An under utilised strategy, but one that can work exceptionally well, is being a guest blogger – in other words writing an article that is published on someone else’s business blog.

Here are four reasons to consider guest blogging:

1. You will build your online visibility with a new audience

Just as you might write an article that gets published in a journal or newspaper targeted at an audience that you want to connect with, being a guest blogger means that you can be featured on a blog that people who are potential prospects are reading.

2. You can get an incoming link to your website

As you will be aware, relevant incoming links to your website are a great way to build your visibility in the search engines.

I get approached on a daily basis by people who want me to link to their website. Many people are unlikely to offer you a link to your website (unless it is a paid search engine marketing strategy).

However being featured as a guest author on a blog means that usually the host of the blog will give you at least one link to your website in the summary paragraph in your article on their blog.

3. You build your network with influencers online

If you implement this online marketing strategy effectively you will begin to build a relationship with influential bloggers in your niche.

Many bloggers will appreciate guest bloggers who provide valuable information for their readers especially if the article includes insider tips and exclusive information.

4. You can start to experience the benefit of business blogging without the long term commitment

I often find many people are unsure about starting a business blog due to their concerns about how long it will take them to craft an article and what they will talk about.

With a little time and support, I know you could easily list out at least 100 articles that you could write.

But if you want to experience what it would be like to author a blog article and the benefits of business blogging to boost your online visibility without getting distracted worrying about the technical aspects of blogging then being a guest blogger is a great way to start.

Why not take 30 minutes this week to identify bloggers who are connecting to an audience that you would like to boost your visibility with and start to research the style and tone of their articles?

Explore their blog, for example see if in their about or contact page they offer details about whether they are open to guest blog posts and consider how you will make contact with them to author an article.

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With the holiday sales season only 2 weeks away, now is the time to take a look at your advertising copy and give it a tweak.

To help you out I have outlined below seven sins of copywriting that you must avoid:

1. No compelling headline – how are you going to get people to buy when the first thing they see on the page isn’t inspiring? I would argue that your headline is the most important aspect of the copy on your page. The key is to tell the visitor exactly what you are offering while also making it appealing so they will read on (and ultimately purchase).

2. No attractive benefits – we’ve all heard the adage features vs. benefits. The features are what you, as the marketer, believe about the product but the benefits are really what the visitor wants to know about. They don’t care how your SEO service works, all they care is that it will get them in the top 10 search results.

3. No bullet points – these ties in with deadly sin number 2. Make spelling out the benefits of your product/service easy by using bullet points. This will make it easier for the visitor also. Here is an example of one of our ads. It shows how easy it is for the visitor to see what the product will do for them by using bullet points.

4. Sentences too long – I have to admit this is one of my biggest challenges in writing copy. But the trick is to know when to end a sentence and start a new one. Here is what I was taught: read the sentence out loud and as soon as you run out of breath, that’s when the sentence needs to stop.

5. Hard to understand jargon – This is probably the most common sin in copywriting. But just remember that not everyone who is looking for your product is as educated as you about the product. Spell out the product in layman’s term. However, don’t talk down to them or assume they know your industry language and terminology.

6. Spelling/grammar mistakes – this is the easiest sin to avoid. Don’t assume that a common spelling/grammar checker is going to pick up all the mistakes. Read back over your copy carefully or give it to someone else to check who hasn’t seen it before (fresh eyes).

7. No break in ad copy – Put yourself in your visitor’s shoes. How daunting would it be to visit a website and find a page full of text? To be honest I would probably click away. People don’t have time or the patience to read through such a large amount of text (not to mention it would look pretty ugly). Use relevant images to break up the text such as a call to action button or an image of your product.

Are there any additional sins you would add to this list? If so feel free to share them below.

What Does “Above the Fold” Mean?
This term simply refers the portions of a webpage that can be visible without scrolling. This is seen as the most important real estate on any web page as other content can be missed if a customer decides to leave the current page for any reason.

The term originates from newspapers – where important stories are placed on front side of folded papers to entice people to buy them.

