SEO for Ecommmerce, Barry Adams from Pierce Communications

The day kicked off for me watching Barry’s tips for ecommerce SEO. This is something I’ve done quite a lot of over the years, and there were some really good ideas on enhancing what I’m already doing here.

Below are a few of the main highlights:

Focus on where the money is. The keywords bringing the greatest revenue aren’t always the ones that bring you the most traffic, so focus on the money first

Use site search tracking in GA for ideas on potential keyword targets

Make sure you structure your site properly with appropriate internal linking anchors. Don’t forget the breadcrumbs!

Where possible get multiple high res product images. Don’t just use JavaScript to display these, as this might prevent them showing up in image searches (alt tag them too)

Use easy and intuitive faceted navigation, using appropriate SEO focused facets. Use URL parameters to block facets that have less SEO value. Be careful of duplicate content though!

Get delivery information on all product pages – don’t make users click through to a specific page, taking them away from product and reducing chances of sale.

don’t 404 your out of stock items. 301 them if they go permanently to retain that value.

Product reviews – use schema (I love rich snippets!)

Link building efforts should be focused to category pages where possible

Great way to kick off the day, and I was really glad to have met Barry finally after a long time talking online. You can find his SEO for Ecommerce slides in full over on slideshare.

Link building with Swiss Toni, Jon Quinton from SEOgadget

Our next session was off to see our good friend Jon’s ThinkVisibility debut. Jon showed us lots of funky tricks to help identify good link opportunities as quickly as possible, using all sorts of data sources and pulling them all in to excel.

My main highlights here were:

‘Link building can be like making love to a beautiful woman’

Use google docs to scrape link prospects, and pull in metrics to assess potential targets authority.

Use SEO tools for excel (I’ve been meaning to check this out for a while) to pull in page rank and social metrics

Make link prospects offers they can’t refuse.

Only use really good content – its not an area to scrimp on costs for poorly written articles.

Cheap content is a false economy (so true!)

Well done Jon – great presentation, and I’ll look forward to seeing some more from you in the future! You can see Jon’s post and slides over on Link Building Lessons from Swiss Toni at SEOgadget.

Website analytics – 60% of the time it works every time, Anna Lewis from Koozai

Anna is another good friend who I was really looking forward to seeing speak. Anna clearly has some good ways to use analytics – helping to find the right kind of numbers from it, as well as finding them faster.

She rightly talked about making sure that data you use, and present to clients needs to have both context & authority.

Determine the right metrics for customers and create custom reports to look at the factors as simply as possible

Use APIs to speed up these processes and to ensure you don’t rely on sampled data. Either learn to code, copy and paste or outsource this work.

Not provided traffic – look at landing pages of this traffic to gain better intelligence as to what might have brought visitors there.

With multi touch attribution set up custom channels to review data more accurately. You can see Anna’s presentation and slides over on the Koozai blog.

25 Useful Tips on WordPress, Dan Harrison from WP Doctors

Another session I’d been looking forward too, I was really torn here as to whether to watch this or go see Carla Marshall from Sorbet Digital presenting in video SEO. Nichola went off to watch that one, so I’m hoping she’ll share her insights once we’ve recovered from the weekends exertions.

Back to WordPress, Dan whizzed through his tips for WordPress (I reckon he could have done 50, but needed Q&A time too). I really liked the shirt he had made for the event:

Fortunately ahead of the event, I talked him out of a ninja themed shirt!

Anyway, on to the content. Dan highlighted the ways on speeding up WordPress using caching and assorted other techniques, shared tips for encouraging social sharing and ways to set it up properly in the first place. I thought the CTA buttons looked interesting and Dan showed us lots of ideas for using gravity forms.

Dan also turned this into an ebook, so you can see all his tips!

Saying Stuff Is Dead… Is Dead, James Carson from Bauer Media

This was possibly my favourite session of the day, but was also the one I took the least notes on. It was fun and engaging (I loved the ‘Steve Jobs IS dead’ joke ).

This presentation looked at how most things that are written about as being dead, actually aren’t. SEO, Email, Facebook; none of these things are dead!

Great stuff from James! James has his slides up on his blog already too.

From URL to Result, Pierre Far from Google

This was a really interesting session, and the first one I’d ever seen from an actual Googler.

It looked at indexing of the Internet, and looked at the process of how this happened (this wasn’t to do with the described ‘magic’ of how rankings were determined however).

I was intrigued that there had been a new smartphone Googlebot thrown out into the wild recently, and Pierre encouraged us all to setup email forwarding on Webmaster Tools messages, as they are sending more than ever now (I didn’t really know this existed, so will go and hunt for this).

I was also particularly fascinated to learn that crawl budgets are not set for ‘sites’, but are instead budgeted by servers. Google call this host load, and do it this way to minimise the chance of breaking a server, but still looking at as many URLs as possible.

I’ve not found any links to this presentation, so let me know if you find a copy available somewhere.

Final Summary

There is a real family, community oriented feel to this conference that many others could learn from – there is a really sociable feel to this event, and it’s always great to meet up with a set of like minded peers again, as well as meeting a bunch of other old friends for the first time.

This time around there was once again a great selection of speakers, although with an emphasis on letting some fairly new speakers get up and show us their stuff. It was a great opportunity to see some folks delivering different angles on things than I’d seen in the past, and I’m hoping to take some inspiration from them and try and dip my toe into having another go at doing some speaking if I can get an opportunity at some stage this year.

