Want to know not just what companies are doing on the social web but how well they’re doing it?

We have brought you just the tool to measure and monitor brand engagement: for the first time ever, ENGAGEMENTdb ranks the world’s most valuable brands based on how they leverage social media to interact with customers.

Razorfish’s “digital outlook report 2009″ – http://www.razorfish.com/img/content/2009DOR.pdf

The following report contains statements that are forwardlooking, including expectations and predictions regarding future industry trends and developments. Actual results may differ materially from our expectations or projections. This report also contains opinions, estimates, and forwardlooking statements by industry leaders. Such statements are the personal opinions of the individuals quoted and should not be attributed to any other entity or individual. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance upon forward-looking statements, which speak only as to the date of this document. Except as required by law, neither Razorfish, LLC nor any of its affiliated entities undertake any obligation to update any forwardlooking or other statements in this document, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

© Razorfish, LLC. All rights reserved.

Razorfish’s “Fluent – The Social Influence Marketing Report” – http://fluent.razorfish.com/publication/?m=6540&l=1

I’m excited to announce the launch of Fluent, the Social Influence Marketing report from Razorfish. This is the first report of its kind which understands who and what influences consumers at different points in the marketing funnel.

The insights in this report are built on three pillars – a survey with 1,000 North American consumers, six months worth of real conversational data to frame the introduction of a new social index and the experiences of Razorfish Social Media Leads across the world who advise marketers in industry leading companies everyday.

The survey and conversational driven research also busts three myths about Social Influence Marketing.

1. That companies have figured out how to build their brands in social media. They haven’t. For example, six out of 10 consumers don’t bother to seek out opinions of brands via social media.

2. That television is dead. It isn’t. Consumers view TV ads as more trustworthy than ads on social networks. Marketers need to do more in the social realm, but they need to do it in a way that builds trust first. Brands don’t have the trust today.

3. That you cannot measure in the social web. Not only do campaign specific metrics matter and can be measured but we believe a SIM Score for the social web is extremely important. