We debate about social platforms (and their subsequent CRMs) frequently at GPO. Proper retweet etiquette, tweet automation, and incorporating Klout scores into our engagement strategy have all been items up on our morning coffee chopping block. However, one thing we can agree on is that optimizing content exposure is important and crucial to an effective social media marketing strategy. Timing and social profile choice can play a significant role in how people engage (or don’t engage) with your status updates.

The graphic above (via Breaking Copy) is a sarcastic dramatization, but it brings up an important point: Certain types of content perform better on different channels! Facebook, Google+, YouTube, and Flickr (among other media sharing sites) are great choices for images and video because your target audience will not have to navigate away from the page to view the embedded content. Also, the functionality of these social networks allow you to use your text as a call to action, yet keep focus of your status update on the image or video itself.

Has someone from your company given an important public presentation relevant to your industry recently? Post the slides on SlideShare, and use several tags to describe the content and make it easily searchable for others. Hosting your PowerPoint presentations on SlideShare is not only a good SEO strategy, it is also is a widely-shared opportunity to showcase your brand as a thought leader of your industry.

For questions, ditch the “poll” function on Facebook (for now) and ask questions directly in the status update. Now that Google is indexing comments in Facebook (note: this may change in the future), there is real SEO value in getting your keywords and focused topics to show up in the SERPS. Questions with designated hashtags are very good for Twitter as well. You can facilitate a conversation among followers and harbor it all under a searchable tag, which makes it easy for others to chime in. Finally, another great place to post an industry specific question is in a LinkedIn discussion thread.

In summary, your social media marketing goal should be to publish your content-rich status updates in networks where it is easiest and more inviting to engage. Cross promote on all channels to boost your reach, but always keep in mind the advantages and strengths of each social profile you have created for your brand. They are all different for a reason!

Have you considered adding social share buttons to your website or blog as part of your search engine marketing strategy? Although the implementation seems daunting, it is actually an excellent call-to-action for visitors to engage with your content or retail items. According to the inbound marketing big boys at Hubspot.com, “Websites that use Google’s +1 button generated 3.5 times more traffic from Google+ than websites that don’t have the button installed.” That is a compelling nugget of knowledge that is very hard to ignore.

Our search engine maketing interpretation: Out of sight, out of mind. So put yourself out there! Still on the fence? Here are 4 more reasons for you to consider installing a plugin like Socialize or DiggDigg2u on your website:

1. It offers people many ways to share your content directly - Save your readers a few steps! With multiple social share button options (like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or even personal e-mail) they can save time and avoid any hassles in order to promote your message. If you make it easy, they are more likely to act on their impulse to share relevant content with their friends.

2. It diversifies your web presence – Niche community buttons like StumbleUpon, Digg, Tumblr, Reddit, and LinkedIn are used heavily by those who actively engage with the Tech, Fashion, and Politics communities. If your brand resonates with pop culture gurus, it is a good idea to have a wide portfolio of social buttons and ways to engage.

3. It encourages conversation about your brand or organization – Once a blog is shared via a social share button, another avenue opens up for others to continue the conversation about your blog topic or your brand. Put simply, social share buttons increase visibility. And visibility begets more opportunity for conversation.

4. Social shares become links back to your site – While they may be “no follow” link, social shares still organically increase the amount of unique page views your receive on your site. It’s another case for visibility: The more social paths you create that lead to your content, the greater chances it will be seen by others and shared through 3rd party streams.

Treat your fans like house guests. Make things more comfortable and easier for them when they visit your home[page]. Be open, be friendly and encourage conversation. And make it easier for people to amplify your message through social shares. It is a search engine marketing strategy that is getting very hard to put off!

Last month, we wrote how the combination of search marketing, social media marketing, analytics and consumer experiences can combine to tell a more complete story about how a brand uses the Internet to market products and services. Creating a unique online experience helps answer questions of why the consumer should pay attention to your business and why they should keep coming back to your website or social network. Businesses must also answer the fundamental question of how to build a long-term strategy around these platforms and who will implement and monitor them.

