Looking at the latest search marketing conference agendas, articles, and online news in the SEM space, it certainly appears that social media marketing and networking are the wave of the future.

To a certain extent, they are.

Social media, and social networking in particular, create a back-and-forth conversation with your target audience, so you can virally market your website through the “buzz” that can be created. When something interesting, cool, or unique is being talked about in “all the right places,” it can certainly provide a boost in website traffic.

We search marketers tend to hang out in numerous online and offline communities where it’s easy to promote our own products and services, yet I can’t help wondering if our view of Web marketing is skewed because of this.

Are potential B2B clients and even B2C customers spending time at Digg? Do they attend SEM conferences in order to hire a company, or are they just trying to learn to do it themselves? And what about other industries? Is there a Sphinn equivalent for developers of product lifecycle management software? Are there groups of people online comparing the various brands of auto parts? Are there really people seeking out articles on these topics?

Perhaps.

And if so, we’d be remiss not to promote our clients’ websites in those spaces. But is this search marketing? Or is it simply marketing? Arguably, it becomes search marketing when it increases link popularity, but surely that should be the secondary goal of this type of marketing campaign. True link popularity comes from having something worth linking to, not something you’ve asked your insulated circle of cronies to link to.
Certainly, the boost in direct traffic that a site can gain when it is being discussed in all the right places online is not to be taken lightly – and that alone is reason enough to try to be found in all the right places. Yet how much of that traffic actually converts into anything good, and how much does it help your organic search rankings?

More important – how does it incréase your bottom line?

For instance, I’ve written a few articles that receíved upward of 1,000 visitors a day from StumbleUpon alone. The spike in traffic was nice, and the slight addition in newsletter subscribers was certainly welcome, but for the most part, those StumbleUpon visitors spent just a few minutes on our site, and only a small percentage signed up for our free newsletter. None of them were interested in using our services. They read the article and then stumbled their way to the next site of potential interest.

Isn’t participation in social media really just preaching to the choir?

You reach your peers, not the people who will purchase your product or service. Sure, it’s a nice ego stroke to have others in your industry tell you how cool you are, and there’s something to be said for building credibility within your community. I’m certainly not knocking that, and have built my own credibility via various online communities in which I’ve participated over the past decade.

But how does it sell your products and services?

Do you gain customers and sales from your social media marketing and/or your participation in social networks? Does it increase your rankings for the keyword phrases your actual target audience is typing into the search engines? If your business model depends on traffic for traffic’s sake, or on how many ad impressions your site generates, then there’s an obvious value. But if you sell a product or a service – then not so much.

My fear with all the hype about social media marketing is that people new to search marketing will believe it’s what SEO demands and what SEO is all about.

It isn’t. Not by a long shot.

Social media marketing is a great addition to any traditional SEO work that you do, but it’s not a substitute. It’s more akin to hiring a PR firm once you’ve launched your already-SEO’d website. On-page SEO is definitely not as sexy as social media marketing, but it is still the most important investment in your website that you can make. Period.

So, go to all your social media conferences, and Digg your way to increased traffic. But first learn exactly who your target audience is, what they’re searching for in the search engines, and how your website can solve their problems. Then make sure your website does exactly that. All the social media buzz and traffic won’t amount to anything if your target audience isn’t already part of the online conversation.

Be sure to have your house in order before you give social media marketing a try.

And don’t be surprised if it doesn’t actually provide you with the ROI you hoped it would. In most cases it will depend on who your target audience is, where they hang out, the types of services or products you provide, and whether your website truly provides people with what they’re looking for.

Getting back to SEO basics – that is, creating a crawler-friendly website that is built around the keyword phrases people use at the search engines to find what you offer – is the first and most important thing you can do for your website and your business. Yeah, it’s not as fun and exciting as social media marketing, but skip this step at yóur own peril!

Creating excellent content is a key element of optimizing your online presence, but once you have created fantastic information you need to disseminate it. You may be one fantastic source of information, but if nobody hears you, does it matter? Make sure that you aren’t leaving out the step that will get you heard. We have compiled a list of the 5 best practices for content distribution:

1. Blogger Connections: You aren’t the only blogger out there. This may seem like a bad thing sometimes when there are so many other blogs to read. How will your blog get read if there are so many others that have equally great content? The trick is to get your content on blogs that are already being read. There are many wonderful blogs that get a lot of their content from guest bloggers. You can submit articles that you have already published on your own blog or create something new that you think the particular blogger would like for their blog. They may even have a request for a specific kind of content they would like from those interested in guest blogging.

Along with contributing to blogs that you are following already, make sure that you are also using services that will connect you with other bloggers. These are great for not only getting your content posted elsewhere but also for getting guest bloggers on your blog. These blogger connection services already have a great network of bloggers who would love to share content. It would be a waste of a resource if you didn’t use something like this.