But there’s a problem. Monitors aren’t like a traditional newspaper. There are a whole range of different monitor sizes and resolutions which means it’s almost impossible to ensure everyone browsing your site is going to see the same amount of content above the fold.

Luckily for us, Google has come up with a tool which can help to solve this issue, its called Browser Size.

How Does Google Browser Size Work?
Browser size looks at the average size of browser windows for people who visit Google. Given that Google is the most popular site on the web, it’s safe to assume their averages will be accurate.

To use the tool, simply type your URL into the “Enter URL here” textbox at the top of the window and click Go. The overlay will show you the percentage of users who have their browser window open to at least this size or larger.

For example, the “90%” contour means that 90% of users can see this content on their screen without having to scroll. Keeping your main message and call to action within this section of the page will give you the best chance of converting visitors.

Google says that it found that the install rate for Google Earth increased by a whopping 10% simply by moving it 100 pixels higher on the page.

Give this tool a go with your website and leave a comment below to let us know what you think.

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As search becomes ever more interconnected, and websites begin to routinely change dynamically based on your search and browser history, your ability to create and optimize individualized pieces of content (blog post, photo, video, tweet, status update, podcast, PDF, presentation) reaches critical importance. If someone is looking for “chocolate ice cream” you need to have content pieces to show up on that radar. If someone is looking for “ice cream sandwiches” you have to cover that base – as well as possibly hundres of other keyword combinations.

There are two strategic ramifications for this new era of content marketing.

First, elaborate but narrow ideas and executions need to take a back seat to simpler but widespread initiatives. One podcast with very high production values is less important than ten podcasts (about different topics) with reduced production values. (There is of course a limit to this logic. Crap is still crap). Also, if you are a larger, well-known brand that relies less upon prospective customers finding you via search or discovering you via social chatter, this principle of breadth trumping depth is not as iron-clad. But, it’s still important. Sure, people probably know how to find Toyota online. But, shouldn’t they also be using content marketing to be in the debate around vehicle safety, reliability, ethics, and an array of other topics?

Second, if you’re going to commit to creating content to fit a large number of customer queries, you can’t waste bullets. You cannot just show up to the party and create your 10 podcasts, and not think about what keywords apply, what the psychology of the people using those keywords is, and how your company can fulfill those needs. Way too much content is being created today with a mindset that goes no deeper than “well, we’re creating and uploading content, so that’s a good thing.”

There’s a Method to the Content Madness

Content without strategy is a colossal waste of time and money. You can do better than that, and you need to, as we’re entering an era where low-hanging fruit is an anachronism. When every single one of your competitors has a content marketing program, the advantage will go to whomever has the best understanding of WHY certain content is successful.

For every piece of content you create, regardless of format, you should develop a Content Rationale Report that includes these pieces of information (as an example, I’ve included prospective answers for a social media metrics chart I’m developing)

• Format of Content: Downloadable chart and glossary (PDF). Companion blog post.
• Description of Content: This chart and glossary will show businesses how to select the most appropriate social media success metrics, based on their business goals and availability of specific data.
• Budget, Including Labor: $300 + 5 hours of Convince & Convert time
• Who Will Be Interested in This Content: Small and medium-sized businesses (with an emphasis on agencies) that need to figure out social media success on a regular basis. Targeted at marketing directors.
• What Questions Does This Content Answer for Them: What social media success metrics should I be paying attention to, and why?
• What Keywords Will Be Used to Find It: Social media ROI, social media statistics, measuring social media
• What Do We Want Them to Do After Consuming It (Call-to-Action): Subscribe to C&C blog, contact C&C about training their teams on this metrics selection process, share the chart with colleagues
• 3 Success Metrics: Social sharing, RSS subscriptions, inbound leads

Here’s the worksheet in downloadable form:

This is functionally similar to the Creative Brief that ad agencies have been using for decades to help copywriters and artists understand the psychology of the customer, and what needs to be included in the advertisement. It’s a tremendous tool for keeping your marketing strategically on target, and now the Content Rationale Report repurposes the creative brief for this new era of search-driven, socially-enabled communication.

