Many business professionals have LinkedIn profiles, but don’t spend much time cultivating their relationships or raising awareness about their business. LinkedIn provides exceptional opportunities for networking and by making a commitment each month to spend time improving a LinkedIn profile businesses can not only add value, but even create clarity about business objectives for potential customers.

*Complete the profile

If you don’t have time to do it all at once, come back and keep adding to your profile. Be complete in your skills and experience and use keyword-rich phrases in your bio.

*Add Connections

Each time you network, go to trade shows, educational events, business meetings take the time to input your connections into LinkedIn.

*Get Recommendations

Requesting an endorsement on LinkedIn is easy, just make sure you provide specifics in your request and then thank your connection for providing a recommendation. Our Presentation Skills Training client, Sue Gaulke has many Fortune 500 clients, this is a great place to create credibility by sharing with LinkedIn connections.

*Join Groups

Join Groups related to your industry and learn about how your peers are leveraging that information. Participate in discussions and events for the group and learn about the participants and their mission.

*Answer Questions

Participate in the discussions by asking and answering questions. Add value by providing a unique perspective. Use the “Search Answers” drop down to review and decide where you can participate in the conversation and become an expert.

*Create a Group

Do this step last. Do the homework and make sure the group doesn’t already exist and that the proposed group is adding new value. Invite relevant connections to participate and give them good reason to want to join.

Bonus Tip:
Add your LinkedIn profile address to your Signature Line in your emails to raise awareness. Promote your LinkedIn profile when appropriate.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Cats are fiendishly complicated to manage, they eat when they want, sleep when they want, come and go as they please. A cat is going to do what it wants, when it wants and there’s precious little you can do to change that. Feed them, shelter them, love them, buy those ridiculous mouse on a string toys to entertain them, get them a scratching post (which they may or may not use) and be enormously available to them for their every need. And they may or may not give you the time of day.

Search Marketing isn’t entirely like that, but it’s close. Learn best practices, implement the right site architecture, spend time developing great content, participate in online communities through social marketing, provide exceptional site performance all so Google will pay attention, and they will if it’s done right…sometimes. And what worked last quarter, may not be what works this quarter.

It’s the equivalent of setting out a can of tuna when the cat is gone, “I value you you so much, I’m willing to set out a $1.75 can of white albacore to entice you to quit being a bitch and come home where you can do me the favor of keeping you from getting eaten by the coyote waiting for you by the barn.” That usually works, then one day, “F#%& you, don’t care about tuna, what else you got?” A little different from Google, but note the parallels.

In the middle of a fairly difficult move, the cats decided to run off for the day. We contemplate what to do, leave the door open, set out food, drive to the old house, set a familiar article next to the front door, walk around in the rain for hours hoping to catch a glimpse of the cats which we imagine are wet and frightened, feeling out of sorts from the new change. In a bit of resignation we decide to go out to dinner and resume the search when we return. At which point, they emerge. Frightened, wet, tired? No, DeeDee is taking a long leisurely nap deep in the bathroom linen closet, Hermann comes strolling up after a 12 hour disappearance just in time to use the litter box, “Man that was a big adventure, I’d have stayed out longer but I really needed to take a crap”. What an ass. Yet here we are relieved and filled with gratitude that these demanding, careless little furballs are home safely. No rhyme or reason as to why they’ve gone or where they’ve been.

So it’s going great, you’re executing on the well-researched search marketing strategy, all internal pages and products are humming along, ranking and performing just as planned and all the sudden, 2 weeks into the busy season the top trafficked phrase with ranking to the home page drops off the face of the planet, for no apparent reason. Site performance is up, no big pricing changes in the industry, no new competition, nothing unexpected, it’s just gone. So you go about setting out the tuna, not the Bumble Bee, but the really good stuff they get only by smacking baby dolphins in the head, sure it’s bad, but you’ll try almost anything at this point. Stand out in the rain, forgo other activities in the hope of gaining the placement that helps make quarterly goals. Then in exasperation, you go to something else. Your heart sinks, a sense of dejected defeat washes over you. Then you check dashboards the next day, and there it is. The ranking you need, hate and love all at the same time. The bitch is back.

