Long before my professional career started, websites were built and controlled by high school students and information technology departments.

A decade later, when those same high school students became college students, they started an internet revolution called social media. The movement led to many companies to rely on interns and recent graduates for navigation through this new communication phenomenon.

In both scenarios, marketers and communicators were somewhat limited in how well they managed the messaging. However in 2010, I think we have entered a phase where social media marketing is now better understood and better controlled by upper level management. Seriously, how many events can a marketer go to without sitting in on at least one social media presentation?

With that comes better planning of resources and content. This is contrary to the issues raised by Jason Fried of 37signals in an interview with Forbes.com. He argued that the biggest problem with social media marketing is that the social websites are just tools and that most companies have yet to decide who they are and what they stand for on social media.

In just a few years this will no longer be an issue. Much like marketing departments starting taking back control of their websites asking their IT department to turn them over the keys so they could optimize the site for search engines, they too will start asking questions about how to start a successful group on Linkedin.

The next stage in social media marketing ready to start flourishing will be more meaningful content publishing and consumer interaction led by senior marketing professionals, who are no longer too naive to ask tough questions of interns and recent graduates.

When considering building a micro site. Think user experience.

Opponents of building micro sites argue that it makes dollars and sense to drive traffic to subdomain or a special section of a larger site. That way users are forced to experience your entire brand and hopefully they will become engaged with more than one specific product or bit of information.

The question is, do users want to experience it all?

Most users when searching for something on Google expect to find exactly what they are looking for. If they don’t find it very easily, they’ll pop right back to Google and visit another page. That ultimately hurts your business and your ranking.

Micro sites because of their size, lend themselves well to search engines and to users who really want specific information. They also lend themselves well to designers who don’t have to deal with strict parameters of making the special section fit within a larger site.

If you really want your visitors to experience your entire brand. Find a way to make it obvious where your visitors can go to learn more. Just don’t be too over the top. Blinking red text screams scam and users usually don’t like to be fooled. One of the best methods of creating a conversion online is making the user feel empowered like they came up with the idea. Baiting them into a area might cause them to walk away from something that feels fishy.

To build or not to build a micro site? Go for it!

RSS is a technology that allows for content to be delivered online automatically to those who subscribe to it. Blogs and microblogs(Twitter) utilize this technology to deliver content and updates.

A 2008 study showed that only 11% of consumers had adopted the technology, which has steered many marketers away from really utilizing the technology.

Despite these numbers, it’s important to note that on any given 15-minute surf through the world wide web, 100% of web consumers will at some point consume content served to them through RSS.

On a recent visit to Mpls St. Paul Magazine’s health web page, I noticed that they were serving content directly from Mayo Clinic’s health blog utilizing RSS. In the PR world of trying to get stories placed in newspapers – that’s like a grand slam everyday. In my opinion, it doesn’t make much sense to ignore this technology simply because consumers haven’t latched on to it.

To learn more about RSS and RSS readers, check out this video by Commoncraft:

In 2009, I encouraged marketers with no idea how social media works to simply get out, create accounts and post information they are already creating.

I hope they did that because in 2010 I think it’s time for marketers who were just getting acquainted to take things a step further by creating a strategic content plan.

Creating a Content Plan

1. Like a magazine, break your year down by months or quarters.
2. Brainstorm subject matter and subject matter experts.
3. Assign 1-2 main topics for each time period. Remember to assign them strategically, for example, if you are promoting clothing, you should promote summer clothing in the months when people are most likely going to be shopping for summer clothes.
4. Determine the social media sites where you want to share your content (blog, youtube, facebook, twitter) and make sure you are familiar.
5. Work backwards to determine the time you will need to produce content and start scheduling your time and interviews.

After completing those steps you should be ready to start creating content of interest that will increase your brand awareness and revenue. Along the way, don’t forget to listen to your audience and adjust your content plan accordingly.

