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Want to improve your search ranking? Create content

Siobhan Nash — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 20:20:34 +0000

Often touted as a science because of algorithms and such, SEO at times seems more like an art. You follow the rules or best practices of the day, but the effort doesn’t always yield the desired result—higher ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs). So, you try another approach. In this way, SEO is more akin to a spaghetti test—throw it against the wall and see if it sticks.

Although search engines frequently tweak their algorithms, Google threw a significant curve ball when it changed its algorithm a couple months back. The search engine now assigns a lesser ranking to low-quality sites like “content farms” or others that use duplicate or recycled content.

The significance of this change is something we at Tendo have been advocating to our clients for years—content is key. If you want to ensure that your company gets found online, you need to create original, high-quality content. It’s this content that will create relevance for your site and improve your ranking on SERPs.

Producing new content on a regular basis certainly requires more time and effort. Here are a couple suggestions for creating original content:

Start a blog. This is a great way to generate a regular stream of content. And if you’re looking for fodder, listen to what your customers are saying on your social media channels and location-based services such as Foursquare.
Write on a topic important to your customers and/or to your industry. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, just make sure to add your own unique take on the subject.
Use content you already have. If your company produces original research, in-depth reports, or other analysis pieces, turn those into a series of articles for your site.

In defense of keywords
Although meta information, keywords in particular, hasn’t been the key to SEO success in years, that doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. In fact, keywords are very important to your content. You should use language your customers use—not jargon or marketing speak—and base your content around those keywords. This will help make it clear to search engines that your page is relevant to those keywords. Also, you can use your keyword research to help identify themes for new content.

The only thing you can count on with SEO is that it will change. Creating informative content that’s relevant to your audience—customers, partners, or both—will ensure that your site gets found and give you the best chance at converting visitors into customers.

What’s your company’s strategy for creating original content for your website?

Social media: It’s all about timing

Siobhan Nash — Fri, 06 May 2011 01:21:27 +0000

We all do it. In our efforts to engage with our audience and provide them with quality content, we post what we have, when we have it, to all of our social media outlets without giving a second thought as to timing. You should. Timing your posts and updates to better coincide with a particular platform’s peak usage increases the likelihood that your content will be read and, more importantly, acted upon—whether that’s opening an email, sharing a link, or commenting on a blog.

I recently attended two presentations that discussed this issue of social media timing—one from HubSpot and one from our own Tendo social media expert Charlotte Ziems. Here are some highlights about timing for four key social platforms—Facebook, Twitter, email, and blogs:

Facebook
• Content posted before noon gets 65 percent more engagement than contented posted later in the day
• Friday posts generate the most engagement, followed by Monday and Tuesday
• Saturday and Sunday posts generate the least engagement but the highest number of shares

Twitter
• Twitter updates are retweeted more often when posted later in the day, as well as late in the week
• Click-through rates (CTRs) are highest mid-morning and early evening
• Mondays and Tuesdays yield the lowest CTRs

Blogs
• Twice as many blogs are read in the morning than at night
• Viewing is highest on Mondays and lowest on Saturdays
• Commenting is highest in the morning and on Saturdays, and lowest on Wednesdays

Email
• More email is opened on Saturdays and Sundays (early in the morning) than during the week
• Sending emails more frequently improves click-through rates and doesn’t result in higher unsubscribe rates

The takeaway from this research confirms something we’ve all heard before: the more frequent your activity, the better the response—and that can be further improved by timing your updates and posts accordingly. Try experimenting with the timing of your social media activity; for example, consider sending an email early in the morning and on a weekend and see what the metrics reveal.

Have you noticed certain days and times work better for your social media activity on some platforms? We’d love to hear about it!

Getting naked with corporate blogging

Linda Leung — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:14:16 +0000

Many organizations have successfully launched blogging personalities—executives who are great at drawing audiences through their entertaining and educational blogs. The better personalities are able to give their opinions without overtly selling the company’s products or services (read my earlier post, “Traits of an engaging blogger“). But as a good marketer, you are conscious that your corporate blog needs to talk about your products and services, right? They’re the reason your company exists, after all.

I disagree. There is nothing that turns me off more than company blogs that ram their products down my throat at every opportunity. If I want to read about their product, I’ll go to the products section and download the product spec sheet. When I read a corporate blog, I want to learn about the company’s particular industry. I expect the company to be a thought leader in their sector. (And if they must mention products or services, use those as examples of how such technologies/services improve the reader’s business and/or career.)

