Group Social Media Interview with 4 Experts

Sometimes you do things with good intentions, but if you don’t follow up on them it makes you look bad. I did something like that recently when I got in touch with some bloggers to do interviews for a new ebook I was creating regarding Social Media Marketing. I’ve decided not to do that anymore, so I kindly asked them if it was OK to make it a group interview on a blog and they all agreed.

So who are the experts?

The Questions

Tell us a little about yourself…

Lee Odden: I grew up in the Midwest with a few side tracks to Alaska, Denmark and degrees in Sociology and Business before I landed a job at web development company in 1996. In order to sell more sophisticated web site and web marketing solutions, I taught myself basic web development/design and SEO.

Today I spend my time as CEO of TopRank and a strategic consultant for our PR firm, Misukanis Odden, blogging, speaking at conferences and turning away entirely too much business.

Shana Albert: I have been a Web Designer and Webmaster since 2001. My sister had designed my first website for me as a gift. Once I learned how to maintain it I started to take apart the pages of the site so I could see how she put it together. Within a few months after that I had started designing my first site all by myself, www.AllDietSource.com. I was hooked.

I started making one website after another. Designing static websites became quite an obsession, really. In 2003 I designed a home school preschool curriculum and created an eCommerce website to sell my products. About a year ago I started my preschool education blog and a few Blogs since then. That was my first taste of social media and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Neil Patel: I an ordinary 22 year old that currently goes to college, runs a company, and eats a lot of Taco Bell. Other than that I blog on my spare time, and I watch a lot of movies.

Jane Copland: My name is Jane Copland and I work as a Search Marketing Consultant at SEOmoz.org in Seattle, Washington. I’m from Wellington, New Zealand and I moved to the U.S. in 2002 to attend Washington State University. I got into SEO by chance, replying to a job posting on Craigslist that looked like “fun!” SEOmoz ended up hiring me and I began working for the company in September 2006.

Can you name any successful, personal experiences with Social Media?

Shana Albert: After taking some time off from keeping up with what was going on with Search Engine Optimization I decided to make it a priority to get updated on what was going on with SEO again. I came across an amazing Social Networking site for SEO and Internet Marketing, Sphinn.

Looking for SEO information and tips from Sphinn and coming out not only with that information, but also friends and fellow colleagues was one of the most amazing professional experiences of my life to date. For me, it was actually life changing. I couldn’t believe the community I found there. I was received with open arms and I had the support and knowledge I needed to bring me and my online business to the next level.

Neil Patel: I try not to mention any client experiences, but I can mention personal experiences. For example my first blog, Pronet Advertising, got on sites like Digg over 20 times, which resulted in massive growth and at one pointed allowed me to become a Technorati Top 100 blogger.

Jane Copland: We’ve had some great successes with various forms of social media optimization over the year and a half that I’ve worked in Search and social media. We’ve used social media participation to improve reputation management campaigns and we’ve also learned what works and what doesn’t in terms of using social media for this purpose.

As far as linkbait goes, we’ve done quite a lot of work in this sphere. Professionally, we’ve helped our own projects and our clients by using linkbait. A few of our pieces at SEOmoz have received a lot of attention on StumbleUpon and Digg, while others have done better on niche forums and news sites. Personally, I’ve had a few pieces of my own content get popular in social media spheres, which has proven to be great practice for future professional linkbait ventures!

Lee Odden: Networking through social media web sites has been instrumental in building the exposure and subscriber base for Online Marketing Blog, which has done fairly well at creating exposure opportunities for the TopRank brand. Social media has also led to numerous friendships, marketing partnerships, at least one new employee and a number of clients - two of which are Fortune 20 companies.

I think it’s important to note that those successes did not occur solely because of social media, but a combination of “real world” networking and interactions in combination with social networking online.

Do you think Social Media is enough to be the only marketing channel used?

Neil Patel: I don’t think it is enough the be the only channel. I am always the type of marketer that hates to rely on one medium to market because if something happens to it, then you are in trouble.

Jane Copland: I think that social media marketing definitely need to be used in conjunction with other SEO methods. I’ve seen campaigns where social media marketing is the only channel used and the content usually “disappears” after a while since the “buzz” fades quickly and there is no stable SEO behind the site in question. The problem is that social media is perceived as being more “fun” than some other forms of SEO and it can be substituted for traditional SEO for a quick gain.

