Week in Review

This was another packed week. What ever happened to the July-August slowdown? Luckily for us Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank® Online Marketing agreed to be interviewed about how TopRank uses social media tactics to distinguish itself in the market, plus how TopRank’s clients are using social media to grow their business online. The interview was so good we had to break it into two parts? You can read part one here and part two here.

First we asked Lee whether his blog has helped generate new business. His answer was:

Online Marketing Blog has been instrumental in promoting the TopRank brand as an authority on topics related to search marketing and public relations. We consistently get inquiries from very desirable clients that say, “We’ve been reading your blog for X number of weeks or months and would like to hire you.”

We’ve put a substantial amount of effort into the blog as a marketing tool, so understandably it is the best source of new business over any other marketing initiative we’ve ever engaged.

The blog has been an excellent tool for improving TopRank’s thought leadership, reputation and credibility in the industry and subsequently, with potential clients.

TopRank provides blog consulting services for SEO, online marketing and public relations purposes and those clients sincerely appreciate the fact that we “walk the talk” with our own blog efforts. For example, Online Marketing Blog is ranked in the Technorati 100 “favorites” and top 120 “most popular” blogs out of 80 million and has been recognized by various rankings of top marketing and social media blogs.

Then we asked Lee what he believes are some of the opportunities in social media that marketers are not taking advantage of. His answer was:

I believe there’s a tremendous opportunity from really getting to know what the social communities are about. Because there’s no unified method of performing SEO, many of the newer search marketers perform site optimization tactics much like throwing spaghetti against a wall to see if it sticks. Doing that with social media without considering a social community’s way of interacting, can result in alienation and distrust of the resource being promoted.

In order to get value out of a social media marketing channel, marketers need to understand the importance of creating value for the communities. I’ve seen many drive-by social marketing efforts fail in their attempt to engage the audience and instead, create a negative brand experience because the marketer did not become a part of the community or offer something the community members would value.

Successful marketing with social media is a combination of active participation, involvement and creation of value as well as a continuous process of testing and measuring new channels to see what new communities might become the next Digg, Facebook or StumbleUpon.

We also wrote about Creating Buzz Online For New Products and a new study from Nielsen BuzzMetrics. The study showed that:

10% of brands accounted for 85% of total CPG buzz in the study. For example, over-the-counter drug brands have generated lots of comment, partly driven by consumers’ high level of involvement with them. Edgy brands were also among the top 10% of products with the most buzz.

As Glen Allsopp commented:

People need to realize something has to be great for it to go viral, good wont cut it

We have some great interviews lined up for the next two weeks with two of the leaders in the social media space. On Monday we talk to Cameron Olthuis and the following week it is Neil Patel’s turn.

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