Content is king. In spite of all that has changed in the online sphere since its inception, content is still the critical element to a compelling website. Providing relevant, fresh content on a regular basis can increase site traffic and improve search engine rankings, which in turn increases ROI. Yet delivering well-structured content of interest to your audience can be difficult. In Real-World Winning Tactics for Content Creation, three content experts gave their tips and advice for effective content creation, from blogs to mobile websites.

Moderator Derrick Wheeler introduced the concept of content as “anything a user can see, and anything a search engine can see.” Ted Ulle, partner with the MEWS Group, Robin Liss, Founder and President of Camcorderinfo.com, and Rupali Shah, Organic Search Manager of GroupM, each spoke to creating specific types of content successfully for your website.

Ted Ulle began the session with a lesson in how not to create a ‘Frankensite,’ or a website whose content and structure is a hodge-podge of mismatched elements that don’t work together. His broad definition of content included not only the text on a site, but also the structure and format of the site itself.

Ted advised beginning the content creation process with comprehensive training:

• Locate and educate everyone involved in the content creation workflow: IT Department, web design, writers, analytics, research & development, etc.
• Dedicate specific analytics to gauge each person’s performance in their role
• Hold regular team meetings to ensure everyone is on the same page

Above all else, content creators need to keep the business goal in mind at every stage of the process. All aspects of content creation and site design should support the bottom line.

In terms of actually creating the content, Ted cautioned against drafting copy around what he referred to as “trophy keywords,” or terms you think your site should be found for instead of the terms your audience is actually searching on. A solid base of relevant keywords is the first step in successful content creation.

The structure and form of a site tie directly to the effectiveness of content. Ted advised using the content as a guide for structure by dividing it into logical groupings that will inform the site menu. A solid site layout will support good copy, so site designers should be familiar with elements such as typography that can enhance usability and reinforce the tone of the site content.

Formulating a strategy and creating a complimentary structure for site content are important elements, but the meat of content creation lies between the two: drafting copy. Robin Liss has extensive experience in this department, having been writing for content-rich websites since the age of thirteen.

Robin likened the content creation process to Ford’s assembly line. Content producers should approach writing copy like manufacturers approach creating a product. Whether writing for a personal blog or coordinating the efforts of several professional writers and editors, a similar assembly line mentality can help content creators produce successful copy.

The basic steps in the assembly line are as follows:

• Acquire Information Conduct any necessary research to create your content
• Draft Copy Write an initial draft of your content
• Create Supplemental Assets Acquire or make any images, graphics or other supplemental material that will complement your copy
• Submit for Feedback Have an editor review the initial draft and make edits
• Second Draft Revise initial draft based upon the edits
• Second Edit Send the revised copy through a second round of edits to ensure it’s grammatically correct and on target
• Content Production Push the content live – this step can have its own assembly line if necessary, and encompasses loading the copy, optimization, marketing and revision and updates.

This assembly line structure can be modified to fit the needs of the lone blogger or expanded to accommodate those of a large-scale online publication. For a blog, the modified assembly line procedure could be as simple as:

Acquire Information -> Draft Copy -> Content Production -> Marketing -> Revision & Updates

An assembly line approach allows content creators to efficiently write the fresh, relevant copy that can ensure high site traffic and high rankings. Isolating each step of the process allows content creators to identify any bottlenecks and address issues to ensure the entire content creation process is streamlined.

Liss recommended assessing a company’s content needs and adjusting the assembly line accordingly. In some cases, a company may want to hire professional writers skilled in their area of expertise to write copy. If this is the case, you get what you pay for, Liss cautions. There is no substitute for high quality copy so prepare to compensate accordingly.

Good site content is important no matter where searchers view a website. Yet what constitutes good content can vary. Rupali Shah took the session in a different direction by examining the content demands of mobile search.

As of January, 84 percent of iPhone users reported accessing news and information via a web browser on their phones. Those with access to smart phones are using them to search the web, and as this number continues to rise so will the number of searchers who view a given website on a mobile device.

Different elements should be taken into consideration when creating mobile site content versus creating traditional web content. Rupali outlined several important factors to keep in mind.

• Site Layout On mobile devices less is more, so keep the layout as uncluttered as possible and limit colors and stylistic elements
• Site Structure Design mobile sites with categorized browsing to help users find what they need quickly
• Page Size It may seem obvious, but mobile devices have very small screens, so page size should be adjusted accordingly
• Optimization In addition to copy, all digital assets should be optimized

Those getting started on creating a mobile site can use several free web tools for assistance.

• Check a site for World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) compliance at http://www.w3.org/mobile
• See how a site will look on an iPhone at http://iphonetester.com

Overall, mobile Internet users are searching for information they need on the go fast. This dictates content creation for mobile sites and should be taken into consideration before embarking on mobile site creation. Some products and services are better suited for current mobile Internet use while others may not yet have a market on the mobile web.

The three presenters in this PubCon session illustrate an important point. Content on a website extends beyond text and encompasses layout, structure, images, and more. Effective content creators must ensure all of these elements are compelling and relevant in order to attract site visitors, increase search engine rankings and improve online business performance overall.

Check out all of TopRank’s blog coverage of the 2008 Pubcon conference here and view our Pubcon photos on Flickr.