Getting others’ guest content on your blog is another great way to link up with more bloggers. These guest bloggers may not have a particular need for your content yet, but they will most likely read your blog if they are contributing to it. This is great because not only have you acquired another reader, but they will be more inclined to request permission to use one of your blog posts on their own blog in the future or to spread the word about your wonderful blog to all their friends and associates who it would appeal to as well.

Remember when submitting a guest blog post to include the byline that you would like the blogger to use for your guest post. You want to make sure that they give proper credit for your blog, and it makes their job easier if they don’t have to ask you for it. Conversely, remember to request a byline or resource box from each of your guest contributors so that you may give them proper credit as well.

2. Publishing on Reputable Websites: There are numerous well established article databases and other content-based websites where you can submit your content. These websites are selective about the content that they publish which increases their reputability. This is positive for you because when your content is accepted by these websites and published, you know that your content is top quality. Those who find your content on those websites will also know how valuable your content is by virtue of the fact that it has been published by an already well-respected source and they will be more likely to want more content from you.

Be sure to read the submission guidelines of these websites. If you continue to submit content that is substandard, your future submissions will likely be ignored. If there are minor things to tweak in your content that will make it worthy of publishing on these websites make sure that you aren’t missing out on this. Overlooking necessary but simple corrections is an easily avoidable mistake.

Make sure you are running with the top dogs. If you think your content is worth submitting to a well-respected site, don’t hesitate to do so. Overcome your fear of rejection and go for it. You may be surprised at how valuable those leading authorities find your content. Don’t deprive readers of your information.

3. Keep Track of Published Content: When syndicating your blog posts and submitting them for inclusion on several different websites, you will want to make sure that you are keeping track of each place they have been submitted to and published. Part of building your credibility is that the content that you write is applicable to more than just your immediate readers. Make sure that you are keeping track of where your content has been published in order to write more content that appeals to those particular audiences.

Remember that part of interaction with readers and customers includes responding to comments and questions. How can you respond to these if you don’t even remember where your content has been published? Keeping track of comments and questions is easy when you are managing content posted on your own blog because you will receive a notice every time there is a comment left. Some blogs offer an option to notify you when anyone posts a comment after you have already posted, but you won’t know about initial comments unless you are keeping track of the post.

One last but very important aspect of keeping track of published content is that, like all marketing strategies, these efforts need to be measured and analyzed in order to create more appropriate future content. If the published content is receiving a lot of positive feedback, be sure to create more like it in the future. If the feedback is negative, adjust your content until it becomes something that readers find useful. Success relies on customer and reader satisfaction. Be sure that you are monitoring this.

4. Publish Press Releases: When an article, blog post, or video is being syndicated, it is completely appropriate to submit a press release. This doesn’t need to be an incredibly formal, pricey press release. There are many free press release publication services that will allow you to post as many press releases as you wish. Having your content syndicated is big news, make sure that you are reporting it!

Every time we have an article or blog post syndicated, we publish a press release about it. Our excitement about sharing our content with the world is equally felt by our readers who find out via press release. Creating a mutual interest, such as excellent content, with our readers is key in building relationships with them.

Press releases also get picked up by bigger news sources. The syndication of press releases lets even more people know about your incredible content and the cycle of content distribution continues. Make sure that you don’t skip this step because you may find new readers to provide with valuable content. Let the world know that others think your content is as great as you do. Write a press release!

5. Tweet and Digg About Published Content: Tweets and diggs are like mini, severely informal press releases. If you don’t have the time to sit down and write a press release the moment you find that one of your posts or articles has been published, make sure that you are at least tweeting about it. All of your twitter followers will immediately be aware of your content being published and if they haven’t already had a chance to read it they will be more inclined to do so.

The same concept goes for Digg. You can digg about your content to let even more of the world know what excellent content you have created and where they can find it. Let your friends and business acquaintances know that they can digg this content, too. You can let them know through your other social media platforms such as MyMark, Facebook and Twitter.

Creating great content is extremely important. The next step is to distribute that content throughout the internet so that it can be found. Make sure that you are publishing your content to other bloggers and websites and telling everyone you know that your content has been published there as well. This will increase the effective reach of your information. Start your distribution and information dissemination now!

First of all, I don’t hate Facebook anymore than I dislike any internet fad. One of my 30,000 readers asked me why I always write negative things about Facebook. First of all this isn’t quite true, since I’ve written a few articles about how to make money on Facebook and the top ads on Facebook. I just like to question what is going on, look beyond the headlines and the spin.

