Earned Media is basically free media. Earned Media specifically refers to publicity gained through editorial influence and has become the backbone of many social media initiatives and social content development strategies.

With so much user generated content these days, it would behoove an organization not to take advantage of the magnitude of earned media – integrating an earned media strategy during content conception into execution.

Definition

To get the definitions out of the way, those in the marketing and agency world are privy to the buzzwords “paid,” “earned” and owned.” Traditionally, they stand for the different types of media and can be easily broken down like this:

• Paid: Buying a 30-second Super Bowl spot
• Earned: Coverage on Mashable (aka user word of mouth)
• Owned: Your company’s website

The business case for Earned Media

Don’t forget all content — whether it’s text, a video or a microsite — will be “reduced to a link” for social spheres making Earned Media an easy thing to do. There were 500 billion word-of-mouth impressions made by Americans online according to Forrester. Such volumes of word-of-mouth marketing can spread awareness of a product incredibly quickly, and it’s why earned media has become so important to a marketing campaign.

Understanding its usage

Let’s run through a scenario. Earned Media, for example, is what you get when you develop a connection with someone that’s compelled to write a Yahoo review, a blog post, a comment or a tweet, sharing their thoughts on your brand with their social network. It sounds simple but it does take forethought.

Specifically, you will need to develop a strategy at content conception and then filter everything through its earned potential. That is, did I get the right audience, is the content compelling to share (good or bad) and do we make it easy to ‘syndicate’ the efforts (share tools, icons, other channels and formats) and, most importantly, does it integrate nicely as a natural springboard from traditional paid or owned media?

More on Earned Media:

For Social Media Marketing, Earned Media Rules -- MediaPost

How Social Media is Changing Paid, Earned and Owned Media -- Mashable

Defining Earned, Owned And Paid Media – Forrester Blogs

Best

Denice MacDonald

Many organizations are obsessed with volume – measuring their web metrics strategy by how many web pages that were viewed or by how many people that have visited. In many cases, this type of information is meaningless as it is not directly linked to a web plan or strategy.

Whether its website traffic analysis, search engine optimization or tracking business success metrics, you need to develop a web strategy ‘up front’ to support measurement objectives. This thought process seems so fundamental but rarely exercised.  Take these simple rules:

A strategic plan for evaluating your website will help you:

1. Collect only the data you need to make informed, strategic decisions
2. Identify priority “action areas” for improvement, measure the impact of those actions -- and keep your customers coming back
3. Determine benchmarks and performance goals you should aspire to, and the extent to which you’re achieving them
4. Determine whether you’re getting a return on the investment you’ve made to build, operate and maintain your website(s)
5. Evaluate how well your website is performing relative to competitors, your company's brand, mission statement or hiring criteria

Develop a plan – a strategy – and review and adjust it regularly by asking these questions:

• What do you need to measure
• What are your requirements
• How will you measure it
• What tools will you use
• What methodologies are needed to gather the data you need
• What will you do with the results
• How will the results help meet the goals for your website and your company's mission
• How does the plan fit with your company's overall strategic and performance plan

Once armed with this process and validation, you will find that your ROI exceeds expectations. 

Great Resources:

Coremetrics Web Metrics
Get powerful website metrics with the leading provider.

Web Measurement Data Fast
ClickTracks web measurement shows behavior, conversion, groups, SEO.

WebTrends Analytics
Marketing Intelligence Solutions, leading analytic & metrics software.

Web Analytics
Compare web analytics products and get a free report sample from CMS Watch.

Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics
If you have an interest in measuring the success of your website, then this book is definitely for you!

Best,

Denice MacDonald

A heat map is a picture of a web page that shows where users click when they visit a particular page.  From a techy perspective, a heat map is artificial intelligence that simulates human vision during the first 5 seconds of exposure to visuals.  

How does it work? 

The areas that are clicked most often appear in red (hot spot), while the areas clicked least often appear in blue or with no color at all.   

Why should you care? 