It was another fantastic event all round, as they have been every time I’ve trekked up to Leeds for ThinkVisibility. Where else would you see a bouncy castle in a casino?

There are lots of interesting pictures from the event over on Flickr.

Thanks again to Dom and the team for having us, and I hope to see you all again in September, if not before!

The post Thinkvisibility 7 Highlights from @ismepete appeared first on theMediaFlow.

In my last role, we had a number of internal tools that I’ve had to find replacements for or just stop using the equivalent of. As a result, it’s made me think closely about the tools that I needed to be bringing across, look for some more modern variants in some cases, as well as making sure I find some new ones to help with the day to day role.

Some of these are SEO specific, and others are more general useful tools to aid productivity, but I thought that this would be a decent topic to write my first blog for theMediaFlow on. I hope you find some of them useful, and be prepared for a fairly long list!

SEO/Search Marketing Tools:

Screaming Frog SEO Spider -

This tool has changed my working life immeasurably for the better. I first started talking to the Screaming Frog tool about this whilst it was in development well over a year ago now, as I was looking for a tool that could help me check with the implementation of the canonical tag across a website.

From an on-site audit perspective, nothing beats this for me. You can evaluate titles, descriptions, keywords, headings, canonical tags, internal link patterns. You can review specific inlinks and anchor texts to specific pages, review broken links and links passing through internal redirects. I’m sure that there are plenty of elements that I am still not getting the full benefits from still, but this is a tool I love and recommend incredibly strongly that you try it if you haven’t already.

Google Keyword Tool - I’ve used lots of keyword analysis tools over the years, and found most of them fatally flawed by the data sets supplying the information. Who knows, they may have got better over the years, but I have my doubts (let me know in the comments if there are any worth having a look at).

I don’t exactly trust the data that this tool gives as the potential traffic levels available on terms are rarely anything like what the exact match data suggests is possible. However, I do find that in terms of comparative volumes between phrases that this is a useful indicator of how a keyword might perform in terms of traffic potential.

Excel - I definitely need to get better with spreadsheets, as I’ve been known to tear my hair out at times, but where would I be without Excel? 2012 is the year where I am really going to get my head around better spreadsheet usage.

I know a large number of the SEOs are talking about learning to code this year, but for me, maximizing and improving my Excel usage is a considerably higher priority.

Already though, I wouldn’t be without it, and its an essential part of the Search Marketers tool kit.

Raven Tools - in particular this is replacing the internal tools that I have previously used.

I have a long way to go before I get to grips with everything that its possible to do with Raven – I’ve mostly thus far been using it for the rank checking & competitive intelligence elements for campaigns that I am working on a the moment, and am planning on spending a lot more time getting to grips with all the extra features over the coming weeks and months.

Header Status Checkers – I now mostly use check your server result codes.

GSiteCrawler - this has been mostly superseded for me now with the additional features being added to the Screaming Frog tool, but this is one that I’ve historically had a lot of use from. I used to use it to create XML sitemaps (now a task for the Screaming Frog Spider), spotting duplicate content issues (now a task for the Screaming Frog Spider) and… ok, maybe I don’t really need to be using this one anymore – if you don’t have a paid subscription for the SF SEO Spider, then it could be useful for creating fairly big XML sitemaps.

Google Analytics & Google Webmaster Tools - goes without saying really!

Google URL Builder - A handy tool for tagging links up for campaigns.

Google Analytics Configuration Tool - This is a newly released tool from the Raven Tools team to help configure Google Analytics in the way that you need for your website. It has options for helping you to setup Google Analytics accounts for websites with multiple subdomains, track multiple domains in one account as well as configuring site search and 404 tracking. It also helps you to setup Goals for the website, using event tracking methods, helps you to track Facebook page traffic and has a URL Builder.

I’ve actually not used this yet beyond a couple of tests, but can see plenty of uses for this in the future and can definitely see how simple this could make configuring some of these options.

Piwik - This is a new one to me, but I’ve been starting to have a look at this open source analytics package since starting at theMediaFlow. It seems to broadly collect the same sort of information as I am used to seeing in Google Analytics, without Google having access to that data specifically.

MajesticSEO - The link analysis tool that I am most familiar with, I regularly use this one. Useful for identifying potential problems in your backlink profiles, performing competitor intelligence and comparisons. So much data available to be looking at it can be a little daunting at first, but once you get your head around what’s on offer its a valuable resource.

OpenSiteExplorer - Since the demise of the Yahoo Site Explorer, this has been my go-to for quick link spot checks. It also does some good comparisons and visualisations of the data.

Link Research Tools - I’ve historically only really used free tools and MajesticSEO for backlink analysis and have enjoyed having access to these Link Research Tools to review that data from a slightly different source

Cognitive SEO Tools - this is a fairly new tool, and one that is certainly new to me. However, I’ve started to play around with the data that this is collecting for a few clients of late and have really liked the data visualisation that you can produce from it. I suspect that as I start to use this a bit more in the future that I will be finding plenty of additional uses for it, as it seems to have a lot of additional features beyond the link analysis elements that I’ve been using it for mostly so far.

Schema Creator - I actually only found this tool today, but I can see this being really useful for using Microdata as set out by schema.org to mark up People, Products, Events, Reviews and more. It gives you a preview and then the HTML to copy and paste where you want to use it.