Lee Odden: That would be a matter of putting all one’s eggs in a single basket. Even if there are multiple sub-channels within the social media realm and great results are possible, in the end it’s only one channel. I’m a bit biased about that anyway because we take a very holistic approach to marketing where we asses a client’s business objectives and then recommend a strategy and mix of online tactics as appropriate. Some clients do SEO and email marketing. Some do SEO and social media. Some do PR, email marketing, SEO, social media and direct mail. It really depends on what the goals are, the audience, the resources and assets we have to work with and of course, timeline and budget.

Shana Albert: Absolutely not. But then again what is the definition of “enough”. Social Media is a wonderful way to market your product or service on the Internet, but I think it should be used in combination with other marketing methods online to reap the full benefits of business success.

What’s the most interesting piece of linkbait you’ve seen?

Jane Copland: This is a hard question! I love seeing linkbait that is very creative in its production and that is actually used for a commercial, business-centered purpose. Creating such linkbait is far harder than churning out some scandalous Top 10 list of naked celebrities. Personally, I was fascinated by our piece of linkbait, “The 22 Worst Place Names in the World” (http://www.drivl.com/posts/view/851) that became insanely popular at Digg and StumbleUpon, and even got us a call from the BBC! However, that piece really had no purpose whatsoever. Its attention alone was what made it really interesting.

Lee Odden: Hmm. It might be Danny Sullivan wearing a girl’s “Best of the Web” tank top and striking a pose

Or maybe it was that strange situation Neil Patel unfortunately had documented with a photo

Actually, this recent post from Aaron and Giovanna Wall about SEO for bloggers was well planned and executed

Shana Albert: I have seen so many that have intrigued me, however, the one that I go back and check often is How Much is your Blog Worth? . This link-bait became a way to check my blog and see how it was doing before it was ranked by Search Engines like Google. As a Webmaster I would keep a close eye on my Google Page Rank, but with Social Desire blog being only 6 weeks old it has yet ranked with Google. However, due to sites now linking to Social Desire I can check daily to see how it is doing with Technorati. But, I found How Much is your Blog Worth quite addicting too… watching how the worth would continue climbing weekly became quite addicting. I know it isn’t a true Dollar Worth, but still an obsession just the same.

 

And, I’m aware that Google Page Rank doesn’t mean as much as it once did. But, being a Webmaster that measured website worthiness on it for years…. It’s difficult not to ignore the whole Page Rank thing completely.

Neil Patel: The most interesting piece was the Elf Yourself by Office Max because it got more links than anything else that I know of.

Do you have favourite sites for promoting content?

Lee Odden: Sure. Google, Yahoo, Live.com, StumbleUpon and a few others I’d rather not mention.

Shana Albert: StumbleUpon is my absolute favorite site for promoting my content. My websites range in content and StumbleUpon has so many viewers interested in so many different things. It makes sense for me to use StumbleUpon to promote my all my website’s content there. I love Sphinn for my social desire blog. Sphinn is made up of a SEO and social media marketing community, so it makes sense to use it for my social media blog.

Neil Patel: My favorite site is Digg when it comes to promoting content. Other then Digg, I would also look at Reddit, StumbleUpon, Propeller, and Del.icio.us.

Jane Copland: I am a big fan of StumbleUpon. Although I believe we focus too much on the well-known social media services and that there is a lot to gain from seeking audiences out in their own spaces, such as niche forums, StumbleUpon has an appeal to “regular people” that Reddit, Digg, Del.icio.us and their ilk do not.

What alternatives to a blogging platform are good for adding content?

Shana Albert: This one I’m not sure about, Glen. I use Wordpress for my blogs and it works great. I do write up my posts in Dreamweaver first. Once I have it the way I want it to read, with the links and such, I copy and paste the HTML right over to Wordpress. It works for me and I’ve been using Dreamweaver for years to design my websites. I’m not crazy about change…. If it works, don’t fix it.

Neil Patel: There are a lot of custom CMS systems out there that are great at adding content, but I personally am a fan of the blogging platform WordPress.

Jane Copland: While blogs provide the easiest, most accessible way to publish online, I think people like seeing more developed websites, webmaster-created media players (i.e. not YouTube or DailyMotion, etc), widgets and badges that have had some effort put into their creation and the clever use of often-abused tools, such as Flash.