Heat maps are a tool used by web developers as part of usability testing. Understanding how visitors behave when they visit your web site is crucial to improving its effectiveness – not to mention conversion.  

Looking at the image to the right, it appears that MacDonald Consulting needs to improve image placement on the header and within center copy real estate to increase visitor interaction and conversion. 

Doing so will encourage visitors to click on header links (top blue area to the right within the graphic).

How to build a website heat map: 

Two of the most popular heat map generator applications are CrazyEgg and Feng-GUI.

Give it a try! You'll be amazed!

Best

Denice MacDonald

Nielson Online called LinkedIn, “The world’s largest audience of affluent, influential professionals.”  In fact, you will find more than 80 million of them from more than 200 countries. LinkedIn’s population is highly educated; more than 80 percent have bachelor or graduate degrees.  

With that being said, LinkedIn provides the greatest opportunity to create business relationships, partnerships and highly refined / qualified leads. Most of the research I’ve done on this topic is fairly straight forward and easy to do.  Here are just a few suggestions - check out the links below for specifics:

1.     Don’t assume your LinkedIn profile should be a quick thirty second sell – this is an opportunity to layout your personal and company information in a way that says ‘let’s create an ongoing dialoque’ --- and  by the way, I’m an expert with information I want to continually share with you…

2.     Have a complete profile - include polls, videos, your blog feed and PowerPoint presentations. Using the new publications application, post your e-books, books, articles and other publications.

3.     Connect via groups – not only sign up but participate on an ongoing basis. Share information and begin creating relationships.

4.     Create a community on LinkedIn – one that is authentic and consistently shares pertinent and relevant information to the group. 

5.  Lastly – don’t forget to optimize your profile – that is, insure that you are using relevant keywords within all rich media links that will get your profile noticed on search.  

To learn more – check out these must-have resources: 

LinkedIn Cheat Sheet by my favorite Hubspot Certified Partner Kuno Creative:
http://www.kunocreative.com/linkedin-cheat-sheet/ 

How to optimize your profile with keywords by Linked Strategies:
http://www.linkedstrategies.com/linkedin-keyword-optimization-video/

View Denice's Linked Profile:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/macdonaldconsultingservices

Good luck!
Denice

[LinkedIn photo image from http://technorati.com/]

I have several hundred true blog followers to my website and they have been thirsty for knowledge on social media, search engine optimization and anything metrics – 30,000 page views to be exact.  

Therefore, I feel it necessary to provide the following links that represent the most clicked, viewed and downloaded blogs from my website for 2010 – just in case anyone needs these resources again. 

Top 2010 Blogs (ranked in order by page views) 

Staying Nimble: Social Media 2010 - According to several leading experts, social media has been the number one priority in 2010. Social media will be used by organizations to lift their brand, stay connected to customers while using networks to grow their lead-gen pipelines. To learn how your organization can capitalize on what others are doing, check out these ‘top’ resources, articles and blogs from leading subject matter experts.  

Don’t Miss This One: Connecting Social Media and Email - I find it interesting that most organizations don’t realize that e-mail marketing is the original ‘backbone’ of social interaction and should always be part of the social mix.  Simply adding some ‘integrated’ content will aid in elevating your brand – not to mention ROI for your social campaigns. 

Get it here: Search Engine Optimization Blogs - Great post by Hubspot on a few dozen SEO blogs everyone should read or minimally have in your arsenal.

Social Media Resources You Can’t Live Without - Whether it’s starting a social media campaign, integrating social media into your advertising or simply setting up a Facebook fan page, it is always wise to seek out experts who have proven experience (and metrics) to help guide you in your social media initiatives. 

Social Analytics: The Next Frontier - Let’s face it folks, social analytics is a new frontier – not anything like the analytics and metrics tracking we’ve used for advertising, direct mail or other one-way channel marketing.

Get It Right The First Time: Web Metrics - Many organizations are obsessed with volume – measuring their web metrics strategy by how many web pages that were viewed or by how many people that have visited. In many cases, this type of information is meaningless as it is not directly linked to a web plan or strategy.  

