David Scott’s weekly wrap up of all things Social Media with David’s insightful commentary.

1. Need some work done?

Why not hire your next employee from social media

We all know that stat – up to 70% of jobs are never advertised, with many coming from personal connections or word of mouth.  Enter social media.  A highly connected network of professionals on the look out for the next big thing?  Check.  An easy way of interacting both formally and informally with potential recruits? Why not. Better than scouring job ads in the paper? Probably!
For the job hunters, here’s five top tips for scoring your dream gig on social media

Social Media Job Search >> Read More

And if you want to actually get a job in social media, check out this list of hints

5 Minute Job Search >> Read More

2. Got a company blog? Why not make it an e-book

I was first put onto the idea of e-books as real, viable ways to market a company by a guy called David Meerman Scott (no, not my doppleganger, evil twin etc).  Prior to that I thought them quite nerdy, niche and, well, unnecessary.  But D Scott turned my head around with this short post (which he later presented in person which was just as effective). Essentially, he says, that marketing your web content should be an integral part of your online presence, and the humble e-book helps capitalise on that.

Read on here

The always on-point team at Copyblogger break down how easy it is to turn your greatest strength – the knowledge and expertise of the business – into a published form.

Copyblogger >> Read More

And as a bonus, check out this discussion about whether sponsored posts on blogs are good or evil…

 Blogs Good or Evil >> Read More

3. Using Facebook to market your brand.

We all love infographics and even the odd sales funnel, so here’s something that includes both of those in a neat way to talk up the anatomy of a fan on Facebook, and how you can use that to market your brand better.

How to market your Business with Facebook

One way you can tailor rewards for your fans is geotargeting. Heard of it? Simple concept really; use the data you have on your online audiences to market to specific areas of the world.  Still not on board? Here, read this little case study featuring some Jamaican musicians and a whole stack of rice and goats, and then think about this: when you’re doing your next campaign through Facebook etc, are you targeting the right people with the right things?

Geotargeting with Facebook >> Read More

However if it all goes horribly wrong, here’s how to handle upset Facebook fans.

7 tips for saving upset customers on Facebook >> Read More

4. Daily Deals = Daily Death?

The daily deals phenomenon has claimed it’s first victim, and what a victim it was: just weeks after rollout here in Australia, Facebook Deals is dead, gone and buried.

Facebook daily deals dies >> Read More

It’s been a wild ride, but the question is: are we over it already?

5. Website of the Week: FastCoDesign.com

Design + the web + social media + pretty pictures = winning combination.
From the editor(s) themselves: “…we believe that a company’s most important employees aren’t its bankers or management gurus, but rather the graphic, industrial, and interface designers who design the things a company actually makes.”  And given that those designs, those graphics, those ideas are going to be the public image of your company, it’s a great spot to get some inspiration.

fastcodesign.com

I hope you enjoy this week’s Listening Post,

Cheers, David.

David Scott Joins Integrati Marketing as our Social Media commentator and expert.

We are pleased to let you know after lengthy negotiations (quite a few lattes) and discussions that we welcome David Scott to the Integrati Marketing Blog.

David is an Australian Media expert and active commentator with all things Social Media. David is a professional media specialist having worked in commercial TV and broadcast journalism.

With David’s extensive knowledge and insight about not only the Australian media landscape but also the trends, best practice observations and “what not to do” in Social Media, we are sure you will find David’s weekly updates of interest.

Even better, as you would expect David being a professional communications expert brings an engaging and easy to read  style of writing to this site which we greatly appreciate. So, welcome David and we look forward to reading more from you about Social Media in the coming weeks.

Clinton

Integrati Marketing.

Introducing SEO into an enterprise-sized business

The Australian Direct Marketing Association has shared a great starters guide to SEO!

ADMA have created a Starters Guide for implementing Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) into Small Medium Enterprises (SME).

As they state in the introduction;

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is now an
integral and critical aspect of how products
and services are marketed. And while
positioning a brand so it has the greatest
visibility in the search engine sphere is a key
outcome, that isn’t where the SEO story
ends.

Effective interpretation of how search
engines function and what people search for
must seamlessly integrate with other
important aspects, to contribute to an
effective SEO outcome.
This white paper details the SEO process,
and highlights key areas for consideration to
drive successful results.

This document we think is a good start to give you a traditional view of the digital landscape.

Importantly, they give clear guides as to what you should look to plan and how to build out targets and measures.

We think this is a great approach. That is why we are sharing this and even better why they wrote it we are sure!

