360DigitalInfluence

Search Engine Strategies Conference returns to Chicago November 14 – 18. Marketers and SEO professionals will gather to discuss all topics related to search, social media and more. Interested in checking out the conference? Use priority code “OGV20” at registration for a special discount.

I recently had the privilege to interview Eric Ward, president, EricWard.com. Eric is an expert on content linking strategies and has been involved in online marketing since 1993. Eric has helped a countless number of companies create and execute linking strategies to increase the awareness of their web content.

Eric is on a panel at SES Chicago, “Social Media Linking and Promotion,” where he’ll discuss how social media usage has created opportunities (and frenzy) among link building and promotion. Here is an excerpt of what Eric had to say about social media linking and promotion:





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Facebook is always making minor tweaks to its platform to enhance users’ experience and last week introduced three functionality changes that may impact the way both you and your favorite brands use the social network.

View Shares on Your Profile or Fan Page

Facebook users can now view shares from public-facing status updates on their page, friend’s pages, or fan pages. It’s important to note that you can only view who shares a status update if the post was shared publicly by a user or by one of your friends.

Now you can easily see which of your friends shared your public updates, but how will this affect your favorite brand?

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Next week Social Media Week makes its highly anticipated debut in Chicago. Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence team will be partnering with Buddy Media to present a panel, “Fueling Your Social Media Strategy For B2B.” Come join us along with brand and platform social media specialists as we discuss the current landscape of B2B in social media as well as future opportunities at 11 a.m. on September 20 at the Merchandise Mart Conference Center (located in the Skyway to the Chicago Sun Times building)

This panel will walk you through what you need to be doing now and provide a glance ahead at what you can do next.

UPDATE: LinkedIn has signed on to join the panel since this blog post was first published

Panel representatives include:

• Mark Skroch from OgilvyOne
• Lauren McCadney from Ogilvy client, CDW
• Myles Kleeger from Buddy Media
• Kyleen Fishwick from LinkedIn
• Ian Sohn from Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence

To register for the event and for more information, visit http://socialmediaweek.org/event/?event_id=827

Also, if you have any questions for the panel please leave them as a comment to this post.

Can’t make the event? You can follow all the Social Media Week events on Twitter by searching #SMW11.

This past week social media showed users a little bit of everything – from the serious to the silly. If you’re anything like me, your Twitter and Facebook newsfeeds are continuously populated with link sharing from friends (and them adding their own commentary, which is always logical). Here are some of the most common serious and silly links shared among my friends this week. What was shared most in your feeds?

The Serious

Obama joins FourSquare

President Obama becomes one of the most high-profile people to join Foursquare. So far more than 27,000 followers are receiving his tips as he checks in across the Midwest on his bus tour. His tips are different than mine and yours as he’s sharing how to improve the economy and not what his favorite item is to order off the menu.

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Wedding bells are ringing. They’re no longer just ringing at your ceremony, but all over the internet. Social media has expanded your wedding planning and day-of events to not only guests attending the big event, but to your entire social networks. Social media allows you to communicate with guests prior to the event and keep the memories forever. Since I’m getting married in less than a week, I decided to take a glance at how social media has changed the wedding process.

Wedding Proposals

Wedding proposals are getting more and more creative. Along with being creative, they’re being captured on video and uploaded to YouTube. There are more than 6,000 results when searching “wedding + proposal” on YouTube. Some of those proposals videos became so viral they have millions of views.

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A picture is worth a thousand words, right? What about a Facebook picture?

How much do you think a Facebook user’s photo that a brand is tagged in is worth? While a quantifiable value is not currently measurable, positive photos that fan pages are tagged in are valuable to the brand as they provide a strong word-of-mouth recommendation (without the words, of course).

Brands will see themselves and their products tagged in more and more photos on their Facebook fan page now since Facebook announced last week that users have the ability to tag fan pages in their photos on Facebook in the same way they can tag their friends. This new functionality creates even more of a deeper connection between the user and the brand. It makes the brand more of a friend than just a brand.

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There are more than 500 million active users on Facebook and the average user is connected to 80 pages, groups and events. With such a high amount of activity, a brand’s voice is key to breaking through the clutter and connecting with current and prospective brand ambassadors.

As I’m sure you have heard by now, last week Facebook announced changes to its fan pages. The changes have the potential to make a brand’s voice more prominent throughout Facebook. However, they may also create a challenge for brands on Facebook as well.

One of the changes to fan pages is that your brand can now like and leave comments on other brand pages. This will allow for brands to interact, build new relationships, and gain a larger fan base.  For example, the Friends Facebook Fan Page can like and comment on fan pages for Joey, Phoebe, Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler and the Central Perk (and vice versa). This would ultimately lead to the Friends Fan Page not only gaining more likes, but also potentially having its message spread further across Facebook.

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People love to rant and rave on Twitter. Brands and organizations love to engage with current and potential influencers. The combination is perfect. It allows Twitter to be used in increasingly creative ways and tweets to be shared in the most unexpected places. The following are five creative ways real-time opinion from Twitter is being shared:

1) Retail Stores – Last week I was at a Las Vegas mall when I passed Metropark, a men’s and women’s store that had a live in-store Tweet stream running on multiple television screens in the store as well as in the front window. It was very interesting to see as a consumer that I could walk by the store and read what people were discussing about @MetroparkUSA in real time.

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Tomorrow marks the first day of SES Chicago 2010. In earlier parts of our SES Chicago interview series we chatted with Chris Long about B2B marketing tips and Hollis Thomases about Twitter and automation.

For part III of our interview series, I had the opportunity to connect with Robert Murray, CEO of iProspect, a search engine marketing firm. Robert will be on a panel of speakers discussing the future of search tomorrow. During our interview Rob provided great insight on changes in search and what the future of search holds.

Brian Camen (BC): I’ve noticed there’s a wide spectrum of knowledge when it comes to paid advertising campaigns. Many people either know very little or have a full grasp on paid campaigns. What are some misconceptions businesses have about paid search advertising campaigns?

Robert Murray (RM): The biggest misconception about paid search is the degree to which it can be automated. Many marketers perceive it to be something that can be done with the push of a button. Big retailers are especially prone to this thinking.

But the reality is that paid search relies heavily on human thought and judgment. An automated bidding system is just a tool that employs rules. It won’t develop a strategy for you. Nor will it devise a series of tests. And it certainly won’t develop your ad copy.

While there are definitely parts of paid search that can be automated, it is not something that you can just set and walk away from.  In fact, you can have the best tool in the business, but if you don’t have savvy and strategic search marketers “driving the bus,” it won’t get you too far.

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As part two of our interview series for the upcoming SES Conference, I had the opportuntiy to interview Hollis Thomases, founder of WebAdvantage.net, a boutique agency providing strategic online marketing and advertising solutions. Hollis is part of a panel “Twitter Nation & Automation” that will discuss the benefits of using Twitter automation on Twitter and how individuals and brands should properly use automation.

Hollis provided a lot of great insight, not only on Twitter automation, but why early marking campaigns on Twitter work so well.

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