Writing for Social Media - If you want consistent social media success, you have to understand what social media users crave. For social media content, that means understanding the type of content social media users want.

Your Entire Organization Benefits From Web Analytics - You finally launched a much-anticipated Web 2.0+ web site and you can’t wait to hunker down and review your analytics. How do you gauge if your analytics for your site are appropriate, measurable and definable? And most importantly, who in your organization would benefit?    

As we move forward in 2011, it will be fun to watch the exploding world of social media and how it will affect all channels in the marketing mix.  

Happy New Year to all my blog fans and a hearty welcome to all new visitors. 

Best

Denice MacDonald

I read with glee this morning an article published by PC World titled Google Search Engine Now Detects Bad Businesses. You have to love Google for this latest move.

Basically, Google has acknowledged modifying its search engine so it can identify businesses that provide bad service and lower their search results rankings accordingly. 

Believe it or not, some companies actually get elevated rankings when customers post poor reviews or have an extremely poor user experience. 

What prompted all the hype? 

Google took action after a recent story in The New York Times that detailed the tactics of an online eyeware store owner who claimed his site's high Google rankings were directly proportional to the many complaints posted by upset customers. 

I applaud Google for this latest move – it helps to keep the small, honest guy ahead of the pack while punishing companies that abuse their customers.

More on this topic:

From MSNBC: Google sucker-punches online retail bully

Best
Denice MacDonald

If most of you are like me, you rely heavily on Google searches for resources and ready information. Google has just announced a great tool to help with those searches: Google Instant Previews. 

The original Google Instant allowed you to see search results as you type. The new Google Instant Previews goes one step further by letting you actually view snapshots of sites without ever leaving the results page. 

Here’s an example using the search “MacDonald Consulting Services” – there are lots of MacDonald Consulting organizations but which one is the one you really need to hone-in on.  

HOW IT WORKS

Each "instant" preview shows you a current view of the page, complete with text, graphics, and anything else that might be present. If you click on the thumbnail, Google takes you to the site. If you move your mouse anywhere else within the search results, Google starts loading previews for other pages in the list.

To learn more about Google Instant Previews and to do a test run – go here. 

Best
Denice MacDonald 

I just received an invite from Siteopsys on their SEO tools – a product that offers over 30 proficient automated tools categorized into 7 categories that help an Analyst, SEO Consultant, Webmaster, Website Developer or a Website Owner to analyze the website for various SEO and Website parameters. 

The best part – these tools are currently free but may not be in the near future. And, if you want to earn 100 points toward future needs, simply sign up here. 

Worth taking a peek: 

These tools not only make analysis process easy, but the tools also provide intuitive results that help make the analyzer's job easy and productive. As their tag line states, these tools are Fast, Accurate and Insightful. The well categorized tools, are developed with an idea to make the evaluator's work automated and cut down the unnecessary time spent on the analyzing various website, SEO and link parameters, without compromising on the quality of analysis. 

For example, I wanted to see how MacDonald Consulting ranks organically within search engines – here are the results using the Search Engine Rank Checker tool: 

Best
Denice MacDonald

Marketing in the Age of Google is a practical guide to harnessing the full power of online search for your business.

Written by former Google employee Vanessa Fox, who created Google's official portal for explaining online search to businesses, this clear, non-technical book demystifies search marketing and explains proven methods you can implement at your business today.  

Not another book on AdWords campaigns, Marketing in the Age of Google instead focuses on making your business stand out in the "organic" searches that attract 86 percent of user clicks.

Fox shows you where companies get hung up with rankings, and lays out a comprehensive approach for achieving the search goal that matters most: connecting with the people who want to find you.   

Get it for your Kindle or at these websites:

1. Amazon
2. Borders 
3. Barnes and Noble 

A special thank you to my colleague, Melissa Powell for sharing this
great resource. 

Best

Denice MacDonald

Great post by Hubspot on a few dozen SEO blogs everyone should read or minimally
have in your arsenal. 