Sponsored By: SES Chicago Dec 8-10 Learn search marketing from the pros

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Lists are always controversial by nature as they exclude and include based on criteria that rarely satisfy everyone. But we’re happy to be included all the same and a BIG THANKS goes to the TopRank team that’s been liveblogging conferences over the past two months of consideration for this list.

Here’s the complete list of 42 top content marketing blogs:

1 Online Marketing Blog
2 Copyblogger
3 Writing on the Web
4 Influential Marketing Blog
5 Web Ink Now
6 Marketing with Meaning
7 Nigel Hollis
8 Conversation Agent
9 Buzz Marketing for Technology
10 Post Advertising
11 Conversation Marketing
12 Marketing Interactions
13 PR 2.0
14 Nick Burcher
15 The Toadstool
16 Servant of Chaos
17 Chaos Scenario
18 No man is an iland
19 What’s Next
20 Buzz News
21 Be the Voice
22 Really Practical Marketing
23 Bringing Brands to Life!
24 ContentMarketingToday
25 Hard Knox Life
26 Web Strategy by Jeremiah
27 Drew’s Marketing Minute
28 JournaMarketing
29 Writing White Papers
30 Seth’s Blog
31 Greg Verdino’s Marketing Blog
32 News from the Herd
33 EyeCube
34 Find and Convert
35 Techno//Marketer
36 Eat Media Blog
37 Conversational Media Marketing
38 Emerson Direct Marketing Observations
39 Internet Marketing Blog
40 Feed Growth!
41 Daily Fix
42 Occam’s Razor

One of the other nifty features of being on this list is inclusion in Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop page for content marketing.

Also, here’s a custom Google Search Engine for just these blogs if you’d like to focus on content marketing in your research and/or blog reading:

Sponsored By: Learn Social Media Marketing in NYC TopRank & The DMA Partner on 2 Day Social Media Smarts Workshop

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Have you considered developing content specifically to drive traffic from social media sites? Have you also considered what you want from that social media traffic, and what to do with it once you have it?

In a session titled, “Earning Big Bucks with Social Media Traffic“, Social Media Marketing advocates including Rank Fishkin, Vanessa Fox, Michael Gray and Alexander Barbara gave some great tips to drive traffic via social media channels and how to monitize that traffic.

Michael Gray kicked off the session discussion how making a connection within the social media world is key to drive traffic to your website. Michael stated that monetizing social media traffic is harder than most other types of traffic and you should only try to make money from this type of traffic if you truly grasp the concept of social media and monetization.

First off, don’t break the rules!

• understand the written and unwritten rules of the community
• know the communities tolerance for sales promotions

Get involved in the social community before you start to market to users.

Michael offered three tips to help business successfully integrate into a social community.

1. Create a knowledge resource:

• create valuable content that is helpful and solves a problem
• offer free solutions
• up-sell only premium products or services

2. Use social media to promote a review:

• compare similar products from different vendors
• works best with new or leading edge products
• keep reviews honest
• be in-depth but avoid TLDR posts

3. Use social media to build memberships:

• use blogs, twitter, and email to create a group of loyal followers
• feed them information with the occasional sales pitches

Twitter can also be leveraged as a way to drive traffic to your site. Michael made the recommendation to design your Twitter campaign around a deal or give a sense of urgency, an example being Woot or Amazon MP3, as this type of campaign has been more successful at driving traffic.

So, what works and what doesn’t work to market within the social media realm?

What Works:

• information resources
• reviews
• problem solving
• deals
• time sensitive offers

What Doesn’t Work:

• direct product links
• hard sell
• mass goods that aren’t unique
• no information value ad

Next up is Alexander Barbara giving advice on how to create content and manage traffic for social media sites such as Digg.

With social media, the bottom line is that your campaigns will be more successful if you create content that speaks specifically to the community audience.

Before you try to promote your site on digg, the first thing you should know is if your site can handle the traffic of being on the first page (what would 200,000 visitors do to your website server?).

The quality of traffic will vary for each social media channel. Sites such as Digg, and Twitter may help you reach a more targeted audience, while StumbleUpon and other niche sites such as Hugg drive non-targeted traffic.

Alexander gave some advice for creating, managing and converting social media traffic:

• understand your audience and create content that appeals to that audience
• choose wisely about your monetization strategy, think about how the traffic will respond to ads
• be prepared for the traffic, if you can’t handle it, you can’t monetize it.

Vanessa Fox took a different approach to social media traffic, providing insight on how to lose lots of money with social media.

If you are a large brand spending a lot of money to develop a ‘viral’ campaign, you may be losing a lot of that money if your content can’t be found.

How search impacts social media:
First thing people do for an offline campaign is to search for more information online. 2/3 of searchers are driven to perform a search online as a result of exposure to offline advertisement.

What does this mean? If you don’t appear in the results during the information search, you don’t exist to that searcher.

Word of Mouth Search
If you spent money to develop a viral campaign and it ‘spreads’ via word of mouth, which helps to drive and increased number of searches for your campaign, but you aren’t actually resulting for the main keywords, what went wrong?

Did your campaign go against the search rules to help you actually get found?

