Tag Archives: Chris Brogan

How To Follow A Social Media Road Map

As Chris Brogan said recently, having a social media strategy is no easy task.  It takes a lot of hard work.  But  if one follows a proven path, some of the difficulty falls away, and the process becomes easier.  One still needs discipline and consistency, but the path to success is clear. Social Media and SEO: 5 Essential Steps to Success provides, among other elements, a social media road map:

“However you look at it, SEO and social media work well together as long as there is a framework for doing so. One way to build SEO and social media programs efficiently is to follow a social media roadmap:

social media seo roadmap1. Find the audience; understand their behaviors, preferences, methods of publishing, and sharing. Most companies that are involved with the social web in the channels where their customers spend time have a good sense of where to start. Many companies are ahead of the game by tracking their audience via social media monitoring software that identifies keywords, conversations and influencers such as those pictured in the Radian6 screen shot below.

radian6 influence image2. Define your objectives. Objectives are often driven by marketing or sales, and SEO has long been directly accountable to substantial improvements in web sales. Social media is not direct marketing though, so different objectives and measurements apply. The role of SEO in a social media effort is to directly influence discovery of social communities or content via search. Do a search for Zappos on Google, for example, and you’ll easily find more than shoes: Twitter, Blog and a YouTube (YouTube reviews) channel are all on the first page of search results.

zappos imageIndirectly, social content can boost links to website content, improving search traffic and online sales.

3. Establish a game plan. The game plan for reaching objectives in a combined SEO and social media effort will often focus on content and interaction, since it is content that people discover and share. Whether a keyword-focused strategy for reaching goals means publishing new content or creating an opportunity for consumer-generated content, it must involve proactive promotion and easy sharing amongst members of the community.

4. Create a tactical mix. The tactical mix for a social media marketing effort is based on doing the homework of finding where the desired audience spends its time interacting with and sharing content. Whatever the tactical mix is, it’s an investment in time and relationships – not a short term “link dump” to promote optimized link bait. Much of the content creation and promotion for a social media marketing effort happens within the tactical mix and, of course, that means optimizing content for keywords.

keyword focus imageWhether content is created by marketers as part of a social destination like a niche community or a promotion vehicle such as an interactive ad, keyword glossaries become useful for writing headlines, deciding on anchor text for links and outreach activities like blogger relations.

5. Measure your goals. Goals measurement should roll up to the specific objectives, both direct and indirect. Leveraging both social media monitoring services as well as web analytics can provide marketers with the insight to improve results. Radian6 and Webtrends have recently announced a partnership that will bring web analytics and social media analytics together all in one interface. In the meantime, marketers can use specific measurement tools to monitor the effect of their social web participation as well as the search engine performance of SEO efforts.”

It’s all about results.  If you don’t measure you won’t know what your results are.  If you try this, let us hear how you do and what you’ve learned you’d like to share.  In social media, we’re all in this together

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

From The Mouth Of A Guru: Creating A Successful Conference Ecosystem

original caption states "colorful reef fi...
Image via Wikipedia

Chris Brogan is one of the Net’s most popular bloggers.  He maintains a warm and personal tone woven in with his business pitch as someone who teaches businesses and ordinary folks to use social media.  He does this by way of his blogs and tweets, but from a money making stand point, mostly by his conferences, which are well attended by celebrity techs as well as ordinary Net denizens trying to learn to do a better job of social media.  Since he succeeds at making money at it, I thought I ‘d share with you how Chris puts together a conference.  I found particularly interesting Chris’s thoughts about “extending the conversation” to other platforms, as I can see the potential to really increase the impact by reaching larger numbers that way.

In any case, here’s how Chris puts it in The Art of Butts in Chairs | chrisbrogan.com.

chairs I run a series of conferences. Logistically, they require the same things most conferences run on: great speakers, relevant exhibitors and sponsors, and eager attendees. The goal is to get the right speakers to draw the right attendees who might also be of interest to the exhibitors and sponsors. It’s a kind of ecosystem. It’s also not exactly the easiest business in the world. People don’t have a lot of budget to spend on attending events. Companies aren’t exactly sending them any more. It’s not all doom and gloom, but it does require more work than it used to, with regards to moving interested people from their office to my conference hall.

Some thoughts.

Be clear about the offer – I try hard to bring the best speakers for the specific content I’m trying to share with my audience. In my event, I’m looking to educate marketers, PR types, and companies representing brands on the theme of “From Strategy Into Action.”

Be open about the request – I try not to bury people in marketing for the event. I send out email marketing about once every two weeks (unless I have a technical accident). Beyond that, I’ll send a tweet every few days (currently around every 3rd day), and that’s about it. I try not to bury folks in advertising for it, but I’m very clear about my ask.

Be empowering – My goal with building events is to put the right people together in a room. I select my exhibitors and sponsors because I believe their tools are the right tools for some of the folks coming to the event. That’s on purpose. Bringing a guy like Chris Kieff from Ripple6 in contact with the kind of people who need what his company sells is exactly why we bother to do a face to face event. But just as much, it’s great to introduce someone who comes as an attendee to Tim O’Reilly or Charlene Li or any of the speakers we have coming. It’s important that we empower people to connect.

Extend the conversation – We’re looking at this right now. I’m selecting the right social platform to wrap around the event so that we can have conversations in and around the event, and not just at the event. The challenge is that no one really wants to join yet another social platform. They’re short term environments and don’t really live beyond the event walls very often. So, I’m looking for other ways to extend the conversation. Hash tags on each session as well as the event might help. Encouraging more flickr and Flip video usage will help. What else, do you think?

Empower Others to Reach Out – One thing I’ve yet to do for this event, but will ask soon, is I ask speakers to make sure to reach out to their constituent bases and invite people who might want to hear them speak. I also encourage exhibitors and sponsors to reach out to prospects. If it’s going to benefit someone to be at an event, I try to connect it all up. By giving speakers a few ways to reach out, I hope to bring the people who might want to gather a way to do so.

Outside of the Event – Sometimes, people can’t make an event for one reason or another. I think it’s always good to build something up outside the event. Some would argue that this might dig into the value of the event itself. Maybe. But I think more of the business networking happens during the event, in between the sessions, than at dinners and tweetups. Sometimes, it’s just nice to blend the location into the experience, and nice to connect with people who can’t make the event for whatever reason. Most events I attend these days have a non-related event like a Tweetup around them. I think it’s prudent.

What Else?

What else do you think face to face events need to have to be of value? What do you want from the events you pay to attend? Are you going to any conferences this year? What makes you choose which events to attend?

Photo credit, daveybot

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]