Google Rich Snippet Testing Tool - Well, once you’ve implemented schema for your reviews (and recipes which I’ve used a fair bit too), you want to make sure that its possible for it to display with those 5 star reviews in the SERPs. Drop a URL into here and see how Google *might* display your rich snippets. It’s also useful to find any problems that you might have with your code to help you get these working properly. Rich snippets are everywhere in search results at the moment and seem to have fewer barriers for entry at the moment, so now is the time to get them on your site!

Google SERP Snippet Optimiser - I’ve loved the SEOmofo SERP snippet optimization tool since i first stumbled across it. It lets you put your title, description and URL in and generate a preview of how that snippet might look when its live on a Google search.

WHOIS Domain Tools - Always useful to do a bit of snooping. Find out details on the Whois record, registration details and some hosting information on websites you want to know more about.

First Link Checker - I’ve used this tool for a number of years now; it lets you look at the links outgoing on a page and flags to you when you link multiple times to the same URL. It can be useful to identify when you might be over-linking internally to a page on your site – I particularly use this a lot on website home pages or specific pages that I want to investigate further.

SEO Browser - Another old one, but I still find it useful to have a quick look at text only views of a page from time to time.

Hitwise Intelligence Dashboard - Whilst this isn’t a tool as such I tend to find myself checking this data a couple of times a month. I find its search engine share statistics particularly valuable to check in on (it always amuses me as well that Google has the top 2 slots here, with .co.uk and .com engines).

Assorted Productivity & “Other” Tools:

Percentage Calculator - I used to get a lot of stick for this one being in my bookmarks, and yes, I can calculate percentages in excel. But this has been in my bookmarks forever, and for a quick and easy percentage calculation that I don’t want to attempt in my head, I always visit here.

Skype - to keep in touch with those around that I need to be able to communicate with at all times (it’s mostly a smaller extension of my Twitter network).

ToodleDo - I resisted using this in my last place of work, but particularly now, where I am working in multiple locations, the importance of a to-do list that syncs everywhere I go has grown to be invaluable. Throw in the iphone and ipad app and I can access my to do list wherever I am in the world. Much better than the post it notes and scraps of paper that used to litter my desk space.

Evernote - Another app that I’ve started to use as a result of working more frequently in multiple locations (and the primary location that I have written this blog from), Evernote allows you to write notes and attach data to it, and have a central storage and access to that wherever you go, on all the devices that I own. In tandem with Dropbox and Toodledo, these are keeping me organised at the moment.

Dropbox - I’ve used dropbox every now and again over the years, but not really with any seriousness. However, since starting here, having an online storage space where I can access what I am working on everywhere that I am working has become more important. Again, using iphone and ipad apps has proved invaluable whilst out and about

Google Chrome Extensions:

I made the switch to Google Chrome about 18 months ago for the most part, although of course keep other browsers to test differences in SERPs and the like. I regularly make use of the following Chrome Extensions to help make SEO’ing that little bit easier!

SEO Site Tools - A fantastic extension for Chrome, my main browser based tool. Contains a ton of offsite and onsite data about a wealth of factors, it lets you have a quick snapshot of a pages primarily important on page items. A must have for Google Chrome using SEOs.

Pinterest Right Click - Not a search marketing tool at all I guess, but I have really enjoyed adding things to my Pinterest boards – particularly since I found this extension that allows you to right click on an image and pin it without any faff.

PageRank - Pretty simple extension – displays the PageRank of a page. Maybe I shouldn’t be looking at it with any credibility, but hey, I still like to know.

XML Tree - I didn’t like how Google Chrome displayed XML sitemaps when I looked at them, and this makes them more usable and readable

Number Search Engine Results - Does what it says on the tin, and numbers search results for you – simple!

Google Global - an extension to let you see Google results in different regions. I often forget that I have this extension, but it is handy for some quick research on how your results might appear in other locations when I do remember to use it!

Evernote Web Clipper - in conjunction with using Evernote I’ve been using this to clip articles to Evernote for later reading.

Honourable Mention:

Spotify… ok, this isn’t a search marketing tool at all. But everyone needs some background noise to help the day on its path. I’ve also been enjoying starting to build some playlists for sharing, and will be tweeting about some more of these over the coming months. I am someone that isn’t a complete iTunes hater, and have previously run my music collection mostly through that, but similarly to some of the other things I’m using at the moment, the accessibility between multiple locations is growing in its importance for me these days.

Finishing Up:
For things like Twitter & Facebook, unlike many search marketers, I actually just use the web interfaces. I find that I can dip in and out of the activities on these platforms much more simply as a result of closing down the browser windows, rather than receiving a barrage of notifications when there have been new updates and getting distracted all the time. For the same reason, I have notifications switched off for most things, particularly email.

Hopefully not all of these were completely the usual suspects for this sort of post, although I appreciate that a lot of these are popular tools and bookmarks. I’m always on the look out to develop this toolset further though, so I’d love to hear if there are some obvious tools and bookmarks that I should be adding – please let me know in the comments.

The post My Most Used Search Marketing Tools appeared first on theMediaFlow.

It’s a hotly contested topic at the moment, with many large media and organisations such as NMA and Econsultancy also debating which discipline is best qualified to own your strategy and budget, with Chris Lake of Econsultancy telling brand owners “your social media strategy shouldn’t be owned by a PR or ad agency“.