• did you use text, search engines can’t read images (or flash)
• do you have an html version of your site for search engines
• did you include a description or meta tag
• are your title tags descriptive

Metrics and engagement
Anytime you embark on a social media campaign, you must identify your:

• Objective
• Goals
• measurement for success
• adjustment plan

The whole point of social media is engagement, abandoning your community mid campaign will deter the audience from further engagement

Metrics Options:

• views
• qualified visitors
• increased sales
• increased brand awareness

Vanessa wrapped up the session stating that it’s not enough to just have traffic, you have to have qualified traffic. In addition, having a call to action and compelling value proposition is key to making your campaigns worthwhile.

Final thought: measure at each stage of your process to identify where the fail points are.

Check back with the TopRank Marketing Blog for more blog coverage of Pubcon 2008 and the Pubcon photosset on Flickr.

Sponsored By: DMA Workshop on Social Media Marketing Build a business case, strategy & tactics - Dec 4-5 NYC

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Universal search has been touted as the biggest change to happen to search in recent years. Certainly universal and personal search have altered the search landscape to an extent, however to what extent is up for debate. In Universal & Personal Search: This Changes Everything, panelists moderated by Jake Baillie brought differing perspectives to the adjustments SEOs should make in light of universal search.

Brian Combs of Apogee Search began the session with an overview of Universal search. The biggest change, according to Combs, is that search is no longer just about text. Now images, videos, and local results can all rank, and rank highly, for any given keyword term.

This opens up a range of opportunities for the search marketer. A given site can now increase their search real estate by appearing multiple times on the search engine results page (SERP). Conversely, universal search can negatively impact your rankings. Local listings can push your site, which ranks number one in the general listings, below the fold of a SERP.

Combs outlined several advantages to getting your digital assets into universal search.  So-called vertical listings, or listings for a specific vertical such as image or video, attract more attention from searchers. Also, many vertical search engines are less competitive than traditional engines like Google. It may be easier to get your video ranking in YouTube for a specific keyword, which can then show up in Google when it blends its results to include video.

Combs recommended going after local search, as it’s often not very competitive and ranks very prominently. He also advises keeping your messaging consistent across all of your digital assets so that you present a unified message no matter how many rankings you capture in the SERP.

Amanda Watlington of APR explained the advent of universal search in terms of the changing role of SEOs. The SEO is now a conductor, not a mere soloist. Search marketers today have to coordinate with others within their company or client’s company to both produce and optimize the assets used for digital search: video, images, PDFs, etc.

Universal search has also changed the meaning of rankings. With personal and local search, the SERP may alter from person to person and location to location. Its becoming more impossible to control your search rankings across the board.

Amanda also pointed out the change in the definition of search engine. By number of queries and visits, YouTube is now the second-largest search engine after Google. Other sites like Facebook, Craigslist and eBay also rank highly in terms of popular search engines.

With Amanda’s point of view on universal search, nearly everything has changed. So how does a modern SEO adapt and become the ‘conductor’ she mentioned?

Search marketers must grow accustomed to working in more of a team environment in order to coordinate the creation and optimization of digital assets. They must also set new optimization procedures and new priorities in terms of what gets optimized and when.

In order to do so, an SEO needs to:

Inventory Digital Assets Identify what types of files you currently have on your site, and what are missing. Look for opportunities.

Evaluate Current Optimization Ensure your traditional search optimization is solid. “Chase universal results from a position of strength,” Amanda advised. Only go forward with universal optimization if you have a strong foundation.

Identify Optimization Gaps Go for the low-hanging fruit and optimize digital assets that already exist on your site, in particular items like PDFs and product descriptions.

Develop a Plan Create best practice documents and train support staff to ensure everyone working on digital asset creation has knowledge of optimization. Also set performance indicators beyond ranking and traffic, as measuring the success of your digital assets can be difficult.

Amanda reminded the session that “the rules have changed, but the expectations have not.” SEOs are still expected to return results. Don’t just create digital assets for the sake of it, create and optimize assets that make sense for your organization.

Greg Boser took a more cautionary approach the changes universal search has wrought upon traditional SEOs.

“The lion’s share of searchers are being served old-fashioned regular results,” Greg stated. He pointed out that even when your digital assets rank in the search, it does not necessarily translate into greater sales and leads. Searchers can’t buy something directly from a video.

According to Greg, an SEO’s primary focus should still be on optimizing for traditional search results. However, universal search should help shape an overall optimization plan. When doing keyword research, be aware of which terms trigger universal results that could cause your ranking to occur lower down the page.

Greg did give some good advice for people optimizing digital assets. Using subjective adjectives, like ‘beautiful’ or ‘funny,’ particularly when optimizing photos can be effective for showing up in the SERPs. Also, many bloggers make the mistake of grabbing photos they host on Flickr for their posts. By inserting pictures directly into their blog platforms, the blog and not Flickr gets credit when the image appears in universal search.

While they brought different perspectives, all three panelists agreed that a site should be solidly optimized for traditional search results before progressing into universal and personal search optimization. While universal search as of yet may only represent a small portion of the overall optimization a site needs, this portion will continue to grow as search becomes more personalized to the individual searcher.

Take a look at all of TopRank’s Pubcon liveblogging coverage here and Pubcon photos on Flickr.

