Digital Marketing, Media, PR Analysis And Insight – The Future Buzz

image credit: swisscan

Due to recently spending some time editing a few of my other sites, I came to the conclusion that I was overdue to get a fresh look here. Email and RSS users, if you’d like to see the new design, click though to check it out.

After carefully looking at my old theme, I decided to go for something simple, as the more I thought about it the more I realized my sidebar was simply presenting too much content. Less is definitely more, and I already like the look of things here better. The old theme (thanks Daniel at DailyBlogTips) served me well for about a year, but it definitely was time for something new.

image credit: dbarefoot

Continuing my series on documenting social media power users and influencers, this week I’ve got five more wonderful people to share with you.

Again, these are in no particular order and I am taking the time to write on not only the big-name players, but perhaps even more interesting I will tell the stories of power users in the long tail also.

If you missed last week’s entry, start by checking out:

Social Media Power Users And Influencers: Part 1

Now that you’re caught up, let’s get into part 2:

image credit: adstream via flickr

Smart organizations and individuals across industries are building their brands through gathering organic audiences and encouraging dialogue.

By organic, I mean people who have opted-in to receive messages. And, encouraging dialogue not only between individuals and the organization, but also between fans of their brand as well. When you function as a connector, you become even more valuable to your audience than merely providing content.

Blogs function great as connectors because they publish not only a reader’s name but a link to their blog or website when they comment. So, when someone posts an interesting comment, it not only adds to the conversation on-site, but it allows the readers of that comment to potentially connect with the writer.

I don’t post too many blog tips here lately because there are just so many sites devoted to that subject.

Anyway I did come across a blog search engine optimization (SEO) strategy that is a nice way to help maximize long tail traffic to a blog. This may have already been written on before, and I don’t think it’s a secret. But, it is a simple way to optimize what you’re already doing for cumulative results.

This works best assuming your blog already has a bit of trust in Google and your articles are getting at least somewhere on page one.

Here’s what to do:

Findability

image credit: aoifecahill via flickr

Is your business findable? Are you findable? These are key questions. Yes, you may think you’re findable, but just how findable are you really? It is highly worth testing.

In the last 30 days alone, well over 1,000 absolutely unique people found this blog through Google. That isn’t even my highest traffic source (social media is above and beyond the highest), but I want to focus on the Google traffic to this site just for a minute to share with you why this matters for your business/blog/online store/whatever you’re doing on the web.

image credit: victoriapeckham via flickr

As someone who works at a firm with a diverse array of clients, I spend a good deal of time reading trade publications across industries. It is always interesting to me when they go into how the specific industry in question is using technology and the web.

The non-tech trade publications actually do a pretty good job of covering things their industry is doing on the web. Never quite as good as the web publications written by web pros, but of course those are written by people who work in this space 24/7.

In something which is hard to witness as both a PR professional and writer, thousands of journalists around the country at major newspapers are being laid off or offered severance packages to quit. You’ve probably read local stories in whatever area of the country you’re in about downsizing and layoffs at your major daily of choice. You may have also seen your local community newspapers closing their doors.

I have written previously on how newspapers have much to learn about the web (and they do), and how local community newspapers need to evolve, but let’s not focus on the people making the decisions who have unfortunately ignored the writing on the wall. Let’s focus instead on the journalists, and all people who write for a living.

Yesterday I wrote on how the only way to build a sustainable web brand was not to play only to networks and try to get big spikes in traffic, but to build your brand slowly, methodically and organically. I stick by this.

Well, what if you don’t care about building a web brand or sustainable traffic. What if you really do want a one-hit wonder, or want to get a large amount of fleeting attention to just one thing or one idea. Today I thought I’d give you a quick strategy to do just that.

Please keep in mind this is the antithesis of yesterday’s advice for building a sustainable brand and sustainable traffic. This is a strategy to create a big hit for one specific idea, video, image, article – you name it. If you’re going to use technique on your blog, I highly suggest using it sparingly.

Yes, Digg is awesome. I know, I’ve had my content reach page 1 several times and send me 10,000+ absolutely unique visitors in one day.

But, unfortunately here’s the truth: Digg and other social media sites are not overnight king-makers of your brand on the web.

Sure, social media is fantastic for bringing your brand to the attention of a huge community of people and spreading your ideas. But, if your goal is to build a sustainable web brand for influence or monetization purposes you cannot rely on social media alone to build your traffic and hits.

Are you a leader or a follower?

A huge trend across the spectrum of professional industries is personal branding.

Thanks mostly in part to blogs and social media, there exists an exciting new landscape to easily see who the all-stars are in every field.

Simply handing someone a resume is already dated. If you’re a professional and think a strong resume and great references will win you a high level position in the future, think again.