What to look for in a search engine friendly platform

When your website is SEO friendly, search engines can visit, read, find, and remember all of the pages within your site. This enables them to know what you are about and to list your pages in relevant search results pages – preferably the first!

I find, however, that website owners will often ask me about search engine optimization (SEO) after their website has been built. This is because they are not seeing the desired results when their new site goes live (such as site visitors or site visitors that convert), and only realize after the fact that their site was not optimized correctly when built. To be effective, SEO is something that you must consider before designing and building your website. Otherwise, you’ll be left with nothing but a great looking site without significant visitor numbers.

I believe a truly SEO-friendly site is dependent on the following two things:

• First, your site should be properly designed with optimization in mind. It’s a shame that some web design providers (mostly smaller shops) still build sites that are not SEO friendly, either through poor design, lack of content, lack of tagging and defining keywords, and lack of linking within your site, site structure, or the platform it is built on. I call designers who ignore these important best practices “build-and-run designers,” as they only care about their portfolio and their pay check .
  
• Second, your site should be built on a search engine friendly platform or content management system (CMS). If your site is built on any content management platform, it will be dependent on its code output and there may be some limitations to what you can tweak to further optimize your site (so that, in the end, it will be found on the search results pages).

These two elements go hand in hand and should be taken seriously. I like how Stephan Spencer explains it in “Search Friendly CMS does not Equal Search Optimized One”. Some people sell the platform as the be-all and end-all solution, but you need a human element involved that understands optimization, plans the site, and implements the best practices to compliment the platform and fully optimize your site for the search engine results pages.

Disclaimer: Not to be biased, but I presently work at Sitemasher as the online marketing manager, so I give feedback and recommendations to our product development department on what is required for an SEO-friendly platform. These recommendations are from my experiences with regards to the code output and site infrastructure. (Sitemasher is a software as a service (SaaS) website builder with a build-in content management solution.)

Believe me, I’ve been through the pain of building websites where I’ve chosen the wrong platform (there weren’t many choices in 2000!) and I had to deal with work-arounds or hire a programmer to do custom 301 redirects (one of many painful tactics to make your site seo-friendly). So I thought I’d share some tips on what features to look for in a website platform. Understanding the website platform should be your first consideration for your SEO-friendly website requirements.

10 features to look for in a search engine friendly platform

1. SEO-friendly URLs and site structure
   This helps by allowing the search engine robots to visit your site, read your pages in the right manner, and properly index your pages (to remember and bookmark them) for the search results pages. If you don’t follow the basic guidelines, your site may not be ranked properly or show up on the search engine results pages. Look for a website builder or platform that can follow these requirements:
   
   o Avoid dynamic URLs with characters: Your chosen platform should not generate URLs that contain ampersands, equal signs, or question marks. It should also eliminate session IDs from the URLs for the spiders. This is specifically true if you are using an AJAX Web 2.0 platform type, so ask if the pages have been rewritten and simplified for the search engines.
   
   o Control of your URL naming: You should be able to define and rename your pages to names that the bots can understand. SEO experts say that short URLs work best in the search engine rankings. Most platforms automatically name your pages by the product, title, or page name within the editor. Look for this feature so that you have control of the URL names, as this will allow you to help your SEO even more.
   
   o Control of site structure and categories: You should be able to define a site structure (categories) that the bots can understand. This is the same as URL naming, apart from the sub folders or categorization. You should also have control of your categorization naming. Most platforms name your categories automatically, but if you have control of them, you will again benefit in the long run.



2. Easy access to control your meta and title tags
   Not all platforms will give you access to override these tags. These platforms may brag that it is automatically done for you, especially in online store platforms. In most cases, you want control to override these meta tags. And in other cases, you may have to dig into the code or get help from a developer to insert the meta and titles tags in the head of the pages (which is hidden code). Look for platforms that allow you to override these tags at a global or page level, and ask whether they can be edited in a simpler manner that doesn’t require HTML knowledge. Most will have an SEO dashboard (like http://www.sitemasher.com/) and it will be a matter of inserting the tags in a form that automatically inserts the code in the head for you.



