4 Point Plan for Facebook Domination

Speaker: Will Scott

1st remember to have a good time…and don’t interrupt people having a good time.  Rules:

1. Be real
2. Give to receive
3. Don’t be a jerk

4 Point Plan to Facebook Domination

1. Get team involved
2. Reach out to current fans
3. Give reason to get involved
4. Make new friends

Hold internal competitions

• Ask employees to recommend your brand to their friends
• Make it worth their while (e.g. $200 gift certificate)
• Nothing wrong with bribing your employees

Install Facebook fan box

• Already on site, makes great fans

Hold an external competition

• Ignore Facebook rules at your own risk
• Can hold on-site and off-site

Find fans you don’t already know

• Advanced demographics and kw filters through Facebook ads
• Value of fans
• Target fans
• Target people coming to an event
• Bday targeting
• 1:1 communication with event attendees/maybes

Lion Brand Yarn

Speaker: Ilana Rabinowitz

Facebook is a tool.  Use it as such.

Lion Brand Yarn’s Strategy

Become a valuable source of information and vital community.  Create a place where:

1. People interact with each other
2. Where fans can become brand advocates
3. For people to share stories, ideas, tips, photos, and experiences
4. To listen to consumers
5. For us to answer questions
6. Show appreciation to fans
7. Seen as individuals rather than a faceless corporation (President made video for fans and was joking around)

How do we know what to say on Facebook?

• Surveys (what are you interested in?)
• Looked at peaks in data (what updates are people interacting with?)
• Know customers after years of correspondence

Voice of Lion Brand

• One consistent voice
• Marketing department brainstorms ideas
• Used graduate student
• Maintain calendar but much is ad hoc

Building a fan base

1. Compelling content (e.g. custom comic strips)
2. Promoted through other media (catalog, newsletter, blog, website)
3. Fans get you fans
4. Suggest to friends
5. Advertise on Facebook

Facebook v. Print Ads: Facebook is extremely effective and measurable & can help engage with a younger audience

Facts of Life on Facebook

1. Cannot control conversation (competitor mentions, customer complaints)
2. Requires time and planning (but maybe not too much money)

Marketing with Facebook

1. Solicit Facebook fans wisely (they are earned capital)
2. Promotions can make fans disappear like crazy
3. Keep helping your fan base (continue to provide resources)

Facebook is Measurable

• bit.ly to measure clickthrough on links
• Facebook Insights to measure interaction with fan page
• Google Analytics to measure engagement from traffic from facebook.com

Benefits of Facebook

1. Builds relationships with consumers
2. Drive web traffic
3. Manage reputation
4. Acquire new customers
5. Builds word of mouth
6. Provides customer insight
7. Offer customer service
8. Amplify other marketing efforts
9. Replace/Supplement traditional advertising
10. Generate direct sales
11. SEO benefits on search engines

Q: Facebook Group v. Fan Page

A: Group makes sense where people engage with each other.  Page makes sense where people engage with the brand

Q: Facebook Do’s?

A: Use a company email as an admin.  Include keywords throughout fan page.  Don’t be a broadcaster – it’s not about you

Q: Analytics Used to Measure Performance?

A: Google Analytics to measure on-site engagement, fan behavior, conversions, URL variable.  Image tag to measure traffic on Facebook.  Facebook Insights are useful as well

Q: Tips and Tricks for Facebook Ads

A: Test, test, test.  Think about the venue you are advertising on

Q: Structure of Facebook social media team and requirements

A: LBY: Grad student works 3-4 days per week, knowledgeable of the brand; can do it in an hour a day

Q: Ideal Frequency

A: Rate of update is based on how frequently fans interact.  Test messaging during various days of the week/hours of the day

Q: What Media Gains Fans Fastest

A: Amplify everywhere it makes sense.  Facebook users hate Twitter. Twitter users hate Facebook.

