Alliance Blog Reviews

I trust you had a great Christmas! As our minds dream of how fantastic 2010 will be, it’s time to look back at the hot topics of 2009. Here are Marketing Pilgrim’s top ten most read posts in 2009. Bing.com; Is it Worth Switching from Google? – A home run for Microsoft? While Bing certainly deserves credit for being the first serious challenger to Google, it didn’t hurt that 2009 was the year that Microsoft stepped-up its media outreach to us. Social Media Monitoring Tools: 26 Free Online Reputation Tools – This post was written in 2007 and has been in our top five for the past 3 years! Social Media Marketing Beginner’s Guide – A great guest article by Jon Rognerud and it still stands-up as a great primer for social media marketing. 8 Essential Free Social Media Monitoring Tools – A smart blogger knows not to simply update a popular post. Instead, you think of ways to expand on it–with a new post! This post from December 2008, added 8 more great monitoring tools for reputation monitoring. 200+ Internet Marketing Gurus on Twitter – Back before there Twitter Lists were just a twinkle in the eye of Twitter’s founders, Brian Chappell authored the definitive list of marketers on Twitter. If we hadn’t introduced a policy to close comments on older posts, I believe this one would have easily broken 1,000 comments by now! 21 of the Best WordPress Plugins for New Blogs – Just a little over a year ago, I spilled the beans on the plugins that power Marketing Pilgrim. Look for a new, updated list, in the New Year! Google Offers Cheap Online File Storage With a Catch – How in the world did this benign looking post from 2007 make it into our top ten list of 2009? Good keywords! The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing – My good friend Ben Wills authored this post in 2006–which at the time was groundbreaking. In fact, I blatantly–with his permission–used it to frame an entire chapter of Radically Transparent! Google Reputation Management: Fix Your Google Reputation & Remove Negative Results – Do you get the feeling that we have a good grasp of reputation management issues? This post is over 2 years old, but, aside from the Google Pages reference, is still remarkably relevant. Facebook Really Does Make Mone y – When it comes to Facebook, I tend to defer to Jordan’s critical eye. She never fails to deliver! Some observations: As of today, Marketing Pilgrim consists of 6,792 (make that 6,793 with this one) posts and more than 45,000 comments! That’s a lot of words! Traffic was up 17.54% in 2009 compared to 2008. Not a bad growth rate! Referrals from Twitter were up 120%!!! Referrals from Yahoo were down 13%. Our own URL shortener– Gri.ms –let us track the origination of around 10,000 visitors! We know where you live! Want to see previous years’ top posts? Check out 2006 , 2007 and 2008 .

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The 10 Most Popular Marketing Pilgrim Posts of 2009

Just a week after Google launched its URL shortener, Goo.gl, it’s premiering another one, this time for YouTube . And because we can’t stand to learn yet another URL shortener name, they’re going with youtu.be . To use the new shortener, you just append the video ID to youtu.be/, so http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKOTClyVrIc become http://youtu.be/PKOTClyVrIc . Shall we count them together? That saves us 13 whole characters . Now, in a limited-capacity message, like Twitter, those 13 characters might come in handy (“no rickroll!!”). Clearly, youtu.be is not intended as a full-featured URL shortener: it won’t work for other domains, there are no custom options, and it’s not as short as possible. In the YouTube blog post, they say that this integrates with the AutoShare features of account holders to link up with Google Reader and Twitter. However, if you haven’t enabled AutoShare, or are not a signed-in member, and you want to just Tweet from the Share menu below the video window, they haven’t put youtu.be into action yet. In fact, a lot of the time, if you want to use it, you’ll have to manually remove the other parts of the video URL. The feature does have its good points: as the blog post points out, when you see a youtu.be link, you know you’re going to a YouTube video. Its integration with Twitter allows developers to show thumbnails, embed directly or track stats in real-time. What do you think? Will you use youtu.be?