3. Auto robots page insertion and easy edit access
   This is a text document with certain snippets of code (always named “robots.txt”) that usually sits on your web server at the root folder, and it is, in simple terms, “the welcome mat for the search engines.” A search engine will look for it when it first crawls your site – it wants to see whether you have any instructions on what pages to visit. In this way, you can direct the search engines to important pages and herd them away from unimportant pages that shouldn’t be indexed to show up on the search engine results pages (SERPS), such as password-protected areas, landing pages for special time-sensitive promotions, or internal pages (some SEO experts call it bot-herding). Google will actually report an error if it doesn’t see your robots page, but it won’t necessarily harm you. I have also found this handy to use with very large sites, where some robots take up tons of bandwidth and can slow the site down (especially in online store platforms). In the past, I have actually defined a rule for a certain robot not to look at the site, because it wasn’t serving that area or relevant to the search engine (for example, in Asia). Your CMS platform should automatically generate this page for you so that you don’t need to know the exact code or have access to the server. It should also give you access to simply define areas of your site in the robot.txt file that you don’t want to show up on search engines. An alternative yet helpful feature is that some platforms will allow you to define the robot permissions at the page level.



4. Automatic Google sitemap.xml generation
   Google Sitemap is an XML sitemap that lets you give Google information about your site. In its simplest terms, a site map is a list of the pages on your website in one or more XML pages. Submitting a site map ensures that Google knows about all of the pages on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google's normal crawling process. To save time, look for a platform that does this automatically for you. Good ones will update this XML code when you add new pages, update the date stamp, or define the page rank (importance), and will also allow you to update the file in a WYSIWYG editor. Read more in the “Why Use Google Sitemaps” post on my blog.



5. Automatic URL list generation
   Much like the sitemap.xml file above, this is used by Yahoo and possibly some other smaller search engines, but the code is simpler and in a text document. Look for a CMS or website building platform that automatically generates this code in the urllist.txt document, and then Yahoo will look for it and index your pages.



6. Auto generation info.txt and easy edit access
   This is an information text document for your website and business that is particularly used for the Alexa bot. Alexa is one of the largest database repositories on the Internet, containing historical snapshots of the Internet. These snapshots not only show what the websites looked like, but also how they are interconnected, and the general surfing activity over time. It is the only major public database that’s larger than Google. This file helps you get listed on Alexa, and help gives you legitimacy if you show up in their directory. Look for a CMS platform that generates this automatically for you and that gives you the ability to edit it in a WYSIWYG editor. I have also heard that other website bots like Compete may use this file as a reference to list websites in their directories.



7. Easy access to insert analytics and tracking codes
   Analytics and tracking codes let you understand how people come to your site, and where your online advertising and other efforts are turning into leads and conversions. There are a lot of platforms that have analytics built in, but these can be somewhat limited, so it doesn’t hurt to connect your site to third party analytics like Google Analytics. Also, some of these analytics (such as Google Analytics) allow you to set up advance tracking code snippets, and it’s a good idea to look for a CMS that allows you to easily add these tracking codes without the help of a programmer.



8. Defining image alt tags with a WYSIWYG editor
   Do question whether the platform lets you define the alt tag through a WYSIWYG editor. (An alt tag is hidden code that contains a textual description of an image that the bots can read, as well as users who have images turned off or are visually impaired). Matt Cutts in Google (he’s the head honcho of the search results rules) suggests that you should use the alt tag for every image on your site. Learn more about the image alt tag with Matt’s video here.



9. Fast page serving
   There’s talk among SEO experts that pages should be served to the user within 500 milliseconds, or else it can affect your search engine results rankings. It makes sense that Google would penalize you if your pages take forever to download and leave the user waiting. So serving pages faster with the same content may show up higher in the ranks. You can avoid this issue by making sure that your images and code are optimized. If you are looking at a CMS or other kinds of platforms, ask to see a sample site that runs on the same platform, and run a test of a page through a website speed test at http://www.iwebtool.com/speed_test.



10. Home page naming and avoiding duplicates
    Many CMS solutions have a default home page other than www.domainnamehere.com/ (for example, www.doaminnamehere.com/index.htm) and the search engines get confused and may read the pages as duplicates, which is not too good for your SEO efforts. This is usually a by-product of the URL that is generated through the platform and you may not have control over it. Eric Enge’s blog post “SEO Hell, A CMS Production” explains it well. Just make sure your website is able to default to the home page www.domainnamehere.com/ regardless of how your site is built or the platform that generates it, as it is standard SEO practice. (A work around can be redirects and some platforms will have a WYSIWYG editor for that.)
    