You can’t just fire content bullets randomly into the air. You have to know why you’re making it, for whom you’re making it, how they’re going to find it, and how each and every piece of content will contribute to your business success.

That’s the future of content marketing. Are you ready for it?

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The mistake many people make when going up competition is to simply fight them head-on. If a competing site is already larger than you, than a direct conflict will more than likely leave you with losses or take an extremely long time before improvement is made. Instead, think creatively and develop strategies which give you a niche or foothold your competition hasn’t discovered yet.

A good example of creative thinking can be found with keyword development. If your competition has a lockdown on a set of keywords, then a good strategy would be to develop a set of keywords which differ slightly. Don’t deviate too far from the path as you want your keywords to keep in line with the topic. However, use longer tail keywords and discover terms your competition hasn’t thought of to use yet. A small bit of research can get your going in the right direction.

Be patient. I can’t make it anymore simple than that. Even thinking creatively and sidestepping your competition won’t net you results over night. More people end up failing due to lack of patience than just about any factor out there. Giving up will always equate to failure, but if you tough it out, many times you’ll start to see improvement.

Sometimes, being the little guy gives you a tactical advantage against competition. Being on top many times can lead to complacency, leaving you with the desire to succeed. Just keep at it, and whittle away with different strategies before discovering something which can breed results. Be creative, be patient, and adapt, and you’ll be making strides.

In the past, I have always divided the SEO landscape into 3 categories: On Page, Off Page and Site Wide.  On Page Optimization refers to aligning the content and Meta data of a Web page with the targeted keyword phrases that the page is relevant to.  Off Page Optimization refers to aligning the link connectivity of the Web site to the keyword phrases that are most relevant for the situation.  Off page optimization is further divided into two sub categories: Internal Off Page Optimization and External Off Page Optimization.  Internal link optimization is concerned with site elements like the global navigation template and breadcrumb navigation.  External link optimization is primarily focused on 3rd party links that point to your site and what keywords are being used in those links.  Site wide optimization refers to cleaning up all the technical issues which can cause problems for search engines in indexing and ranking your site.  Issues like URL structure, 301 versus 302 redirects, flash, Ajax and Java script, rel tags, xml sitemaps and many other details make up our list of Site Wide Optimization rules and tactics.

Until recently, this model was an accurate reflection of the issues that need to be addressed in any SEO campaign.  But as search has advanced and new metrics have been developed that affect search rankings, a new model is necessary to encapsulate all of the variety of new tasks that are important to any successful SEO campaign.  So for 2010, here is the new search periodic table of the Eight Elements of SEO:

1) Discovery

Analytics

Obviously there is a lot more to the optimization process in this new model, and that’s because a lot has happened in the world of SEO in the last couple of years. So today I would like to put some context behind this new model and explain what else it covers.

The first element in the new model is called Discovery.  This part of the SEO process refers to all activities that are required to understand the parameters and goals of the campaign.  The Discovery phase includes keyword research, competitive analysis, understanding the business model and a review of the current analytics landscape including keyword rankings to understand as much as possible the “current state” of the SEO campaign and what the goals of the campaign are moving forward.

Universal Search Optimization refers to all activities that affect rankings for universal search elements like video, images, news, shopping, reviews and local listings.  Activities include but are not limited to optimizing video content and title tags, image alt tags, shopping feeds through Google base, and local optimization through the Google Business Center.

Usability is a separate Web discipline that focuses on user experience.  Until recently, the correlation between usability and SEO was implied but not well defined.  With the recent advent of the Google Web site Speed Test and all of its associated recommendations, the first concrete metrics that tie usability to search rankings have been established and more will follow soon.  It’s in the best interest of search engines to reward sites that have superior user experience, so you can be sure that an increasing amount of emphasis will be put on usability metrics going forward.

Social Media has long been a favorite tool of SEO practitioners for link building, reputation management and user generated content.  But now that real time search has become a prominent feature of the major search engines, the subset of social media activities that affect SEO is worthy of special attention and those activities need to be part of any successful SEO campaign.