Sponsored By: DMA Workshop on Social Media Marketing Build a business case, strategy & tactics - Dec 4-5 NYC

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The last regular session of the day I decided to attend was on In-House SEO and PPC which was moderated by Melanie Mitchell and included Jessica Bowman, Dan Perry, Ana Schultz, Allison Fabella and Jill Sampey. The issues that in-house search marketers experience are the same issues that SEO agencies experience when performing enterprise SEO and PPC programs.

I walked in at the start of Jessica Bowman’s presentation who was talking about roadblocks to internal search engine marketing efforts:

• Adds projects to man hours
• Inconsistent with other goials
• Goes against existing progrtamming standards
• Were not technically feasible
• Added to the project timeline and cost

Once you get executive buy in, you cannot stop. Most opposition stems from lower and middle management. Middle managers need to get upper level support.

You plan of action needs to constantly and consistently reiterate the SEM message to all employees. The buy in includes a preview that SEO will run into roadblocks. It will take time and there will be complaints. Prepare executives for obstacles before they happen.

• Devlop a 24 month internal PR campaign for SEO
• Create a SEO presentation you can use internally: Why it makes sense and that it gets high priority and give to anyone and everyone
• Offer SEO Brown bags
• Train everyone on SEO
• Have regular SEM update meetings for all levels
• Use the same slides you used to get buy in
• remind them of the timeline and progress
• The internal PR campaign for SEO never ends

Now up is Allison Fabella, SEO Manager for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution who discussed SEO at the middle management level.

There are four sections to consider for middle managment in-house SEO::

1. The product manger - Your first and last defense for the longevity and success of a SEO effort. They approve each phase of the project.

2. The developer - The backbone of your SEO and can directly impact traffic positively or negatively.

3. The designer - Plays design cop to the layout and aesthetic of your web pages. Educate them on how search engines “see” web pages

4. The content producer - Directly affects whether content has a chance of ranking. Give them examples of how ironic or clever headlines show up in search compared to literal references.

Achieving SEO Harmony

• Estahlish your credibility by making quick changes that will show results. This is critical when you are new to the organization.
• Document your successes. Theirs, not yours. Emphasize how SEO benefits them, not you.
• Be omnipresent and locate your SEO at the intersection of development, design and content if possible.
• Goals and Accontability - attach success to the productivity of those in the organization helping implement SEO.
• Make sure SEO gets included in the life cycle checklists
• Training - train everyone in your organization on SEO. More education and awareness the more they will appreciate SEO.
• Compromise. “Well, what CAN be done?”

SEO in middle management isn’t so much about writing content, coding pages, desiging grapihics. It’s about leadership.

Next up is Dan Perry from Cars.com who says when you’re first meeting company executives, to stay at 30,000 feet and speak their language. Show them the math that demonstrates financial opportunity for SEO implementation.

Train everyone on SEO. With marketing and PR, explain you can influience brand perception by optimizing the display of brand messaging. IT needs to know that small changes can have large impact. Biz Dev needs to be realistic. SEO is built in to new hire training to let them know the company puts a lot of value in SEO.

Build SEO into the process for new content development and publishing. Seek out SEO Superstars that will help evangelize the benefits of SEO to the organization. Be available to people in the organization who have questions about SEO.

Have a plan and show the math (opportunity to generate revenue), show what the competition is doing, be ready because it will involve a lot of work.

Next up is Ana Schultz Marketing Manager at Qwest who talked about the pros and cons of in-house and agency PPC.

For PPC the pros of in-house include better internal communication and product offer knowledge. The cons include the difficulty of staffing and the available talent pool. Technology and information sharing can be a challenge.

Do the due dilligence for SEO budget justification. Quantify the results for each initiaitive. Ensure the implementation process is clear and too many page owners can mean content can easily get overwritten.

Last up is Jill Sampey from Blast Radius and previously an in-house SEO from ThomasNet.

Use an agency or not? Look at the specific goals at a specific point in time. How complex is it? What is the learning curve and is it unique to the business? What bandwidth, talent and time available. Who are the stakeholders involved? Do you have the right access to the stakeholders who will evaluate success of the program.

The Agency Advantage: Training is less of an issue because the agency will have expertise that can hit the ground running and less overhead to get started. Many agencies will have proprietary tools of benefit not present within the company. An outside party like an agency often carries more respect than someone in house to champion a project. Agencies can be a catalyst for change to provide outside perspective and involvement. An agency can offer another set of eyes and a perspective as a result from working with many different companies and industries that are not as obvious for people in-house.

Potential Issues with Hiring an Agency. The agency is external and removed from the core business. Agency engagements can be expensive if objectives aren’t clear. Hiring an outside agency requires management of the agency. Finding the right agency is difficult and should be considered according to the specific needs.

Make your own ROI goals instead of putting it on the agency to come up with ROI. Emphasize the value and importance of analytics and make sure you have access to the data/reporting.

Take a look at all of TopRank’s Pubcon liveblogging coverage here and Pubcon photos on Flickr.

Sponsored By: SES Chicago Dec 8-10 Learn search marketing from the pros

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The first post-lunch session of day 3 of Pucon brought together a great mix of SEO experts including: Todd Malicoat, Rand Fishkin and last minute fill-in for Jessie Stricchiola, Andy Beal. Moderator duties were handled by Joe Laratro.