Final tip to take home: If you found a CMS or web platform that is SEO-friendly, but is not familiar with all of the SEO best practices, don’t start designing and building your site just yet. Contact an SEO firm beforehand, as they will help and consult with you on planning the site structure, and naming pages for SEO with strong and relevant keywords, so you can integrate it within your site build. Every little detail in the initial planning stages can have great results in your SEO efforts!

If you want to share similar experiences on this topic, I encourage you to leave a comment!

Can YouTube Really Boost Your Brand?

In the United States a 71-year-old presidential candidate has made YouTube part of his campaign strategy. His competitor achieved YouTube stardom last year with a renegade music video created by supporters rather than political operatives.

If Senators John McCain and Barack Obama have turned to YouTube a crucial part of their market outreach - what about you? Shouldn’t YouTube be part of your branding strategy?

It’s easy to overlook YouTube as a quirky entertainment phenomenon. But make no mistake about it, web video is radically changing the landscape for marketers of all kinds: corporate, not-for-profit, causes & activists, and political campaign teams alike.

Right now most marketers and communicators are still absorbing the astounding reality that you can video broadcast whatever you like, whenever you like, to a mass audience for a pretty reasonable sum of money. This is a mind-boggling reality. This power is almost dizzying. No offence to the TV networks out there, but we really don’t need you like we used to.

But...be forewearned...this ability to broadcast brings with it enormous responsibility. You don’t want to contribute to that unfortunate, desperate mass of video content that is bypassed for being boring or pointless.

That’s why the secret of success in this YouTube era is to focus in on great storytelling. Use the people on your team who understand how to weave a compelling tale (in writing and on video). And listen when they tell you: “No we can’t do that, it’s too schmaltzy.” Or, “I really don’t think we have a story here.” Or, “If we want people to understand, we have to use words and images they relate to.” (Plug: You can also hire a firm that helps with YouTube marketing services and storytelling services like Soya Marketing in Vancouver, BC.)

If you start and end with honest-to-goodness storytelling and a strong journalistic style, YouTube can and should be a central part of any brand strategy.

P.S. A final note: Malcolm Gladwell is using YouTube too (indirectly and directly) and we’re pretty sure he knows a thing or two about how to tip the marketing see-saw.

*By the way, your 17 year old has now been sitting at his computer for 22 hours straight now. He is no doubt downloading both a skit from Saturday Night Live and a short lesson on how to apply for and complete his MBA all on YouTube. Oh yes. This is the way of the future.


This blog post is written by a guest blogger and friend of Seed the Web:

Deborah Collins, Partner
Soya: The New Marketing & PR
Offering YouTube Marketing Services & Brand Storytelling
http://www.soyamarketing.com/

How to Increase Your Online Exposure with Blended Search

You may or may not have noticed, but when you do a search on the top search engines, different kinds of results are creeping in all the time. Search results pages now display content that is beyond text links. These results contain a mix of web pages, video thumbnails, images, maps and local directory listings. This is an emerging trend and called “Blended” or “Universal” or some experts are coining it as “Search 3.0.” You can use this to your advantage by understanding how these results are considered and how you can present your company to have multiple results on these search results pages. You can also offer a richer and more interactive experience to your potential customers and possibly increase click-throughs to your site.

I attended a great webinar "Blended Search One Year Later" with Chris Sherman from Search Marketing Now. During the webinar he posted an interesting poll to the attendees and it was: “Over the past six months have you noticed your company’s images, videos, or press releases appearing on the main search results pages of the major search engines?” Half of the attendees said yes, 34% said no and 15% said not sure.

Sherman explained the stages/versions of search that we have seen to date:

• Search 1.0 – was first-generation search engines. Primary ranking method was Boolean logic, which was early ‘60s information retrieval based more so on database queries. It did a good job within a closed universe. It was pretty basic and easy for search marketers to optimize their websites and not really algorithmic (dependent on multiple variables and checks and balances). It also was a green light for black hat (aka spammers, the bad marketers) and opened the door to Search 2.0. Remember the good old days when you’d search “Britney Spears” and you clicked onto results and somehow landed on a porn site? That was trickery and not effective results for the searcher! You did not have a huge amount of confidence that Google would deliver the right results and you probably had to spend a lot of time searching for the right information or website. You had to really hunt or take chances on faith and luck of the draw. Back in 1993, Alta vista said 99% of submitted URLs were spam. Search engine marketers were mostly viewed as black hats (if that term was even coined then?)
  
