It’s a catchphrase that has been used by most in the Internet marketing industry. Whether you’re talking about social media marketing, search engine optimization, or lead conversion, the idea that “Content is King” rings out as a mantra amongst most who are trying to drive traffic, links, leads, or all three to any given website. For the most part, this is correct, but…

In many ways, it’s a naive cop-out. Why? Because behind almost every King, there’s the people who really call the shots.

Content In Social Media

If a Twitter update falls in the woods and nobody is following that account, did it really make a Tweet? If a Digg story is submitted by someone who gets no Diggs to it, can it hit the front page? If a Facebo…

You get the point.

You can have an exclusive video of Barack Obama dancing with Marilyn Monroe in the White House and post it on your site, but if the right people aren’t there submitting it to Digg, posting it on Facebook, Stumbling it, or Tweeting it, it doesn’t have a chance.

Meanwhile, a picture of a guy standing next to Mark Wahlberg can go viral and get over 80,000 views on Flickr if the right people Digg and Tweet it.

In social media, having strong accounts, a sound strategy, and a little luck can go 90% of the way. The last 10% – that’s where the content comes into play. Having strong content in social media is extremely important, but by itself it won’t make a difference.

Content In SEO

Back in 2005, content was truly everything when it came to search engine optimization. You could stuff keywords, hide keywords, magnify keywords — if you wanted to rank for a particular keyword, it just wasn’t that hard.

Google and the other search engines soon figured this out and started going in a different direction. While the content was and is still important, they decided that offsite factors such as inbound links would need to be used to determine the true relevance of a page in relations to their keywords.

The theory is easy. If trusted websites link to a web page and anchor the link with particular text, the search engines see this and believe that the link must lead to an authority for that keyword. It’s like a vote. Not all votes count the same; a link from the New York Times is counted as a much stronger “vote” than a link from justinandhisspamblog.blogspot.com.

While content is still read and helps tremendously with rankings, it’s the inbound links that have the real juice. It’s possible for a site to rank without links, and it’s possible for a site with links to rank without content, but combined the two provide tremendous power towards achieving strong search rankings.

Don’t Stop with Content

That’s the moral of the story. You can put out the best content on the Internet but without a proper strategy to shine the right lights on the content, it will go nowhere.

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Read more about Internet Marketing Strategy on Hasai.

There’s only one thing I hate about white papers. Wikipedia defines them as:

“…an authoritative report or guide that often addresses issues and how to solve them. White papers are used to educate readers and help people make decisions. They are often used in politics and business, and technical subjects. In commercial use, the term “white paper” has also come to refer to documents used by businesses as a marketing or sales tool.”

While we specialize in social media marketing, we often have a challenge in marketing our own products. That’s the only part I hate about White Papers: they’re geared towards being a marketing tool. Our preference is to educate and hope that people are willing to ask us for help with their social media needs when the time comes.

We are going to be offering a White Paper to Car Dealers to demonstrate how social media can have an impact on their business without spending a dime and in 30 minutes or less per day. Those interested, simply email me at jdrucker@hasai.com

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Learn more about Social Media Strategy on our blog.

2010 appears to be the year of Hasai! We have officially sold our firm and future services to TK Carsites, an automotive marketing firm and former client who saw the Web 2.0 goodness we brought to the table.

Otherwise, nothing changes. Everyone is still on board and plans to stay on board forever. Our current clients will continue on as they were before. The only change is that we will be taking on more automotive-related clients, everyone from car dealers to manufacturers, and helping them to take advantage of social media.

We have taken down our homepage and redirected it to the blog for now until we can put together an appropriate forward-facing presence. After all, there are huge advantages to getting bought by a website provider!

We’re truly excited about the opportunities this will bring, both in clients and resources. This partnership should make a huge splash in the automotive industry.

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Read more about automotive social media on this blog.

Just about every social media marketing firm in the world includes Facebook as one of the primary tools that companies large and small should use in promoting their brand, websites, products, and services. With about a trillion users joining daily and more time spent on Facebook than with family, it only makes sense.

It’s the buzz.

It’s also very difficult to do well from a marketing perspective.

Rather than reinvent the “Facebook Tips” wheel, we have compiled dozens of articles that seem to offer the best advice out there for prospective Facebook marketers and promoters. Each article has been read and “vetted” by our staff. While we may not agree 100% with every article’s conclusions, there is definitely something that can be gained from them.