Speakers:

Will Scott – Search Influence
Ilana Rabinowitz – Lion Brand Yarn

Moderator:

Hallie Janssen

Liveblogger:

Mike Nierengarten of Anvil Media Inc., a Portland SEM agency

Session Details

The post Making Friends & Generating Business (Facebook) SearchFest 2010 Session appeared first on SEMpdx.

SEM agencies are specialists in the marketing landscape.  SEM itself can be broken down into specialties.  Agencies may focus on SEO, PPC management, link building, or application/widget development.  A quality agency should understand its own strengths and weaknesses and be able to produce a list of partner agencies who are leaders in their fields.  If an agency claims to do everything in house, move on.

Before looking for an SEM agency, identify your specific objectives.  Are you looking to drive traffic from qualified keywords in search engines? Are you looking to increase ROI from online marketing or paid search?  Looking to establish a presence on social networking sites?

Second, identify what type of clients your ideal agency will serve.  Are you a Portland area car dealership looking to rank well in Local Search?  Find an agency with a number of local clients.  Are you a large e-commerce site spending $100k+ per month on online ad spend.  Find an agency with similar large e-commerce clients.  If you are looking for a strong presence on Twitter and considering advertising on Facebook, look for an agency that has successfully worked with both.

Once you have identified a list of agencies that match your initial criteria – focus on your specific objectives and have a relevant client portfolio – it is time to ask the difficult questions:

1. Google the company name: Even the worst of SEM agencies will probably do fairly well in a Google search for the company name, but do your due diligence.  Check out their case studies, ask to look at sample reports, and look for any bad reviews.  Can the agency provide client referrals?

2. Who is doing the work: This is an important question.  Working with a knowledgeable sales person to close the deal is a lot different than working with an experienced account manager.  Who will be working directly with your account? What is their SEM background?

3. What are you paying for: Be suspicious of agencies that charge a percentage of ad spend or a set project fee.  Agencies, like lawyers, should only charge you for work that actually gets done.  Look for an agency that charges by the hour.

4. How does the agency report ROI: The major upside of online marketing – whether SEO, PPC, or SMM – is that online efforts are readily tracked.  A solid SEM agency should provide ROI metrics for all aspects of SEM.  Ask for a sample ROI report.  Does the agency account for cost of services in ROI?  How does the agency weight visitors coming from multiple sources (e.g. email campaign, paid search, and branded organic search)?  How does the agency handle branded campaigns and brand awareness?

5. What about competitors: Knowledge of what your competitors are doing online is important in an SEM strategy.  How does the agency incorporate competitor research into their processes?

6. Ongoing: SEO, PPC management, and SMM cannot be completed in a one-off project.  How does the prospective agency handle ongoing management?  Does the agency charge a set rate per month or does the agency adapt to your changing needs?

7. Percentage of work focused on analysis: In the SEM world, analysis should be the foundation for each proposed solution.  A good SEM agency will research top keywords to target before beginning SEO or paid search efforts.  Solid agencies will provide post-mortem analysis on online marketing campaigns and regular reporting.  What type of analysis does the agency provide regularly?  Ask for a sample report.

8. What’s next: A good SEM agency should be able to answer this question.  What online marketing tools and platforms are on the horizon?  Is mobile going to gain market share?  Should you be putting your money into widgets and iPhone application development?  Should you incorporate an OpenID login?

9. What do their clients know: From my perspective, this is the most important criteria for selecting an SEM agency.  Good agencies teach their clients SEM.  Do their clients understand SEO?  Do they attend SEM conferences?  What can you expect to learn through working with the agency?

Review the agencies’ responses to your questions.  How quickly did they respond?  Did the agency answer your questions thoroughly or simply provide a boilerplate answer?  What was your overall feel in working with the agency on the questionnaire?  Choosing an SEM agency can be difficult for marketers with limited SEM experience, but by asking the right questions, good agencies should distance themselves from the pack.

The post How to Choose an SEM Agency appeared first on SEMpdx.

SEO Trifecta: site-wide SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO – panel addresses site-wide SEO and answers, “Are you experiencing technical difficulties?”