So, in that light, I want to examine the numbers: According to Comscore, in June, over 130 Million people within the US used Facebook. This is about one third of the population of the US that uses Facebook – some of them day after day, many times a day, making it one of the most popular media sources ever in the history of the world. However, despite this, Facebook may only bring in $1 Billion this next year, even with expected growth. This may seem like a lot money, but it’s actually not – and I know why.
The Superbowl gets around 100 million viewers each year. While the number goes up and down, it’s a good round number for this post and makes it easier for me to do the math. According to my research (Google) there was last year 62 ad slots sold at between $2.5M and $2.8M. That’s at least $155M in revenue, perhaps even as much as $175M in revenue for whichever network broadcasts the Superbowl. That means each viewer is worth at least $1.50 for the Superbowl.

In contrast, the number $1 Billion estimated in Facebook revenue is for their 500 Million (and growing) users throughout the world. While I can’t find any numbers that say how much revenue is generated in the US and how much is generated internationally, I’m going to make a conservative guess that at least 90% of the revenue is US based, meaning that next year $900 million dollars is expected to be made from Facebook. That means that each US user, over the period of the year is only worth about $7.00 for the entire year.

That is a ridiculously low number if you think about it. Viewers watching a several hour football game are worth 21% of the value of a Facebook user who may use the site 365 times plus a year, spend hundreds of hours a year talking to their friends and family, and more importantly interact with people of similar interests, communicate their needs, buying habits and much more. If you translate the value into hours of use of a Facebook user compared to a Superbowl watcher, an hour of a Facebook user is insignificant – I can’t even do the math, but you are talking about hundredths of a cent per hour for each Facebook user compared to around 50 cents per hour per Superbowl watcher.

The value comparison here is hard to believe, in light of all the media coverage about Facebook. This raises two possible sets of questions.

The first set of questions asks what the real value of an internet user is. The second set of questions would ask why we can’t monetize those users. If we concentrate on the first set of questions, we would come to conclusion that internet users, especially those on Facebook have little value financially per user. That the only reason that Facebook has any value is because of press coverage of the substantial size of the user without comparing the users actually value. When you look over the value of broadcasting corporations in comparison to their revenue, the inflated difference is great.

The second set of questions interests me a great deal more, because it might have two subsets. The first question to ask is, is it easy to acquire users for a social networking site (and then lose them like MySpace) and how relatively cheap is their value. We are estimating the value of Facebook at 12 billion, although the majority of those users have only been on the site for less than a year. They have no loyalty, they have no value beyond that time. Any significant change in Facebook, or the rise of another more interesting social networking site could immediately doom the value of Facebook. Their value when it comes to advertising is clear. I’ve pointed out, that so far, their value is insignificant per user.

So, now the important question: why are these users so useless, and why can’t we monetize them? Why hasn’t interactive advertising advanced far enough that it can actively engage users and create both branding and direct response experiences for social users that equates to actual value? This is a very significant question for anyone who is looking at the development of advertising on the internet and the value of social networking to advertisers.

We can believe that either we haven’t learned how to monetize these users and we will very soon, or we can believe that the value of a social networking user is useless. This is probably the most important question of our time when it comes to the economy and its relation to advertising on the internet.

I believe the issue is simple: we need to be considerably more creative (as does Facebook) about advertising on the internet.

After 10 years of substantial growth, we still depend too much on display advertising in the form of 728×90 banners. I remember in 2000 being introduced to some of the rich-media expendables that are still in place.

Facebook, on the other hand, still depends completely on CPC text advertising for its revenue. Here is the good part: this means whoever finds a way to be creative can monetize these users significantly. I am of the opinion that the Facebook user’s current value is less than 1/100th of what it could be – that for every dollar made now, within the next few years someone can figure how to bring in $100.

Whatever this might be, I’m not sure – but it does mean that monetization of users needs to be beyond the CPM, beyond the CPC, and start to use possible metrics and systems that we haven’t even thought of.

Author: Pace Lattin

There are about ten common Facebook marketing tactics. (You can probably think of more, but most are a derivative of one of these ten.) It may surprise you to learn that five of these tactics don’t even work — that’s fully half! Now, no Fire God will suddenly appear to smite you if you happen to have done one of the following things. They are definitely mistakes, but they aren’t irreversible. In fact, they’re really only mistakes in one sense of the word.

My perception of these as “mistakes” isn’t about breaches of the unwritten Facebook etiquette either – I dance on those lines myself from time to time.

Rather, I’m calling them mistakes from a perspective of effectiveness, versus the alternative behavior. Whether they’re wrong in terms of just coming across as rude or politically incorrect is another matter altogether.

Having said that, off we go.

Mistake #1 – Posting Signature Links on Profile Walls with Your Introduction

I asked someone why they did this once, especially since I’d already been to their site and purchased the item they were selling on that page.