This week’s InnoTech Conference (The Business & Technology Innovation Conference and Expo) at the Oregon Convention Center April 22-23 boasts a wide range of Technical and Web Topics including IT issues, Local Search, Blogging, Enterprise Search and Mobile Search: (see Sessions At a Glance).

MEDIA forte marketing, will be paneling a Hot Seat Site Reviews session with Hallie Janssen, Anvil Media, Kent Schnepp, EngineWorks and Scott Hendison, Search Commander. These sessions are a great way to take SEO/SEM best practices and apply them to live sites.

Another “Don’t Miss” is David Mihm’s “Local Search Marketing Strategies“. David, GetListed.org, shares strategies for maximizing exposure in local Google and Yahoo listings.

The SoMe (social media) Awards is a newcomer to the line up and and honors the area’s top social marketing campaigns. Also on the Social Media front, Rahaf Harfoush, New Media Strategist, Member of Obama’s Social Media Team, & Associate Director of the Global Cooperation Initiative at the World Economic Forum will present at the InnoTech Keynote Lunch on Thursday, April 23, 2009 (register here). Unique opportunity to hear, first hand, from a member of the social media campaign that redefined politics.

If you’re at the Expo, come visit our SEMpdx Booth and learn more about becoming a member of one of the best search marketing organizations in the country.

In it’s 6th year, InnoTech agenda and speakers keep getting better. Don’t miss it!

Twitter has received a great deal of publicity in the last couple of weeks, leaving those who don’t subscribe to “TechCrunch” to wonder, “how can I use Twitter?”

So here is a list of ways I’ve used Twitter in the last week

Got recommendation on a Sauvignon Blanc to pair with a dish I was preparing from @rperro

Used Twitter Search to find out about my daughter’s choir tour in London, connected with program organizer in Prescott, @davidlrattigan

Got reminder about local Gorge Angel Conference deadline from @BFashing

Initiated review from top blogger @garyvee

Learned about singer, Madeleine Peyroux from @toddmintz

Learned about a product, live video tours of real estate properties, for new client from @hometours

Learned about legislation I may not have read in mainstream news @fratel

Figured out technical search issue and analytics issue with recommendation from mentors @dannysullivan, @portentint

How can you use Twitter?

Go to search.twitter.com, enter a search query, read tweets from influencers, get involved in that conversation and add value by contributing to the conversation in a meaningful way.

Don’t take my word for it, create a Twitter profile, use it and let me know what you think.

Happy Tweeting!

If you want great resources for search marketing, follow me on Twitter @mediafortemktg

I forget sometimes that online Social Networking isn’t commonplace for a lot of people. If you don’t tweet, haven’t MySpaced, Stumbled Upon, Dugg or even Facebooked, here are some good ways “regular folks” use social networking to make their lives easier, better, more transparent and more interesting.

1. My sister Kristen posted a video of her daughter Madeleine when she lost her first tooth (declaring that the tooth fairy was coming and that she is “very sneaky”). So damn cute and we’re all happy we can take part in the little things even if we’re not next door.

2. A mother I’ve volunteered with at our schools for years updated her profile on Facebook from Married to Separated. She’s more acquaintance than friend, but someone I’ve known for many years and our daughters are involved in many of the same activities. Knowing she was experiencing a life change from Facebook was better than me blurting out that I hoped she and her husband would be at my Holiday party. Though it may not be optimal, life is busy, and having a bit of knowledge about friends who aren’t in your inner circle can be enormously helpful.

3. My friend is starting a new business. We used Twitter to find out who is taking part in the conversation about the solution his business provides. Go to Twitter, create an account, complete your profile. Go to search.twitter.com, enter the keywords and phrases that apply to your business or interest and follow the people you find interesting (if they think you’re interesting, they might follow you back).

4. My girlfriend sent me updates via Twitter during the recent snow storms to keep us alerted to their changes in travel plans.

