Blogging Your Most Effective Social Media Strategy - Indiana University Communications &...

Chantelle Flannery

Blogging: Your Most Effective Social Media Strategy

Image: aha-soft.com

81% of consumers using social media say it’s important for businesses to respond to questions and complaints

70% of consumers go online when searching for information about local businesses

74% of consumers want regular posts about products

72% of consumers want posts about the company

67% want to see photos of the company office, group outing, picnic etc

from directional marketing Bride the Gap, Between Search and Sales Survey

Corporate Response

Source: Datran Media

In 2010, what percentage ofyour company’s budget will beallocated to digital versus traditional?

Why Blogging …

David Armano

Higher Engagement

David Armano

Organic Search Rankings

Power of RSS

Conduit for Conversation

Maximize Your Blog

Quality Content

Flickr: USDAGov

Quality Content

• Create effective titles• Make the content scanable• Integrate keywords• Variety of content is important• Provide ME value

Image: Oude School

Trust in “a person like me” increased from 20% in 2003 to 68% in 2006

Listen & Respond

Flickr: NickJAdams

81% of consumers using social media say it’s important for businesses to respond to questions and complaints

74% of consumers want regular posts about products

72% of consumers want posts about the company

67% want to see photos of the company office, group outing, picnic etc

from directional marketing Bride the Gap, Between Search and Sales Survey

Response Techniques

• Have a plan for handling negative comments

• Answer the questions• Thank the positive comments• Acknowledge all comments • Don’t make people wait

Search Optimization

Who are you? = Your Words

How they find you? = Search Keywords

Keywords help get you properly indexed.

Keywords should be used in your blog content.

Keywords should be properly used in the code

Find Keywords

Google External Keyword Toolhttps://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Use Keywords• Domain name • Home page title tag• Heading tags • Subheading tags• Blog post title tag• Blog post slugs• Bold keywords in posts • Image/Alt descriptions• Internal link descriptions• Meta descriptionCool Tool

www.seo-browser.com

Keyword Bonus Tip - Location• Geographic Keywords• State• City• County• Neighborhoods• Street names• ZIP codes• Area codes• School districts• Regional landmarks

Use KML code & geotag your site

Cool Tool http://www.addressfix.com

Monitor Rankings

Google Webmasterswww.google.com/webmasters

Cool Toolswww.semrush.comwww.kpmrs.com

Optimizing for Search

• Register with Google Webmasters, Yahoo! Site Explorer and Bing Webmasters

• Build a robots.txt file that disallows directories you don’t want indexed, allows the rest, and points to your sitemap

• Integrated an XML Sitemap that automatically publishes

• Ping the Search Engines when your content changes

Photo by Frank Kehren

Measure & Adjust

Flickr: cambiodefractal

Analytics

Must Read Analytics Blogwww.kaushik.net

Other Tracking• URL shorting services • Google custom campaign URLs• Unique phone numbers• Unique URLs by platform• Analytic goal-setting• Landing page / CTA conversion• Closed business

Flickr Photo by jdegenhardt

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein

Image: duncandavidson

Integrate & Syndicate

BLOG

Images: aha-soft.com

The Conversation Prism – Brian Solis

Promote Everywhere

Cool Toolsfeedburner.comhootsuite.comtwitterfeed.comping.fmcotweet.comlinkedin.com/appsfacebook.com/apps

Flickr photo by hegarty_david

Flickr: yomanimus

SearchOnline

ReadBlog

Click on CTA

Fill Out Form

Lead in CRM

Images taken from Formstack – Thanks guys

Bonus: Blog as a sales funnel

Landing Page

1. Write a blog post that has the same text and value proposition that you would use on a landing page

2. Make sure that graphics and primary language match the button or text used as the call to action that drove the traffic to the post

3. Insert a form into the blog post in order to truly convert Cool Tools

formstack.com

Turn a blog post into a landing page (w/o IT):

Results: Awareness | Customer Service |ROI

Blogging: The Most Effective Social Strategy

•Your Blog = Online Hub–Attracts search traffic–Power of RSS–Landing page w/o IT–Companywide communication tool

•Maximizing your Corporate Blog–Quality Content –Listening - Respond–Measure - Adjusting –Incorporate in overall marketing strategy

Chantelle Flannery

@chantellefChantelle.Flannery @ gmail.com

Slides will be posted:www.slideshare.net/chantellef

corporatebloggingtips.com