Integrated Social Media - Study Done by Ogilvy-ChatThreads

Ogilvy-ChatThreads Integrated Social Media Sales Impact Study 2011

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Incubus - New Approach to How Social Media Meets PR

I have seen a lot of different social media campaigns in my day but one that struck me as very clever has been what the band Incubus has done. In preparation of the launch of their 7th studio album "If Not Now, When?" and kickoff of their U.S. tour in over 3 years the band has setup what they refer to as "IncubusHQ".

IncubusHQ launched on June 30th, the campaign enabled the band to interact with their fans regularly through multiple events most of them via the web. For 7 days (6/30 – 7/06) Incubus was inviting fans in the LA area to undisclosed locations for the most unique, personal and up-close fan experience - I have to admit I was wishing to be there with them.

Incubus' official statement about the kickoff stated:

"In “Incubus HQ Live” the web meets reality; it’s where web technology combines with fan-to-band interaction complete with impromptu live sets, live web streams, instructional clinics, and full performances from the band all being captured in a real-time documentary. Basically anything is possible and anything can happen!" http://on.fb.me/rbQBAm

But that's not all IncubusHQ was focused on, they also heavily promoted the album, and US Tour via email, on PING (iTunes Social Network - awesome), Facebook and Twitter - they also had press on sites like Mashable. The emails were great because it gave any fan a step by step rundown of what the band is up to, and how to connect with them as they were approaching the first day of the US tour. All the hype was to lead up to the live feed of their 1st show at Red Rocks on August 17th.

I have always known that PR and Social Media cross paths but this particular campaign has really brought a new element for musicians and how they now can approach new ways to promote their music without the help of MTV, David Lettermen, and Jay Leno, and I have been enjoying the hype from a social media distance.

Catchy Linkbait Is Worthless Without Really Good Content

Recently I read an article that came from Search Engine Land regarding LinkBait. What is linkbait? The best definition I could find on linkbaiting was written in a blog by a man named Stuart Brown -- ahhh the love of blogs ** sigh ** Linkbaiting is essentially a piece of content placed on a web page - whether it's an article, blog post, picture, or any other section of cyberspace - that is designed for the specific intention of gathering links from as many different sources as possible. Does it work? It can if it is done the right way but it should not be considered as a sole source of long term traffic. Check out this post from Digg which basically says the best way to handle Linkbait is with really good quality content. Getting to the top spot on Social Network's doesn't mean you will automatically get the inbound links you really want....

read more digg story

Looking to Get More Traffic Naturally? There is More to SEO...

There is big hype on how to gain more exposure on the search engines. Many small businesses think they just need to “optimize” their website. What exactly does it mean to optimize your website anyway? There are many company’s who will tell you that there are specific things that need to be done to your site to make sure the site is able to be crawled by search engines, and if you are lucky maybe they will talk to you about linking, accessing links to your site from other sites that are relevant, and then it stops there. There is more to optimizing your site than titles, descriptions, and directory links.

As a small business owner what else can you do that won’t break the bank?

1 – User Generated Content – let me explain what this is. Simply stated, it is available content that users are generating on social media sites across the web such as MySpace.com, Facebook, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, and even Yahoo! Answers just to name a few. These sites allow you to create profiles and add valuable content to them which could be highly relevant to your business. It also allows for huge opportunities to increase traffic to your website which at the end of the day that is what you want to see.

2 – Blogs by far are the easiest ways to generate traffic to your site. How you ask? By simply writing and linking which is exactly what the search engines are looking for. The content within blogs gets crawled by search engines and eventually can make its way into the search results chock full of keyword phrases. It is so easy and it can be done for FREE! The only costs that are related to this effort is maybe ten minutes of your time about 2 times a week. If you are not a believer check out Blogger.com and get your blog started today!

3 – Articles and Press Releases – are also an easy way to generate traffic to your site. With this method you can actually increase your backlinks (links leading back to your website) naturally as well as give the search engines lots of content to crawl. Your article or press release is highly relevant to your business because it is typically about your business once again chock full of keyword phrases. For this effort check out companies such as PRWeb, Market Wire, and Ezine Articles.

4 – Last but certainly not least, there are Viral efforts. Have you checked out YouTube lately? If you don’t have a lot of money to spend on viral efforts my suggestion would be make a video and post it. It is easy and effective. You can also submit it to Google Video and don’t forget to optimize your title and description for this video with links leading back to your website. Imagine that! You can do it for such a low cost and actually get a stream of traffic absolutely free.

Remember having your own business is great but don’t forget that in order for your business to succeed you need to be visible and market your site the right way as well as the smart way.