She said: “I saw someone else do it.”

“How did it make you feel?” I asked.

“I felt kind of used. But I figured if that’s what it takes to be successful, that’s what I’ll do, even if it doesn’t seem quite right.”

Now that’s deep.

I understand though, because once I made the vow to become successful, I also made a vow to do “whatever it takes”. At the time I thought it meant hard selling and being pushy. I later found it meant hard work, and doing what’s right even if there’s a lazier, easier way.

Even if this was once effective in terms of getting clicks from random profile visits, Facebook is now much more stream-driven than it is profile-driven.

And that’s a huge part of why this is a mistake in terms of effectiveness.

Not to mention that people who see these postings as rude or attempts to spam can rémove or hide them. They may even drop you as a connection, which cuts you off not just from them, but from their network.

You’re not missing out on anything by omitting that signature link. Your name, hyperlinked to your profile IS your signature link. If your profile is set up correctly, prospects will get to your site from there.

Mistake #2 – Pitching

If you want to pitch people on Facebook, purchase an ad on Facebook.

It doesn’t have to be a Facebook ad – purchase one in a popular Facebook application. No matter how good your elevator pitch is in real life, it doesn’t translate in online networking. Let me give you a hypothetical example from the real world.

Imagine you go to an after-work bar. People go there to relax with work friends, to meet potential mates, on actual dates, and to get to know other people in the business.

You’re unwinding with colleagues when someone walks up, and without forewarning, tries to sell you some steak knives. When you stare blankly, they shrug, and move on to the next person.

We all may chuckle to ourselves, and wonder what that person is thinking… but are you ever the knife salesman when you’re on Facebook?

Honestly, when I first came here, I was tempted to be.

Thank God my better judgement stopped me. I’m telling you that to say this – if you’ve been the knife salesman don’t be ashamed, you didn’t know any better. It’s not like they issue marketing lessons with your incorporation papers.

Just make a vow, right now, to always check yourself before you post. Ask yourself “Am I Networking or Pitching?”

Mistake #3 – Artificial Bonding

I’d respect a person more who was upfront with me, and said they were hoping we could work together, or do some business, than someone who pretended to care about me in order to get me to have a conversation that they could then direct to their pitch.

I wouldn’t purchase from them, at least not then. But at least I’d still respect them, which means I could change my mind in the future.

Pretending to like people until you get the chance to try to sell to them is really just pitching with a little bad foreplay first.

Bad foreplay isn’t better than none at all.

Mistake #4 – Favoring Uphill Marketing Over Downhill Marketing

Again, this is a mistake in terms of how effective it is. In my own experience, as well as in case studies of clients, it always works out better when you create a fantastic marketplace presence and people are drawn to you in droves, seeking to do business with you, rathere than the alternative.

The alternative, of course, is when you go out and pursue customers and clients one by one.

That’s not to say that you should stop advertising, bidding on projects, or being a go-getter in any way.

It means that while you’re doing that, also create a situation where customers are flowing towards you, seeking you out, asking for help.

It’s much less work to get from interest to sale when they come to you.

Mistake #5 – Fishing on Dry Land

A long, long time ago, I was in a network marketing company. Now defunct, the products they have greatly enhanced, possibly even saved, my life. The products were targeted to people who cared about being healthier and eco-friendly.

Could Facebook Even Survive Without Email?

Facebook thinks email is dying. Classic. How many times have we heard this now? Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg gave a speech at the Nielsen Consumer 360 conference recently, essentially claiming as much.

“In consumer technology, if you want to know what people like us will do tomorrow, you look at what teenagers are doing today, and the latest figures say that only 11% of teenagers email daily. So email (I can’t imagine life without it) is probably going away. So what do teenagers do? They SMS and increasingly they use social networking.”

First off, Facebook couldn’t exist without email. You need an email address to sign up and to log-in. Many of us rely on email for notifications from Facebook to know when someone has sent us a message, commented on our posts, invited us to an event, tagged us in a photo, etc. In fact, I’d be curious to see how frequently the average Facebook user would come back to Facebook daily without email notifications.

Email lubricates social interactions on Facebook, and I’d be very curious to see how successful Facebook would be without any email integration. I suspect it would die.

To be fair, Sandberg was looking to the future, and not the present when she made this claim. She even said that she couldn’t imagine life without email. It’s interesting, because Facebook is in some ways helping keep email relevant for the reasons mentioned above (though email certainly doesn’t need Facebook’s help to stay relevant).

Facebook requires you to use email to sign-up and log-in, but we are seeing more and more open protocols being used around the web for ID authentication. There are also not-so-open protocols in use, like Facebook Connect. I can log-in to a wide variety of sites/apps with my Facebook ID, but I can’t log-in to Facebook with anything other than my email address. If Facebok thinks email is dying, does that mean it will adopt some other open authentication protocols? Don’t these protocols generally come back to having an email address in the first place anyway?

