitter is one of the most useful social properties on the web, hands down.  You get used to the 120 (oops – 140… thanks Jack… I was asleep at the wheel there) characters, I promise.  Besides, we all have short attention spans anyway.

Are you a power user too?  Follow me @bill_sebald

Update:
So the word now is that these searches are inflated.  Apparently sporadic API calls from all the apps (like my ChromeBird) that ping the search command are included in this announced total.  Well, yeah… technically that’s a search, but really Twitter?  A little deceptive to put the number out there without that caveat.  You still have an incredible achievement to be proud of.

Related: Small Business SEO Services

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The Second Largest Search Engine Is Twitter (and you still don’t get it?)

But one friendly lesson stuck with me.  ”When in a club, don’t look too eager.  Women notice that!”  This hit me – not because I was necessarily being one of those Night At The Roxbury guys, but I realized I did notice it when I was out; single guys craning their necks to target every woman.  Like throwing a flurry of darts with reckless abandon.

Many businesses who get into social media remind me of this.  It’s a sea of people, and instead of learning to speak the language, make friends, and nurture relationships, they start aggressively firing shots at potential closers.  When they don’t convert, they blame the night club (platform), or the girls (customers).  It’s too frantic.  In online social marketing, your customers expect you to engage with them.  They know when you’re desperate.  They see businesses do it all the time – the only rookies in the social media space are the businesses still going for instant gratification.

Unfortunately, bad pick up lines with your customers are just as bad, if not worse.  They destroy your chances and put you in a much worse light.  Cheap engagement tactics and sloppy execution without sizzle and value make businesses look even more desperate, and turn a flat “no” on the dance floor to blatant giggling and pointing.  Put some thought into what you should really do when taking your chances.

I had to learn to shape my conversations to my new audience (and not talk about video games).  Businesses need to do the same.  Forget a conversion rate if you can’t do this.

Post from: Bill Sebald's Greenlane SEO 2.0 Blog

Social Media Marketing Is Like Dating

This is a very social media thing to do. I think you should be doing this in the social world. It is, after all, still marketing.

The new world media gives businesses a face (if you didn’t create a face for your business in 2009, you’re already a year behind). This year I truly believe it’s about practicing your communication skills. When you’re writing your emails to your friends and colleagues, think about whether you can share it with your consumers. Does what you’re saying feed into the big picture? It’s probably valuable enough to have inspired you to write it -- so should you share it? Possibly. That’s what your social consumers want from you anyway. They want to know how you feel about a market trend. They want to know if you have a plan. They want to know, well, if you realize your pizza sucks.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH5R56jILag

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Bad Pizza and Good Social Marketing

Click here to read the article

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Blurring The Line Between SEO and Social Media

Why would you want these people to crowdsource for you? Look at them. Teenagers. Derelicts. Hippies!

Ok, that’s sarcasm.

I’ve been really into the idea of using other properties for marketing for a while.  I really got into a Twitter kick last year, and am still active.  I’ve played with every social bookmarking, social voting, image network, and tagging sites.  I’ve recently been working with my company on a social media marketing offering via Facebook.  It’s not a new concept, but it is.  It’s still very much fluid, and very much worth exploring.  A lot of companies turn their nose at it.  Yeah, but we’re used to that.

Remember when we used to try to talk CMO’s into letting us post on forums?  They were worried about negative responses (at the cost of the positive responses).  Then we had to convince the CMO’s that blogs were good!  We often got the go ahead as long as we had a dedicated moderator to cut out the negative stuff.  I admit it – I had that job once. But somewhereb thanks in part to the slow adoption from major brands like Dell, Zappos, and Amazon, the publicly posted negative feedback and reviews stopped getting censored.  When they would get censored, there would be a public outcry.  Progressive CMO’s were more worried about that outcry than the negative posts on their domains.  Good call.  If the products can stand for themselves, then let the social media prove it for you.  Now we’re talking about something truly valid.

The social media space really evolved this past year.  The community noticed the companies making these efforts, and taking these risk.  The companies were embraced for it.  Fans and followers became as faithful as NASCAR fans are to their brands.  And even when the quantity is few, their presence was very illuminating.

So here I am, getting really into marketing on Facebook, and finding myself excited about the opportunity of riding a wave that will either dissolve before reaching the shore, or smash into beachfront property like a tsunami.  My only regret is that I wish I had the foresight to jump on it sooner.  Actually, my regret is that more businesses still don’t have the insight to jump into it now.

It’s a tough sell.  I can completely relate to the business owner.  It’s very similar to convincing a CMO to try building a blog in 2006.  By the time they were all convinced, every company had one and none were being used properly.  A lot of noise.  But how do we convince the CMO’s that these teenagers, derelicts, and hippies are all extremely important components of your business, and not just because of their dollars?  It’s now officially a different world online, and I’m afraid business is once again way behind.  The CMOs are reading all the trades, and the “social media is where it’s at” articles, but it’s not sparking enough passion in the CMOs to pick up all the Lego pieces and start building.  How big does the bang need to be this time?

But what about the content, cross-channel implications?  They’re huge.  Maybe Facebook marketing doesn’t seemingly pass as much SEO value based on the structure of the Facebook platform, but SEO is so much more than algorithms.  It’s marketing.  It’s content.  It’s helping search engines adore your business, content, and value.  Facebook (and the content it provides) means more than most people think.  To me that’s the hurdle you have to get over first and foremost.  With passion.  Show that it’s rock n’ roll, yeah, but it’s not dangerous.  It’s cultural.  It’s last year’s next big thing.  Let’s get a move on, already before the crowd actually moves on!

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Facebook Marketing: Last Year’s Next Big Thing!

But however they’re handling it, it looks like Twitter finally made some money by opening their tweets to Google (at the cost of about $15 million) and MSN (at the cost of about $10 million).  Beats the hell out of the limited calls us regular folks get!

I was so sure it was going to be the Paypal-esque money transferring model first.  At least it wasn’t as cheesey as buying and sending virtual gifts for a dollar (I don’t care if it worked, Facebook – it’s cheesey!).

For more check this out.

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So This Is How Twitter Is Making Money!