• Jacob Cass put together a detailed tutorial-style article on How to get more brand exposure, traffic and sales using Facebook.
• Becky McCray offers 6 big Facebook tips for small business.
• Paul Dunay asks With Facebook pages, who needs a website?
• Joel Turner goes into the fundamentals of optimizing in Facebook page marketing tips.
• Ron Jones takes a look at Facebook marketing 101.
• Amanda G. Watlington brings us 5 tips for promoting your business on Facebook.
• Macworld demonstrates the basics on Facebook usage itself with Top Facebook etiquette tips.
• John Jantsch touches on 5 tips for getting more from Facebook.
• Mari Smith discusses Top ten tips for creating buzz with Facebook events.
• Liz Baron offers Facebook marketing tactics.
• Steve Coulson put together 5 tips for optimizing your brand’s Facebook presence.
• Soft Sailor has Top 5 coolest Facebook tips, tricks and hacks.
• Greg Finn breaks down SMX East: Facebook marketing tactics.
• Justin Smith talks search in 10 key SEO strategies every Facebook page owner should know.
• Marty Weintraub had the same idea with some different strategies in 10 SEO tips for maximizing Facebook visibility.
• Christina Warren examines Facebook marketing: IKEA’s genius use of photo tagging.
• Even CNN takes a decent stab at it with 5 tips for fixing your Facebook page.
• Ian Paul lists Ten Facebook tips for power users.
• Ryan Dube gets more advanced with 6 Facebook hack codes & tips to show off your geeky skills.
• Richard MacManus shows us How to use Facebook: 5 tips for better social networking.
• Hongkiat challenges us with 20 Facebook tips/tricks you might not know.

As more stories, tutorials, and how-tos come out, we’ll add to this list.

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Read more about social media strategy at Hasai.

One of the most important aspects of having a complete Internet marketing strategy is controlling your reputation online. As consumers get more savvy and turn to user reviews as a portion of their buying decision, making certain that the good ones can be found and the bad ones are hidden can be the difference between good sales and bad.

Then, there are times when controlling the search engines for your name goes beyond just making sure that your reputation is strong. Sometimes, it’s a matter of driving off 3rd-party lead sites, competitors, and listings that include competitors and 3rd-party lead sites.

Marlboro Nissan (a Boston Nissan Dealer), TK Carsites (an automotive marketing firm), Hasai (us) and Pasch Consulting Group (an automotive SEO firm) have mastered the art of “owning Google”.

So, how did they do it?

Google is smart. Trying to fool them is something only attempted by the foolish. Instead, Marlboro Nissan, TK Carsites, and PCG used the oldest “trick” in the Google algorithm book: quality.  Rather than try, as most, to spam their way to controlling the first page and beyond on Google for the search term “Marlboro Nissan”, they did everything that Google told them to do. They offered quality content, quality pages, and a few other tricks to play Google’s game by its own rules.

1) Power of 5 Websites

As a website client of TK Carsites, Marlboro opted to use the Power of 5 website platform for their marketing. The platform separates out the individual profit centers and gives them a website of their own. Unlike simply using microsites, the Power of 5 platform combines the 5 (in Marlboro’s case, 6) domains seamlessly, giving it the look, feel, and functionality of a single website while offering up multiple, quality URLs for the search engines to index.

In the screenshot above, you’ll see that positions 1, 2, 4, and 8 are domains that are all a part of the entire Power of 5 web presence. They are ranked for the term “Marlboro Nissan” as well as other keywords specific to their purpose. The Used Cars Power Page is ranked #4 for “Marlboro Nissan” and has everything that a consumer would need to buy a pre-owned car from them. The page also ranks for several other terms, including “Used Nissan Boston”, to drive traffic from people not looking specifically for Marlboro Nissan.

With unique, quality content on each page that is geared to tell both the search engines and consumers what the focus of the page is, it’s a win-win for everyone.

2) Microsites

Marlboro Nissan also acquired the services of Brian Pasch and his team at Pasch Consulting Group to create lead-generating microsites. With a strong working relationship between TK Carsites and PCG, it made sense to select him as their microsite provider.

Positions 3 and 5 are PCG microsites. There are several throughout the search listing for their name, but these sites also draw traffic from other local and even national keywords to enhance Marlboro’s web presence beyond their primary website and to give them multiple ways to generate leads.

3) Social Media

Positions 7, 9, and 10 are social media properties created and controlled by Marlboro Nissan and Hasai. They are ever-evolving accounts that are active and give a strong presence to Marlboro on the Web 2.0 sphere.

As the accounts grow and the engagement increases, these properties will not only help control the searches, they will also help to generate traffic and leads.

4) Ratings

Oh no! There’s a domain visible on page one that Marlboro Nissan doesn’t control. Sitting at #6 is DealerRater, a site that is the thorn in many car dealers’ behinds.

For Marlboro Nissan, this is intentional. Why? Because it’s a user review site that has Marlboro Nissan listed with 4.9/5.0 stars after hundreds of reviews. That, my friends, is something that you WANT people to find out about you, which is why Marlboro has chosen to not only let it stay on their searches — they promote it on their sites!