The more education about what SEO can be and is critically important, rather than the spurious ‘Guru’ services, which other sites espouse with dubious long-term results.

The ADMA guide is well worth the read.

Heard of ADMA?

You may know of the Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA) if you have not, then you may wish to learn more about them here.

ADMA, are focused on;

Since our foundation in 1966, ADMA’s mission has been to create an environment for the advancement of responsible, effective and enlightened marketing.

ADMA bring together experience in below the line marketing (BTL) from the top business all over Australia. BLT Marketing is effectively anything that is not mass communication like Radio, Newspapers, TV and magazines for instance.

So, these guys are specialists in understanding what it means to deliver targeted, relevant communications to prospective and existing customers through direct marketing techniques. And one of the most important direct marketing channels is the Internet which is a Direct Marketing channel.

ADMA have a load of resources and they espouse a methodology which is eminently measurable which walks hand-in-hand with what integrated marketing should be, accountable!

Well as integrated marketing practitioners we think so anyway at Integrati Marketing.

Let us know what you think

We would like to know what you think about the guide and we would be happy to talk with you about your site and business.

Read the ADMA SEO Guide here

ADMA – SEO Guide 2010-09-01 – Final

Let’s be clear, there is no ‘secret’ to writing copy that drives great website engagement plus high levels of traffic with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

There are literally millions of websites and SEO Guru’s that suggest they have the ‘secret recipe’ and that by engaging these so called Guru’s your site or a page in your site will hit pay dirt by being at the top of a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) .

Google has over 200 ‘Signals’ which they use to rank content. The only way to write content that will work for your site is by writing content first and foremost for your audience and write about things that are helpful, easy to understand and most importantly helpful!

That is some of the best SEO content writing advice you can get for you and your business or employer.

Oh, and writing in Plain English aimed at high school level will help too!

Honestly!

Whilst we now know and remember, we should write for our audience first, we can also use some concepts and tools to also help us potentially improve our content further.

But, importantly this is not to degrade the article by ‘stuffing’ in Keywords or Terms.

This example of web content was written by using several free online SEO and Google tools as well as a new marketing cloud service called Inbound Writer.

Let’s get into a fight!

The first thing we checked before we started this article was “who we are picking a fight with“. That sounds pretty terrible doesn’t it.

Believe me it actually is not a bad idea.

Recently I read Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson which in the chapter titled Pick a fight advises you should choose a competitor that you want to target as you believe your have a better product or service etc.

If you think a competitor sucks say so… Taking a stand always stands out

But I added a wee twist to this.

I have been targeting some top ranked Australian Marketing sites since I started Integrati Marketing.

I don’t necessarily think that everything they do is bad but I think there integrated marketing strategies and their website executions suck.

And with Jason and Davids advice on board plus my twist, I targeted three Australian Marketing sites that all suggest they have great content writing, creative writing, organic SEO skill, that will help your business get ranked and outperform the competition blah blah!

Do these top Australian Marketing sites really help you?

But they really don’t provide any practical marketing help or insight on the doing!

And marketing is all about the doing otherwise it is all hot air… or paid for consultancy hot air!

Marketing help – We’re here to help you!

So as we promise to hep you here is some expansion on a service we reviewed a few months back here on our blog known as WooRank and combining this with Inbound Writer to help you with your content.

With a couple of clicks and a WooRank of the competition site by “Site Reviewing” the competition we had 3 target websites to benchmark our SEO content for this articles optimised content.

Let’s show you guys how you can use these tools to help your site and content work harder for you!

Now we have a target list of websites and their competition which we can then compare the content writing on their sites to the article we are writing.

Inbound Writer let’s us add 3 websites to the new document we are dynamically creating in Inbound Writer which helps us as SEO Copywriters.

Next we add in Focus Terms of what we will be writing about in our article.

I have used very generic terms as this article is for learning outcomes not to boost our SEO… we’re actually more interested in sharing this new marketing cloud service with you!

Then we add in the 3 target websites just so…

So that is our methodology to start with, but the first rule always still applies write for your audience.

Next, Inbound Writer heads off to the web and starts analysing over 35 different sites and also your target sites for either target content or who you have defined as competition for the article your writing.

When Inbound Writer has finished, you will be presented with what looks and is an online editing tool that you can start to write your articles content into.

The team at Inbound Writer allow you to write up to 8 articles a month which we also think is pretty cool. Then you can go to work on your article and start writing.

As we have done with our ‘live article’ here, which is a creative writing process in itself, for this blog post about content writing with Inbound Writer.