Registration is free and the event starts with a little light networking at 4.30, with the debate commencing at 5.30. Drinks and refreshments will be served.

Arguing their respective case:

Digital Marketers: Andy Oakes, NMA (New Media Age)

SEO specialists: Kevin Gibbons,  SEOptimise

PR specialists: Claire Thompson, Waves PR

Social Technologists: Benjamin Ellis, Redcatco

Social Media specialists: Nichola Stott, theMediaFlow

Event hashtag = #ownSMW

See you there!

The post Who owns the Social Space? A Debate appeared first on theMediaFlow.

I got to know a little about Antoine, whilst in the process of blogger outreach on a client project. I was struck by his professionalism and dedication, not only because he is based outside of the UK, yet still manages to be bang on-time (and often first) with the latest LFC news; but also because despite having built an already successful blog (and seriously large audience), Antoine was always available – including when it became apparent that he was writing to me and tweeting from his hospital bed.

As social media professionals, we may often stress that to build a truly successful online community requires more than just information and authority; it requires absolute dedication and passion. Here was someone who epitomised this – I simply had to interview him…

Could you introduce yourself and give us an overview of your blog, and social communities?

My name is Antoine Zammit I own and operate what I call a social blog entitled “Empire of The Kop“. The blog has tremendous social media presence on Twitter (@empireofthekop) and on Facebook.

How long have you been a fan of LFC?

I have been a Liverpool supporter for over 30 years now, it all started when I was a kid growing up in Malta. In 1992 I moved to the US and brought my passion with me across the pond.

What made you decide to turn your passion for the club into a full time occupation?

Well actually it is not my full time job however I do spend as much time on it as a full time job . Living in the US is difficult for a football supporter; I don’t have any friends who live close by or any co-workers who follow the sport so I had to turn to the Internet. It started with Facebook, I used to post LFC news stories to discuss. Very soon other LFC fans from all over the world wanted to be my friends and before I knew it I had 5,000 Facebook friends which is the limit that Facebook allows. Due to this limitation I switched to Twitter and started tweeting, eventually I ended up launching the blog when Facebook censored a page I had posted and Empire of The Kop was born.

How many readers do you have and how big is your total audience (roughly) when considering your social profiles too?

EOTK (Empire of The Kop) gets over 250,000 visitors per month, there are over 36,000 Facebook fans on our page and over 100,000 followers on Twitter.

How did you build such an enormous and engaged community?

Mostly it has been passion, I try to be not let any piece of Liverpool FC news slip past. I also Tweet live game updates which have become very useful to fans who aren’t able to watch the game. I am usually faster than any of the other football sites and Tweeters.

Such volume and frequency of communications must require great attention to detail, and some pretty heavy-duty tools I imagine? What are your favourite twitter, or general posting tools to help you manage and monitor all the outgoing and incoming messages?

I use Tweetdeck on my computer and when I am on the go I do use the mobile Twitter application.

Would you describe what you do as a labour of love?

Yes of course

What sets EOTK apart from other LFC blogs and fan sites?

Mostly it is because the site is by Liverpool fans for Liverpool fans, there are no professional writers who write on the blog, they are fans from all over the world. Thanks to the blog I was able to give a voice to many fans who would otherwise be disenfranchised.

How do you source your information?

The internet of course; thanks to the tremendous network of followers I am able to get the stories submitted right as they happen and sometimes someone slips me some gossip too.

What are your three biggest tips for would-be bloggers on how to grow an audience?

Engage your audience, be generous (Re Tweet) and follow everyone who follows you so you can communicate via DM (Direct Messaging) as some don’t want to be public on certain things.

>Nichola: I came across a first-hand account of engaging and generous activity from Antoine (behind the wheel of EOTK) on Twitter. When I told a friend and contact of mine, Rhys Wynne (who is a lifelong LFC fan) that I was interviewing Antoine he said “I tweeted to him when I was in Slovenia to ask where I could watch the Merseyside derby in Ljubljana, he put me in touch with the local supporters club, who actually had an event at the pub 10 minutes walk from the hostel, it was great. The guy has an amazing community surrounding him.”

What’s been the biggest difficulty you have faced over the years in building EOTK?

Having to deliver bad news about the club is always the most difficult, I am a messenger and sometimes I do get shot.

Do you have any support, interaction and/or recognition from the club?

Yes, the club’s official Twitter have sung my praises a few times and even did a special shout out for me when I was hospitalised.

What’s your take on the clubs’ financial situation and the recent difficult times?

It was tough having to go through all the negative stories and trying to put a positive spin to them. The situation has improved with the new owners and if they do what they promised then happy days are ahead for Liverpool F.C.

There certainly have been some happy days lately, with a great result against Chelsea at the weekend. You’re away to Wigan on Wednesday. What’s your prediction?

Wigan away can be tough, unfortunately many of the players will not have enough time to rest. I do hate predictions but I am going with a narrow win 1-0/2-1 for Liverpool.

Finally – whilst I have a soft spot for Liverpool, as they are one of the best Northern teams; I’m actually a ‘Boro lass myself. After a difficult start to the season, we’re under new management (Tony Mowbray) and won convincingly on Saturday. Do you think Mowbray could bring ‘Boro back to the Premiership?

Things do look a little dire for Boro, I do believe that they will stay in the Championship next season however I can see them turning around and returning the Premiership after that. They deserve to be in the Premiership.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Thanks Antoine, you’ve been a great interviewee and a fantastic, real-life example of social media theory.