• Search 2.0 – With the issues and limitations of search 1.0 – it lead to search 2.0. This was more of an algorithmic search, which factored in hundreds of different variables to figure out the key words and main categorization of our website. For search marketers, it was imperative to understand how the search engines work and keep up with the best practices. If you fell back on old tactics to trick users to visit your site with irrelevant key words, you were labeled as a black hat and your site could possibly be delisted from the algorithmic search engine. Larry Page from Google reasoned that the entire web was loosely based on the premise of citation and introduced the page rank. If he could divine a method to count and qualify each back link (site that linked to your site and validated who and what you are) on the web, as Page puts it "the web would become a more valuable place." This was a way to understand the authority – simplistic toward page rank. This was harder to spam (better for white hats – people who followed the rules), and sophisticated SEO became imperative. Then search engines started to have vertical searches such as catalogues of videos, news and images through links, and tabs and radio buttons. People were just using the regular search results and ignoring the other “vertical searches” for the most part though. Search marketers never really focused on them either.
  
• Search 3.0 – Where we are today. These separate catalogues or vertical searches are becoming irrelevant as digital assets are being considered in the algorithms for regular search results. We start to see that more people are clicking on news in regular search results more and not via the news tabs. People are starting to click on YouTube videos and maps or news links served from third-party sites.

How to take advantage of universal search and show up multiple times on a results page:
You have a chance to have multiple results show up on Google, but not necessarily web page text links as Google doesn’t like to serve multiple pages from your site on a results page. But what you can work around is try to increase the possibilities of mixed pieces to show up on that same results page. Here are some tips to help you optimize other pieces and increase your impressions (showing and displaying) on the results page under your company and or key words strings that customer search for you.


Images – How to optimize for blended search:

• Name the image with an appropiate name.
• You have an option to tag images within your WebPages with the “alt” tag. Try to label it with your company name, product or service or whatever is appropriate for that image. Something that is straightforward and not “image_201.”
• Also try to optimize or tag (categorizing) any images you have hosted on any photo-sharing site like Flickr - it’s not all about optimizing images just on your site.
• If you have images within your pages, also make sure they are surrounded by text in html that has some complementary or same key words in the paragraph above and below.

News – How to optimize for blended search:

• Optimize text the same way as web pages (juicy, meaty content).
• Choose a news distribution service that has optimization features or services – free services don’t really have all the features to optimize your release properly.
• Add important key words in the headline that you want to show up in the search results pages.
• Leverage linking power within your press release. Use links, one for each 100 words.
• Use alt tags on your images.
• Add key word anchor text with your hyperlinks.
• Take the time to tag the release itself.
• Run a key word density check and tweak – make sure your target two to three key words are defined through all areas mentioned above.

For more details read my blog post on “How to Optimize News Releases for SEO and Tips”.

Local Business Listings – How to optimize for blended search:

• Opportunities are huge now here.
• Crucial – take control of your own listings with Google, Yahoo and MSN. Take control of your listings (free or enhanced) use them for the exposure – local listings are given prominence. You usually have to go in and open a local account, verify that it is you via phone or snail mail and then add all the information. This is a manual process and you are not automatically added.
• Add location-specific info within your site – put it everywhere on every page – not as an image. This helps the search engine to understand where you are. You can put it in the footer of every page in html text.
• Localize content if you have multiple locations – you can really do well if you take the time to create localized content for each location and have local listings with the search results for each location.

Video - How to optimize for blended search:

• Most people are not optimizing their videos – they are just uploading them.
• Add your video to your pages - use descriptive text around the video with keywords that are relevant, just like images (paragraph before and after).
• Define your video tags according to key word and strings that people may use to search for you, not just your company name.
• Make sure you add a description.
• Host it on a social media site that is optimized, like YouTube.
• Include URLs in videos to encourage viral distribution with “letterboxing” as a title in lower left.
  

