I read a great article yesterday by Ben Elowitz on the rising importance of Social Media Optimization or SMO.  In this article, Ben predicts the death of SEO as SMO continues to rise to power pushed along by the partnership between Facebook and Bing.  So, is Search Engine Optimization actually dead?  Is Google shaking in their boots as reactive (vs. predictive) searching falls by the wayside?

Well, probably not quite yet.

Before you throw your SEO strategy out the window in favor of SMO I would caution you that a blended approach is probably the best bet for now.  If you’re doing neither SEO nor SMO, you may be in trouble (contact us!)  If you are doing only SEO or SMO, you are likely leaving value on the table.

The reason I think … Read More »

I picked up a tweet from Jean-Philippe (JP) Maheu, CEO of Publicis Modem, about a great execution by Nike on a Facebook video.  I have a lot of respect for JP, having followed his career and hearing him speak several times, most recently at the last Kellogg School of Management Marketing Conference.

So, I naturally hit his link to the video to see how good this execution was.  I was instantly Shocked, however, to discover that the only way I could view this video was to FIRST click “LIKE” on the FB Fan Page.  Let me make this perfectly clear.

Nike made me commit to Liking their video BEFORE they let me see it.

So… I clicked “Like” and then was permitted to watch the video.  To Nike’s credit – it was a beautiful execution.  Once of the best I have ever … Read More »

Use social media and digital media channels to reach me – don’t leave a voicemail

There has been some talk going around the Internet about Google working with a new web search. Of course, this makes most entrepreneurs and web programmers nervous as all the hard work they have been doing for years to get secure organic search rankings may come undone with a flip of a switch. This is what they had to say on Google’s official site on crawling and indexing:

“For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results.“

I want to … Read More »

By now most of us have heard the term “Social Media Marketing”. Some of us are probably even using it, hopefully a good amount effectively. But there are still some that say that it’s just not that important or not that big. But the sheer numbers may surprise you.

Twitter grew 3,000 percent in April of 2009. Facebook hosted 61.2 million visitors in March. LinkedIn counts 20 million users worldwide.

With a potential marketing channel that big, it’s no wonder both big and small business owners are looking to unlock the secrets of social media as another way to get the word out about their businesses.  Because many of these social media accounts (and potential clients) are free, this adds to the appeal.  It can be relatively cheap to start a social media campaign, so it’s a way for a company … Read More »

Social Media has become quite a buzz word lately. It seems that everyone has or wants to jump on the Social Media bandwagon and hopes their sales skyrocket. But there is a lot more to Social Media than just writing a few blog posts and holding your hands out to collect the money. There needs to be a social media plan in place and it needs to be executed like any other plan in order for it to work effectively. Like the old saying goes, “Failing to plan is like planning to fail…”

The most recent Social Media plan that has worked to perfection was Obama’s presidential campaign. This was the start of a new era; both for the American people on January 20th as well as for the way the internet will be used to market products and promote brands. … Read More »

I downloaded the new version of TweetDeck today and something immediately caught my eye…

Notice anything?  Like…..that little Facebook checkbox?
You’ve probably noticed that Facebook recently changed it’s main page to look just like a tweet stream.  This was their response to the massive following twitter is receiving.  Many people immediately declared the Death of Twitter! …But not me.
Even though Facebook is a scary foe (perhaps second only to Google) Twitter has built a very loyal following.  With TweetDeck’s new function to load tweets simultaneously to twitter and Facebook, it keeps Twitter as the primary engine and relegates Facebook to nothing more than a twitter aggregator.
How will Facebook respond to this?  Who knows…but I think it’s time they made Twitter a real offer.
For the other cool new stuff TweetDeck added with v.025, see the image from TweetDeck below or just visit their … Read More »

“Fiasco” is probably a bit harsh…but the truth is many colleges are afraid of a social media “Fiasco”.  You know how it goes…you do a quick cost / benefit analysis where you can’t quantify the benefits but the potential costs seem readily apparent.  Management’s decision is simple and easy – Stay Away from Social Media!

I recently interviewed Rachel Reuben, Director of Web Communications at SUNY New Paltz.  Rachel has recently gone through a challenging situation with the New Paltz Facebook page, where she had to make some tough decisions.  I wanted to share this case study with you in hopes of dispelling some of the fear of Social Media.  Here is how one university encountered a situation, dealt with it appropriately and came out ahead.

On Oct 26th, the … Read More »

Did you stop by the InnoGage booth at NACAC this year? NO??? That’s funny…me neither.

The InnoGage team decided to get a little nuts at NACAC this year. Instead of putting up a booth and waiting for people to walk by, we decided to be the eyes and ears of hundreds of people both at the conference and across the country. The InnoGage crew split up and attended sessions that covered Social Media, Recruiting strategy and other valuable Web2.0-ish information. We listened intently and pushed out bits of valuable information through our mobile devices utilizing twitter. If you’re confused, let me break it down for you.

I walk into a session about “social media in higher ed” and sit down. The Panel begins talking and I begin typing bits of interesting information … Read More »

With the Upcoming NACAC 2008 conference converging on Seattle Washington this week I decided to jump back into the NACAC 08 blog, drown myself with information and see if I could contribute anything valuable. I was looking forward to getting into the convo – the only problem is there is no convo…

The NACAC Blog http://nacacconference.blogspot.com is ripe with social media push strategies, such as automatic tags & links to Delicious, Technorati, icerocket & keotag and RRS feeds, email updates…etc. The problem is it appears to be all one-way traffic. I call this a “social media attempt”. It happens when a person or group wants to get into social media but is not sure how to do it, is afraid of it, or just doesn’t want to deal with it. The result is a centralized flow of … Read More »