Analytics is the engine that allows you to make decisions about your SEO campaign in terms of understanding performance and deploying resources on an ongoing basis.  Having an understanding about the differences in paid and organic traffic, brand versus non brand keyword performance and the long tail performance of your campaign are a few of the basic essentials that must be in place to strategically run a successful SEO campaign.
In my next post, I will describe a two phase process for running an SEO campaign that addresses all of the Eight SEO Elements on both a foundational and continuous basis.

I hope this gives everyone a good foundation to describe the process of SEO.  I will be speaking more about the eight elements of SEO at the Online Marketing Summit here in San Diego later this month as well as SES New York in March.

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[...] According to an August 2009 survey by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education, 86% of professionals in a variety [of] fields said that they have adopted social media in some way. [...] it also indicated that some professionals or companies are adopting social technologies without having a way to actually measure how effective or useful the measures actually are. In fact, 84% of respondents said they don’t currently measure the ROI (return on investment) of their social media programs.

Even less encouraging, more than 40% of respondents said they didn’t even know whether they could track ROI from their social tools. This is worrisome because it indicates that industries and professionals are adopting technology without actually taking into account how it will impact their business and what value it will add.

via mashable.com

Unfortunately, it’s a similar picture to what I often see in the UK, based on many conversations during this year with organizations large and small.

Not only that, far too many people don’t seem to have a clear plan that sets out what the measurable goals are for their communication and what is the role of social media tools and channels alongside traditional forms of communication.

A point that sometimes crops up that I get asked is: what are we defining as “ROI,” meaning “return on investment”? Money spent?

Not necessarily. ROI can have many meanings as long as everyone agrees on which meaning you’re applying.

I usually illustrate how easy it is to set up your situation for measurement like this, when you’re doing your planning (and well before you execute), an example if you were setting up a business blog:

If you don’t set measurable goals, no wonder there’s not much actual measuring going on.

I wonder what KD Paine or Angela Sinickas would say on this topic.

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Now what if I said they’re all irrelevant? What if I said you don’t need sales to be successful? You’d probably say (fairly sarcastically), “Why not just hand my business over to my competitors while I’m at it?”. And you’d be right – if I were serious.

Of course PR, marketing, advertising and sales are relevant, and hugely important parts of your business. But they’re not the most important part.

“But they’re the ones that bring the customers and make money, and money equals profits!” you might say. And again, you’d be right. But take a look at that sentence again.

“Customers… make money and money equals profits.”

That’s both sets of customers, new and existing. So why are so many businesses concentrating on the new and forgetting about the existing? Is the mindset, “Well, they’ve stuck with us so far, they must be happy”? If it is, be prepared for a wake-up call.

Just because a customer has stuck with you doesn’t mean they’re satisfied. They may be tied into a contract or they may feel it’s too much effort at the minute to find a new vendor. But satisfied? Not necessarily.

Have you asked them lately how they’re feeling? Have you asked how you can improve your service (don’t fall into the trap that your service has reached its plateau – nobody’s that good)? You do have ways of asking these questions, don’t you? If you’re not sure, ask yourself the following:

• Do you have a customer feedback form on your website?
• Do you have a proactive approach at asking your customers what they’re thinking?
• Do you collect your customer details and use that information to personalize your relationship?
• Do you have some form of customer service performance in place?

If you can’t answer “Yes” to at least one of these questions, you might want to check and see how many of your customers have dropped off the radar in the last 3-6 months.

As important as your sales team is, or your marketing team, or your PR team or your advertising team – as important as all these elements are to your business’s success, they all cost money.

Your customers, on the other hand? A happy customer is your sales, PR, marketing and advertising teams rolled into one. Your most loyal employee. Your most vocal supporter – and they don’t take wages from you. So look after them.

Be Pro-Active

If you collect contact information, use it. Call your customer up and ask how they’re finding their time with you. Ask how you can improve and what you can do to make their lives easier when shopping with you.