That’s why I love Naked Security, the corporate blog of security software company Sophos. At first glance, you’ll think the blog’s landing page is a news site (being an IT news junkie, that gets my approval). The “articles” (blog posts) are written in a news style and the headlines could appear in any IT mag (examples: “Sloppy spelling scuppers DHL malware spam attack” and “Fake Android Market security tool delivers more than just a cure for Droid Dream malware”).

The posts are entertaining and educational. I especially liked the Sophos series on Facebook security best practices. None of the posts has any mention of Sophos products. Often, the writers (all Sophos execs) will link to Sophos educational videos on YouTube, or encourage readers to join the company’s Facebook page, which has 64,000 followers.

One of the company’s bloggers, Graham Cluley, won “Best Security Blogger” by SC Magazine in 2011, while the blog was named “Most Educational Security Blog” at the RSA Security bloggers gathering. So others must believe they’re doing something right as well.

Here’s why I like Naked Security:

It has a clean design that’s easy on the eyes and easy to navigate.
The blog headlines/titles are enticing.
It uses images well, and each blog post has an image.
It integrates well with Sophos’ social media. The landing page has a column that shows the latest Sophos YouTube videos and Tweets. You can also share posts on Facebook or Twitter.
The posts are usually well-written. They don’t use jargon and the writing style is easy to read.
They don’t take themselves too seriously.

What do you believe makes a great corporate blog?

Why social sign-on can elevate blog debates

Linda Leung — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:24:33 +0000

I’ve had great conversations with complete strangers. You can get into a lively discussion with the person sitting next to you on planes and trains, for example. At some point during the conversation, though, it’s nice to introduce yourself and attach a name to the face. When that happens, you’re no longer anonymous. Similarly, if you run a blog and you don’t want your readers to be able to comment anonymously, the new trend of social sign-on could be just the ticket.

For most bloggers, comments from readers are one of the rewarding aspects of maintaining a blog. Many bloggers especially enjoy debating with readers–a healthy debate is great for learning and appreciating the other side to your argument. But if your blog platform allows anonymous commenting, sometimes readers see that as a green light to leave nasty or rude comments under the mask of anonymity.

You could moderate the comments section of your blog. But if blogging is something you do in your spare time, you probably don’t have much time to moderate comments, especially if you receive a lot of them. This is also true if you manage several corporate blogs.

This is where the use of social sign-on is helpful. With social sign-on you’re enabling people to sign into your blog or community using their existing identity on Facebook, Twitter, Google, or a number of other similar sites. As a consumer, you may have noticed this capability in some of the retail and travel sites that you visit. According to a survey of retailers offering social sign-on by vendor Gigya, the top benefit was increased customer engagement and relationship. Retailers also value the ability to get richer data about their customers through the information available on their social networking profiles.

So how could social sign-on be useful to ensure intelligent discussions on B2B communities? If a site knows who I am through my LinkedIn profile, I’m unlikely to leave a comment that I wouldn’t want my name to be associated with. My professional reputation is too valuable to damage with inappropriate comments to blog posts or online communities.

IBM’s InfoBOOM website for midsize companies is an example of a community that enables members to sign in using their LinkedIn profile.

For more about social sign-on, read social media expert Jeremiah Owyang’s take in his blog post, “Research Note: Integrate Social Networks with your Corporate Website with ‘Social Sign On’.” Gigya, which sells social optimization tools, published some advice for websites on how to best deal with the information they now know about their users. Register to download the white paper, “Owning & Controlling Social Data — What Businesses Need To Know.”

3 social media trends for 2010

Selena Welz — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 19:17:08 +0000

As an evolving medium, social media is a breeding ground for constant experimentation and continued development. Lots of efforts fall short—in fact, we probably never even hear about them, given the nature of social media. But when something does take off in the social media sphere, it takes off like gangbusters. In that vein, here are a few social media trends that saw great success this year.

Nonprofits jumping aboard the social media train

As the business world finds new ways to benefit from social media, nonprofits are naturally following suit.

Take the Red Cross. After seeing significant decreases in cash donations to its traditional red buckets and bell ringers stationed outside of shopping malls and supermarkets, the Red Cross began recruiting virtual bell ringers using Twitter and Facebook. The Red Cross reports that this effort raises an average of $3 million per year.

Other nonprofits are using social media as their primary business model, such as Catchafire and Taproot Foundation, which exist purely online and match skilled volunteers to charitable opportunities.