Given you’ve researched the keywords you want to target, the six main factors listed below are what I believe to be the most important for high rankings in Google. Obviously there are more than 100 factors that Google takes into account, but these are the six I believe to be the most influential.

Number of Incoming Links – The more links going into a page, the more “respected” and higher ranking a page will be on Google. This can be taken one step further, in that a link coming in from a page with lots of links going into that page is worth more than a link coming from a page with very few links coming in.

Incoming Links Anchor Text – Links with keywords as the anchor help Google decide what the page is about. Internal anchor texts are an easy way to influence this.

Coding – Google spiders have only so much time to read all the pages on the Internet. If your pages have long backend codes, Google might not read all that is on your pages.

Titles, Text and Descriptions – Whatever keyword you are targeting, make sure it is present in your page title, description, headings and page content.

Visitor Behavior – Google tracks everything users do through the Google toolbar, web browser. If people click on your page, then go back to Google to look for another page with better information, Google will drop your pages in a hurry.

Timeliness – Old pages don’t get much love on Google. That’s why search marketers love blogs.

Disagree with me? I’d love to hear what you think I missed.

In the spirit of sharing things I like on the web, check out the video below about social media usage.

Read the blog post behind the video on socialnomics.net.

If you work in marketing or communications, you probably have little doubt that your organization should start utilizing social media, but are you ready?

From my experience, C-level executives often worry about what could go wrong. They worry people will say bad things and even worse that no one will do anything about it. The reality is that if you have company, people are already out there talking you. And if you don’t know about what they are saying, chances are you are already doing nothing about it.

I put together a series of questions that might help you decide whether your department or organization is ready to join the conversation on social media.

• Do you have a marketing or communications department?
• Does your marketing or communications department produce news articles, press releases, videos, photos and/or events?
• Do you know who your target audience?
• Is your target audience on social media platforms?
• Do you have key messages?
• Can your social media administrator answer common questions posed on social media?
• Do you have the ability to call on experts within your business to help with complex questions and situations?
• Does someone in your department have experience utilizing social media platforms?
• Have you contacted a lawyer or your legal department to see if there are any subject areas or statements you might want to avoid?

If you answered yes to all these questions, chances are you organization is ready. If not, your problems may be bigger than deciding if your organization is ready for social media.

[digg=http://digg.com/business_finance/Why_are_marketers_so_obsessed_with_Twitter]“Twitter asks ‘What are you doing?’ You can tell Twitter what you are doing on twitter.com or you can text from your cell phone.” says one person who doesn’t understand twitter trying to explain it another person who knows less about it. This conversation is usually followed by a “Hills” like awkward silence and a few shrugs of the shoulders.

I’ll be the first to admit I was absolutely lost the first couple of days I started using Twitter. I didn’t follow anyone I cared about, none of my friends were on it and I didn’t understand what to say or what to do

Looking back, as much as I hate to admit it, it wasn’t until a weird owl named “Mr. Tweet” gave me a few suggestions of who I should follow before I began to find some interesting people on Twitter. From there I was able to branch out, finding a few more people who were conversing with the people I was newly following.

Before I knew it I had a nice little network of people to follow and talk to. Most of them weren’t too weird. For the most part they were interested in some of the same things I was: Minnesota, healthcare marketing, the internet, celebrities and sports.

So why are marketers so obsessed with Twitter?

Because they care what you are doing and thinking, especially as it relates to products and services they have to offer.

A quick search and you can find that there are people actually interested in everything from Anoop Dogg on American Idol to polar ice caps. Marketers find this invaluable because they can have real conversations with people thinking about products and services they have to offer.

Take for example this scenario layed out by Peter Hershberg in Advertising Age:

“A young woman in Chapel Hill, N.C., wakes up sweating. Her air conditioner has died. She knows she wants a new one, but she wants one that will be energy-efficient, easy to install on her own, reliable and not too expensive.