The post “How I Built One of the Largest Online Communities in Sport”: An Interview with Antoine Zammit – Empire of the Kop appeared first on theMediaFlow.

Excellent!

As you begin to generate a bit of a following and you’re seeing “community signs” such as increased repeat visitor numbers, higher page to visit ratios and also comments on your blog; you may notice the ubiquitos spam.

Some spam is so obvious, if this was 1972, we’d have eaten it. Other spam can be a little harder to detect, and it may get past the spam-catching plugin that you use. Getting comments feels great, particulalry as you launch your business and seek to establish networks and communities so I understand it can be hard to draw that line and work out what is a spam comment and what is a real genuine comment, when perhaps you would rather approve more than you disapprove.

Let’s have a quick definition and then look at a few quick and easy ways to tell spam from the real thing!

Spam is a lot of things in a lot of mediums, but from email, to Twitter to blog comments there are common elements:

1.The route to “spam” is electronic.

2. The “spam content” is most often disguised as a genuine communication

3. There is an attempt to deceive you, for the benefit of the “spammer”.

When it comes to blog comments, the reason for spamming, is to drop a link on your site, to the spammer site. Most of the time the reason for posting a link isn’t so much about getting traffic, but about the spam site, increasing the number of links to it. Some of the most important of the two hundred or so ranking componants of the Google algorithm look at number of links to your site, relevance of such links to your site, the quality/authority of the site linking to you and even more link related factors. If done well and undetected, link spamming via comments can help a spam site achieve a falsely high ranking that does not reflect the tru quality of the site.

So that’s why they do it!

Here’s a few thinks to think about when deciding if a comment may actually be spam.

1. Links in the comment/commentor details: do these links lead to good quality legitimate sites with such signifiers as clear business details in the Privacy Policy, About Us or otherwise legal footer links.

2. Links in the comment/commentor details: are these links relevant to the post, the comment or the general theme of the blog?

3. Does the comment add any value? comments such as “that was a great post – thanks”. Might make you feel great for a second, but if the comment adds no value, or makes no real reference to the content – chances are it’s deliberate spam.

4. Does it read well? Most spam comments are not made by humans, but by spambots. Such spambots crawl the web looking for blog platforms, crawling and following links to activities such as “add comment” then drop the auto content in the bot program.

5. Is it duplicated? If a comment is very vague and adds no value e.g. “A good article and thank you for the information. I will bookmark this post” then you could try searching for that phrase on Google, to see if it is a bot comment. Make sure you use the quotation marks around the phrase to only get results with the exact phrase, with words in that order.

One final point on blog comments in general. Many blog platforms give you the option to automatically approve all comments that are not identified as spam, malicious or otherwise by your blog software. If you work in a litigious or highly competetive sector, it may be an idea to allow automatic approval anyway, reason being if you have manually seen and approved these comments, you then as a publisher are responsible for this content.

More on dangers and legal pitfalls in social media here: Social Media 101

You nearly always did not ask for it.

The post Comments on my Blog: When is it Spam? appeared first on theMediaFlow.

My first session of the day and it promises to be a really exciting one. Social Media is always a good crowd-puller, but in the hugely competitive affiliate space, Social Media participation has it’s pitfalls.

Here we go…

Andrew is a self-proclaimed geek and former affiliate. Currently working with a big agency and experienced in managing legal social/gaming issues, (particularly the celebrity death odds.)

Participation is underpinned by a required understanding of the law.

We’re starting off in 2000 when Lawrence Godfrey goes after Demon Internet and sets a 15k precedent for content host responsibility. Blame him…

Andrew himself had a client video removed from YouTube, due to a trademark referenced. Less than 100 views before it was pulled.

The Electronic Commerce Directive “ISPs should not have to monitor everything.” However in France Louis Vuitton and eBay are at constant war over fake goods. eBay does offer some policy (the VeRo program) to try to protect IP.

How does this affect You?

Blogs

Post moderation and pre-moderation. Post comment goes live, approved after the fact.) Pre – moderation approving by consideration, actually puts you i a difficult position, as you have complicity approved something.

Spartacus Order – anonymous comment trolls need to watch their backs. This order means the person responsible for comments must identify themselves.

John Doe: 18thc law. A court can still proceed without knowing the identity of a perpetrator.

In the UK, the  Consumer Protection Act. A financial interest must be disclosed e.g. if I chat on social media “Betfair is great”, then I need to disclose my financial relationship, or am technically breaking the law.

Yahoo! Answers example – comment in Car Insurance from a guy who gets a lot of thumbs up, however ‘always’ recommends the same insurance co. Naughty.

Gambling in Europe

EU free trade is fuzzy when it comes to gambling and proceedings take a very long time to change. One law is that there is coming EU tracking law. Opt out of tracking must be clear.

Other Effects – Google

The algorithm knows gambling content.

That’s the cautionary tale, now for the advantages.

Affiliates are not stupid

Affiliates don’t have a brand committee (nimble and flexible structure)

On average affiliates are 3525% quicker than brands to make site changes

Merchant Disadvantage

One client took two years to put a link on their homepage

One bank took one year to add an RSS feed to a page for a 10k bill from their design agency.

Another took 7 months to decide to use Google Local and 1 year to actually get on there.