Location-based social media on the rise

Online junkies have flocked to location-based social media, also referred to as geo-social media. Now, in addition to announcing your every thought and action, you can include where these fascinating events are taking place.

Geo-social sites like Foursquare and Gowalla are attracting four percent of online Americans, according to Pew Internet Research. Four percent doesn’t sound like much until you consider how many people are online.

Some pundits question the long-term viability of location-based services. However, as businesses begin experimenting with the possibilities of this type of interaction, as reported in a post by my colleague Linda Leung, we’ll likely see many more iterations of these services.

Users like Facebook’s “like” feature

People were already using the “like” feature frequently within Facebook. But once the social network released a “like” plug-in that can be added to external pages, people have been “liking” all over the place. The “like” feature can even include comments now.

Not only does this feature allow users to enrich their Facebook profiles by including more external content, Facebook itself has a whole new stream of user preferences to play with.

The user ease of simply clicking a button to “like” something combined with the value this could hold for marketers—and Facebook is pushing this marketing value—means this development (like social media itself) has only just begun to evolve.

As we head into 2011, this year’s developments will be yesterday’s news in no time—and the new year will introduce new ways of communicating online that we haven’t even considered.

What social media trends have stood out for you this year? Have you tried something new that worked? I’d love to hear about your social media successes in the comments.

3 corporate blogs that set the standard

Siobhan Nash — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 19:17:38 +0000

Blogs continue to abound as companies realize their value as a marketing tool. Facebook and Twitter may be great for updating your followers (many of whom aren’t necessarily your customers) on your company’s latest news and offers, but blogs excel at supporting key business goals, such as lead generation and brand marketing. According to eMarketer, “…the percentage of U.S. companies that use blogs for marketing purposes will rise to 43% in 2012, from 34% in 2010.”

Much like communities, your blog isn’t all about your company. It’s not about telling your customers what you want them to know; it’s about engaging them on topics that matter to them and address their needs.

Some B2B and B2C blogs do this better than others. Here are three blogs that I think succeed at one or more best practices.

Salesforce.com: The company’s CloudBlog touts itself as “An industry view with altitude.” But this tagline is more than a clever turn of phrase. It delivers on the implied promise—higher-level industry insight. The tone is conversational but opinionated. The posts convey information effectively, using bullet points, graphics, and embedded rich media to break up the content. Finally, the writers successfully connect the topics to the company’s mission and goals without making a blatant “pitch.”

Dell: A lot of companies, especially larger ones, have more than one blog to serve various audiences and industry segments. But if your audience can’t find the blog they’re interested in, what’s the point? Dell has one of the better landing pages I’ve seen for organizing multiple blogs. In addition to a clean, simple design, this landing page offers a feed of the latest posts, a search option (which I haven’t seen very often), and a blog directory—both at the top of the page and in the right margin, which also includes brief descriptions of the various blogs.

O’Reilly Media: This one is a little off the beaten path, as O’Reilly Media is a technology book publishing company. But the company’s blog, O’Reilly Radar, excels at something I believe is essential to connecting with your audience—defining the writers. Just as many of us don’t like interacting with phonebots, your customers aren’t likely to engage with your company if your blog posts are penned by faceless (sometimes nameless) writers. O’Reilly provides a photo, a link to profile information, and a Twitter handle for every writer.

Room for improvement
Although these companies exemplify some of blogging’s best practices, no blog is perfect. Where I think most companies fall short is in burying access to their blogs at the bottom of the home page. There are a couple corporate websites, like HP and Salesforce.com, that provide links “above the fold.” GM does one better, making the “News & Conversations” link the first tab at the top of its home page. A link higher on the home page is good, but more, higher-profile real estate for promoting your blogs and inviting visitors to participate would be even better.

You can find more examples of successful corporate blogs on Mashable.

What do you think makes for a successful corporate blog?

Traits of an engaging blogger

Linda Leung — Thu, 13 May 2010 21:57:05 +0000

Your organization has a blog. You’ve even got some employees who are eager to put pen to digital paper and produce content. But there’s a difference between blah content and the “I’m-subscribing-to-this-blogger-because-he’s-got-interesting-views” content. The writer of the latter often attracts regular readers, engages readers in conversation (not only on his or her own blog, but also on other people’s blogs), and posts prolifically.

How do you find these types of bloggers? And what’s the best way to manage them?

