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It’s Hard, But Don’t Feed The Trolls

October 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

TrollIt’s hard on Social Media to avoid them. They’re ugly, stinky and bad tempered. Trolls are the bane of everyone’s existence online. You can avoid them and we’ve all have given in and fought back against them. But I’m here to tell you to stop fighting them. Don’t feed the trolls.

The greatest way to put any bully out of their miserable pathetic online life is to not respond and ignore them. Continue about your day online and off without a second thought about them.

You see they feed off your anger, your contempt and your retort.

In the end if you don’t feed the trolls they will shrink and eventually disappear. If they don’t, it won’t matter because you won’t be paying any attention to them.

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Charlie Sheen: Marketing’s Newest Guru?

March 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Charlie Sheen: Film star, television star, comedian…online marketing genius?

Think about it.

He headlined the news for several weeks, until the recent Japanese earthquake and tsunami, because of his very public war with CBS and, according to some experts, his mental meltdown that played out before the cameras. And, during those few weeks, he garnered both admiration and disgust for his rants and off-the-wall sayings. He started his own webcast followed by the announcement that he was going on a national tour (which sold out).

He reached one million Twitter followers in a mere 24 hours.

Even people who had never heard of Charlie Sheen before know him now. (And, whether they genuinely like him or just enjoy watching his meltdown is probably up for debate.)

Charlie Sheen did seemingly overnight what online marketers and entrepreneurs spend hours and hours and pour money into achieving, yet not always succeeding. So, whether Sheen knows what he’s doing or not, are there lessons to be learned from his online explosion?
Sure, and many take us right back to the basics of marketing – both online and off.

Give your target market what it wants and do it in a variety of mediums.

The media jumped on the Charlie Sheen bandwagon from the beginning, giving him plenty of airtime. And, many people were sucked in, especially when Sheen began with his now-infamous sayings. Tiger blood and Adonis DNA and winning are two of the most popular. They re-tweeted his Tweets, posted them on Facebook, and shared them with friends.

He saw people were paying attention so he kept up with the tweets, added a webcast, and along came a tour. He saw what people wanted and kept feeding them more in several different platforms.

Give your target market what it wants and do it in variety of ways. Sure, you might be loyal to Twitter, but not everyone in your target market is going to love Twitter. Some people use Facebook. Others prefer subscribing to a blog.  Get your message out there through a variety of mediums, and evaluate which work best. Maybe your target market is pressed for time, so you opt for Twitter and Facebook over long webcasts.

Come up with a catch phrase or a slogan, something that sets you apart.

What do you think when you hear “Just Do It?” “I’m loving it,” and “Winning”? Nike, McDonald’s and Charlie Sheen? Think of a catch phrase, something that is going to make people, when they hear it, automatically think of your business. It might just end up on t-shirts like Nike and, now Sheen, sells.

Get it while it’s hot.

If you have an opportunity to get in front of your target market, do it. Charlie Sheen isn’t the only one cashing in on his oft-uttered name these days. Plenty of other businesses are, too. AOL featured an article of the many ways companies are using Sheen’s visibility to increase their own, including a hot dog joint selling “Charlie Dogs with Tiger Blood.”

Even if you don’t want to risk your reputation by linking your name with Sheen, take advantage of marketing opportunities when they arise, even if you’re not sure they will work.

Try everything.

Don’t be afraid to try new ways to get in front of your target market.

Charlie Sheen is throwing out a new idea every day – t-shirts, books, live shows, a reality show and a talk show – to stay in the spotlight. At the same time, he’s selling the Charlie Sheen brand. Come up with multiple, creative ways to keep your business in the forefront of the public’s mind.

Ultimately, whether Sheen’s visibility continues to rise, he’s reminded the online marketing world and entrepreneurs of some very basic, important marketing lessons: Give the people what they want. Capitalize on your opportunities, and perhaps most important, create your own marketing opportunities.

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Is Your Brand Name and Social Media Efforts Affecting Your SEO and Link Building Results?

December 2, 2009 By 11 Comments

Justin Freid PhotoQuality inbound links to your website play a large role in the top search engines algorithms; the actual anchor text of the link also is one of the key factors for evaluating that specific link. The anchor text lets the robot, or crawler, know what to expect from the page it is landing on.

A company with a strong brand name can run into a few issues when it comes to SEO. If no link building strategy was laid out, chances are most of the inbound links to a well branded company’s web site will have the brand name as anchor text. If the site you are working on could be considered a “dinosaur” chances are you are dealing with a plethora of links that are not utilizing your top performing keywords in the anchor text.

There are a couple of things to keep in mind when approaching this issue. First, a strong brand name is important. You do not want to completely negate the brand name your company has built for SEO purposes. You marketing team may have a couple issues with that. At the same time it is important to include your high converting keywords within the anchor text of your inbound links.

Marketing, PR, along with your SEO and social media teams need to all be on the same page to overcome this dilemma. It will be important to have your marketing and PR team promote your product with your brand name and tops keywords together. Also make sure that the messages you are delivering through social media clearly showcase the keywords you are attempting to have as anchor text for inbound links. If someone is already using your brand name for a Twitter account an alternate option could be a @handle that combines your brand name and a top converting keyword string.

For example let’s say Ford is attempting to jump into the hybrid car market. Ford’s website likely has tens of thousands of inbound links with the anchor text “Ford”. You search for “Ford” and you going to be directed to their website, but if you search for “hybrid cars” they are nowhere to be found. It will be important for your marketing and PR team to place your strategically planned out keywords in their press releases and advertising initiatives.

Creating a niche social media identity specifically to promote you’re the new hybrid line of cars could Ford could also help with this issue. If you are interacting with bloggers and other green related industry types and your twitter name is something like “@FordHybrid” they will be used to associating the two together,and when it comes time to link to you page they will do what comes instinctively and use both terms in the anchor text.

Now let’s pretend “Hybrid Cars” is the top searched keyword and even though Ford may rank low for the term it converts well when users find their way to the site. Having your marketing efforts include terms such as “Ford’s Hybrid Cars” or “Ford | Hybrid Cars” can help you boost your SEO results while still including your brand name. Hopefully when someone goes to write a blog post about Ford’s new hybrid cars, they will actually use the anchor text “Ford’s new hybrid cars” instead of only using “Ford” as the anchor text.

This will help Ford not only continue to have a strong brand name but associated it with hybrid cars, and should have a positive effect in SERPs as well for your keywords. Make sure to use keyword variations like “Electric Cars from Ford” or “Hybrid Automobiles by Ford” as well.

And if you happen to be one of those working with a dinosaur, make sure to check your internal linking strategy as well. Chances are there are quite a few links linking back to your homepage and other sections of your site with your brand name as the anchor text.

Justin Freid is the Traffic and Lead Delivery Manager for Petersons College Search and StudentEdge College Planning. Justin works in the product development, SEO and creates social media strategies for Petersons and is currently pursuing an MBA at Philadelphia University. You can find Justin’s thoughts on the world of social media and SEO on his blog, Justin Freid – Search and Social Media Marketing and follow him on Twitter under the handle @Justin_Freid

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Google Reader to Feed Your Lifestream Addiction

September 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Here’s a screencast I made this morning on using Google Reader’s search features to follow your some of your social lifestream in your reader.

Readers still provide a simple interface for following the updates from your favorite blogs. But Google Reader has been adding small social features, which help make it a more useful tool in your daily online activities.

Here’s the screencast on using Google Reader to streamline and aggregate your lifestream:

As you can see, Google Reader offers a limited array of services, but since it offers Twitter, it’s definitely a step forward in real-time updates.

Let us know what you think in the comments or on Twitter.

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