The popularity of specific social networks comes and goes, but email has been around for a while, and has really shown no signs of going anywhere. Here’s something to consider – how many years has your inbox been flooded with spam? Has it caused you to use email any less? Granted, Facebook does continue to grow, even in the face of massive privacy concerns, but that’s hardly an indication that it could replace email. Sandberg didn’t suggest Facebook itself would replace email, but that SMS and social networking in general would. We’ll see. If Facebook hopes to be a significant part of that replacement on the social networking end, they’re probably going to have to play a little nicer with the open web movement.

I’ll come back to the conclusion we always reach. There is room for both email and social networks. Just like there is now, there will be in the future. As far as marketing is concerned, social networks appear to be greatly enhancing email campaigns. A recent study from GetResponse found that campaigns utilizing these networks were able to increase click-through-rates by 30%.

“Build it and they will come” the saying goes.

Not.

You can build a blog or video site and you can still be lacking connections.

Connection is the nuclear core of social media. But you must make an effort in order for that to happen.

Whether you have a social media home busíness, traditional brick and mortar business, or an online business, you must get into the social trenches and connect and converse. It is that simple and that plain.

It is all about connecting and creating an engaging conversation with people that draws them towards you.

But why are people in social media not doing that?

Maybe they do not know this powerful 5 step “Avalanche Process” for getting new customers and keeping them in social media.

The first thing you must do is connect with the social media culture. It is what marketing is about in social media. Some people think that they can be anti-social in social media and think they can broadcast their message and people will still come.

That simply is not going to happen. Not in social media. You do not build ‘it’ but instead, build relationships that can become doorways and then eventually become customers.

Here is the “Avalanche Path” you can follow:

1) Connect –> 2) Conversation –> 3) Value –> 4) Doorway –> 5) Customer

Let’s take a quick look at each step:

1) Connect

Connection with people is where success in social media starts. Connect with people on Twitter, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Youtube, on Orkut, or every other niche site out in the social sphere that matters. You must connect.

Here’s a little tip:

Connect to those who are looking for you. They will find you if you are visible, and accessible to
connect to.

2) Conversation

This step is where the conversation with people starts. You talk about the prospect and where they want to go. You talk about what they want to talk about. You study their profile, pictures and videos on their social sites because you can learn a lot just by paying attention.

Then make sure that you stay in touch and listen when they are communicating with you. If you do that, they will want to stay connected to you.

3) Value

This step is where you bring in the magnet to pull them towards your message. Show them value they can obtain with your message in their life. Show them how your message can help expand, broaden, enlarge and improve their life. You do it through tips and how to’s in videos and blog posts and podcasts, as well as tweets and twips. Show them how you can make their life easier and show them how to do something they want to learn. You show them how to be or do something. If you can expand the size of their dreams, you can get them as a customer.

The more value people perceive you have for them the more likely they will walk through the “Doorway.”

4) Doorway

This is the doorway to conversion where you convert them to a customer. You must convert prospects into customers if you are going to have any kind of business. That is simple to do.

Give them an offér where “No” is impossible to say. That is the secret. Give first and then make the proposition so compelling they cannot say “No.” We do it all the time. We just ran a social media special on our training products and it blew the roof off our shipping department. It has created a flood of new customers and new orders for us. All we did was give them an offer that was difficult to turn down.

The secret of success we experienced can be found in the word “Give.”

Give away something they must have, and something that will improve their life, and they will get it.

5) Customer

This final step is where they purchase your message, products, or webinar or event. This is the beginning of your relationship though – not the end.

Here you must start building the relationship between you and the customer even more.

Give more than they expected and throw something in for free they were not expecting. Give them a free download or ebook and let them see a Private video collection as a special.

Encourage more. Make sure that you send a note of encouragement and stay in touch with them.

Thank them more. Make sure they know you are thankful for their business and connection. We send out free downloads all the time to say thanks that some people paid $$$ for in the past. Thank them in everything you do and they will come back for more.

Get your customers addicted to your Value, Message and Emotions. They will become more than a customer. They will become a loud speaker for you and tell everybody you know you are the best at what you do.

That is what you want to happen in your home busíness or traditional business in social media marketing.

A number of major media companies are starting to implement tools for third-party authentication for consumers. We spoke with JanRain, which provides a tool called Engage that companies like Tribune Interactive, Meredith, E.W. Scripps, The Dallas Morning News, bizjournals, and the National Geographic Society are all using. With the solution, publishers can authenticate users via third-party logins using as many as 16 different providers, including Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo LinkedIn, etc.