5. My mom is going to create a Facebook account after she saw some fun photos of us in Hawaii. Now we can share photos and comments more easily than we did when we emailed pics.

6. I sent a picture from my Birthday Brunch to my girlfriends who aren’t on Facebook. Easier than sending thank you postcards (though I haven’t entirely abandoned that tradition).

7. My girlfriend Stumbled a review and info about Gran Torino and shared with me, I went that night. Fabulous! Stumble Upon is a bookmarking site that allows people to give thumbs up or down on a site. Great way to get the skinny on a lot of web content.

8. My President Elect (and First Lady) used Twitter to share information about the Presidential Inauguration.

9. My daughter looked up restaurant reviews on Yelp to help us to decide on a Thai restaurant in Portland.

10. An acquaintance and wine lover sent me a review of a Walla Walla wine he loved because he saw a Syrah review I had placed on Corkd (an online social network for wine aficionados). There are social networks for a ton of topics (from wine drinking, to kayaking, to knitting to scrapbooking). Match your interests with an online social network.

11. My son finally accepted my friend request on Facebook (then promptly disparaged me for commenting on his wall-the online social networking equivalent of your kids asking you not to hug them in public). Okay, online social networking doesn’t work in every situation, but it can be enormously helpful (and easy).

Don’t be intimidated. You don’t need to be a technical wizard to join online social networks.
So forget your preconceived notion of social networking being for tech geeks (it’s not). Choose a site, complete your profile, start interacting and see how it works for you.

Social media usage has exploded over the last few years, but marketplace uncertainty still exists about how to best monetize this tremendous potential traffic source.

It’s About the Audience

Whether starting a new site or adding new social media features to an existing media venue, you must think hard about your audience. The user is at the core of every social media site. Assess the following issues:

Who’s your audience? Spend time defining your target market. Think in terms of the these factors:

Demographics. What attributes describe your market, such as household income, geography, age, education, profession, or household composition?

Psychographics. What other traits does your audience have? Are there special interests that influence their actions? These can be work-related, such IT, or hobby-related, such as knitting.

Behavior. How do users’ online actions reveal their interests? Do they use specific products or content? Do they read whitepapers or watch videos?

How do you want to the audience to participate? Make it easy for users to contribute and share, in addition to providing site capabilities that are intuitive to use. For example, rating content or uploading photographs often takes less effort for users than expressing themselves in words.

What’s the benefit of participating, both passively and actively, for users? The reader is thinking, “What’s in it for me?” Is it being part of a community, getting feedback, having a public forum, earning respect, being heard, or some other reason?
Allow participants to give you feedback about site functionality. This is particularly important during early stages of site development, when your participants can tell you what they want and need from your site as well as complain about what doesn’t work.

Points to Consider When Adding Social Media

Create a strong process for site moderation with well thought out and established guidelines for what’s acceptable. ITtoolbox’s George Krautzel points out that this must be done subtlety; it doesn’t mean becoming an obvious presence on your site.

Have a willingness to fail publicly, because social media requires a level of transparency. For some companies, this can be difficult to accept. Transparency is important to understanding what works and how you got to your current offering.

Understand the speed of change involved. Every day brings new changes and challenges as your site evolves. This can be difficult for some offline media companies to comprehend.

Commit to making it succeed. Social media isn’t “build it and they will come” functionality. It takes ongoing work to nurture and keep the community expanding and evolving.

Recognize that building a social media site is an iterative process. It requires continually testing new ways to improve the site. According to Spiceworks’s Jay Hallberg, it often takes three attempts to get a piece of functionality to work properly for the community.
Different Revenue Models

Social media provides publishers with a variety of revenue models, including:

Advertising. Despite publisher concerns, social media, especially for niche or B2B (define) markets, provides well-developed niche opportunities that can evolve into a variety of offerings. Among the advertising opportunities: banners, sponsorships, lead generation, and behavioral targeting that can be sold directly or through third parties.

Subscriptions. Subscriptions can be offered in a number of ways. For example, they can be used for additional functionality, as with LinkedIn, or they can blur the line between print and online, as with the site for “Engineering News-Record.”