She hops online and types, “I need a new A/C today; I have $250 to spend — help!” into Twitter, which in turn feeds automatically into her Facebook status. She immediately begins to receive replies in both channels from friends with advice on retail outlets, air-conditioner brands and how to stay cool with no A/C. She also sees an @ reply on Twitter from a national big-box retailer letting her know its Chapel Hill location has new air conditioners in stock, as well as a link to the section of its website that shows air conditioners for under $250.”

This is a great example of how social media can be used be marketers. Consumers don’t even need to walk into a store to be helped. All they have to do is say what they are thinking about something and someone should be there to help them. Zappos.com has over 430 employees actively mining Twitter and it is part of their customer services. Do you?

Follow me at twitter.com/allanwoodstrom.

North Dakota State president, Joseph A. Chapman wanted his university to become a major research university. As an article this week in the New York Times points out, Chapman saw athletics as a way to broaden NDSU’s exposure on a national level and boy was he right. Did I mention the university located in Fargo, ND had an article about it in the New York Times?

Moving on, Chapman might have never imagined wins in football and basketball over teams from major conferences. He may have also never dreamt that the basketball team would make the NCAA tournament in its first year eligible. But that’s exactly what has happened and the university in all of its departments will become better because of it.

Chapman told the New York Times that since the university moved to division one athletics, “freshman enrollment was up 23 percent, research expenditures had more than doubled, and that the number of Ph.D.’s awarded this year would top 100, a five-fold increase from 10 years ago.”

Social Media Application
This same theory can be applied to social media. If you want to help a company grow though social media, chances are you’ll have to focus content and social utilities on a subject that appeals to a broader audience, not necessarily where the core competencies of the business lie. Much like NDSU used sports to generate awareness and support for other areas of the University.

Take for example one of the largest shoe companies in the world. If all Nike ever talked about was new technologies in shoe making, only some serious runners and engineers might care. On the contrary, they have broadened their reach and audience on social networks by focusing content and online tools on things that the general running public cares about.

NikePlus.com, a running social network, built by Nike allows runners to log their miles run, share their stories, look up local races, get running tips and connect with other runners. Best of all, Nike has made it very simple for runners. As an article in BusinessWeek points out, all runners have to do is plug in the mini ipod that hides in their shoe and everything they did is immediately tracked and uploaded to the Nike website.

The article also points out that since the launch of Nikeplus.com, Nike has increased its running shoe market share from 48% in 2006 to 61% today. 

To reiterate the point of this article, if companies want to bypass advertising with dying newspapers and radio stations and dive into social media marketing, they have to research what their audience is interested in and deliver. The rest of the business goals will work itself out with added exposure.

Ever wonder why each month seems to be “National ‘Something or Other’ Month?”

It’s called Marketing.

I will preface this entire article by saying, I don’t think that all “National ‘Something or Other’ Months” are bad or get lost in the shuffle. In fact, I would even go as far as to say for healthcare marketers, “National ‘Something or Other’ Months” can be quite effective.

Just yesterday I received an email that said,

“March is colon cancer awareness month.

http://www.mngastro.com/stories/

Please schedule your colonoscopy or encourage your friends and family members over the age of 50 or if you have a family history.”

The email was from a colleague, who received it from an employee at Minnesota Gastroenterology, P.A.  The stories are great and it looks like they are using a local media partner to help spread the message. This is a great example of a local healthcare group making the most out of a “National ‘Something or Other’ Month.” I am sure their schedulers are busy this month making appointments for the rest of the year.

Finally, this post wouldn’t be complete with me getting on my soapbox and preaching the use of social media. I didn’t see that Minnesota Gastroenterology had posted the videos to YouTube. A comScore report in December 2009 showed YouTube accounted for 25% of all searches done on Google sites. In total, YouTube alone had a higher search volume than on all of Yahoo’s sites. It might not produce dynamite results, but it might be worth getting a few extra hundred people to the Minnesota Gastroenterology web site over the next couple of months.