Lee Odden: If you mean the functional task of adding information to a web site, then any content management system is better than nothing. Low budget sites can greatly benefit from something like Adobe Contribute as an alternative to a high end CMS. Its super cheap ($150 per license I think) and offers many of the features you’ll find with entry level or mid point CMS systems. Of course the web site needs to be made with Adobe Dreamweaver in order for Contribute to work, but it’s a good alternative.

If you mean adding content for users and for search engines, then sites could pull in RSS content from other sources or they could embed videos hosted with YouTube and add their own commentary. Also, a system for allowing readers to contribute content can be productive in the form of user profiles with a niche social network, product reviews or even a forum.

Will it ever be too difficult to create exceptional content that attracts links?

Neil Patel: I think it does become difficult after a while to create exceptional content for specific niches. Sometimes you get writers block or you have used up all your great ideas for a specific niche, but if you have a team of people you can always come up with good content ideas through brainstorming sessions.

Jane Copland: Unlikely. Social media may be worth less in the future, as search engines’ algorithms change and people’s attention is diverted elsewhere, but there are always new users and there is usually always a way for a creative person to put a new face on an older idea. People had compiled lists of bad place names before I did: I just did it “better” than they had! In my own, unbiased opinion, of course.

Lee Odden: As long as customers’ needs and interests change/evolve, there will be opportunities to create really useful, interesting and unique content to attract others’ links, referrals or to buy products and services.

Shana Albert: I don’t think so. With every new day bring another new idea. With every new idea comes another person’s view of the idea. With another person’s view come blog posts and opinions all over the Internet linking to this post and that opinion. Not that it is easy to write exceptional content…. it’s always a challenge. And, that’s not going to change. But, as long as there are opinions in social media there will be people linking to them.

Is Social Media enough to rely on for link building?

Jane Copland: Again, not I don’t believe it’s enough, but it’s a great addition.

Lee Odden: You can go a very long way using social media channels for link building, especially if you include blogs. It really has to do with the relevance and usefulness of the content. Again, I don’t believe in limiting marketing possibilities because certain tactics are currently in fashion.

For example, the long time tactic of back link analysis and research has always been and continues to be part of every link building and competitive research effort we perform on behalf of our clients. We’ve found numerous linking gems and marketing opportunities that way with a direct connection to increased revenue.

Link building works in concert with content promotion. Traditionally, SEO has been all about keyword optimizing content and getting links. In order to be competitive, I think SEO campaigns will increasingly involve leveraging social networks and content promotion/distribution channels. Effective and sustainable link building has to do with matching content
with the appropriate distribution channel and promoting relevant pitches to influencers in the community. This ties into the social media currency post I did a while back.

Shana Albert: I think that Social Media Marketing is an excellent way for link-building and increasing traffic to your website. I have truly been amazed by Social Media since I entered its world not too long ago. But, being a webmaster for so many years before embracing Social Media I also know how important the basics of SEO can be to a Website. I believe that both will take your online business/website to the next level. A website must have clean inner link structure, Title Tags, no duplicate pages, etc…. add in blogging, comments on other blogs, outward links to others, social networking, communication with others in your niche, blah, blah blah…. I believe that SEO and SMM together is as good as gold to an online business or website. I really can’t imagine that success could be the same with just one or the other.

Neil Patel: I don’t think it is enough because social media does not always allow you to get ranking for competitive terms. I think social media is a good source of links, but other means need to be used to build links.

When do you see more companies embracing social media as a viable marketing strategy?

Lee Odden: When there are more case studies and verifiable best practices that show a certain amount of predictability in getting a return on the investment. Some companies will invest in social media because they think it’s cool and believe the over-hyped Digg crack claims being made. Others will invest because it’s a proven channel to drive revenue
with accountability.

It’s still really early and there’s so much hype about possibilities and a lot of social media marketing practitioners that are doing more than just increasing spikes in traffic, really wants to let any secrets out yet. While there’s plenty of information about driving traffic, there’s a scarcity of good data on what works for increasing sales, what doesn’t and whether it’s a good business decision or not.