“JanRain is helping these companies to garner traffic to their site via the social web,” a representative for the company tells WebProNews. She also says Engage can let media companies “allow consumers to publish content back to the social networks, increasing the cycle of referral traffic, and capture important demographic data to improve the user experience.”

“Traffic to your website from a social media platform is, by its very nature, more valuable than traffic from other sources,” she adds. “People spend time on social networks for the purpose of sharing information with people they deem important. Trust is high among peers; recommendations and messages exchanged among friends are more likely to resonate than those directly from a company.”

“A goal for any site is to have a visitor login or register, becoming an engaged user and interacting more – making a purchase, posting content, etc. Once a user is engaged, make it easy for them to communicate back to the social networks of their choice without leaving your site,” she continues. “Activity-based social publishing tools enable the user to perform this action from within the flow of your website experience. A user finds something of interest on your website and then calls it out to their community.”

“The engaged user is an effective filter both for their community and your website. When a user decides to share information back to a social network, it is a win for their contacts and your organization,” she concludes. “The circle of referral traffic begins. As the user shares their activity or content from your site to friends on a social network, the post from the initial engaged user drives traffic back to your site, some of whom will login and publish their own activities back to their networks, and so on. Many organizations leveraging this functionality are experiencing 6-25 new referral visitors for each social action a user shares with friends. As this cycle repeats, these organizations create a direct link to the social web and a sustaining stream of new referred visitors.”

In another article, we compared the value of social interactions with content through social networks to comments on the content themselves. There is no question that the social networks can provide additional value.

Google announced that it is putting all of its non-search display advertising offerings together into one network called the Google Display Network.

Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management explains the reasoning behin this on the Inside AdWords blog: “Over the past year, we’ve been focused on investing in display advertising, and we’ve seen great momentum from the increasing number of you running display campaigns with Google. We’ve rolled out new features and targeting options and more precise measurement tools. To provide more places for you to run display ads, we’ve added more publisher sites (through Google AdSense and DoubleClick Ad Exchange) to our ad network of over one million sites. Meanwhile, many of you have continued to run ads on YouTube and our own properties.”

“The Google Display Network will comprise all of the sites (apart from search sites), where you can buy ads through Google, including YouTube, Google properties such as Google Finance, Gmail, Google Maps, Blogger as well as over one million Web, video, gaming, and mobile display partners (our display partners include all of our AdSense and DoubleClick Ad Exchange partner sites that allow text and/or display ads),” he continues. “The Google Display Network offers all ad formats – text, image, rich media, and video ads – enabling you to unleash your creativity and engage potential customers across the Web.”

Nothing has changed about the way advertisers run ads. AdWords bidding and reservations for YouTube and Google Finance, for example, will be the same.

Google says that in the coming weeks, you’ll see a change in the AdWords interface that reflects the new Google Display Network brand.

Every so often, an argument and ensuing discussion erupts in the Blogosphere over whether or not it is ethical to block comments on a blog post and what value they actually add to content.

The latest one started when John Gruber at DaringFireball wrote a post in response to a John Battelle post about Apple blocking Google from iOS app Ads. Gruber has become somewhat famous around the tech Blogosphere for not allowing comments, and is usually referenced in these conversations.

Joe Wilcox at OddlyTogether wanted to respond to Gruber’s post, but obviously couldn’t do that via a blog comment, so he wrote his own blog post instead, questioning Gruber’s manhood. “If John Gruber allowed comments on his blog, I wouldn’t need to write this post, and it has been long-time coming,” wrote Wilcox. “I considered writing it every time I read something outrageous at Daring Fireball but couldn’t directly respond because John doesn’t allow comments. Finally, this morning, I had enough.”

“A man pushes out only as much as he can receive back,” he added later in the post. “By comparison, I see John attacking from a fortified position. He can attack but not easily be assaulted, and, yes, many of his posts are attacks on others. Sarcasm and witticism are the ammunition. Maybe John has different values of what is a man. My values are clear. A man-hell, a good writer-doesn’t hide behind his assertions. He stands by them. Discussion and response test his assertions and expose him to more points of view.”

Benefits to Eliminating Comments?

One thing seems clear to me. If you turn off comments, it forces the conversation outward. As Gruber has proven, people who want to respond to one of his posts have no choice but to blog about it themselves, tweet about it, or choose some other venue to discuss it. Most likely, those who wish to discuss it are going to link to DaringFireball to give their own content context. It seems entirely possible that by not allowing comments, Gruber is encouraging more links to his content. This may not be his intent, but it would appear to be the case nevertheless.

That’s not to say that this strategy will work for everyone. Don’t expect to turn off comments and automatically get more traffic. Obviously, you’re going to have to create great content that people want to discuss in the first place. The question you have to ask yourself is whether you want the conversation to happen where it started or to be broken up all over the web.