Who wouldn’t?

Beware…

There are many companies out there offering services to car dealers and other businesses claiming to be able to not only control the first page of searches on Google and beyond, but to do so without the dealer getting involved. This is, for all intents and purposes, impossible without spamming. While they may be effective for a short time, the search engines will eventually figure out the game (as they always do) and squash it without warning.

Take your reputation seriously, but make certain that you are hiring companies that use proper techniques that fall in line with the search engines’ requirements. Otherwise, you’re taking a huge risk to simply save a few bucks.

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Read more about Social Media Strategy on this blog.

For those in the social media marketing world, one of the best sources for driving traffic to a site is Digg. The Digg front page can generate tens, even hundreds of thousands of visitors in a day or two, plus can drive hundreds (sometimes thousands) of inbound links to the page.

The problem with Digg and the reason that there are no more than 10-20 social media marketing firms in the world able to use it is that out of 20,000+ submissions per day, around 120 make it.  When you take into account the dynamic of the site to favor “power users” and “whitelisted sites”, it’s a portion of traffic and link strategy that most marketers attempt but only a microscopic percentage achieve.

If you want to be one of those who succeeds, read on…

How to Hit the Digg Front Page

1) Participate… a Lot: The first rule of Digg is that it’s an insiders’ game. Unlike sites like Reddit and StumbleUpon where the quality of the content can propel a new domain submitted by a new user to the front page for massive traffic, Digg requires networking and maneuvering of domains.

Start an account and start Digging. Find people who are active and hitting the front page. If they’re hitting the front page, chances are very strong that they’re “in the game” and actively Digging those who are Digging them.  This aspect of building a strong Digg account could (and probably should) be a an article of its own, so we won’t dwell on it here. Just know – you can Digg 200, 300 or more stories per day. The more you Digg, the better your chances are of getting noticed by someone who will hopefully become your friend and Digg your submissions as well.

Patience is key – you might Digg everything someone submits for a month before they notice you and add you as a friend. They might never notice you. Remember, it’s nothing personal. Having a strong Digg account has a lot of power, but with great power comes… you know the rest.

2) Promote Only the Best: When you have a domain that has not hit the front page of Digg often (or ever) you cannot promote any old submission. It needs to be the best of the best. The worst thing that you can do to your domain is to promote something mediocre. If it hits the front page and gets buried or ends with a low Digg count, your chances of hitting again decrease dramatically.

Site owners often come to us with “We hit a few times a couple of months ago but haven’t been able to hit at all since then.” They over-promoted. They thought (as we all do) that everything they wrote was worthy of the Digg front page and needed to be promoted.  There is TorrentFreak, APOD, and XKCD – those sites hit most of the time. Otherwise, fewer submissions hit than not.

Again, be patient. Save the best of the best for promotions. Everything else can be submitted, but the more that a site is submitted by “power users” without hitting, the lower the chances that it will hit again in the future.

3) Title is (almost) Everything: A good title is necessary to hit the front page of Digg. A great title can be the difference between hitting the right sidebar of best stories of the day (where you can get the big traffic) and not hitting at all.

Learn the site. Learn the community. The old days of “Top 10 lists are the way to hit on Digg” are gone. It’s not that lists don’t hit anymore, but there is a certain fatigue associated with lists that have made them not only more difficult to hit, but also much more difficult to put on the right sidebar.

4) Pics or it Won’t Happen: Digg loves images. They love videos as well, but videos have to be excellent to do well. Pics can be good but still strike a cord with the community. Articles hit the most, but have the least chance of making it to the right sidebar. If you have a great image (or better, and image site) you have a better chance of succeeding on Digg than with a straight news site.

A great image can even help a story to succeed.

5) Be Organic: Don’t hire companies who will buy Diggs for you. Don’t promote your submissions via instant messenger. Don’t try to cheat the system. Make incredible content, a strong account, and title it right. Everything else will fall into place.

These are the basics. Every step could (and probably should) be a blog post of its own. Feel free to contact us if you need any further advice.

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Read more social media tips on this blog.

Let’s make something absolutely clear from the beginning. This is not a suggestion that businesses who are not involved with social networks should blindly rush in. As you will learn, the clock is ticking and it is important for businesses both local and global to get involved and make an impact through social networks.

With that said, it’s better to not get involved than to try social networks and do them incorrectly.  On to the story…

Social Networks Start Tightening Up Growth to Fight Spammers

The predictable cycle is starting to materialize. For this post, we’ll look at Twitter as the primary example.  Since its birth, Twitter has been the most “spammer friendly” social networking site (mostly because it’s not a true social network, but that’s not important).  They allowed multiple accounts, few limits or restrictions on what could be posted, and an ability to grow an account quickly. While these attributes contributed greatly to its growth, they also opened the doors wide open to spammers.