Aaron”Warm Up Act” Kahlow: Translating Technology

Getting Technical SEO Ingrained in the Organization: Selling Internally

• Think about making money first
• Help others understand search and empower those within the company
• Sound the alarm – stop allowing your company to hit the snooze button

Top Ten:

1. Duplicate Content Destroyer: use canonical tag
2. Domain Choice: www or non-www
3. Cookie It: get rid of session id’s in URL strings (store in cookie rather than URL)
4. No Old School JavaScript: drop down menus should be in CSS and include no script tag
5. Flash & Java Upgrades: more advanced tactics for Flash and JavaScript
6. Page has importance: nofollow links to supplemental pages
7. 301: use 301 & 302 as appropriate
8. Sitemap two-ways: xml and html
9. 5 or less: limit # of parameters in URL strings to 5 at most
10. Check it twice: check and double check robot.txt files in Web Master Tools

Educate > Translate > Execute – in that order. Too difficult to execute without first educating

Susan “Token Googler” Moskwa: Technical Insight URL’s

Why Care About Technical SEO

• Google can crawl a limited (albeit significant) amount of information on the web and can index even less – you want to be indexed
• Google prioritizes crawling (new content > refresh old content > few duplicates)
• Google then keeps the “good stuff”

* Funnel crawling “budget” toward important content

Reduce Inefficient Crawling of Your Site

• Avoid maverick coding problems – e.g. discourage alternative encodings (QQ instead of ?) and eliminate positional coding
• Remove user specific details from URLs (creates infinite URL’s) – e.g. user id
• Keywords in name/value pairs are just as good as in path (static v. dynamic URL’s)
• Optimize dynamic URL’s – create patterns for crawlers to understand (category, article, sid): patterns allow Google to analyze variables
• Rein in infinite spaces: e.g. uncover issues in CMS
• Disallow actions Googlebot can’t perform (disallow shopping carts, contact forms, login pages)

Get Preferred URL’s Indexed

• Set preferred domain in Google Webmaster Tools
• Put canonical URL’s in Sitemap
• Use rel=”canonical” tag
• Get feedback in webmaster tools

Vaness “Cyberspace Visionary” Fox: Diagnosing Search Issues

Path to Improvement

• Assess where your site is today
• Identify problems
• Root-cause analysis

Identify Problem

• Big drop in traffic – limited use of rankings
• Not getting traffic where you expect
• Content in SERP’s does not look appealing
• Customers have bad clickthrough experience

Make Sure It’s a Problem

• Toolbar PageRank drop – not necessarily important unless coordinates with loss in traffic
• Number of indexed pages drop – can be a good thing as long as important pages are being indexed
• Indexation ratio change – look at the right metrics

Find the Cause

• Traffic drop: ensure from search, ranking problem or indexing problem?
• Indexing problem: whole site or just a few pages
• Ranking problem: drop for all keywords or some, same pages as ranked before?
• Flowchart shown (see Nine by Blue)

Diagnostics and Resources: janeandrobot.com

To do: submit an XML Sitemap by category and view your index statistics (total URL’s:indexed URL’s) – allows users to see where the issue exists

SERP display issues: look at your listings and ask would you click it

Findability issues: Superbowl Ad example – edityourown.com (Hyundai). People actually typed “edit your own” in Google where Hyundai’s microsite was not listed, leading to lost traffic.

What really matters: Accessibility > Discoverability > CONVERSIONS

Q&A:

Addressing duplicate content throughout sections of a site? Recommendation: Why? Extra click can be beneficial. Other option is to use CSS. Yahoo has a duplicate content tag as well.

No cache meta tags causing an issue? Recommendation: No cache meta tags should not cause an issue

Flash & SEO friendliness – serving humans and robots with different content? Recommendation: Why? Search engines cannot completely crawl Flash. Put everything around Flash in text – limit Flash content to moveable objects. Jane & Robot addresses Flash issues

The post On-Site Insight: Technical SEO Advice appeared first on SEMpdx.

Local search became an emphasis in January 2008 and has increased in frequency since.