Do you have a specific question about online marketing? Send an e-mail to shannon@sitemasher.com , and we'll try to post a blog on the topic in the future (and possibly do the research for you, if we don't know.) If you want to share similar experiences on this topic, I encourage you to leave a comment!

Optimizing Images for Search Engines

I really like how simple and yet descriptive Matt Cutts from Google explains optimizing images in the video below. I wish everything about SEO was as simple to explain as the alt tag! For those of you who don't know - Matt is the head guy who understands how Google reads your site and ranks it for the results - he knows the inside variables that make your website search engine friendly. Matt will never hand over the full recipe to success in Google though (as it can open up black hats to cheat the system), but his tips will help you!

Optimizing Images - why?
When you optimize images within your pages with relevant keywords, your website pages are more likely to show higher in the ranks on search engine results pages. The higher your links show up on the results page, the more site traffic you will receive. The kicker is, that you must use relevant keyword terms to what your site and images are all about and terms that potential site visitors or customers would use to search for you.

To complement your overall search engine marketing efforts, you should already be naming the alt tag for every single image on your site. Also to take it further - Matt recommends that you name the image names with keywords that make sense (not "img1234.jpg"). Which I highly recommend as well- it wouldn't hurt!

How to Optimize News Releases for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Traditional public relations (PR) is being completely redefined as a result of the Internet.

One subset of PR is news release distribution. A news release, media release, press release, or press statement is a written or recorded communication directed at members of the news media to announce something deemed to have news value. Typically, it is mailed, faxed, or sent by e-mail to assignment editors at newspapers, magazines, radio stations, television stations, and television networks (source: Wikipedia: News Release). It used to be a traditional tactic within the marketing department (in-house or outsourced), but it was expensive, and for the most part ignored by smaller companies. Some companies simply couldn’t afford to hire PR firms to help them with releases, and they couldn’t afford the expensive distribution.

Isn't it funny how the world evolves over time? Now the distribution model has changed and is far less costly. Press releases are not only being pushed to journalists and media - they are also being served out on the Internet via blogs, news feeders, directories, and aggregators, thereby - tapping into an enormous audience and, in some cases, talking directly to the consumer or customer. Additionally journalists, media, and end users may have subscribed to particular key word feeds, which are more of a pull versus push.

So what’s the big deal to a website owner?
Press releases can help your search engine rankings for popular and competitive search terms. If you're a website owner, you should seriously consider adding press releases, optimization, and online distribution into your online marketing mix. Ultimately, this will benefit you by producing higher search ranking results on key word strings in the search engine results pages (SERPs), which in turn creates more site traffic and more site conversions (such as newsletter sign-ups, product or services purchases, downloads, phone calls, or trials)

My favorite news distribution tool:
After doing some online research for news distribution providers, business wire, and service shops, my favorite choice is http://www.prweb.com. It is good for those who understand SEO and how to write a release…and for those who don’t! If you fall into the latter category, you can add on editorial revision, drafting, and optimization. Depending on your news release length and the additional services you choose, it can range from $80 to $1,000 for each release. For Sitemasher, I personally choose the “Media Visibility” package at $360 for distributing our news releases, as it has more options for optimizing and distributing news. Sometimes I will upgrade with the business wire add-on, as it can reach an even larger media network, but only for very important releases. Recently we distributed a news release about Sitemasher’s Blue Sky Award from Microsoft and we valued that as very big news.

Ten top tips for optimizing your press releases to increase search engine rankings and site traffic
Some changes to a press release are relatively minor, but can make major differences in the most critical spots. If you take the extra time to implement the following tips, not only will you see the benefits, but your release could potentially be picked up by more sites, search engine results pages, aggregators, and directories, and also attract more media attention and bloggers (who may write about your product or service).

1. Choose news distribution services that have the right features. Research self-serve online distribution services that offer features to optimize your releases (see points below on those requirements, and question whether you can do it on their platform). Some don’t offer all of the features to properly optimize your news. If you’re unsure from their website whether they do, then sign up for an introduction webinar, if available, to understand the tool more. Alternatively, ask them for a test account that will let you log in and kick it around to actually see the features. Also, look for a service that gives you reports on readerships, downloads, and archiving (for longevity on exposure). Consider the geographic distribution networks and whether you can upgrade to larger networks or language translation (if you are a global company or plan to go global in the future).
   