That said, the conversation (if enough people find it worth having) is going to be broken up all over the web anyway. Regardless of whether or not you allow comments on your blog, people are going to respond to it in what ever manner they prefer. These days for many people, that means simply retweeting it or liking it on Facebook (now people can even “like” the comments on Facebook too).

Maybe the real question is this: how much do blog comments matter anyway? There is no containing the conversation. It’s really been this way as long as blogs have been popular. People have always responded to others’ posts with their own blog posts. The fact that services like Facebook and Twitter have become so popular in the mainstream is what has changed. It’s so much easier to add your comment in a quick status update or tweet than it is to write a new blog post.

Likewise, many will find it easier to simply hit a “like” button or a “recommend button” for Facebook or a retweet button to express their approval of a blog post. With a tweet, they can add their own commentary too, and it really provides more benefit to them, because they are bringing the people they know into the conversation, as opposed to just participating in a conversation with a bunch of strangers that also read that blog.

Naturally, this also benefits the blog post by opening it up to increased exposure, and obviously more traffic, as well as potentially more links, which can even benefit you in search.

Comments Still Have Value

Comments can add value to a blog post by presenting different perspectives around the subject at hand. Even Gruber has acknowledged this. But increasingly, more of those perspectives are being expressed externally. The entire conversation rarely (if ever) takes place on the blog post itself.

When readers see that a post has a lot of comments, they may be more inclined to read it. This is another valuable trait comments have, but if you display a count of retweets or Facebook Likes or Google Buzzes or Diggs, or whatever, it can achieve a similar effect. However, only the people that actually go to your site in the first place will see these counts. A more important factor to consider is probably that as more content is shared throughout networks like Twitter or Facebook, users will be more likely to read a post based on things like the title, who shared it with them, and what that person said about it.

Interestingly, Gruber was able to convince Wilcox to turn off his own blog comments. Would you ever consider taking that leap? For more background and viewpoints on the conversation (of which there are many), I suggest reading through the various posts at DaringFireball and OddlyTogether.

Social media marketing is an essential tool for any business. Sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are among the most popular sites regularly visited on the internet and can generate large numbers of visitors and new sales leads.

Many businesses are already utilizing social media marketing as part of their ongoing business strategy, but a large percentage of these are not aware of the essentials required to fully maximize social media to its full potential.

Here are 5 important criteria that need to be addressed in order to run a successful social media campaign.

1. Search Engine Rank Awareness

Social media profiles now make regular appearances in search engine listings. The major search engines are placing greater importance on these profiles as they tend to possess regularly updated topical content and provide quality information that search engine users are looking for.

Any social media profile should be created with search engine placement in mind. Ensure that relevant keywords are placed in titles, and content, and that any links use keywords (located within the anchor text). Brand names should be clearly visible to augment the likelihood of search engines displaying a social media profile for brand-related search queries.

Having a social media profile appear in SERP listings will build traffic to that profile and could subsequently lead to additional traffic to the main business website via that profile.

2. Additional Site Traffic from Social Media Posts

Search engines now index and display individual social media posts in their search results. The search engines consider these posts topical, relevant and useful to their users – 3 of the main criteria search engines look for when ranking a page (or submission).

Posting quality submissions on social media sites and including links back to a main website, or webpage, within these posts can seriously incréase website traffic – if the posts are indexed and displayed in search engine listings.

Social media bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon and Slashdot have been known to drive thousands of visitors to websites. Submit blog posts – and website content – to these sites and there is a good chance that these submissions will capture the interest of readers and result in increased website traffic.

3. Use Social Media for SEO-Based Links

Links back to a main website can be placed in most of the social media profiles. These are useful links from high authority websites and good quality backlinks influence where a website is ranked within a search engine.

Many social media bookmarking sites now apply the NOFOLLOW attribute to links due to abuse, but there are still some major platforms that continue to use the DOFOLLOW attribute. At the time of writing, these social bookmarking sites still allow DOFOLLOW links:

• FriendFeed
• Furl
• Slashdot
• Digg
• Mixx

Even if a bookmarking site applies the NOFOLLOW attribute, links within posts can still pay dividends. Regardless of their SEO-based backlink power, people will still follow these links back to a main site and this means increased traffic and greater site visibility.

4. Target Specific Markets

The simplicity of creating a social media profile allows for the creation of multiple campaigns. A good business strategy should run a main social media profile and then look to create smaller, laser-targeted profiles that cater for very specific niche markets related to the main business interest.

If a business sells a wide variety of products, it should look to create individual profiles that target the different categories of products sold. This tactic allows the business to concentrate on each subset of product, as well as the potential customers searching for these specific products, or type of products. By breaking down social media campaigns, a business can provide relevant, topical information that caters for very specific individuals.