Don’t collect information initially? Fine – have a feedback form on your site and have that (or a customer feedback phone number) printed on your receipt. Encourage interaction and communication.

Or, if you have a Twitter account, have “Don’t forget to tweet about us on Twitter” printed on your receipt and then monitor your mentions. And this works both ways – you can salvage a negative impression immediately or emphasize a positive one.

Start a forum on your website where customers can chat with each other about how you’re doing, and how you can improve. Involve your employees throughout the company on the forum, and talk to your customers like human beings instead of just sales figures. Sure, you can advise on what employee can say what, but at least offer the voice to open up to and converse with.

The key thing is, sales and marketing and the rest of the new business team is exactly that – new business. And you 100% need that. But you also need existing business to build on and let you have the means to go after the new. Your customers – and by association, your customer service – are the real profit makers.

Isn’t it about time you treated them accordingly?

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Consider the recent example of Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, whose digital doppelganger created false identities spanning a range of social media sites and even claimed he had been diagnosed with skin cancer. ESPN advised in its NFL Rumor Central, “Not real, folks. In fact, if you see an athlete with a Twitter, you should assume — at least at first — that it’s fake. Assume it’s a Twitter twerp.”

What happens to celebrities happens to brands too. Identity hijacking is prevalent in social media largely because it’s easy to set up accounts and find an audience. The potential for the reach is enough of a lure. When I recently asked Facebook’s Chris Pan who Facebook’s audience is, he said something to the effect of, “Pretty soon it’ll be everyone.” He’s not that far off.

Major brands have increasing recourses in taking charge of their social identities online. If you’re in this elite group, you have a shot at pleading your case to sympathetic ears at various digital properties. MySpace has always restricted brand pages to paying marketers, Facebook is now aggressively cracking down on branded Pages not owned by someone affiliated with the brand, and Twitter will often turn over parked accounts to the rightful tweeter upon request.

Still, this strategy doesn’t solve two issues. One is that a reactive approach could occur after squatters have already damaged a marketer or brand. The other is that for the vast majority of businesses and brands, there’s no clear rightful owner. For instance, when I think of Sal’s Pizza, it’s the Sal’s Pizza on Mamaroneck Avenue in Mamaroneck, N.Y., with the best Sicilian slices I’ve ever eaten. But there are Sal’s Pizzas in Dallas, Boston, New Holland, Pa., and Little Neck, N.Y.; the last one even owns  myspace.com/salspizza. On Twitter,  @salspizza belongs to a restaurateur in Limerick, Ireland. I know the real Sal’s isn’t in Ireland – come on! – but it would be hard for Mamaroneck’s Sal to make a case, no matter how many of my old high school buddies sign a petition.

So, what’s a marketer to do? Here are ten steps to follow:

1) Run an audit of where your brands are. Note the usernames you use. If you have one flagship brand that’s also your company name, then it’s easy. If you have a stable of brands, this could be a long list.

2) Prioritize the usernames. In the Sal’s example, the business may be Sal’s Ristorante but it’s known as Sal’s Pizza, so salspizza (which is also easier to spell and type) would be the preferred name.

3) Use a site such as usernamecheck.com or knowem.com to enter see if your usernames are taken across scores of sites. Also check for other brand terms. Prioritize usernames that are both memorable and widely available — that’s the sweet spot.

4) For any sites that you know are priorities, register your key usernames. If you’re not sure which sites to prioritize, start with the ones you’ve heard of.

5) Eliminate any sites that are only for consumers and are off-limits for marketers or brands. For this and the next steps, call on the most social-media-savvy person you know, ideally someone you work with closely in your company, at an agency, or elsewhere.

6) Now you need to review all the other sites and prioritize further. If you’re at a total loss, use Compete or Quantcast’s free tools to see how much traffic the sites get, and pick a threshold. 7) For any of these sites, if you don’t plan on using them right away, fill in the minimal information required, post a link back to your homepage or the hub of your social marketing program, and adjust the privacy settings (where possible) so that’s they’re visible to the smallest audience. You don’t want to set false expectations for engaging consumers, and you don’t want to publicize a brand presence that falls short of your standards.