First up is Todd who covered 30 different tools which are too many to mention here but included tools for: browsers, domain server, keywords, competitive research, ranking checkers, backlink checking, on page optimization, spidering, productivity and tools for fixing duplicate content. but the most interesting included:

• User agent switcher allows you to surf the web as if you were a bot from an engine so you can see sites the way search engine spiders see them.
• Search Status Firefox plugin shows you various time saving information all in one place 
• Header Checker
• SiteUptime lets you know when your site goes down
• Domain Tools Bookmarklet that gives you whois information on the domain name you’re looking at. Also shows other domain names someone owns (paid)
• Ping time shows how fast your site responds to web requests. If slow, it can cause issues with spidering.
• Keyword tools: WordTracker.com, KeywordDiscovery.com, tools.seobook.com also offers a free keyword tool
• SEOBook - SEO for Firefox
• SpyFu scrapes Google AdWords and can give information about competitor keyword purchase activity
• Compete.com shows competitor traffic and keyword information (paid tool)
• Caphyon Advanced Web Ranking - rank checking tool
• Link Harvester shows unique linking domains to a specific URL, deep link ratio, number of .edu links, etc
• Hub Finder - will find collections of sites that all link to a particular URL. If they link to that URL, maybe they will link to you.
• Interet Marketing Ninjas - a Strongest Subpage Tool.
• SoloSEO.com is a project management tool for SEO projects
• Link Suggestion Tool shows a list of search phrases you can combine with keywords to research link opportunities
• Xenu Link Sleuth broken link tool. 
• Roboform remembers form field information for filling out information
• Jing Project ScreenCapture
• Copyscape will show you any time someone copies your content on the web
• DupeCop

Next up is Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz with “6 Tools that Rock” and promises there is very little if any overlap with Todd.

• SEO Automatic Tool - looks at common on page optimization factors and offers recommendations.
• DaveN’s Keyword Density Tool will analyze keyword occurrence on-page and it surfs as Googlebot.
• blogpulse - Tracks millions of blog feeds and provides insight into what bloggers are discussing as well as trends of phrases over time.
• LinkfromDomain Command @ Live.com - who is a particular site linking to. (linkfromdomain:toprankblog.com)
• Historical PageRank Lookup from SEOmoz tools
• Linkscape SEOMoz is a crawl of the web that offers metrics on link and score mozrank on the domain level and at the URL level. Shows who 301 redirects what page, anchor text distribution and others.

Last up is Andy Beal from Marketing Pilgrim.

• SEOResearchLabs.com offers keyword research for $100. Extensive spreadsheet of keyword data.
• SEO Link Analysis - Firefox extension gives you a bit more information when opening such pages, it gathers the PageRank for the linking page, the anchor text used on the link, and checks whether the link is nofollowed or not
• Google Webmaster Central - 
• Backlinkwatch.com - Shows the URLs of link sources, PageRank, follow/nofollow.
• SEMCheck.com - $12 tool that automates basic SEO functions and issues.

Sponsored By: Follow TopRank on Twitter

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Elisabeth Osmeloski and Alex Bennert

Barry Schwartz and Ken Jurina

Jessica Bowman and Heather Lloyd Martin

A taller Matt Cutts and Lee Odden

Lisa Barone and Tamar Weinberg

Andy Beal, Jane Copeland and Mike McDonald

Jake Baillie and Eric Enge

Dante Monteverde 

Susan Esparza and Rebecca Kelley

Google Booth

Take a look at all the Pubcon photos from TopRank opn Flickr.

Sponsored By: Learn Social Media Marketing in NYC TopRank & The DMA Partner on 2 Day Social Media Smarts Workshop

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The sheer quantity of different information sources online has resulted in a media circus. The various blogs, tweets and mainstream media outlets are like different acts vying for user attention. Online reputation management amid all the chaos can be difficult. It seems only appropriate that a circus insider, Jessica Berlin of Cirque du Soleil, weighed in with some tried and true advice in Reputation Monitoring and Management.

Andy Beal, Internet Marketing Consultant with Marketing Pilgrim and Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing and primary author of this blog, also contributed their advice for keeping the positive spotlight on your brand in this session moderated by Todd Friesen.

Why Monitor Online?

Lee pointed out that both your brand influencers and those influenced by your brand live online; your customers, prospects, competitors, etc. What is being said about your brand online can have a huge impact, both positive and negative, on your business.

“It’s not just a search engine, it’s a reputation engine,” Lee said.

Rankings in the search engine results page (SERP) can be as valuable as a hit in mainstream media due to the volume of people who see it. A negative SERP ranking for your brand can come in the form of a YouTube video, blog post, Flickr image, forum thread or just about any format imaginable.

Andy Beal pointed out a wide range of reasons to monitor your brand online, both positive and negative, including:

• Getting product ideas
• Finding new relevant keywords for SEO
• Reaching out to brand evangelists
• Learning blogger sentiment
• Conducting informal market research
• Discovering industry trends

Regardless of your reason for brand monitoring, a brand can be missing huge opportunities by failing to properly monitor and manage online reputation.

What to Monitor

Andy stated that a given brand should be monitoring more than just the brand name in order to effectively manage online brand reputation and fully utilize online resources that can improve brand perceptions online. He mentioned monitoring the company name, individual products, company executives, competitors, clients, industry patents, reviews and more.