Lesson: affiliate organisations are the perfect size, scale and mindset to successfully participate in social media.

Virtual Networking

Nimble affiliates can easily participate in Twitter.

TRAPS

Blogging

Blogger, Mixx, Friendfeed, Twitter, Twhirl – one blog can grow into so many means of promotion it is an easy trap to end up exceeding time spent “being social”. Do monitor your time against benefit.

Dumb Merchants

Andrew himself was previously an affiliate of New Line Cinema – When Lord of The Rings launched, they offered an affiliate scheme on a golden ring for £200 which got a lot of traction in some social media, (incredulity of price for a replica ring) which lead to a lot of impressions, high-interest. Social/viral effect can lead merchants to suspect some form of click incentive. Andrew got kicked off this particular program.

Biggest Tip

NEVER offer legal, financial or medical advice in any way, shape or form.

Also – careful when providing content related to celebs. If it is true = copyright, if it’s private = Intellectual Property.

Moving onto Gamer Networks and the Prime Candidates for Affiliate Social Activities.

Raptr is a perfect hunting ground for casual gamers.

Real-time in Twitter, links text ad links related to trending topics.

Outbrain’s Outcloud A great way to collate blog content into a social content form including thumbnail image content. Costs $10 a month, but huge potential for impressions and clicks. Highly recommended.

Also – don’t forget good old Yahoo! pipes.

In summary – Social Media is a world of opportunity for affiliates, but just be aware of the rules of play, and how social viral campaigns may not convert in the way that is expected by the merchant.

QUESTIONS

What about duplicate content?

Don’t duplicate your own content. Don’t push the same post to multiple distribution points. Check Google from a content dupe perspective. Make sure your post is live on your own site first. Establish authority of source.

PR are the sites good distribution sources?

Yes. Particularly if you can get something into Google News. NYT picked up a press release about how US prisoners are forbidden to play Dungeons and Dragons. Great story, which was picked up by the blogs already for two days before NYT picked it up.

The post London Affiliate Conference: Social Media 101 appeared first on theMediaFlow.

On the bonus side, nobody can tell that you haven’t pressed your dress suit!

If you really want to rock the party, it pays to have a clear idea of why you are there in the first place. If it’s primarily a customer growth objective or a credibility objective, this will effect your follow strategy.

Here’s a few tried and tested, but imaginitive ways of finding people to follow…

1. Use a Directory

A number of directories exist just for people on Twitter. You can search for Twitter users by their interests or categories and/or geo-location. www.wefollow.com is one of the largest, and allows for both interest and location based searches. Other directories include www.twellow.com, www.justtweetit.com, www.twitterdirectory.com and www.geofollow.com .

Make sure you add yourself to these directories too; so that you can be found by people who are interested in your chosen categories and physical location.

2. Speaker ‘Circuits’

If you want to follow and establish a presence with the leaders of your industry, it’s a good idea to familiarise yourself with the ‘speaker circuit’. Industry leaders and conference speakers tend to have a highly visible media presence and you will find many on Twitter. Check your industry conference and exhibition websites for a list of speakers. Most websites will feature a detailed speaker profile with Twitter ID included. If not, take your list of names and do a “Find People” search on Twitter.

3. Competitor Websites

Following your competitors is always a great idea. If your industry is super cut-throat, be warned that they may not follow you back, or may even block you from seeing their Tweets. This is a bit extreme and most competitors will have nothing to hide from you, and many may welcome a bit of banter and exchange with an industry peer.If any of your competitors are on Twitter, most will have a link to their profile on their website.

4. Follower-Drilling

Once you have identified a good person or competitor to follow, check who is following them and use the profile information in the followers list to see who could also be of interest to you. In most cases with a well managed Twitter account, you will find followers of a like-mind.

5. Keyword Searching/Hashtags (#)

Use the Twitter search functionality to search for keywords or hashtags that are relevent to your brand and your product. A hashtag is slightly different to a keyword in that adding a hashtag to a Tweet, collates all Tweets that use the hashtag, regardless of content. As an example #LAC is the hashtag for the London Affiliate Conference next week. I may well see Tweets like this…

“Where is everyone staying then? #LAC”

or…

“Going to the closing party?” #LAC

So a hashtag, when used correctly, can help you identify people that are involved or interested in something, even if their Tweet content does not specifically call this out.

Search results for keywords will show Tweets from Twitter users that have referenced the keyword in their Tweet. In many cases this may be because they have a specific interest in your product. It may be a good idea to directly introduce yourself to them by sending a Tweet (@mention) solely to them. Be aware that someone you follow will be quite likely to click your profile to assess if it is worth following you, so please don’t do this!

I want To Be Special!

Tip: If you use a third party application such as Tweetdeck you can create a column for your keyword search or hashtag and all public tweets containing your keyword or hashtag will appear in this column in realtime.

6. Other Social Media

Many other social media sites allow users to add their Twitter ID to their existing profile. If you already have an established community elsewhere, such as your Linkedin network, then check the profiles of your contacts and those that are also on Twitter will be easy to find!

Of course, the standard way to find people on Twitter is to use the “Find People” search within Twitter, however this is a little long-winded and relies on you knowing who you are looking for by name.

We hope these resources and tips give you a bit more of boost to your follow strategy, so that you can easily find people to learn from, connect with, market to and create a relationship with. Do you have any questions about Twitter in general that you would like to see answered in this blog? And do let me know if you have any cool ideas for identifying people to follow!

The post Tweeting for Business: Who Do I Follow? appeared first on theMediaFlow.

This year however I’m speaking, reporting, live blogging and all sorts.

I’m really excited having been off the scene for a while. Also I’m a little nervous about seeing and meeting all those people I have spent the past year stalking, befriending, admiring and engaging with on Twitter. I have a bad habit of seeing celebrities in London and thinking we’re old friends, so I’m not confident in my avatar recognition skills. Please don’t be offended if I walk past you. Grab me and explain who you are and we’ll get on like a house on fire I’m sure. Or you may get dragged into a room at SES and interviewed for SEO-Chicks. (If you’re really, really lucky )

First up is #LAC, or London Affiliate Conference (Gaming). I’m speaking on a panel about advanced social media strategies; lead by social media expert @JudithLewis. Judith has been online, since there’s been an ‘online’ and truly knows her onions when it comes to social media, search engine optimisation, paid search, quality chocolate and indeed most other things. I’m excited to meet my fellow panellists, who are Sarah Goodwin of Bloom Media; Matt Nash of OOSOCIAL and Zoe Sands from Cisco.

We have a tough gig though as we’re on Saturday (30th January) last session of the day, on the last day, on the session before the partayyyy! BUT. We’re giving away free stuff including wine and chocolate and I may even have something pretty speshup my sleeve.

So please come and heckle/learn/laugh/eat/drink/snooze/whatever: just come! You will certainly pick up some gems of information, that could help increase your audience and brand rapport; even if you’re an experienced social media communicator.

If on the other hand, if you have no idea what ‘#LAC’ (hashtag) means, or why I’ve prefixed a name with an “@” – then you have to come!

The post London Affiliate Conference (Gaming) #LAC appeared first on theMediaFlow.

John Prescott on Twitter

I think that this is a great thing. The product capabilities of social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube have opened more than just a new functionality-driven approach to customer communication. Over time, such media have shown us that customers have longed for that personal route and that feeling of belonging, so it’s actually a shift in mind-set we’re seeing.

I’m a member of Virgin Wines, and every time I receive an order I throw the cardboard box in the recycling pile out back. Last time (which was just before Christmas) I happened to notice on the side of the box, the following message; “Did your driver do a good job today?”

Virgin Wines Social Feedback on Delivery Boxes

Isn’t that great? I think this is a bit of a mind-shift from the punative tone of similar messages seen on the back of professional vehicles. What struck me here is that, this is a personal request for feedback on an individual, that is motivated seemingly by desire to reward and encourage good performance.

I’d like to think that brands like Virgin Wines are seeing how well received is the social element in their interaction with customers and are thus embracing this mindset; this friendly and human tone of voice, throughout all of their communications.

A Cardboard Box Can Be A Social Medium!

My point then… customers really want to interact with you. Customers are human beings just like your employees. Customers might not have cared so much about who you are, until you showed them they could.

With the Virgin Wines example, I was immediately warmed to the thought that they care about my experience, they value my feedback, and they also value their staff by rewarding good performance. I want to continue to be a customer of a business like that. I’ll admit that I intended to send an email, but got distracted by what awaited me in my inbox. If they’d given me the option to tweet @virginwines then I definitely would have; and would have said something like “the man brought fine wines to my house. I am in love with him”.

Instances of brands embracing the social mindset are occurring more often in Europe, but it’s been happening for a while in the U.S. Coca Cola famously offered two of their biggest fans a job, after (said fans) Dusty and Michael created a kick-ass facebook fan page some time in 2008. Rather than contact Facebook and demand these guys handover the page to them (which Facebook will allow you to do), Coca-Cola obviously thought who better to run their fan page, than such die-hard, genuine fans? If you haven’t come across this story before; its a great social media case study, and you can find a thorough review on Econsultancy.com by Patricio Robles.

Now 'Offical' Fan Page

Brands aren’t just becomming more social-minded in the way that they involve consumers though. We’re also seeing brands communicate a human approach by telling us about the people that work for them. I’m thinking in particular of the charming and amusing “Intel Star” TV ads.

I took this video from their official “channelintel” on Youtube, where they state “Rather than focusing on a new product, the 2009 “Sponsors of Tomorrow” ad campaign celebrates what makes Intel different; culture, personality, heroes…”

That Intel are taking the trouble to endear to us the people that make the things that other companies stick into the machines we use to connect online, is a great testement to the brands embracing a social mindset. Even the less consumer facing brands!

What Does This Mean To Me?

I’m aware that all of the examples above reference brands that are hugely well known and have the sort of marketing budgets the rest of us dream of. Because of this, I think we can have more faith in the benefit of adopting a social mindset in approaching your customer communications. Huge brands like Virgin, Intel and Coca-Cola do not do things lightly. When your revenue is into millions and billions of dollars, you do not invest in a campaign direction without research and analysis. If these brands recognise a customer desire to connect and act on it; we won’t go far wrong to follow their example.

What Practical Lessons Can We Put Into Practise Here?

1. Be Consistent: Decide your social media brand identity and register it in as many places as you can. Use the same brand name, brand icon and profile precis throughout. You will probably benefit from having one detailed profile and a brief profile version, depending on the media tone of voice and character space available.

2. Be Everywhere: Register your social media profile in as many places as possible, starting with the most suitable for your audience and focusing your time in the same way. Even if you never intend to communicate via e.g. Bebo, you can at least protect your brand and make yourself available in the event a potential customer wants to interact with you there.

3. Be One Brand With One Voice: Instead of referencing “our Twitter account”, or “Our Linkedin account” think of your brand as everywhere online, and the social media platform is just the lens through which a customer may prefer to see you. Instead think “come find us on Linkedin”, “come join our fans on Facebook”.

4. Listen And Learn: Save the one-way “me, me, me” messaging for the spammers. Use the functionalities of social media that faciliate two-way communication. Monitor post interactions on Facebook, check your @mentions on Twitter; and most importantly try to respond and acknowledge those who participate.

5. Let Go Of Your Brand: I’m not saying you have to ‘do a Coca-Cola’, however it’s important to know that the people that buy your product have every right to mention your product and feed back about your product. It’s how you handle that feedback and what you can learn from it that is invaluable.

So there we are. None of this is remotely unfamiliar is it? In fact you may have been reminded in the anecdotes here about your favourite local caf, or the corner shop from your childhood. I think it is human nature that we crave recognition and we want to be valued as an individual customer and not a sales statistic. Social media websites have the functionality to enable brands that would other wise be very distant, to feel more local and approachable. From this; we’ve been reminded of what we already knew.

A social mindset is nothing new. What’s (fairly) new is that online technology faciliates a local and social approach not previously possible for national and international business. And your customers will love it!

The post Social Media: Think “Mindset” Not Platform appeared first on theMediaFlow.

Not so.

Blogging isn’t for everyone and every business, and there are perfectly good reasons not to blog. Additionally, ‘having’ a blog is only the functional and logistical requirement taken care of; it is you, or a willing (and somewhat talented) member of your team that needs to commit to blogging, for your brand and online business to benefit.

If you think your business website needs a blog, (or perhaps you’re being advised to add a blog but you’re not really clear as to why;) if you have the content and the commitment here’s some of the upsides.

Discoverability

Adding relevant and original content to your website is a very good thing to do. As a general rule, the more content you have, the more chance you have of someone finding your online business. As an example, let’s imagine your online business offers a specific product, e.g. vacuum cleaner bags. Many people in the UK may habitually and colloquially search using “hoover bags” to see if they can find an online ordering service. You might not want to reference a specific brand in your formal messaging; however such variations can easily be referenced in a blog post about “the strength of brand in the vacuum cleaner industry”. Of course other factors affect how and when your website pages may show up in search engines, but certainly the more relevant and original content you can add to your site the better.

Audience

As we already know a blog can help increase your audience from a discoverability perspective. Blogging affords you a certain amount of freedom that you likely won’t have on the core pages of your site. Such freedom to explore your topic can help you tap into a whole new market!

As an example; imagine my online business is a vegetarian resource, focusing on the individual health benefits of a vegetarian diet. I choose to write a post on “vegetarianism as a green lifestyle choice”, given that this is a current news topic. If my post receives good volumes of traffic, agreement in the comments and links to my post from green-lifestyle resources; this would indicate to me that deliberately targeting and messaging my product to an environmentally conscious audience; would be worth exploring.

If you think this seems a little hopeful, I can think of any number of products that have exploded in popularity, due to the discovery of a completely different application of the product *coughs* Anusol, *coughs* Viagra.

Feedback

A blog is a social communication tool. Save controlled-message, formal announcements for your press releases. Allowing comments on your blog opens up the benefit of discourse and feedback, as your readers can tell you what they think of your topics and points, and also add their own opinion and perspective too.

So what if you get a negative comment? If it is downright rude, silly or offensive then you can spam it. If a negative comment is a disagreement with a point you have made, you can either defend yourself with further evidence; or if they have a valid argument, talk about how you will consider that argument and what you might take from it. Either response will show that you have listened, considered, engaged and acted. Would you buy something from a brand that listens, engages, considers and acts? I would!

Reputation

One of the best ways to establish reputation is to do a bloody-good job for your customers. Word does spread and referrals will come; however if you’re a start-up, it is only natural that this will take a bit of time. Another way to help establish reputation quickly is by writing interesting, knowledgeable and well-researched blog content. Your peers and competitors will begin to notice (many companies routinely monitor competitor information and may even subscribe to your blog) – so here’s your chance to show them that you know what you’re talking about.

Learning

We may differ in some ways, in how best we learn. Some people can absorb information very successfully from a two hour 4pm lecture. Others may benefit more from practical experimentation, role play and such-like. One common factor for most of us is repetition. We tend to learn a little more, or a little faster if we repeat what we have learned through writing it down, re-enacting it or speaking about it.

Blogging can be a great learning process for the blogger as well as the reader. Regardless of the type of post I may be writing, there will always be some degree of reflection, recall and research. I personally find that to construct a blog post, I’m collating a number of points that I feel I know the way on, and organising them into a constructive narrative (I hope). I find this helps me reflect on my own knowledge, as well as encouraging me to keep learning, as I will seek recent information and resources, when doing my research.

I’ve deliberately kept these points and benefits one-sided, in that the above references only the benefits to site owner, rather than visitor. I want to address this quite seperately, looking at what your blog can do for your audience (and how this will also, indirectly boost your business.) If anyone wants to get me started with some thoughts on that, please comment away!

The post Does My Business’ Website Need a Blog? appeared first on theMediaFlow.