Model bloggers

Before we get to that, let’s look at some examples of executives who effectively engage the blogosphere. Chuck Hollis is vice president of global marketing CTO at EMC. He’s been at EMC for 15 years in a variety of technical and marketing positions. In other words, Hollis knows his stuff. He’s comfortable writing easy-to-read posts about everyday life (such as “What iPads did to my family”) and is not afraid to state his views about EMC activities.

Take, for example, EMC’s bidding war against NetApp for Data Domain last year. Although some company executives may stay silent on such company activities, preferring to speak through their PR or legal teams, Hollis posted a blog about his personal perspective of EMC’s move. Not surprisingly, that post attracted multiple comments.

Hollis’ opponent at HP (they often cross swords on each other’s blogs) is Calvin Zito, author of HP’s Around the Storage Block blog, and StorageWorks marketing communications manager. Like Hollis, Zito has held a variety of positions in marketing and engineering.

Zito is a prolific writer with a great writing style, and commands a regular audience—including Hollis.

Ideal traits

Judging by their blog posts and the frequency of their updates, both Hollis and Zito are comfortable writers and are quick to analyze their markets. The results are thoughtful and engaging blog posts. Hollis and Zito are quick to respond to reader comments—both complimentary and not—and engage with readers of other blogs by placing comments there.

Once you’ve identified executives who have the necessary traits to write blogs, how do you manage them?

You don’t.

Opinion writers

View such corporate bloggers as you would opinion writers on newspapers. By all means run a blog that is a mouthpiece for your organization, if that makes you feel more comfortable. However, encourage other voices to speak as well.

It’s not possible to silence people who have strong views, but B2B readers are mature enough to decide for themselves whether these bloggers are stating their own views and not those of their employers. (Some bloggers state this on their blogs, particularly if they’re hosting the blog themselves.) Of course, it helps when these bloggers are senior executives and not entry-level employees.

It is better to have employees who are able to engage with readers and get the blogosphere talking than to run a bland corporate blog that commands no attention whatsoever. You’re now in the publishing game, so be prepared to loosen the reins.

9 video highlights from the O’Melveny & Myers social media panel

David Vespremi — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:35:43 +0000

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A social scientist, an engineer, a marketer, and a consultant meet at a law firm… and over a few glasses of wine, the conversation turns to social media.

The setting: Venture Capital Alley, aka Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park.
The gracious hosts: O’Melveny & Myers, fresh off their victorious settlement in AMD vs. Intel.
The panelists: Karla Spormann (president and CEO, Tendo Communications), Martin Eberhard (cofounder and former CEO, Tesla Motors), Patrick Ewers (founder, Mindmavin), and Dr. Marc A. Smith (chief social scientist, Connected Action).
The occasion: An opportunity to get perspective from local executives who are putting social media to work for business.

Below are several video highlights from the social media panel:

Dr. Marc A. Smith:

“The clustering of social connections is fascinating and really revealing.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Smith/Martin Eberhard:

“The downside to social media is that you’re going to have a conversation with someone that has a lot of time on their hands. With you. Now. And you may have other things on your agenda and this becomes an issue because then those people feel scorned and they have the same amplifier you have.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Karla Spormann:

“Understand where your audience is and what tools and channels they’re using. Listen first, and then determine whether or not you want to engage.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Patrick Ewers:

“Common ground is about making people think, ‘I am like you.’ And that’s what you want because ‘I am like you’ means ‘I like you,’ and this is important because…once you get to “I like you,” doors open, things go faster, people start looking for excuses to overlook your mistakes.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Eberhard/Spormann/Smith:

“Social media has already overtaken traditional media. General Motors has had more success getting people to understand the Chevy Volt through Bob Lutz’s own blog than through any advertising.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Smith:

“The more your message propagates, the more Google focuses on it.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Smith:

“Most opportunities flow not through strong ties/connections, but weak ties—the ones you know casually. In addition, humans evolved in tribes of 150 or less, so you can really only have strong ties with 150 or fewer people.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Eberhard:

“The social media thing really is about being a human being and this is why the Bob Lutz blog works. He says things in his rough-and-ready way that doesn’t align itself with the marketing speak that’s all over the rest of their website.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Spormann/Eberhard:

“So my advice is if you have done a good job of developing a network of people that are following and into what you are doing, you just kind of need to give the right people a hint that there is something bad being said about you on some other site and let them be the bulldogs.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

A blog by any other name…

EmiA — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:55:26 +0000

Blogging can be an intimidating word, especially when you’re not a writer or editor by profession. I’m the office manager at Tendo, so when my colleagues here ask me to contribute to the Tendo blog, my answer is either, “sorry, I don’t blog” or “I’m too old to join a new fad.” But am I really too old to blog?? I always get anxious when faced with new technology, but I gave up my beloved IBM Selectric for a word processor and then a computer, so I decided to find out what blogs, blogging, and bloggers were all about.