Greg: Local Link Development

#1 thing to be concerned with in local search (and search engines in general) is inbound links. The best method for building a link development plan is competitive analysis – viewing strategies of sites who rank higher.

Great first step is directory listing. For example, list your site in niche directories regarding your city and category (e.g. New Orleans, Plumbing). Yahoo Local, Best of the Web, and other local directories are local specific and can really help with geo-targeted rankings.

When listing, provide all info: address, phone number, hours, etc. Most importantly include zip code. Including phone # and address in Title tag or meta Description can help with local rankings. Furthermore, keep all other phone numbers (fax, mobile, etc.) and addresses off the page as it confuses the bots (or use images for other phone #’s). Keep it simple – provide the information within the meta tags and correlate it on-page.

Search engines are getting better at identifying spam content and verifying actual business listings. Therefore, it is important to be consistent and accurate.

Mary: Optimizing for Local Search Success

Challenges for Local Businesses

• Local search is different: need to rank well in universal search, ten pack, local SE’s, online yellow pages, local social websites (Yelp), and vertical directories – Ton of work to do!
• Need to be present wherever potential customers are looking for you

On-Page Optimization

• Build releavance and trust in location + target – marry location with keywords
• All usual SEO efforts with a geographic slant
• Use hcard format for location info on pages

Optimizing for Multiple Locations

• Create a separate page for each location
• Local info on each page
• Internal links include location plus keyword
• Use other location-centric terms: airport code, intersections, highway exits, etc.

*Give business a tagline: make it very clear where you are and what you do (e.g. Austin’s Best Pizza)

Standardization Builds Trust

• Standardize your information across the web – same business name, address, and phone #
• Go to sources of business data and standardize there
• Use a local database directory – profile aggregator (universalbusinesslisting.org and getlisted.org)

Optimize Your Business Listings

For Search Engines:

• Use main keyword phrase and complementary terms
• Grab long-tail including products and services, brands you carry, etc.
• Choose or create the right categories and submit to as many applicable categories as possible
• Give your listing attributes – add categories (e.g. town served, types of rentals, etc.)

For customers

• Enhance your listing to attract attention, answer questions, build trust
• Use photos, videos, reviews, coupons – leave nothing blank
• Learn from competitors

Create Citations – web references (pages or site that mention your website)

• Citations help Google build trust
• Citations drive targeted traffic (e.g. Better Business Bureau)
• Citations generally easier to get than links

Impact of Reviews – reviews and local search: perfect match

• People want review; people use reviews
• Ratings influence rankings (e.g. Yahoo Local)
• Highly rated sites can get more exposure
• Users sort results by ratings
• Ratings and reviews influence CTR

Solicit reviews from happy customers

• Create a plan
• Use surveys and follow up emails
• Bribe people to submit reviews (discounts, promotions)
• Send reviews to a variety of web sites

Off-Page Optimization

• Target incoming links from local sites (Chamber of Commerce)
• Look for links on sites that rank well for your targeted terms
• Use your connections/network

Matt: Hyperlocal Blogging

Local blogging is good for local search marketing.

(Hyper) Local Blogs

• Take advantage of an opportunity to rank for local searches

Content Anyone Can Create to increase traffic & long-tail visibility

• Combined sale, Flickr, photos and blog post
• Photo of country singer + blog post + upcoming concert
• Community pool closing + blog post

Why Local Blogging Works

• Growing interest in local stuff online
• Traditional media declining
• Local websites often lacking
• Search engines love good blogs

Tips

• Write about local stuff
• Use photos & video
• Think ahead
• Do basic SEO
• Don’t overdo self-promotion

Q&A

Quantifying ROI: organic listings difficult to measure – same holds true for local blogging. User count is easiest metric to measure – effort leads to increased exposure and traffic

Diluting pages with too much content: use local info where necessary – keywords most important in title, limit use of local content if appears overcrowded. Use subdomains for local pages (e.g. chicago.example.com) – provides increased internal linking

The post Little is the New Big: Local + Hyperlocal Search Marketing appeared first on SEMpdx.