   


2. Optimize: add all important key words in the headline. Understand and define the most important key word strings that you want to be known by, and try to incorporate them in your headline. Why? Because it increases the possibility of people finding your release or your release being picked up by key word queries in readers and directories. If you state “Sitemasher wins an award,” it is too vague and it will limit your exposure throughout the web that picks up releases via tags (also known as “categorization” and “key word” queries). By contrast, if you state “Sitemasher wins Microsoft Canada Blue Sky Award,” you have more potential key words, which means the release can be picked up for any tags under “Microsoft” and “Blue Sky Award.” Also, if people search for this exact phrase in Google, they will probably find your release at their first attempt. I actually saw this work just a few hours after we sent out our release. It was listed in second place in the Google search results, and was picked up by Yahoo and Google news, as well as some top aggregators and financial aggregator sites that pull through all Microsoft’s feeds.
   


3. Optimize: use links, one for each 100 words. Try to follow a rule of one hyperlink per 100 key words. Some SEO experts believe that if you do more than that, then the release can be over-optimized (also viewed as spam from the search engines) and possibly get penalized, whereby it will show up lower down in the search engine results. To take it even further, make sure that you add hyperlinks to the important key word phrases (and never something such as “click here”). This helps raise the ranking of the release (and possibly your website if the link is to any of your web pages) in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for that particular key word or key word string.
   
   


4. Optimize, use alt tags. In the same way as defining key words, this tactic can also tell the search engines what is important and raise your release within the search engine rankings. So if you can label particular pictures with your important key words, make sure you take advantage of it.
   
   


5. Optimize: add anchor text. This is an advanced tactic and sometimes a little confusing or hard to find the instructions within PRweb.com. However, the formulas are simple, and with a little practice (and by following a few simple rules), adding anchor text to your press release is quite straightforward.
   
   Plain anchor link: http://www.sitemasher.com/cmssolution.htm [Sitemasher]. This will result in a link with the text “Sitemasher” pointing to “www.sitemasher.com/cmssolution.htm,” or whatever you substitute.
   
   Anchor with Title tag: http://www.sitemasher.com/csssolution.htm [Sitemasher __title__ Sitemasher is a cms platform and more]. This is the same as the above except that if a reader hovers a mouse over the link, the text “title text” (or whatever you substitute) will appear.
   
   Note: There’s a space before and after the underscore, which is a prerequisite.



6. Interact and optimize. Use images, audio, video, and PDFs to take things up a notch and make it a multimedia news release. This may attract attention, as some aggregators like to rank multimedia pieces higher up on the page. It also gives other bloggers additional pieces to pull through to their sites if they wish. If you are pulling in a YouTube video, make sure you also tag it with important key words within YouTube, which will help your most important key words in the search engine results. Also, within the news distribution service, you should be able to label and tag any images and PDFs with key words to increase your odds of getting even more exposure.



7. Optimize: take the time to tag the release itself. Services like PRWeb have an additional feature that lets you can define Technorati tags. Technorati looks at tags that authors have placed on their websites or news releases. These tags help categorize search results, with recent results coming first. If you overlook this feature and don’t use it, you can miss out on thousands of readers who may subscribe to Technorati, or directories and aggregators that pull through feeds from these tags. PRWeb allows you to tag your release with multiple tags, so I always choose the most important tags.
   


8. Optimize: run a key word density check. Some services such as PRWeb may have an analysis tool that gives you feedback on key word density and key word locations. Try to make sure you have at least two to three of the most important key words in the title, in the short description, and within a hyperlink and its anchor test. If the analysis indicates that your release is weak or lacks important key words in some areas, go back and tweak it.
   


9. Have a strong call-to-action and landing page on your site. Depending on your message, I’m sure that you can incorporate some sort of call-to-action or incentive to read more on a special landing page. Maybe it’s as simple as asking interested parties to sign up to your newsletter, read more on your company blog, sign up for a webinar, download a white paper, or sign up to qualify for substantial discounts on purchases. If you have a unique landing page for this release, you can also track how many people clicked through by viewing your site analytics.
   
   


10. Provide good content. Last, but by no means least, make sure that you add meaningful content. Keep it short and get rid of adjectives – “the first,” “the best,” “the paradigm-shifts,” “world famous,” and all manner of other trend-setting verbiage and numerous quotes. For website owners and SEOs, this may be a matter of educating and retraining you or your writer to move away from traditional news release writing (hyperbole) that used to talk to media and journalists only. Releases via the web are being picked up by other bloggers, and pulled through and aggregated on other sites, so it’s more important to get straight to the meaty stuff!
    
