Campaign Strategy: Social Media Link Building

When devising the strategy for your social media campaign, it is important to understand that there are two main types of social media sites, networking sites and link building sites, and each category has it’s own rules and best practices.  In my past posts I have discussed how to effectively use social networking sites to increase your brand awareness and promote your products/services, so in the next few posts I want to discuss the link building side of social media, and teach you a few tricks of the trade.  In this post, I will discuss what link building is and why you should engage in it, and in my next post, I will share with you some link building best practices, and help you begin your bookmarking strategy.

First of all, lets start at the begining.  Link Building is the process of creating inbound links to ones own website. This can be done by reciprocal links, being listed in e-zines, newsletters, directories, search engines, etc.  Link building is one of the best ways to increase your search rankings and drive traffic to your website, but if you expect to see results, you must learn how to build links correctly, and place them on the right link building sites.  Social Marketing expert Michelle MacPhearson explains, “link building sites are typically social bookmarking sites, sites where you can add your articles (and link to your site within the article) and sites where users submit content or links to content and other users vote that content up or down.”

Some of the most popular link building social media Web sites include:

• Squidoo
• Digg
• Propeller
• Del.icio.us
• Weebly
• StumbleUpon
• Reddit

I know this may seem like a lot of Web sites to submit your links to, but think of it this way… If you submit 1 link a day to 4 social bookmarking Web sites, every day for a month, you will have over 120+ links linking back to your website.

To make things even better, there are several bookmark aggregator sites out there that will allow you to streamline your submission process and help you organize your submission process.  One of my favorites is Social Poster, a social bookmarketing aggregator that allows you to submit your posts to multiple bookmarking Web sites with one click.  This tool has rapidly decreased the amount of time I am spending bookmarking my submissions, and offers over 70+ social bookmarking sites for you to submit to.

Now that you understand what link bulding is, and why you should engage in a link building strategy, take a little time to think about which social bookmarking platforms will work best for your campaign.  Each network targets a different type of content, and each site has a different audience that you will be reaching, so it is important for you to understand where you want to target your campaign to see the best results.  In my next post I will be taking you a step deeper into link building, by explaining some best practices of the trade, and helping you begin to build out your own link building strategy.

Campaign Strategy: Online Community Best Practices

As social media continues to sweep the nations, more and more companies are venturing into the online community space to promote their company’s products or services.  Unfortunately, all too many of these companies fail because they are looking at online communities solely as a new way to market themselves, by constantly pushing spammy messages to their members, and not as an opportunity to increase brand engagement, or develop brand evangelists.

Jeremiah Owyang, Sr. Analyst at Forrester Research, defines an online community as “an interactive group of people joined together by a common interest.” These groups of like-minded individuals can be focused around a brand or a set of product and services, an when properly developed, customer communities often sprout up some of your brand’s most passionate customers. Successful examples of online communities include XMFan around XM Radio, HDTalking for Harley-Davidson, and IKEAFANS on IKEA products, and who can forget Dell’s online community, which it famously used for a corporate image turnaround in 2007, and due to it’s success remains  one of the most highly regarded and highly trafficked customer communities online.

So how do you develop an successful online community for your brand?  To help you along your journey, I have compiled a list of best practices that will help you develop a solid interactive community.

1. Start with a solid community strategy. Your community needs to be rich with features supporting communication, collaboration, feedback and knowledge exchange. Remember, a community is a social entity.  You must give them means to communicate with each other (and you).
2. Put the needs of the community first. Communities exist to serve the needs of their members, and making sure the community has truly free rein to serve itself — even if it ends up recommending competitor’s products in some cases or becoming a venting zone for customer’s complaints — is essential for the community to thrive through open conversation, honesty, trust, and candor.
3. Tailor your communications. Do NOT fall into the trap of bulk messaging, or “friending” people you do not know without a proper introduction first.  Show them the value your community offers, and invite them to join.
4. Keep communication consistent. Make sure you communicate and engage with your community throughout the year, not just before large events or promotions.  You must engage with your community members every day.  Your success, and the return on investment you can achieve are directly related to the amount of time and effort you put in to your community.
5. Take an active roll in other communities outside of your own network. By contributing ideas, lessons learned, industry information, and your opinion, you will be adding value to their community and promoting yours at the same time.  Remember, if you do not add value to your presence, your community people will reject you.
6. Think outside of to discover new ways to facilitate community. Look outside of industry barriers, and pay attention to what market leaders in other industries are doing in other areas to create a strong and vibrant community that can be found nowhere else.  Consider this part of your core competitive advantage.
7. Give your community a voice, and listen when they speak. Help your community to feel empowered.  Ask them to suggest new product or service ideas, vote on topics and speakers, and use the community in new ways you    didn’t    plan on.
8. Encourage your brand evangelists. Support and reward loyalty and dedication for those who go above and beyond to assist     you with building community value.
9. Don’t forget about the press. There are many new forms of press/news emerging out of the traditional space, including bloggers, social media press releases, etc..  Work cooperatively with these new voices to cover your conferences, upcoming product/service launches, industry papers, and    community by using a variety of new mediums.

Conclusions

In conclusion, if you are expecting results from your social media strategy, you must be willing to put in a substantial amount of effort following the guidelines above.  Jeremiah Owyang expounds, “ To host a successful community, think of it as you would product development: Start by focusing on objectives, chart a road map, assemble the right team, and plan to be flexible. Then build your success by launching the community with the backing of your most enthusiastic customers and staying engaged as the community grows.”

For additional ideas on how to effectively engage with your customers online, check out “So You Have a Facebook Profile…Now What?”

If you have any questions about online community building, leave me a comment with your email, and I will be sure to send you a fast reply.

Internet Marketing News: Online Video Named as a Primary Focus of Marketers in 2009

According to a recent survey, conducted by PermissionTV of more than 400 senior-level decision makers online video is now the top priority for digital marketing budgets for 2009.  The study finds that more than 50% of marketers surveyed are planning to launch an online video campaign by Q2 of 2009, and 32% are implementing their video campaign now. Chad Ciesil, President at WhittmanHart Interactive, a leading interactive marketing firm, explains, “As the PermissionTV survey shows, marketing executives across many industries recognize online video as a critical component of their digital marketing initiatives.  We’re recommending the use of online video in all of our client’s campaigns as it can lead to greater customer engagement and better campaign ROI.”

When looking at they types of online video marketers are planning, nearly 60 percent of respondents considered interactive video experiences to be the next evolution for online video, followed closely by non-linear, interactive video storytelling.   Matt Kaplan, VP of Solutions and Chief Strategy Officer of PermissionTV, explains “… online video will play an increasingly critical role in all interactive campaigns. [The] survey results demonstrate the strategic importance of online video in the overall marketing mix… as well as more sophisticated video experiences.”

After reading the report from PermissionTV, eMarketer went on to conduct their own research on video marketing, and based off their findings, they estimate that spending on online video advertising will grow to $4.6 billion in 2013, representing a more than sevenfold increase from the $587 million spent on the format in 2008. eMarketer estimates that more than four out of five Internet users will watch online video ads in 2012, which is up from the two-thirds who did so in 2008.

To anyone even remotely connected with online marketing, the results of this report should not come as a surprise. Online video is a fantastic medium to reach consumers, as it allows brand marketers to create and send out a message on multiple levels via visual imagery, the spoken word, music and visual text. For more information on online video marketing, keep checking back here on our blog.  I am currently working on an Online Video Best Practices Guide, which I will be publishing online soon, and I would love to hear your suggestions, or help you answer any questions you have in the online video space.