Once the site drew the attention of celebrities, politicians, and businesses around the world, it became necessary to slow down the growth of those accounts that started taking advantage of the “Twitter Wild West”. First, they limited the amount of people an account could follow in the beginning to 2000. Once that number was achieved, an account could only follow 110% of the number of followers it had.

Accounts still grew rapidly and follower “churn” (the technique off following a lot of users, waiting for a certain period of time, and then removing those who didn’t follow back) became more of an issue, so Twitter implemented a 1000-follow-per-day rule. This slowed account growth tremendously, but it was still possible to grow fast.

Recently, they dropped the number down to 500. Mission accomplished. The days of churn as a valid growth method are pretty much over. At the current rate, a manually managed account can grow by 200 followers a day if it’s done right (and doing it right is very time consuming).  It takes 2 months to get 10,000 followers now (a feat that used to take a few days).

In short, businesses and individuals need to be creative when building accounts. So many accounts are simply spam now that gaining 200 a day might only yield a few dozen quality friends. Of those friends, half of them may be gone or uninvolved in a month.

There are ways to build strong accounts without spamming or relying on slow churn. This is where proper social media strategy comes into play. While there are companies that will charge thousands to build a relatively worthless batch of social media profiles, they don’t take it to the next level of helping to build the accounts, train those who will be managing them, or helping to promote them with innovative ideas.

What Does This Mean for Businesses

The immense popularity of sites like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace has generated a tremendous upspike in the number of companies who are offering social media marketing services.  You do not need a social media marketing service.

Let me repeat that.

You do not need a social media marketing service.

There are choices to be made and made soon. The clock is ticking. The longer that a company waits to start or improve their social media strategy, the harder it will become to truly get in the game.  Here is what companies need to do:

1. Decide whether to hire, outsource, or use DIY social media. Be careful of the cheap or free techniques such as using temporary interns.
2. Commit. Whatever you choose to do, stick to it and put the time, money, and/or effort into doing it right.
3. Read social news blogs, Twitter tip sites, and advice on how to use other social networks.

Once you’ve made your decision, hire a social media strategy firm (such as Hasai).  Promoting your company through social media is more than a marketing campaign. It’s more than having a presence. It’s about looking at what your company is doing, what your competitors are doing, and most importantly looking at what your customers are doing. Making your social media strategy fit with your market is the key to doing exceptional things in Web 2.0. Just look at Dell.

Regardless of the size of your company, chances are strong that you can make a difference with social media. It’s all about impact. Your company needs a heavy hitter on its side for the most impact.

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Read more about Social Media Strategy on this site.

]]> http://hasai.com/blog/featured-articles/social-networks-the-clock-is-ticking-for-businesses/feed/ 0 http://hasai.com/blog/featured-articles/startups-remember-lessons-from-the-first-wave/ http://hasai.com/blog/featured-articles/startups-remember-lessons-from-the-first-wave/#comments Fri, 04 Dec 2009 11:11:50 +0000 admin http://hasai.com/blog/?p=57

Here is an excellent interview from ReadWriteWeb with Mark Jeffrey, current CTO for Mahalo with loads of experience in startups. Starting a new Internet company in today’s ever-volatile world can be harrowing, but as long as you remember the meteoric rises and falls during the first big boom before the bubble burst, you should be ahead of the game.

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Read more about Social Media Startup Strategy at Hasai.

Over the last several months, we’ve worked with some, interviewed others, and came to the conclusion that there are some out there that are real. Some. The rest, probably 95 out of 100, know very little about how to truly design social media campaigns and manage a proper social media strategy.  This is a huge problem as several corporations and small businesses we have talked to lately are skeptical of anything relating to social media.

They tried it with this company or that company and they didn’t see the results.

Before we join the chorus of “we’re the best” that makes it seem like we’re just like everyone else, let me state something very clearly. Our results are predefined. Our methods are discussed openly and honestly. We do not collect a penny until AFTER the results are rendered.

Do I have your attention?

For the first year of existence, Hasai chose to stay hidden. Social media and its many components are sensitive topics. Companies do not necessarily want their customers or competitors knowing that they have hired a social media firm, so we decided to “not exist” except through referrals and word-of-mouth.  As the company expanded over the months, it became clear – there are ways to protect our clients without staying in the shadows.

Too many companies are popping up that offer the same thing that we offer. Then again, a Daewoo and a Bentley both drive down the street. They both have 4 wheels, doors, windows, and an engine.  The difference is that one does it right and one did it wrong.

Read through the site. We are carefully crafting what we can and cannot say in a way that will protect everyone involved while still offering the opportunity for companies to find us.

You’ve found us. You’re already ahead of your competition.

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Read more about Social Media Strategy.