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YouTube Gets (Not Really) Shorter Links

Well, since everybody rolled out the trends of 2009 at the beginning of December , there’s really nothing left to do this year but make predictions for next year, right? Forrester is going to kick us off with predictions for marketing in social media . Naturally, they see major growth coming in the SMM arena (which they call “social computing,” but I think that’s something different . . . ). In fact, they see 2010 as they year social media marketing reaches maturity, with marketers (and not just SMMs) focusing on measurement and even getting budgets. The rise of SMM will lead to more transparency and interactivity, Forrester predicts. And that will make SMM even more valuable to companies. Oh, and Twitter will reach profitability —or be acquired. Of course, all this won’t come without challenges. With much of social media still a highly fractured, siloed space, many marketers will have to prioritize various social networks—will they spend their time focusing on getting Twitter right or really interacting with Facebook fans? Meanwhile, they’ll also have to make sure their social media is ready for the mobile web. And of course, measurement continues to be a challenge. Says Forrester: Marketers don’t think they’re very good at measuring social media: On average, they rate their own efforts to measure social initiatives at 4.5 out of 10.3 And there’s no silver bullet — depending on marketers’ objectives and the technologies they’re using, any of dozens of different metrics could be appropriate. But one thing’s for sure: With the need for accountability rising, marketers can’t keep pretending that fans and followers are useful success metrics . In 2010, marketers will finally start to focus on the metrics that match their objectives — and metrics that their CMOs already know and trust. Forrester also explains how they can do this—just like we measure just about anything else. Set a goal, then figure out what metrics will help you meet that goal and track them. (Forrester notes that a lot of these metrics may be more intangible,” like brand awareness and likeability requiring “brand surveys, sentiment analysis, and Razorfish’s SIM score,” in addition to more traditional hard numbers in sales.) What do you think? What metrics are most important in your social media marketing? How do you track them?

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Starting Up the Social Media Marketing Prediction Engine

When I first started tweeting I would post randomly throughout the day about something that had caught my attention at that minute. The problem I found was that my tweets lacked bite and were in danger of all sounding the same. It was also taking up a huge chunk of my time, flitting in and out of the twittersphere. So, I took an afternoon out a couple of weeks ago and set up a content plan. Much recommended for bloggers, I found that planning ahead really helped to provide posts which were useful and informative for followers. I did this by collecting and researching useful content – e.g. seo tips, geek jokes, quotes – and then sitting down and using a spreadsheet to book a time to tweet the info and to then pre-load the posts into my software. The benefit of doing this is that I now take time to seek out relevant information, knowing that I don’t have to tweet right now. Instead I make notes, add the tweet to the content plan and then schedule the tweet. I’m also able to add spontaneity when it feels right instead of posting lots one day and little the next, keeping a steady stream of interesting content running for my Followers. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Content Planning to Add Value to Your Tweets

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Content Planning to Add Value to Your Tweets

While it’s easy for us to predict the decline, and ultimate death of mainstream media, I wonder if we know what we’re letting ourselves in for. Take, for example, the recent incident that involved a Washington D.C. detective and a “tweetup” snowball fight. Mashable alerted me to the story . With a couple of pics and a video, it’s easy to believe that the cop overreacted and should lose his job: Now, I’m certainly not bashing Mashable here–they took the social media angle that appealed to their readers–but let’s look at the “citizen journalism” side of this. Viewing the photographs and cell phone video, you might confidently predict that there’s not much the police officer can say to defend his actions. He pulled a gun on a bunch of kids having a snowball fight! But, if you take the time to read the Washington Post’s lengthy account of the incident, and you learn that this was, at worse, a misunderstanding and, at best, the correct reaction for a cop being pummeled with snowballs. Personally, I still believe the cop overreacted–and should face some kind of discipline–but that’s part of my point. I’m a citizen journalist–aka blogger–and I make my living by imparting my subjective views on you, our readers. The Washington Post however, while not able to shake completely the latent bias of its journalists, does a much better job of presenting the facts–and leaving the reader to form their own opinion. In Radically Transparent , we talk about “professional detractors”–those that are paid to report on your misfortune, yet without any apparent modus operandi –such as journalists. While we may not like what they write about us, we know that we can somewhat trust their structured gathering of information and procedures for correcting any erroneous reporting. As citizen journalism continues to take the place of professional journalism, I wonder how this will affect reputation management. Are we ready for a world of biased reporting? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Cop Draws Gun at Tweetup Snowball Fight; Is It So Clear-Cut?

