Social media optimisation - helpful tools

Since I've been working on a social media strategy recently (I'll post more details soon), I thought I'd share some tools which I think could be useful to anybody managing their own SMO.

The first one is a social boomarking tool called Social Marker (http://www.socialmarker.com/). While some people may not think of social bookmarks sites as part of a social media strategy, they are a great way to syndicate your content using your own tags, especially when combined with buttons on your site.
The best feature of Social Marker is that it allows you to bookmark your content on all of the main social bookmarks sites at the click of a button (including delicious, reddit, digg, stumble upon...). Initial set up may take a while as you need to register individually on each of the sites, but once this is done, everything will be very straightforward.
When used with free social buttons (www.addthis.com), your social bookmarking efforts will never be the same again!

The next tool is a video upload service that allows you to upload your rich media on a wide range of video sites at the click of a button. The principle is the same as social marker with a slightly long initial setup (need to register on sites such as youtube, dailymotion...) and simplicity afterwards. Tube Mogul (http://www.tubemogul.com/) also gives you in depth analysis for each of your videos, allowing you to understand users behaviour across the sites.

Because social media can be extremely time consuming, it is becoming essential for any internet marketeer to automate a lot of the tasks. This can be a simple link between a blog/rss feed and twitter (http://twitterfeed.com/) but it can also mean developing apps that will automatically distribute new content from a website to sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Blogs, Twitter....I'm sure a few tools are readily available online, but bespoke solutions can be ideal if you have the web development resources.

Ok, so now you have the right tools to start implementing your strategy, but how do you measure it? While it is hard to find any free integrated social media effectiveness reporting tools, a few tips can help you measure basics fairly easily.
If you use google analytics, you can create a new segment to compare social media results with other marketing channels (paid, organic..) Instructions here. Being a bit of a Google Analytics fan myself, I can only highly recommend Brian Clifton's blog, Measuring Success.

Ploked.com also gives some really good info on which metrics you should use when measuring social media activities.

While I'm sure most of you enjoy spending time using social media, I think it is very important for any business to make the most out of this wonderful internet marketing channel by planning its growth and carefully measuring results.
Enjoy your weekend!

What makes a good online marketing strategy

Web marketing is a constantly evolving discipline and never has this been more obvious than now with the rise of social media and user generated content. I've worked in the online marketing/SEO industry for more than 7 years now and I still learn something new every day.
I worked on the online marketing strategy for my company the other day and thought I'd share what I think are fundamentals in any good strategy:

Search engine marketing

• Search engine optimisation:
  - on the page (metadata, content, alt tags, H tags, internal linking, keyword density, technical analysis) never forget that content is king!
  - off the page (link building, link baiting)
• Social media strategy:
  - Blogs/ forums
  - RSS feeds, social bookmarks, content aggregation sites
  - Social networking / microblogging (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn....)
  - Online reputation management
  
• Paid search:
  - Pay per click campaigns (Adwords, Yahoo search marketing, MSN)

Email marketing / Advertising

• internal campaigns for retention (existing customers, prospects/leads, lifecycle emails)
• Display advertising for acquisition (banners, sponsored emails, solus emails/3rd party emails)
• List rental for acquisition (targeted emails to key decision makers/ key sectors)

Web development

• Usability / User experience
• Copywriting
• Regular design review
• other business relevant projects (product launches, special offers....)
• Technical infrastructure
  

All of the above elements will only be effective if used in an integrated manner and as part of an overall marketing strategy.
And of course, I cannot finish this post without mentioning web analytics, the key to success for any marketeer! The strategy has to be implemented based on measurable business objectives and targets.
Well, that was a long post so hopefully somebody will read it and maybe benefit from it. Contact me if you would like to know more, I'm always happy to help.

Is Google's monopoly making life easier for internet marketers?

I was thinking this morning (yes, it happens!)...is Google's monopoly on the SE market such a bad thing? I've got to admit that it is sometimes frustrating as an online marketer to have only one point of reference for SEO, Google! That means that if you dont get your optimisation right, you could be missing out on 90% of potential traffic and business on your website.
However, from a reporting/tracking standpoint, this supremacy makes life a whole lot easier. I'm quite keen on web analytics, and I've got to say that having google as a benchmark for all marketing activities allows you to focus more.
This of course doesn't mean that you should neglect the other SE players such as Yahoo, Live (now Bing), Ask and others, as genuine business may come out of them, but Google always leads the way. I dont know of any business owner who would complain for his website not doing well in Yahoo...however, not seeing a website on the first SERP in google is a major drama in many companies.
I still hope though that the times when you had to understand several search engine algorithms come back as it would secure our jobs!