    If you’re looking to do your press release yourself, here are some good tips on how to write it, along with information about the anatomy of a news release:
    

• News Releases 101: Best Practices
• Formatting Your News Release
• News Release Template
• Quick Tips for News Releases
• Editorial Guidelines

Want to learn more about online PR and marketing? A recent book I read is called “The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly” – I highly recommend it!

Or would you rather hire a firm to help you with your SEO and PR? Recently, I talked with Deborah Collins at a BCAIMS Seminar from Soya Marketing (www. soyamarketing.com ). She is an online marketing PR and social media expert. We had a great discussion on how PR and SEO have merged. Debbie advises her clients to be very careful when choosing a PR firm, as not all PR firms (especially traditional ones) understand or have invested in the time to learn SEO and online PR and how they work together.

Do you have a specific question about online marketing? Send an e-mail to shannon@sitemasher.com , and we'll try to post a blog on the topic in the future (and possibly do the research for you, if we don't know.) If you want to share similar experiences on this topic, I encourage you to leave a comment.

How Twitter Can Help Online Marketing and Tips

Twitter has been around and popular in the U.S. for more than a year with millions of users. The iPhone is coming to Canada in a few weeks and I am sure Twitter will become more mainstream and adopted in Canada. Why? Because the iPhone can host the already popular Twitter application, it can be integrated with your Facebook and your blog, and it is very accessible to input your tweets anywhere, anytime.

More than a year ago, I went to a conference in San Jose and was introduced to Twitter. I was initially not sold on it, nor did I understand why someone would use it. I wasn’t convinced because I didn’t see the relationship and benefits with other social media spheres myself. Recently I integrated it with my Facebook , iPhone and Seed the Web blog and I discovered that it is a great way to get the word out about yourself, company or blog. It is a good medium for expressing yourself and networking with others with common interests. I now see how beneficial it is, if Twitter is fully integrated with other mediums, you can see better results in a whole (synergy).

How I have my Twitter set up:

So what is Twitter?

• It’s a micro blog that allows you to send updates (aka “tweets”) to the Twitter website, similar to the Facebook status (with a limit of 140 character input). People want to tell the world what their likes and dislikes are and what they are doing “right now.”
• It helps you find people with similar interests. You can follow them, and others can follow you.
• It’s an instant-messaging-meets-social-media-networking tool.
• Twitter is one of the most popular applications on the iPhone.

What Twitter can be used for:

• Pull marketing tactic vs. push.
• Quick answers to random questions – you can throw a question out and anyone can answer you.
• Telling others about breaking news within the industry.
• Promoting your company’s name, sharing your blog posts or news.
• Saying weird stuff (with your company’s name mentioned for a subtle plug of course!).

Samples of real-life opportunities:

From my experience so far at Sitemasher, we’ve had potential customers contact us and tell us that they found out about Sitemasher via Twitter. Others have given us feedback that they found us on Facebook, saw the tweets about Sitemasher on our status and clicked through on our blog links to find out more about our website builder/content management platform (CMS). Sitemasher has also seen increases in its blog traffic, Twitter followers and friends requests in Facebook. In the end, it increased the communities that we’re involved with, which can also increase new customer leads as we’re tapping into a larger audience with the same likes.

10 key takeaways to integrate Twitter with other tactics to get better results.

1. Show full transparency and authenticity. Open an account at Twitter.com with a real name – use your name and not an alias, so people can search and follow you. Also, when you use a real name and picture, people will trust you more.
2. Lurk and learn before you leap. Watch how others interact, post links, and ask questions – learn from them.
3. Interact and give value. You can be funny, educational, on-the-know and down-to-earth.