I started with the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, which defines blogging as a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer.

Wait a minute! By this definition, I’ve been a blogger all my life! In grammar school, I kept a journal, using an alias, for a girls’ club that was posted on a bulletin board (closet blogger). In high school, I contributed events commentary to the school newspaper (social blogger). For visiting family and friends, I kept an activity journal with great information and useful contacts (travel blogger). At work, I took meeting notes, transcribed minutes, and added commentary about improving business practices (business blogger). I wrote a yearly holiday letter chronicling the latest family events (family blogger). All of this material was either publically posted or made available to a group of people, and every “posting” required style, tone, and etiquette guidelines.

Blogging may seem intimidating, but it’s really just a different medium for distributing information—information that you’ve probably been sharing your whole life, in one form or another. And while it’s true that a blog is available to a larger audience, I’ve found Web audiences to be more forgiving about my writing style and grammar than former teachers and ex-bosses. So if you have something to say, just figure out who you’re talking to and start blogging. It may not be as hard as you think.

My next blog topic: Texting? Wait a minute…

To brand, or to shill? That is the question

David Murphy — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:44:19 +0000

Last I checked, Dr. Eric Schmidt wasn’t jumping on to Google financial briefings to preach about Apple’s latest iPhone firmware update. And last I checked, the same good doctor wasn’t running across the stage at MacWorld–or whatever events Apple’s keynoting now–arm-pumping to the chant of, “Google! Google! Google!”

That’s because of a little thing called conflict of interest. I come from a print journalism background, and these three words are akin to the Great Wall of China for content creation. That’s not to say that an average marketer or businessperson has no moral code, but it can be a tapdance to do what’s best for a brand without looking like a complete shill–be it for your company, your clients, or your competing interests.

Marketing on Someone Else’s Dime

Consider Sarah Lacy, the Bay Area’s favorite female tech journalist–or, at least, one that’s been talked about a great deal since her big Facebook interview snafu in 2008. No stranger to inserting herself into the story, Lacy writes about Facebook, of all things, in her BusinessWeek column this week. The premise of the story is simple: Facebook employees are cashing out their shares of the company’s stock at a high enough rate as to overload the company’s $100 million share buyback program. Simple. Done.

Instead of pointing to similar occurrences across the tech sector and drawing some kind of parallel between the companies’ respective situations, or taking the larger spin on the effects of an economic recession on an individual’s desire to keep money close at-hand, what does Lacy do? If you guessed, “shill for her other job,” you got it. She references her employment as a blogger at TechCrunch, talks about the site’s awesome environment and strong financial growth, and even uses her BusinessWeek column to jokingly beg her boss, Michael Arrington, for stock options.

Talk about eating where you… well. I’ll let you finish the metaphor.

Suffice, the entire ordeal makes Sarah look like a wide-eyed fangirl for her other paychecks. The weight of her words loses legitimacy. BusinessWeek looks like it has no idea how to manage its employees and, worse, is effectively sponsoring the endorsement of a competitor.

So what?

As marketer, it’s important to realize the walls in which you play. You can’t just blast your marketing message in every medium of interaction, otherwise your constant attempts to bring your brand to the forefront of any and all discussions will look like an official kind of astroturfing. The conflict of interest is one of you, an everyday person trying to say everyday things, versus your hidden agenda.

If you’re going to try and frame a brand within the context of a larger, topical issue, at least do it with grace. In Lacy’s case, her TechCrunch employment might be relevant as it relates to working for a startup and the subsequent issues of stock options. The context of her blog, however, makes this relationship sound like an advertisement–not a genuine piece of insight sparked by insightful comparison, rather, one that’s arisen out of hubris.

You can talk about your brand. You can be passionate about your brand. You can even shill for your brand a little bit–it’s okay, everybody else does. But crossing the line is like the difference between a martini with a twist and a straight shot of booze. One keeps life pleasant; the other gets you hammered. Don’t get hammered by your community because you couldn’t keep your words straight.