Other forms of revenue. Given social media’s evolving state and the strong online advertising market, many companies haven’t fully explored such options as revenue shares or affiliate-type sales, research sales, and data sales (without revealing personal information). (For other content revenue generation ideas, see “Develop Supplemental Content Revenue Streams.”)
Measuring Social Media’s Impact

Many marketers continue to use older metrics to assess a campaign’s impact. In part, this is because they like having metrics that are consistent across campaigns and that they understand. But other, less traditional metrics are also important. Among the salient factors to consider:

Pageviews. While this is an established indicator, it can put your social media efforts into perspective. For example, McGraw-Hill’s Dora Chomiak pointed to a roughly two- to three-fold increase in pageviews per session from the newer social media sections of the publisher’s site. For an advertising-driven site, this translates directly to the bottom line.

User involvement. This can be measured in terms of time on site as well as activity. For example, how many comments or photographs are added each day, week, or month? Has user time on your site increased due to involvement with these sections?

Advertiser interaction. Does the site enable advertisers to participate in a dialogue with their consumers? For media entities concerned about advertisers that receive negative customer feedback, it’s important to put this in perspective since the conversation is already happening. And these newer formats enable them to address these issues head on (albeit in a public forum). Note: this can also be useful for editorial team members who, until this point, may have only had a one-way communication with readers.

Revenues. As always, assessing revenues and positive cash flow are critical components of any campaign.

Costs. It’s important to track costs associated with these efforts. Remember to consider expenses broadly, because it may touch a number of your organization’s areas.
While adding social media to your site can be a difficult decision, the most important step is starting. Social media features aren’t a quick fix for a boring site. But many online marketers have found they’re great tools for expanding reach, building involvement, learning from visitors, and, yes, even bringing in new revenues.

SEMPDX hosted their 2nd annual SearchFest yesterday. Speakers included Rand Fishkin of SEOMOZ, representatives from Google and MSN as well as a host of talented Search Marketers from around the country. I was pleased to see some local friends from Hood River and I met a lot of new people, either learning about search for their company or their own agency.

The conference focused on search strategies such as link development, social media marketing, website usability, analytics and even international SEM. It was fun to see how some local entities are using search marketing to grow their businesses. Dan Harbison of the Portland Trailblazers shared how they’re using their website to increase visibility of the team, improve public perception of players and even sell season tickets.

I presented on Marketing 2.0 Issues including Online Reputation Management issues that occur using Social Media Marketing. Though all three panelists have vastly different client bases, a lot of our recommendations were shared-spend time researching the social networks you’d like to engage, have thick skin, have fun, be a good community member, don’t spam, give more than you take. Marty Weintraub of AimClear had great advice for dealing with bullies, while Janet Johnson shared insight into helping companies with B2B focus leverage the power of social media marketing.

For those of you who missed it, shame on you and plan to go next year;) but know that SEMPDX holds great networking and educational events year round. Check out their upcoming schedule.

Also, big thank you to Benjamin Lloyd of Amplify Interactive and the whole SEMPDX team that made the event possible!

Though I’ve attended Search Engine Strategies conferences since 2001, I’m really enjoying and learning from Danny Sullivan’s search series, SMX, Search Marketing Expo. I attended SMX Advanced in Seattle this year and last week attended the SMX Social Media series in New York. We’ve been talking about social media marketing for about 3 years now, it had been pre-dominantly embraced by the 18-30 year old male demographic. It has now become a powerful venue for communication in niche and micro communities and people are coming up with some really smart ways to leverage the medium. Of course there are spammers who muddy the water and try to turn social media marketing into just one more unwanted advertising venue. Here are some topline items of discussion to help you start thinking about how to use SMM to raise awareness of your site.