It’s easy to think that experiential marketing is simple. Use a recipe of creating interactive platforms for conversation via social media marketing, provide entertainment, develop funny advertisements and bingo, you will have customers practically knocking down your door. Yet, for many brands, experiential marketing is actually a difficult concept to grasp. In most companies, core competencies center on the manufacture and selling of products and services rather than marketing.

Just as major organizations use an outside advertising agency to create and develop commercials and marketing campaigns such as the E*Trade baby, the development of experiential marketing campaigns often requires experts who can help uncover the key traits of how a brand resonates with consumers. Television and radio advertisements are unidirectional methods of communication with an emphasis on branding.

Search and social media campaigns work similarly to branding; however, these mediums are more adept at translating resonance and connection with the consumer into meaningful methods of educating, entertaining and engaging an audience. Yet, taking the brand experience to the digital realm requires an expertise in facilitating and motivating two-way communications. It’s not always as simple as having an executive assistant manage a Google Adwords or YouTube video campaign.

At Get Page One, we create search and social media marketing plans with your customer in mind. Our core competencies and expertise focus on helping create the brand experience while you concentrate on developing outstanding products and services.

In his 1937 novel Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck wrote a paraphrased line about “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Nearly any business leader will tell you this is a true statement. In today’s technology-savvy world, things that go awry can often times create a publicity snowball effect — both positive and negative — in the mind of the consumer, influencing more and more stakeholders as word spreads like wildfire. At Get Page One, we believe reputation management strategies are a proactive approach to the handling of crisis; identifying brand supporters and developing a feedback loop for communication with publics.

Reputation management once existed as a sub-genre of public relations (PR) personnel in the media industry to create or manage spin and shape perceptions. Because of the real-time communications technologies of today, reputation management has taken on a unique significance in the marketing repertoire. Consumers are flocking to the Internet, taking the water cooler conversations to social media sites, such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and blogs, expressing evangelism for the brands and products they love, distaste and distrust for those they do not. And it’s not just happening to giant corporations. Small and medium sized organizations are just as susceptible to positive and negative feedback on the Internet. And because this conversation is taking place at lightning speed, ignoring it is not an option anymore.

Of course, it’s always great to be prepared when things go “awry,” and the need for help managing your brand’s reputation doesn’t require a crisis the size of a British Petroleum oil spill. Small customer relations issues, packaging or service problems can turn a seemingly minor dilemma into a major setback that may spread throughout the social web. A proactive approach to monitoring and managing these quandaries can turn a negative into a positive. Conversely, reputation management is not just about handling negative conversations. Encouraging and responding to positive mentions by consumers through social media marketing can enhance brand reputation in the same way.

In days past, coping with consumer perception meant having a journalist at your disposal, a public relations professional on your staff and spending thousands on advertising to help modify public opinion. Now, the consumer is the journalist, social media professionals are your public relations managers and two-way feedback is replacing the expense of one-way advertising. And since we are keen on quoting writers today, poet Oscar Wilde once wrote, “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” Search marketing and social media services help get you talked about, and reputation management from Get Page One helps manage that conversation.

It may be easy to think that to achieve favorable search results on Google, Bing or Yahoo, simply putting up a video, blogging or posting to Facebook and Twitter will get the job done. However, to achieve optimal results, the combination of search marketing, organic search engine optimization and social media necessitates a cohesive strategic vision. Moreover, this vision is not an end-game approach, but rather an ongoing and flexible process. The need for flexibility stems from the constantly shifting changes in search algorithms and consumer behavior. We are often asked at Get Page One how each of these components operates in tandem to reach results.

While the answers are not always simple, search engines begin the course of online visibility through a complex combination of factors. More than just heading tags, anchor text, backlinks and advertisements, each component in the search process works together to develop placement on search engines, where the best place is, of course, a top ranking. Ideally, through the progression of increasing views and interaction, organizations convert search results into consumer demand and new sales. In a sense, it is akin to a professional baseball team playing for a World Series title. Each element, from pitching and hitting to defense seemingly operate separately. However, these components do not win championships by operating independently. The manager must know when to bunt and steal bases and when to pull the starting pitcher and rely on the bullpen.

Likewise, search marketing, SEO and social media marketing all seemingly function as separate entities. Yet, each has its own objectives. Choosing the right keywords, effective use of ad elements such as targeting and call-to-action, engagement through social networks and measuring results are just a few pieces of the puzzle.