Different companies will want to monitor online buzz for a unique mix of these elements in order to serve their purpose. To effectively monitor the online brand reputation of its six different Las Vegas Shows, the marketing team at Cirque du Soleil looks for:

• Customer Experiences Cirque du Soleil considers its customer experience to encompass everything from purchasing the ticket to when they leave the theater. They look online for both good and bad customer comments relating to any part of the overall experience so they can address concerns and build strong brand connections.
• Information Accuracy The team looks into any negative online mentions of Cirque du Soleil to correct any inaccurate information.
• Brand Mention Wording With six different shows in Las Vegas, Cirque du Soleil’s marketing team wants ensure each show is getting mentioned distinctively and not under the Cirque du Soleil umbrella term.
• Sphere of Influence The team looks for indications of how far and wide mentions of Cirque do Soleil spread, to see if one blog post mention can spread into social networks, bookmarking sites or even mainstream media.

Monitoring Tools to Use

With the circus of different media outlets online, brand reputation managers need an arsenal of tools in order to effectively monitor brand sentiment online. All three panelists mentioned several good tools to use in order to monitor your brand reputation. With most of these services, you can set up an RSS that alerts you of new items relating to specific brand names or keyword terms:

• Moreover.com Monitor competitors, industry news and trends with this site’s very granular news categories
• Google.com/trends Monitor up and coming industry trends to get ideas for new products or promotions
• Technorati.com Monitor blog posts and social media mentions
• Backtype.com Monitor blog comments about your brand or a competitor, or blog comments relating to your keywords
• Blogpulse.com/trend Monitor the trending of keyword phrases or your brand name to see if people are talking about you more or less
• Keotag.com Monitor tags of your choice across several bookmarking and tagging sites
• Boardtracker.com Monitor forum posts
• Copernic.com Monitor changes or updates on any given website
• Radian6/Buzzlogic Monitor a variety of different online media outlets and a wide range of social media

Marketers should also monitor their brand name in social media sites like YouTube, Flickr and Twitter to effectively manage brand buzz in multiple media formats.

How to Monitor

Lee outlined both a short-term and long-term approach to effective online brand reputation management. In the short-term, a company wants to ensure positive brand mentions are ruling the SERPs, as the search engine rankings tend to be highly visible. To do so, a company should focus on:

• Creating a brand optimization process
• Optimizing all digital assets including text, video, images, audio, press releases, etc.
• Optimizing across departments to ensure online assets from all departments are optimized. For example, HR should be optimizing job posts

In the long term, a brand should be working to identify, qualify and engage dissenters by correcting any inaccuracies and responding directly to negative mentions.

Jessica outlined Cirque du Soleil’s current online PR practices to illustrate the changes online brand reputation management has undergone in recent years. In particular, she highlighted transparency and building long-term trust between Cirque du Soleil, journalists and fans. Cirque du Soleil actually allows fans to control several of its ‘official’ groups on social sites such as MySpace, and gives them inside information to post as content. They also allow journalists and bloggers greater access to Cirque du Soleil content to build strong media relations.

What are the Results?

Companies can decrease attention on negative brand mentions with effective optimization tactics that result in multiple positive rankings on the SERPs. By directly addressing negative brand mentions in a personal manner, a company can turn a brand de-evangelist into a brand evangelist. Strong and open relationships with content producers in the form of journalists, bloggers and fans can prevent negative buzz and help ensure only accurate brand information exists in the online sphere. The comprehensive brand management advice from Jessica, Andy and Lee can help you make sense of the online media circus and keep a positive focus on your brand.

Check back with the TopRank Marketing Blog for more blog coverage of Pubcon 2008 and the Pubcon photos set on Flickr.  Also be sure to visit the video interview on reputation management with TopRank CEO Lee Odden and Mike McDonald of WebProNews.

Other Search Industry blogs covering this session include:

• Search Engine Roundtable - Tamar
• WeBuildPages - The Lisa
• WebProNews - Doug

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The speed and availability of information online has given more power to the individual to be vocal about their opinions and feelings, both positive and negative.  Social media, blogs, forums and online groups can leave you vulnerable to negative attacks if you are not involved in the conversation.

This panel of brand ambassadors, including Jessica L Bowman, Sr. Marketing Manager for Yahoo!, Lauren Vaccarello, Director of Publishing for Forex Capital Marketers, Tony Wright, CEO and Founder of WrightIMC, and Brian Combs, Senior VP & Chief Futurist for Apogee Search, discussed the ins and outs of how to manage both your reputation and brand in the intricate and sometimes hostile environment on the web.

Jessica Bowman kicked off the session, giving a broad view of brand management, stating that as an organization you need to deliver a consistent customer experience to build credibility for your brand.

The ‘halo’ affect is your ability to deliver that positive brand experience across all customer touch points, including your’ in-store location, your customer service line, as well as the interactions your customers have with traditional news, the search engine results, Facebook, MySpace, your blog, Twitter, and YouTube.

Traditional approaches such as your customer service line, in-store experience, and news releases address less than 50% of the ‘halo’ channels, and the ratio continues to decrease as online platforms evolve.

The opportunity for your customers to complain about your brand online gets easier each day.  Technology such as the iPhone puts the power to be vocal in their hands.