In lieu of lifting the entire post, you can get the entire listing here.

Read more about HubSpot.

Best,

Denice MacDonald

About a year ago, I did a blog on Wordle -- a java applet that generates a word cloud – a visual depiction of words that appear from a site's source text.  I thought it would be interesting to do a follow-up to see how my blog is transitioning based on keywords - the results are very interesting.

MacDonald Consulting has morphed into to a social media blog with concentration on strategic content strategy.

Here is the original content from that earlier blog - along with the original Word Cloud followed by the Word Cloud created today.

.     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

To get Wordle to work, go to their site and enter a URL with an RSS feed. The result is an amazing visual montage based on prominent or frequently used words. 

The tool offers a variety of effects and fonts which you can randomize or colorize simply by clicking a button.  Moreover, Wordle lets you print out the text montage or visualizations, save them as PDF or to a public gallery for multiple use. 

Creative Commons Requirements

If you use a screen-capture, PDF, or other image representation of a Wordle on this site, you must attribute the image to http://www.wordle.net/.

MacDonald Consulting Services "Wordle" Circa August, 2009

MacDonald Consulting Services "Wordle" Circa August, 2010

Best

Denice MacDonald

With budgets still tight, how are companies managing to stay connected while bringing engaging and relevant messages to customers?  

Successful companies are learning that if they use interactive elements such as video, polls, FLASH and RSS feeds within their e-mail marketing campaigns, they see higher conversion rates and a stronger connection to their customers.

Video, if created properly, can really enhance your e-mail message and recipient interactivity. By using an enticing image with descriptive impact statements, recipients will be eager to click and link to the video. Include the file size, length of video or formats supported. Use flash video (FLV) whenever possible to achieve higher compression rates. 

• HOW TO: Create Online Video That Works by David Rich

Polls are a great way to entice recipients and engage audiences that want to be heard. Create topics or subjects that will resonate with your intended audience. Provide immediate results, along with associated support material, newsletters or additional links.  

• Best practices: Using polls in e-mail marketing by Karen J. Bannan

RSS feeds are another way to keep customers connected post e-mailing especially if your company has a blog, dedicated community or news section. RSS feeds provide the right amount of content to recipients on their terms making it the perfect connection outside of targeted e-mails.

• Newbie's Guide to Google Reeder - by Josh Lowensohn

In summary, once you have created an on-going e-mail campaign with customers, remember to include interactive elements and content that will continually engage your customers. Remember to measure the effectiveness of each campaign and refine where necessary.

Best,

Denice MacDonald

We’re all busy professionals trying to stay ahead of the curve – really not having all the time possible to keep up with all the knowledge related to Search Engine Optimization, Web Analytics and even Social Media.

Omniture has a timely blog covering all the bases – including input by numerous thought leaders within the organization.

And…if you’re specifically interested in social media – Omniture provides interesting and timely topics to help you chose the right social media platform.

Omniture makes it easy to stay connected – simply sign up via their RSS feed.

About Omniture - an Adobe Company

Omniture has over 120 consultants worldwide with teams dedicated to most major industries, including Retail, Media, Financial Services, High-Technology, Travel, and Automotive.

The organization has top cross-industry teams focused on Search Engine Marketing, and Test and Behavioral Targeting and their Omniture Digital team are the foremost experts in data-driven Creative Optimization.

To learn more, Contact Omniture.

Best  

Denice MacDonald

You cannot simply build a website and wait for visitors to come. You need to market your website online – meaning you need to take action to make your site highly visible to search engines so it gets found by potential customers.

Here are some quick ideas on maximizing your web site through simple optimization.

Keyword research – where to begin? – There are a number of inexpensive keyword research tools that will help you find the keywords and keyword strings for a specific product or service.  My favorite tool has always been Google Keyword Tool - but, Wordtracker is also very popular and very effective. 