On the Internet, you want to be in the right place at the right time, when the consumer is looking. Each building block in the practice of search marketing helps to realize this goal. Optimal search results typically occur when each building block combines within a comprehensive strategy. Therefore, like a World Championship baseball organization, achieving top Internet ranking is a team effort.

Technological innovation between search engines and social media seems to have taken somewhat divergent paths in recent years. While search engines and social media have seen some integration, recent changes by Google adding a Google social search feature could make the blend between search and social even more relevant.

At Get Page One, we’ve monitored the evolution of search and social, and we are excited about the future prospects in technology and relevance to business. Because many organizations bring in new customers through a combination of online visibility via search marketing, SEO and word-of-mouth (or word-of-web), the latest innovation from Google can possibly be a boon to business.

Google Social Search, as reported by Mashable, feeds information from your social graph into search results. The information shown to the user stems from shared connections and shared information linked to Flickr, Quora and Twitter, social feeds with which Google integrates. In other words, if one of your Twitter friends shared a link to Get Page One, the share would show annotated below the search result.

Marketers and businesses realize the importance of how consumers share information via the social graph, including the trust they have in the recommendations of their Internet friends. Google Social Search adds an element of both visibility and word-of-web.

With the advantages come potential disadvantages. If your organization happens to be experiencing a public relations crisis, the negative publicity might not only feed the search engines, it may also feed more negativity into the social graph, snowballing when picked up in a Google search. At Get Page One, we can help you prepare for and react to an online public relations crisis via our reputation management services.

Despite any disadvantages, advancements between search and social media provide a unique opportunity for companies to extend their reach and influence.

If you’re not using social media to promote your business, you’re missing out.

A recent study by Wetpaint and the Altimeter Group, called the ENGAGEMENTdb study, ranks the “world’s most valuable brands based on how they leverage social media to interact with customers.” Able to measure and monitor brand engagement, ENGAGEMENTdb is the first of its kind. Essentially, Wetpaint and Altimeter Group are measuring social media’s financial value. For example, how does a Twitter account actually pay off — or does it even pay off at all?

So the study took the world’s 100 most valuable brands (as measured by BusinessWeek/Interbrand “Best Global Brands 2008″ rankings) and looked at their social media use — how well the brands are engaging their consumers and how that affects their revenue and profit. What the study found was that those 100 brands are “experiencing a direct correlation between top financial performance and deep social media engagement.”

What exactly does that mean? Simply put, companies engaging in social media are more financially successful.

At Get Page One, we’re firm believers in the power of social media marketing. But you can’t just sign up for accounts on Twitter, Facebook, etc. and hope for it to pay off. You have to work hard at it and be consistent in the way you use it — you can’t just sign up and leave. Successful social media marketing involves signing up for social media accounts and actually being social — interacting with other users, regularly updating and participating.

Engage in social media, be consistent and see it literally pay off.

When taking your first steps towards using Twitter as an online marketing tool, it’s important to have good Twitter etiquette. The bottom line is that Twitter is all about interacting with other users and building trust. If you use your account to do nothing but talk about and link to your business, you will be seen as a spammer. But if you engage in conversations and use the service as a real person — the voice of your company — you will build trust and earn respect.

How to Use Twitter: DON’T…

• Don’t just post links to your website. You’ll sound like a robot and people will think you’re a spammer.
• Don’t only talk about your company.
• Don’t tell every detail of your day or give too much information.
• Don’t use foul language or insult competitors or Twitter users who have said something negative about you or to you.
• Don’t post links to anything NSFW (not suitable for work).
• Don’t ignore people who @reply to you.
• Don’t ignore @replies.
• Don’t forget to use search.twitter.com to look for mentions of your company or name
• Don’t use search.twitter.com to look for people talking about your industry and spam them with an @reply.
• Don’t follow many more people than are following you — keep a good ratio. Use friendorfollow.com to find out who isn’t following you back. (If you’re following lots of people and not many are following you, this makes your account look spammy.)
• Don’t use a tool to send new followers an automated Direct Message.
• Don’t follow a bunch of people at once, especially right when you sign up. Build up your profile slowly. It takes time and patience.
• Don’t get political unless it’s a major part of who you are or who your company is. Potential customers or clients could make the decision not to use your services based on any political statements you make.