The main difference today is speed of information, customers can post complaints in the heat of anger, as technology advancement eliminates the ‘cool off’ time.

It’s imperative to train your company to maintain the positive brand.

• Great customer service needs to be the company culture
• Train all employees that interact with your customers on how to handle complaints
• It’s too easy for anyone to complain to thousands of people via Twitter, Facebook, iPhone

Establish boundaries and rules. Jessica urged the audience to add guidelines for online commenting and blogging to your employee handbook.

Grant employees access to social media sites so they can monitor what’s happening and what comments are being made about the brand.

What might an upset customer do to voice their complaint?

• Comment at Yahoo and Google local
• Write a blog post
• Twitter update (which may push out to their Facebook network)
• AdWords ad with the complaint
• Primary purpose to get the attention of a VP who can instill change

Next up is Lauren Backarello, offered tips for maintaining your brand online. Defending your brand online requires both a defensive (preventative) strategy as well as an offensive strategy to deal with negative attacks that occur.

Defensive Strategies:

Get the best players

• Buy domains around your target keywords and brand name
• Make sure to own ‘mybrandsucks.com’
• Own your ‘CEOsname.com’

You don’t have to use these brand names, but have them so no one else can.

Don’t overlook social media

• Register your brand name on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Naymz, Wikipedia, and Squidoo.

Know what your competitors are doing

• Know who is bidding on your branded terms.

Keep an eye on your key players

• Create alerts for your brand name, executive names, and key product names.

Monitor everything

• Twitter is a great place for people to connect and interact. It is also a great place for people to complain about companies to hundreds of their friends at once. Tweet Pro is a tool that helps you organize the contacts that are talking negatively about your brand

You can use Twitter to help manage your reputation by monitoring tweets for complaints and responding to help them find a solution for their problem.

Offensive Strategies

• Empower your loyalists
• Respond to negative publicity quickly

Brian Combs talked mostly about how to pre-empt a negative attack online, giving advice about online customer service.

Before you have a problem:

• Dedicate resources to online customer service
• Monitor online conversations
• Use consistent Naming conventions
• Create and propagate multiple sites

Upon finding a problem:

• Engage and attempt to diffuse
• May create an online fan
• Don’t be defensive or attempt to strong arm, you’ll make it worse
• Don’t engage with trolls and internet tough guys
• Take it offline if possible
• As if they’ll block with robots.txt (instead of asking to take the negative content down)
• Attempt to scrub the list

Own more real estate in the Search Engine Results page with:

• Sub-domains, product sites, int’l domains
• Social media like Facebook, MySpace
• Articles on their party sites
• Microssites to address specific concerns
• Blended search
• Content must be Unique
• Sites may require link building

Risky Techniques:

• Wikipedia
• Pay Per Post, ReviewMe (for scrubbing)
• Google Bowling
• Deceptive Practices

Key takeaways:

• Reputation problems are easier to prevent than to fix
• Customer Service 101: Engage and don’t be defensive
• If you  must scrub the listings, take a diversified approach

Tony Wright started off by telling a story about a Paris Texas and a reputation management issue between the local elementary school teacher and the ramifications of a situation that spiraled out of control.

Lessons Learned:

• Emotions can ruin an online reputation
• Sometimes responding makes it worse (if you are emotional)
• If you are an employer, you need to have policies in place to keep employees from responding inappropriately
• Threatening violence on the internet can be dangerous, but most of the time it makes you look like an idiot
• Local politics is very interesting indeed

Reputation, Influence and Branding:

• Reputation, branding and influence are not the same thing but are interconnected
• Of the three, start working on reputation. The others will come if your reputation is good
• Don’t let good branding get in the way of a good reputation
• Monitor your reputation. Create a formula for keeping your reputation solid, deal with snags as they come

Creating a formula for online reputation:

• Items to consider, sign weights to how each affects the brand:
• Reach of the venue (ie: New York Times, vs. unknown blog)
• Influence of the poster (what is the page rank for the blog, how many visitors)
• Tone of the content (Look at the comments to the post, are they all negative?)
• Follow-up on the post (watch for on-topic vs. off topic)
• Viral effects (has the post been picked up on other sites?)

The panel closed with a discussion about the need to have a full time person in the company dedicated to monitoring, managing, and maintain a positive reputation and brand online.

What are your thoughts about having a full time brand ambassador? Does your company have a full time representative dedicated to connecting with customers online?

Check back with the TopRank Marketing Blog for more blog coverage of Pubcon 2008 and the Pubcon photosset on Flickr.

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Joe (here flanked by Vanessa Zamora and Melanie Mitchell) is always the luckiest guy in the room - especially in Vegas

Michael Dorausch and birthday girl Reem Abeidoh

Zack at Zappos Headquarters

Zappos, Elvis Style (including music)

6 SEOs Can’t be Wrong: Marcus, Bob, Chris, Greg, Neil, Cameron

Dan Perry and Ethan Giffin are pretty happy about Pubcon

Another packed session room at Pubcon

Microsoft with big smiles and plenty of visibility as an underwriting sponsor at Pubcon

There’s plenty to talk about in between sessions

Jeff Randall from WebmasterWorld making sure registration runs smoothly

Jessica and Ashley from TopRank who are blogging Pubcon

Andrew Beckman & Cindy Turrietta

Brian Chappell, Brian Carter, Jordan Kastaler and Jeremy Luebke chumming it up at the Zappos party

The Man of Pubcon: Brett Tabke

Check out all of TopRank’s photos on the Pubcon 2008 Flickr set.