Where other businesses try to capture all potential buyers in one huge net and can only provide generic information to a wide scope of readers about the entire range of their products – the clever business, with their niche market profiles, will reach out to each subset and be able to provide them exactly what they are searching for.

5. Improved Brand Recognition

Many businesses fail to realize the importance of social media profiles when it comes to increasing brand recognition. These social media platforms have millions of daily visitors and provide an unequalled resource for rapidly promoting a brand, or product.

Having a main website ranked high in a search engine for that particular brand name is great – as long as enough people are performing search queries using that specific brand-name keyword. Social media provide an easier solution for promoting brand recognition and this factor should be forefront in any social media strategy.

Make sure the brand is clearly visible in a profile – include it in the profile title and bio; promote the brand discreetly in sporadic posts and if there is a brand-related business logo, this should be placed on the main profile page.

It has been suggested that a person needs to see, or hear, a brand name seven times before they consider becoming a customer. Social media offers a business the best solution for reaching the largest potential audience.

By utilizing social media marketing and concentrating on these 5 important criteria, any business can potentially expand website traffic, sales leads and easily reach targeted customer bases. Social media marketing is starting to become very competitive, but not everybody has learned to optimize their campaigns and fully utilize the power of social media marketing. The business that learns to adapt its strategies and play to the strengths of social media is the one that jumps ahead of the competition.

Author: D M Gray

Is it just me but didn’t Google recently put everything on its main homepage except for Google Buzz? What’s up with that? For heaven’s sake, they even put the PacMan game in their logo for two days running… you would think some of the brightest minds on the planet would have figured out by now if Google truly wants to try to win on the new memeyouyou web, they simply have to fully integrate all their programs into one homepage or at least place Buzz right there along side the Gmail button.

Google Buzz has all the ingredients to finally make Google your one-stop center on the web. It can be THE place for sharing not just your conversations but photos, videos, and everything else. Will it live up to its full potential and become a true Facebook killer?

The main reason Facebook is such a threat to Google is not because of the massive amount of users it has, but the amount of time those users stay on Facebook. If you just look at the Alexa comparison alone, Facebook users spend over 30 minutes on the site, which is triple the time users stay on Google. Facebook also beats Google in the bounce rate and page views per user. Could all the recent changes to their SERPs be, not only Google’s answer to the upcoming Bing/Yahoo marriage, but a strong way of presenting a real challenge to Facebook’s overwhelming stats.

Web users are lazy and they want a one-stop solution to meet all their needs. They want to connect with friends and family, they want to broadcast to the world, they want to search for something to purchase, they want to be entertained… iGoogle should be that solution/center but I don’t believe it quite passes the test because there is still no Google Buzz?

The main problem with Google is that it has no well-defined center which users could call their own. Perhaps I am reading this wrong, but have Google users fully bonded with iGoogle? Putting the privacy issues aside, I don’t think they have embraced it in the same way web users have embraced their Facebook. What is missing are all the elements that are present in Google Buzz, but again we seem to have two disjointed programs rather than one solid rallying point.

For many web users, Facebook is the starting point of their web day… in many cases, it is probably the only place they go on the web religiously each day. Why? Because all their friends/family are on there and they don’t want to miss out on any news or gossip. Not checking your Facebook page has become the ultimate faux pas of this new social media etiquette.

No one is going defeat or compëte with Facebook you say?

Not so fast! Even empires come and go; a web site is even more fickle, especially if something more convenient comes along. Does anyone remember MySpace which is still a very popular site but no longer has the numbers it once had. Facebook or even Google could suffer the same fate if something better comes along.

Google’s main business is online search. It is its bread and butter, which may have blinded those in charge from seeing the bigger picture. The bigger payday.

Google owns so many popular sites within the top 20 including YouTube and Blogger… if only they could better connect all their interests into one SuperSite or one SuperDevice for those thinking within the box. Online search can still be the main course, but you need to corral all of these different users into one starting point or center with a couple of Billion users logging in each morning to start their web day. Just imagine the ad revenue potential that would generate for the big G.

Impossible you say, but not really, all the ingredients are there to form this SuperSite but it needs one big bang to get it going, to create a center of the web universe, which will be Google.

Whenever I think about Google, I am reminded of a class 5 Hurricane with all these popular sites and programs swirling around it like mad, but there is no eye to this hurricane, at least not yet. Google needs a solid center to draw everything into focus and get everybody at the same starting point. Whether it is the Google search page, Google Buzz, Google Profiles, Gmail or iGoogle… but it all needs to be pulled together if Google wants to truly battle with Facebook for all the marbles.