The Good:
The web is such an enormous place and Social Networking sites have made it very easy to locate sites, blogs and communities that share your interests and needs online. Say you like wine (okay, let’s say I like wine;) and we have a wine client. I spend time at blogs such as wine camp and social networking sites such as corkd. These communities are superbly rich with wine content that is unique, interesting and helpful. They share wine reviews, recipes, wine events, harvest information and wine tasting recommendations. It’s enormously helpful to go to a handful of sites or blogs and get updates on wine scores, up and coming vintners, new recipes and events. It’s a great way to aggregate all of the best there is for wine content. This is the good of social media marketing. The good allows us to be privy to the best, most relevant, most illuminating content on the web.

The Bad:
Social media marketing is an open forum for discussion, content and links. Because link popularity is an important element of search optimization, it can also be a free for all of links to obscure viagra and cialis sites that have less-than-nothing to do with the social networking site you’re visiting. That’s the bad. Shame on them, propagators of this kind of activity should all be flogged. That said, think about your intention when you become involved in a social networking site. I have an interest in wine communities, I represent a wine client and if I spend my time on wine blogs pushing my client and their special of the week, I would be next for flogging. But if I spend time reading blogs, commenting fairly on cork’d about the 07′ harvest of Oregon Pinot Noir or sharing my grandmother’s pumpkin shrimp saute recipe (that by the way pairs beautifully with my clients’ 06′ Pinot Gris) then I’m being a good member of my community. Social networking is much like starting a friendship. What do you want from me and how can you add value? If you meet me in a coffee shop and start telling me all your problems and ask me to help you move I’m probably not going to get to know you, but if you meet me in a coffee shop and we’re friends for awhile and you add value to my life as a friend and you need help moving, I’ll be there for you. The bad is when people leave comment on social networking sites with total disregard for propriety and good manners.

The Ugly:
Okay, now I’m taking the gloves off. Spammers and black hat SEO’s should be flogged (did I mention that?) I have a corporate client for which we do monthly press releases. This last week, one of our releases was hi-jacked. This entry appeared under a tail search term for my client:

Avery® Print and Mail Center Announces ‘Direct Mail Dish’ Blog …
This site may harm your computer.
Avery Print and Mail Center (PMC), the direct marketing group of Avery … How to Self Direct Retirement Funds Into Real Estate (PR Newswire via Yahoo! …
blogged.sbmarketingservices.com/blogs/ how-to-direct-mail/112554/avery-print-and-mail/ -

Okay, couple of problems. Notice Google addition to this entry This site may harm your computer. not a message a company with an exceptional reputation wants to be associated with. Though the title even shows the registered mark, this BS marketing blog tries to create a relationship between our direct mail blog and some real estate scheme. Legal departments are involved and it will get resolved, but let me ask-what is the point? People aren’t stupid, this company has less-than-nothing to do with retirement real estate. How can hijacking someone else’s unrelated content be helpful to you?

Vertical Response, a very highly respected Email Marketing Program, had their site hi-jacked and were pummeled with some very bad PR (because someone thought this spammed up, hi-jacked site belonged to them). They are a classy outfit and handled the situation quickly and graciously, but what a nightmare.

The internet is still relatively new and all of these hi-jacking, spamming, trademark issues are just beginning to have real world solutions and frankly it’s a nightmare if you’re ever on the wrong side of the spam. This kind of ugliness is reprehensible and unfathomable. Social media marketing, blogs and other easily editable sites have opened the door to content hijacking and all forms of desperate marketing ploys. This is the ugly. The ugly is when you ask for everything and you’re willing to give nothing.

The Fun:
Now we can talk about the fun. An agency representing Comedy Central presented at the show. In a session for Wikipedia, he outlined how Comedy Central leverages comments and additions to Wikipedia for South Park. They let brand evangelists share the message and Wikipedia and its’ guest are the better for it. Consumers trust the information because it isn’t coming from some big PR firm, it’s coming from the guy who has faithfully watched the show, gets the characters and shares fact about the program. This is the fun! How refreshing to see social media marketing at its’ best.

The take away? Let’s do our best to be good social networking citizens, just as we work to be good friends. Comment fairly and appropriately, be a good friend online and your friendship, good content and fair intent will be rewarded.