Aligning with competitors – Determine how many other sites will be vying for similar keywords or keyword strings. To validate findings, simply type the words into Google and review the number of results. That’s your competition. The higher the position within the result page, the more difficult it will be to rank on that keyword. If you are still having difficulty determining keywords, you can open your competitor’s web site and view their keywords by selecting “View” and then “Source” from the menu. The third line in the source code typically says “Keyword Content” and then lists the keywords used for that page.

Start small – If you are new to the game, it is always advisable to start with 1-2 keywords per page on your website. Reason simply, you want to find the right balance in search volume, review how you’re faring against the competition and grow your program based on sound statistics. Likewise, insure that the content that is written for the site contains an appropriate usage of the keywords.

Site structure – In order for any search engine optimization program to work and track, you’ll need to insure that the site structure is conducive for optimization. To rank higher in search results for your target audience, you must identify the most effective keywords and then place them in the right areas of your site’s content and HTML code including page titles, headers, meta-tags, links and page content.

Site updates – ‘Content is king’ philosophy still rings true for optimization success. Keep your site updated regularly. What is the rule of thumb?  Minimally, weekly!

Linking – I still believe that linking can effectively, and quickly, increase page rankings. If you have a lot of other web sites linking to your site, the search engine spiders will visit your site more frequently and find new content quickly. You can find out who links to you already by typing “Link: yourdomainname.com” in any major search engine.

Measure – It’s all about effectiveness and ongoing metrics. Let your initial search engine optimization initiative run for about 2-3 months. Track how your rankings change week-over-week or month-over-month, and then decide whether more words need to be added or eliminated. Use tools like Google Analytics for web site metrics and SeoDigger for wordtracking performance.

Best,

Denice MacDonald 

Everyone wants to create useful rich content. But it's not as easy as it sounds. Content needs to reflect user needs and requirements, contain an adequate amount of words to support search engine optimization while reflecting the organizations' unique brand proposition. 

Know Your Industry - Know Your Customer.

In order to create relevant content for your web site, gather information about all aspects of your industry – including competitors. Then, determine exactly who your customers are.  Are they busy professionals or non-techie information gatherers?    

The More Relevant Content You Provide on Your Site, the Better.

Relevant content is not only helpful in gaining the interest of search engines, it also piques the interest of diverse web site visitors. Let visitors know quickly that they are on a site that has information related to what they are interested in. Doing so will help lessen friction in the users experience and lead to conversion (act or buy). 

Summarize, and then Expand.

Most content developers start with bloated brochure copy. Instead, begin with a well thought summary picture paragraph (100 words) and then provide additional content within your site’s category subpages to provide more information regarding expanded learning. Well-written, persuasive copy should be moderate and to the point.

Place Top Keywords within Your Text.

Search engines have always loved content paragraphs and keywords. In order to further optimize your site, combine the two by placing relevant keywords within each content paragraph

Check out these great resources: 

How to Create Web Content that Works by Leanne Bergey

Web Content, Writing for Web Sites by WebsiteTips.com

Best

Denice MacDonald

In today’s plethora of blogs, tweets and slideshare, how can you increase search engine rankings for your own organization? Simply by using social networks to help elevate your brand presence.

For example, I read and routinely respond to industry blogs that have a similar audience as MacDonald Consulting. 

Of particular interest is a blog response to an associate I’ve done work with:

Likewise, I take every opportunity I can to respond to questions on LinkedIn - hallmarking my industry breadth while helping fellow colleagues to be successful:   

Lastly, I’m asked permission to use my blog as an example in this scenario:   

This interaction has garnered MacDonald Consulting high rankings in Google search results while aiding in expanding my own social network.

Take some time each week to answer blogs, syndicate your own blog content and answer LinkedIn questions. See what happens. You’ll be amazed how quickly your own personal rankings now appear on first page results.

Best

Denice MacDonald

MacDonald Consulting has just been notified by Surchur, the dashboard to right now, that it has launched a new socially powered search feature to add to an already advanced set of real time search tools. BTW - this is on top of a record month in which Surchur outgrew every one of the independent real time search engines on the web.