Companies embracing social media as a marketing channel right now might be taking some risk as early adopters, but some are hitting the jackpot. For organizations that can dedicate resources to being creative and offering value to social communities in the long term, now is a great time to be involved or at least get started with social media marketing. By the time it becomes and standard marketing practice, those companies will be so far ahead in the networks they’ve built and the knowledge
acquired, it would be hard for competing newcomers to catch up.

Shana Albert: Enter Shana!! I think that this will involve someone who has proven that Social Media Marketing does in fact work. It does…. We know that it does. How? From our experience using this medium as a way of promoting our business, website, blog, whatever it is that we are promoting at that time.

You know, as a webmaster who was pretty antisocial less than a year ago I have seen such amazing success adding Social Media Marketing into my business plan equation. I can’t imagine such success without it. I think once other companies and small businesses see what SMM can do for them too they will jump on this bandwagon as well.

I would love to be able to help online businesses / webmasters stuck in Web 1.0 to take their business to the next level. And, this is something that I am considering doing professionally. In order to prove to them the success they could have adding SMM to their business plan would take a person who has experienced such success.

Neil Patel: I think it will take a few more years. Search engine optimization has not even taken off with every company out there, so I would not expect social media to take off anytime soon with the masses.

Jane Copland: When companies understand that social media doesn’t have to be restricted to Diggbait and crappy Myspace spam. We need to show businesses that their companies can be promoted through social means without appearing amateurish or spammy.

If you could only give one Social Media Marketing tip, what would it be?

Shana Albert:

Do what you can handle. You can’t do it all. Trust me, if I had more hours in the day I would add more Social Media to my daily duties, but there just isn’t enough time in the day. There are a lot of choices of Social Media Activities to choose from. Find the Social Media Activities that you enjoy doing the most, and what would give you the most bang for your buck (so to speak). Once you mastered that task and feel you have room for more, add another.

 

Social Networking sites are awesome for getting your site’s name and link out, not to mention meeting other wonderful people in your Niche. But, there are so many of them out there. So, find the few that you can handle participating in and match with your site’s niche and stick with them. I love StumbleUpon because of its ease of use and the traffic it can bring. It’s not in just one niche…. It covers them all. I can’t say enough about StumbleUpon and for a Business or Webmaster that is just starting to enter the world of Social Networking this is a great place to start.

Neil Patel: You need to first figure out which audience you want to target because different social sites have different audiences. Once you do that you can figure out how to tailor content that meets their needs and then you will do well on that particular social site.

Jane Copland: Don’t get too hung up on the reaction of people who come to your site from Digg, Reddit etc. The most vocal readers are usually the negative ones, and they’re also usually the minority. Some people on these sites enjoy being horrible about the content they come across. Your piece will receive 2400 diggs and 269 comments that say “this sucks.” That is because the people who enjoyed the content (i.e. the majority of people) enjoyed it and voted for it. The vote was their version of a positive comment.

Lee Odden: Just one? In order to get value, you have to give value. Take the time to get involved, participate and develop a strategy before jumping in.

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve seen people make?

Neil Patel: Some people keep on pushing content when all the previous content they pushed did not do well. You need to first embrace the social community and truly understand it before you try and leverage it.

Jane Copland: Wasting good content by submitting it to Digg when it was never going to make it big at Digg. They should have used more inventive methods and smaller, more niche services and promoted the content outside of social news entirely.

Lee Odden: Rushing into social media and looking at it like it’s just another place to publish their traditional content. It just doesn’t work that way. Participation and understanding both the formal rules as well as the unwritten rules are key for success with social media channels.

Leveraging social media as a marketing tool is not just about going hot on Digg, Delicious, Reddit, etc as many SEO/social media types will have you believe. Of course there can be significant value in those outcomes, the social news and bookmarking sites along with blogs are just a slice of the overall social media pie. There are branding, public/media relations and advertising opportunities above and beyond the short run spikes in traffic that can influence a brand’s visibility, drive traffic and increase sales.

Shana Albert: It’s got to be attempting to do too many Social Media activities and getting burned out. SMM is a lot of work and takes a lot of time.It doesn’t have to be “all or nothing” with Social Media.But, I can see how easily you can fall into that trap.I am obsessed with everything social media and I would love to just do it all day long. But, I can’t. I’ve got my businesses to run.It takes a lot of time management skills to achieve social media / business success.

Glen’s Note: Thanks to everyone for participating, I think this is a long, but great piece that many people can learn from which was the aim of the project.

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