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Social media gurus, including Warren Whitlock, Co-Author of The Twitter Revolution, Brian Carter, Director of Search Marketing for Fuel Interactive, Guillaume Bouchard, CEO of NVI, and Kent Schoen, Facebook Product Manager, joined forces at this session to discuss the Big sexy buzz around social media and provide some food for thought to convince skeptics that social media can be a successful marketing channel.

Warren Whitlock kicked off the session discussing twitter habits.

There are two stages of Twitter:
1.    Denial: Why would anyone care what I ate for breakfast?
2.    Reluctant Acceptance: I have a Twitter account but haven’t seen any traffic

The Twitter Revolution really is about making meaningful connections.  Let people know what you are up to, because contrary to some beliefs, people do care.

Warren explained that in today’s online world, we are all publishers. If you have a MySpace page, a Facebook account, or use Twitter, you publish content for other users.

Many people have asked the question, “how do I get more people to my website?” Warren’s advice: publish more content and tweet more. Give users more advice, resources, and content and they will find your website and make a connection with your brand.

The most important thing to know about Twitter is that there are no rules.

You can use Twitter however you want, but know that people are not going to follow you if you spam them, and only post promotional links. Be authentic in your approach and you will make a connection.

Next up, Brian Cartern discussed the benefits of the big Trifecta.

What is the Trifecta?

The Trifecta is a combination of blogging, bookmarking and Twittering. The key is to incorporate optimization into each corner of the Trifecta.

Optimization = Getting the results you want faster

Brian gave us his 5 step process to optimize anything:
1.    Identify your goal
2.    Establish a measurement
3.    Where you at?
4.    Plan Route to Goal
5.    Let results guide progress

In social media, if you want to succeed, you need a brand that is more powerful than your target markets. In social media, you need a powerful goal.

Why does the trifecta work?
-    Blog is a place for you to establish your authority
-    Bookmarking is social proof
-    Twitter gets you attention

Guillaume Bouchard talked mainly to social news and the benefits of sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon, and stated that the main principle of social news sites it to catalyze natural link growth.

The realistic role of social news:
-    Produce link worthy  content
-    Taking luck out of the equation

The Social platforms: Digg and StumbleUpon make up 90% of social traffic.

Digg:
-    Onsite voting
-    Tough to succeed
-    Can get buried
-    Large traffic spike
-    Success: home page

StumbleUpon:
-    Toolbar voting
-    Not as tough to succeed
-    Can get thumbed-down
-    Lower total, more gradual spike
-    Success: recommendation surge

Make it or break social media strategy involves:
-    Content
-    Platform
-    Submitter
-    Category
-    Vote (solicitation)

Content Development:
Approval = perception of quality and enjoyment / time taken to enjoy

Give quality:
-    They like to laugh, but avoid failed attempts at humor
-    They appreciate hard work, but avoid build-content-quick-schemes
-    They like learning
-    They tend to follow their communities (dis)approval
-    They do not like spam, or SEO & marketing, for that matter

Save Time:
-    They don’t want too much text
-    They want to be able to skim and get the basic idea
-    They don’t like having to click unnecessarily
-    They resent when your server can’t handle their visitorship
-    They like being able to vote right now

Platform of Trust:
Both Digg staff and users value trust. Unfortunately, trust isn’t easy to earn.

The numbers
-    Trusted domains account for +90% of home pages
-    Of non-trusted domains, 30% are images, 10% are videos
-    ~100-125 stories hit the home page every day

The Trusted Submitter:
-    Domains are trusted, but so are people
-    Trusted submitters are less likely to be buried
-    Receive immediate fried votes
-    More than 30% of sites on the home page are from top submitters

Category Selection:
-    Different categories have different voting requirements
-    Digg has a proportional home page breakdown for each category

Soliciting Votes:
-    Look for exchange opportunities
-    Leverage instant messaging
-    In-site communication services
-    Vote on lots of stories

Ken Shone, product manager for Facebook, wrapped up the session sharing some Facebook statistics with the group.

Facebook Users:
-    120 million active users
-    15 million mobile users
-    1billion profile details
-    20 million daily status updates
-    100 million daily pokes
-    20 million daily wall posts

Social media is influential. A survey conducted asked users when they were considering purchasing a product or service, what was the most trusted and valued source of information. Over 70% said word of mouth.

With massive amounts of content online, communities and friends have become the filter to help determine an individual’s media preferences and is used to identify what content is worth their time.

Measurement and analytics with Facebook:

Passive measurement
-    Lexicon measures social interactions and demographics on Facebook
-    Identify the trend in conversation
-    Ad tools can help you understand who is out there (geographic and demographics)

Active measurement
-    Discover who’s engaging with your business and how

Demographic data may confirm your suspicions or lead you in a new direction. Make informed decisions based on how people interact with your content.

If your company has not adopted social media as part of its marketing mix, what are some of the common objections or road blocks you have run into?

Be sure to check back for more TopRank Pubcon coverage and visit the Pubcon photos on Flickr.

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