The socially powered search feature aggregates information from twitter, digg, other social sites and their own site users to give a view into the hottest websites for a given topic.

You can view the new feature by visiting a sample ‘surch’ for “social networking” at http://surchur.com/all/social+networking. The new ‘popular tab’ contains the socially ranked results alongside the original related feature tabs: blogs, social news, news, video, pictures and products.

Also, Surchur, is asking if you or your organization is interested, you can interview their founder, Todd Hogan -- he’d be happy to give you a web demo of just how powerful the new set of features are – and why Surchur will be driving the next wave in real time search innovation.

About [from Surchur website] 

“surchur.com is the ultimate dashboard to right now. Built by a team that is passionate about what the real time web can offer, we're constantly improving and updating our site. Our latest version takes a giant leap forward with a massive social implementation. User input is taking a much needed front seat in determining what we show. Check it out - we think you'll swoon.” 

I highly recommend that you take a look at this great search tool! 

Best

Denice MacDonald

Let's face it, successful SEO is hard.  Reason simply, SEO is not a want, it is a necessity.  According to Jill Whalen, CEO and founder of High Rankings, "...a sick web site leaves money on the table".

Without proper web page optimization, an organization is losing out on search engine visibility and possible customer conversion.  One of the first diagnostic tests in your SEO checklist is to see how Google views your home page (or any page of your site) by taking a look at how it looks in Google's "text cache."

Additional warning signs (symptoms) include:

• Missing page content
• Missing navigational links
• List of unlinked words
• Keyword stuffed paragraphs that aren't normally visible

Although a good exercise, it is only the first step in elevating an organization's web page rankings.  

For more information and Search Engine Guidelines visit:

• http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/
• http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/index.html
• http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx

Lastly, stay connected on latest SEO trends, reviews and content sharing at:

• http://www.SEOMoz.org

Best

Denice MacDonald

[Credit: Jill Whalen, CEO and founder of High Rankings]

According to Nielsen, Bing is the fastest growing search engine. Although Google still leads the pack with a 65 percent share of searches, Bing’s overall search share rose by roughly 22 percent to almost 11 percent of total searches.  

Bing is not trying to grow expedientially – rather, they are trying to build market share one great application at a time. 

Check Out Visual Search! 

Bing continues to tech-up its attractiveness by introducing a visual search feature. When users perform a search and click the ‘visual’ button (left side of screen), search results are arranged into rows of virtual data arranged into galleries. Because most individuals ‘browsing’ the web prefer graphic images over text, this is an awesome solution. 

Take my recent search for ‘movies’ – I am able to view, visually, movies that peak my interest. Or, I can simply refine my search by ratings, genre and more. The only downside to this feature is you will need to have Silverlight enabled. But non-the-less, after using this feature, you have to admit that it’s a great way to search. 

More on Bing:  

Microsoft’s Bing vs.Google: Head to Head Search Results by SearchEngineLand 

Search Smackdown: Bing vs.Google by TechCrunch 

Best

Denice MacDonald

KeywordSpy^TM - a powerful web-based keyword intelligence system - has announced the unveiling of KeywordSpy Version 3.0. 

What’s so great about this upgrade? Version 3.0 is a compilation of user feedback – elevating the product version to an all new level based on customer interaction and use. 

New features include:

1. Daily scans of over 127 million keywords in our database.
2. Advanced searching options including destination url and ad copy searches.
3. ROI Indicator to easily pinpoint profitable keywords and ad copy combination.
4. Competitor sub-domains related & misspelled keyword results.
5. Support over 80 major affiliate networks for a high-end affiliate research.

 If you are interested in learning more about this great product, sign up now for a free trial.

About KeywordSpy

KeywordSpy currently operates in USA, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. Through this keyword tool and keyword software, you can perform advanced keyword research and keyword tracking to study what your competitors have been advertising in their Adwords campaigns and Other PPC campaigns. You can now get complete in-depth analysis, stats, budget, affiliates & ad copies of your competitors. 

Best

Denice MacDonald