Sample tweets:



4. Have a library of tweets. Make sure you have a bunch of tweets before you really start to find followers, so others can view your tweets and know your personality and the value of your feeds – they’ll make that decision to follow you back or not.
5. Try to follow those who you ultimately want to follow you back. Anytime you “follow” (which is like becoming a friend on other social networks like MySpace, Facebook, or Digg), it sends a notification to that user. And they may follow you.
6. Track and search tweets for key words that you’re interested in. I will go to Google Custom Search (in Beta) or summize.com and search for tweets on topics that I’m interested to or related to my business and start to follow those people. The people I look for are the ones with the same likes/dislikes as mine and those who give great links to tips, new technology services and who also do updates on a continual basis. This is a good way to keep up on your reputation management to see who is twittering about your company, and if it is positive or negative. Also gives you a chance to react and fix situations that may be negative.
   
   
   Sample search on Summize.com:
   
   
   
7. Integrate with other tactics. I discovered that if I integrated Twitter with other social media realms, my reach increases and I save time. I have my Twitter feed automatically update my Facebook status (you need to download the application in Facebook to your profile). I posted my feed on my blog to show visitors what I’m doing or saying at the moment, and I downloaded the Twitter application on my phone, so I can tweet on-the-go.


Sample Twitter feed on blog:




8. Subtly promote your company. Don’t do all business speak – not a hard sell – take your suit off! Start casual conversations with the people you like or have something in common with. Don’t sell them – make acquaintances only. Get familiar with inappropriate spam.
9. Make a commitment. At first you may feel like you’re talking to no one, but you’ll gain followers in no time – don’t get disheartened – nothing good is easy!
10. Advertise your Twitter feed and let people know you are Twitter friendly. They also may find you through Facebook, blog, search results or other advertising medium (business cards, e-mail signature). Insert it on your e-mail signature or even write it on the back of your business cards.
    
    Sample email signature:
    

Additional Twitter reading: Guidance, Tools and Resources at Website Magazine.

Do you have a specific question about online marketing? Send an e-mail to shannon@sitemasher.com , and we'll try to post a blog on the topic in the future (and possibly do the research for you, if we don't know.) If you want to share similar experiences on this topic, I encourage you to leave a comment!

Social Media Strategy – Running a Customer Contest via Flickr or YouTube

I want to share a good example of how to run a photo/video contest through a social media site like Flickr or YouTube and how it can work for your company’s online marketing strategy. I think this is a brilliant example to get your customers involved. It is also an easy way to implement with very little IT investment - a matter of copying and pasting a code snippet from Flikr on your site. A few years back I did a similar contest with an online store and it was high maintenance (manual process) as I had not thought of this method, nor were the social media sites as friendly to execute such a campaign.


Here’s how you can use social media site for a contest and tips:

• Host the contest on a video-sharing (like YouTube, Vimeo or Viddler) or photo-sharing site (like Flikr).
  
• Advertise the contest details on your website with simple and clear instructions. Give the link for where to upload the media piece for the contest. Is it a video or photo contest? Be clear on what they should tag the video or photo so you can review them and pull them through your site (like a mashup).
  
• Define a specific tag or channel that can be used for your contest - making sure the tag is not so generic that it could accidently be used for other photos or videos.
  
• Use the top favorites is an indicator of finalists - no need to collect votes via a form on your site. YouTube or Flickr does all the work and tallying for you!


• Entice the contestants to send out the link of the contest on your site to their friends and family to vote for them. This is where it can become very viral!
  
• Advertise your contest everywhere you can. If your company has a blog, Facebook or twitter account – make sure you cross-promote the contest and link to it! Try sending out a press release if it is a big contest.
  
• Use a mashup to advertise and show off your contest. A mashup is a mini application that combines the submitted videos or photos that were defined under a particular tag on the social media site (i.e., YouTube or Flickr). You can obtain the code snippet from the host site and display the mashup on your website, blog etc by simply copying and pasting the html code. The mashup is dynamically (shows up right away) updated whenever anyone submits a piece to that category.
  
• Define a deadline date and use three to five top votes as finalists and send out a message to all participants asking for votes on the finalists. You can obtain longevity and more interactivity when you include your customers with the final voting!

This is a continuation from my “How Social Media Can Help You With Your Online Marketing Strategies” blog after attending Darren Barefoot’s The Many-Armed Starfish: Social Media Marketing 101. He mentioned a case study that is similar to above idea.

Do you have a specific question about online marketing? Send an e-mail to shannon@sitemasher.com , and we'll try to post a blog on the topic in the future (and possibly do the research for you, if we don't know.) If you want to share similar experiences on this topic, I encourage you to leave a comment!