Check where competitors are. One easy way to do so is look for their most obvious usernames and visit those accounts to see if they’re really competitors or squatters. If you can’t find much, run some basic searches. Consider whether it’s worth joining competitors on those sites if you haven’t signed up already.

9) Share the list of registered usernames and passwords with a few trusted colleagues so you’re not the only one with the information.

10) Don’t be a jerk. You’ll find opportunities to undermine competitors throughout this process. Be one of the good guys. Try believing in karma.

Ideally, marketers will have clear-cut strategies for where they want to be and how they’ll develop their digital and social brand identities. But there are two problems with this approach. First, for many marketers, that’s just not the case. Second, if marketers think too hard about their strategy, they may never get around to covering some of the basic steps. If you don’t have a Twitter strategy, for instance, go ahead and register the most relevant usernames you can, make the profiles private, and then return to them when you know what you’re doing.

People will still impersonate celebrities and brands. It’s a price to pay for popularity, or notoriety if that’s the case. But if you’re in these arenas for real, it takes a lot of the fun off others trying to claim they’re you.

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You see, one shouldn’t be using the state of the links on the site as the measure… and such approaches are often even frowned upon by many in the biz as noted in this recent Sphinn thread. Regardless of the emotional reaction, the whole concept is flawed. I could give a rat’s ass if the links on a given site (including social and blogs) are followed because that was never the consideration in the first place.

Secondary links are the goal

The main thing, from a link building perspective, is not really about direct links but the secondary links one garners from having a viral story on said site. If one gets a hot story on places such as Digg or Twitter, how many links are being generated? This is where the story begins for link builders. Having a viral story make the rounds can often result in a great number of back links that can often be of far more value than those single authority links social spammers seem bent on getting. This is the greater value to be had from SM sites for the adventurous link builder.

Now, we can discuss brand development and authority building as an important aspect of content distribution, (and social media) but let’s stick to the potential of them for link building. When we look to target a given social site what do we want to know?

• Is the site targeted? Meaning does it have active categories relating to our market.
• What’s the demographic? Is there a viable number or market related peeps?
• What’s the reach? Is it syndicated heavily, (RSS, Twitter, Blogs, Scrapers..etc..)
• What links are top stories getting? (is the demo a linking group)

You get the idea… we want the best possible opportunity for generating secondary links from the primary exposure. That is the goal at the end of the day (from a link building perspective).

Don’t be short sighted

This is actually true of a lot of content distribution/placement channels. You shouldn’t be as concerned about the type of link as the ability to generate links from the situation. What would you rather have?

• Scenario 1 – a followed link from a marginally popular location such as http://www.under-link.com/
• Scenario 2 – a nofollowed link from a popular site (or maybe dropped by a top Twitterer).
• Scenario 3 – a followed link buried on a popular site (poor exposure)

If you said anything but Scenario 2 then please move to the front of the class, because you are failing sadly. Ultimately the actual status of the link is not going to be nearly as important as the ability to get the content in front of as many folks as possible. If you and the content team have done your job, and chosen the right locales, then you should end up with some great secondary links.

The ethical dilemma

Now, let’s deal with the purists ok? If you noted the Sphinn thread cited off the top, there are more than a few folks impassioned around this topic. For starters, I do get kinda pissy when I see folks condoning social spamming – but that’s a personal thing. I also get somewhat bemused when folks think that some tactic has been ‘outed’… cause if social spaming is a tactic, it certainly ain’t a secret. But that’s just me – I really don’t see how marketers are in a position to be complaining about web pollution – ya know what I mean?

And so I submit to you that there are far more distasteful link building methods than social/comment spamming. I don’t think it will go away anytime soon and I doubt they will ‘destroy the web’ as some have insinuated. What is the important thing for SEOs to understand is that social media, for link building, is more about the exposure of the content and not grabbing the core links. The status of the link (followed or not) should never be the consideration… that is simply short-sighted.

What say you? How do you use social media for link building?

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