Write and learn

Now you can write a document prior starting the Inbound Writer process or you can write one in the editor as you go which I have done here to show you some tips and I guess “How to’s”.

When we first started the article Inbound Writer presented us with this information about our document as we had no content.

But it does have all the information we have aggregated from our Focus Terms and the Sites we added in.

So with this information I can now target Keywords and Focus Terms.

Here comes the dynamic Content Writing assistance

The “Document Tips” and “Relevant Terms” is the information which has been assessed by Inbound Writer and presented to us in the editor.

So as we write we can now start to weave into the copy to improve our SEO content with helpful keywords and for our organic SEO in our web content strategy.

As we build up the content Inbound Writer let’s us know how we are going and gives us Document Tips and also an overall Document Score.

So, after we had been writing for a while we started to get document advice and assistance from Inbound Writer which is really helpful.

This helps us check we are on track, you can also highlight your Focus Terms and Keywords in the document and see the changes real-time.

Even better as the content builds out you get even more helpful advice from Inbound Writer to improve the new document with Document Tips.

More than one SEO Content Strategy?

Also we can choose different strategies which we can employ with the Inbound Writer content writer.

The SEO Content, Keyword and optimised content can be targeted with different weightings by selecting a distinct strategy such as; Balanced Strategy, Maximizing Search Strategy and Minimize Search Competition.

There are 2 more strategies of Maximise Social Strategy and Custom Strategy but the team at Inbound Writer are still working on these.

As you write you can keep highlighting the Relevant Terms and Focus Terms which your have decided your document should be targeting.

But this does not change the rules of writing to the audience and making sure your writing in Plain English!

Does this help you?

Hopefully you will find this article of interest and maybe you will even give Inbound Writer a go and try our strategy or even better your own.

By the way we have no association with Inbound Writer or Referral Tracking on our site to them, we just thought that you might like to try it for yourself.

If you do need any help with your site and would likes my assistance with SEO or rather Search Engine Optimization without the marketing puffery we are happy to help.

We love to talk marketing, but we love making it real even more!

I have written about advertising and the importance of advertising to become accountable since the inception of Integrati Marketing. Marketing accountability is really core to marketing effectiveness today and will in the near future be considered a ‘hygiene factor’.

This is not because I believe that advertising does not work, it means that we know that mass media advertising has become less effective in the 15 years I have worked in Marketing and now as an Integrated Marketing practitioner.

Back in 2006 McKinsey and Co published a report that provided a clear measure that advertising via mass media was not only losing audience numbers but even more worryingly there was little engagement which means reduced effectiveness.

In fact they predicted by 2010 that TV Advertising would be 1/3 less effective than it was in 1990.

What is Customer Engagement?

Customer Engagement (CE) is not a unique term invented with the creation of the Internet. The notion of customer engagement was present in retail and customer service businesses marketing prior to the Internet and web metrics.

Our take on Customer engagement is the connection of both on and offline marketing information which lets us understand how into our content they are.

A definition presented by Eric Peterson’s work on Customer Engagement provides what is an excellent working definition:

Engagement is an estimate of the degree and depth of visitor interaction against clearly defined set of goals.

The key points here are that an agreed way to measure the engagement exists and that the visitor interactions can be many and varied with our marketing communications.

So what?

OK, so we have a clear understanding of what Customer Engagement is how does that help my business and support our objectives and marketing practices.

Customer Engagement is important.

Customer Engagement measures when agreed by your team and in your business enable you to define targets and measure the effectiveness of your marketing communications (digital marketing and Offline Marketing) or rather conversations with your Clients, Customers and Followers.

There are many options available to measure engagement, but one of the best channels is your website.

Tracking engagement measures such as; bounces, time on page, number of visits, bookmarking, tweets, Likes, are all different levels of engagement.

With Google Analytics or other web analytics services you can set up simple dashboards that enable reporting of your website and tracked advertising links to campaign pages or your sites content pages.

This is important as you may want to answer questions like; “Which keyword in my Search Engine Marketing provides the best conversion and longer term engagement”.

Looking at Ghuniem’s degrees of engagement we can look at a framework that can be created in Google Analytics to measure web site and advertising in the stages of the Degrees of Engagement.

So, with this criteria we can now look at Google Analytics for instance and build out segmentation that allows us to monitor customer engagement with Ghuniem’s criteria from the Customer degrees of Engagement continuum.

We can do this via the Google Analytics Advanced Segmentation section.

If you would like help understanding your web site and customer engagement metrics then feel free to contact us to talk to you about your business. We’d love to talk Marketing with you!