Twitter may have began as a simple communication platform for friends and family, but it quickly evolved into an amazingly powerful marketing tool. Arguably, becoming one of the most effective resources for marketing and business professionals alike. One of the really great aspects of Twitter for any professional is the ability to target large amounts of people based on their interests and location. It is this niche/geo targeting that enables “web savvy” real estate agents to reach much larger amounts of prospective clients than ever before. ** Traditional marketing serves as no challenge to a successful Twitter campaign. The Power of Twitter Friends To find success on Twitter you need friends, lots of them. The more people that befriend you the better as it extends your reach each and every time you post a new tweet. Building a substantial amount of friends often requires a physical attempt on your part, unless of course you also happen to be famous. Its important to remember that the more targeted your twitter friends are to real estate and/or your area, the more potential leads you will find. Here are a few tips for finding targeted prospects: Location Search: One of the best things you can do is find friends in and around your local area, after all they are likely the ones that will be buying houses there. For example, a search for Portland Oregon turns up a lot of people that live and work in the Portland area. Industry Search: Search for terms like “real estate,, “real estate agent”, “buying real estate”, you could come up with these for days. Many of these searches will return other real estate agents. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that befriending another real estate agent is a bad thing. Agents refer clients to other agents all of the time, don’t pass on that opportunity. Searching for Related Terms: Search for terms such as “need to move”, “house shopping”, “shopping for a new home”, etc. Admittedly, this type of search tends to be less targeted but can still provide additional exposure and possible clients considering a move to your area. Please note: While the Twitter search bar may not look like much at first glance, it harnesses a tremendous amount of power under the hood. The search tips above are designed to drill down into targeted areas of interest and reach more clients. Twitter Tools for Real Estate Agents There are a number of great tools out there that can increase the power of Twitter and decrease the amount of time and effort required to use Twitter successfully. Some that would be valuable to real estate agents are: Twitter Local : Twitter Local is a pretty neat Adobe Air application that allows you to filter tweets by location. This makes finding potential clients in your area extremely easy. Monitter : Monitter allows you to monitor specific terms and keywords as they are mentioned. This is very powerful to a Twitter marketer and can open up a lot of possible new relationships for real estate agents. Twellow : List your real estate business in Twellow a Yellow Pages type listing directory for Twitter accounts. This is also a great place to find other real estate agents in your area and across the country. TweetLister : TweetLister is a really unique service that makes adding your property listings to Twitter easy! This online service automatically converts your listings to tweets and posts them to Twitter. Pretty neat, huh. Twitter, Another Tool for Real Estate Agents Basically, what it boils down to is that Twitter is a unique platform with a lot of potential for maximizing exposure to your real estate business. As with any tool or service, you have to actually use it to make it work. Nothing happens on its own. The great folks behind Twitter have given you the people and the platform, now its your job to do the sorting and marketing. Have fun with it! © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Twitter for Real Estate Agents – From Tweets to Clients

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Twitter for Real Estate Agents – From Tweets to Clients

Although article marketing may simple like a simple enough task, there are quite a few particulars once you get into the meat of making your article SEO friendly and highly effective.  This statement however is not meant to frighten you away from using article marketing as a powerful tool, but instead to educate you on how to make sure that your time and efforts truly pay off.  By following a few simple rules you will see a much larger return than if you simply write an article and post it hoping for dramatic results. In fact, if you have published an article, or a few dozen and not seen any positive ranking results from your efforts chances are you have failed to follow a few of the basics that are elementary but important.  For instance, when it comes to successful article marketing proper placement is a vital tool.  A few quick hints about the structural nature of your article construction and you will be well on your way to making a turn around on your time investment or your monetary investment if you outsourced the task to someone else. The best place to start is with the basics, which means taking a good look at your title and the construction of your title key phrase in the introductory paragraph.  First off, your title should always contain your keyword phrase at the beginning instead of the end. While it may be tempting to write something catchy such like The top ten tops for dog training you can bark about, the phrase Dog training: the top ten tips will actually do better for you. The reason why is because you want your title phrase near the beginning of your title so that search engines correctly identify it and see it.  In the same way, you want to place your title phrase within the first hundred characters of your article.  While these tips are simple, they can make all the difference.  Follow the same rules when it comes to the rest of the paragraphs in your piece and your headings and subheadings and you will be much closer to reaching your final goal of excellent rankings simply from article marketing.

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Article marketing for dummies