How to Use Twitter: DO…

• Make sure you have an avatar.
• Use search.twitter.com or Twitterhawk to look for mentions of your company or name.
• Add people who have mentioned your company or name on Twitter, then send them an @reply that says something like “Thanks for the mention!”
• Post links to your new blog posts and other news, but keep it to a minimum.
• Post at least once per day. Space your posts out — don’t just post one after the other.
• Interact with people who are following you. Build up a rapport.
• Keep your posts to under 140 characters — don’t post twice in a row because you have so much to say about one thing.
• Use your Bio to let people know who you are and why you’re here.
• Fill out the homepage URL field in your profile with your website.
• Retweet (RT) links and Tweets you find interesting and relevant to your industry. The user you RT’d will appreciate it — this is the highest form of Twitter flattery.
• Think before you Tweet. If you mess up, many of your followers will have software that automatically downloads posts, and they will still be able to read your deleted post.
• Use Direct Messages when you need to send someone a private message.
• Use tinyurl.com or is.gd to shorten long links.
• Be interesting.
• Most importantly–Have fun with it!

Happy Tweeting!

By now, you’ve likely heard at least something about Twitter, the social networking website where users can “tweet” 140 characters at a time. People use Twitter for all kinds of stuff — keeping in touch with friends, finding out what’s going on at a particular place, joining conversations and, most important to this blog post, marketing.

How does a website where people seem to just be writing about everyday personal things — “What a beautiful day!” “Just saw a superlative movie!” “I’m eating food at a restaurant!” — have the potential to be a marketing platform? you may wonder.

Look closely at Twitter. Spend some time looking around at what people are saying, or, even better, type in a keyword at search.twitter.com. When you do that, you’ll start to notice something: Twitter has a ton of potential when it comes to marketing your business.

And businesses are no stranger to using Twitter as a marketing platform. Just look at Skittles — for one day a couple of weeks ago, going to Skittles.com brought up a search for “#skittles” on search.twitter.com, so any time a Twitter user mentioned Skittles, it’d show up in the search feed. Needless to say, a few jokers took the opportunity to write inappropriate remarks about the brand, but for the most part the chatter was positive. Skittles got exactly what they wanted: for people to talk about Skittles! And, hey, that’s exactly what we’re doing right now, so it clearly worked.

Countless other companies are already on Twitter, as they’ve quickly realized its social media marketing potential. Companies like Whole Foods, General Motors, Comcast and JetBlue use Twitter to actually interact with their customers, and they even provide customer service through it. That’s a brilliant way to use Twitter, since it seems customers truly appreciate when a human from a business actually takes the time to speak to them. A personal reply online seems so little and basic, but imagine how well this kind of customer service resonates with people.

It’s incredibly easy to make Twitter one-way and just send out self-promotional tweets, a mistake that countless businesses are making right now. Doing it that way is not only lazy, it’s a missed opportunity. Making it two-way (where you are actively replying to other users and engaging in conversation) is exactly how Twitter is meant to be used. Interaction is essential if you’re going to effectively use Twitter as a marketing platform.

Twitter is Down. I’m getting a 500 internal server on Twitter, and my twitter finger is starting to twitch. I’m not really sure what to do now … just sort of sitting here staring at the screen … Do I call the police? The National Guard? Barack Obama?

Twitter Having a Ruby on Rails Scalability Problem?

Theories abound around here of why Twitter is down, though the prevailing one is that it’s Ruby, and that from our Ruby on Rails programmer. There is an inherent Ruby on Rails scalability problem, and it’s causing me, and millions more jittery twitters some unease.

“Twitter is Down” Timekiller

Ok, since Twitter is down, and you might have some time to kill, why not comment here on one of these questions:

1. Why is Twitter down?
2. What do you do when you can’t Tweet?
3. What horrible worldwide implications will the Twitter outage have?
4. What will we do if Twitter never comes back up?

… what’s that? Twitter’s back up now? um … ok, gotta’ go now, you can catch me on my Twitter about SEO, but you feel free to hang around here and answer the poll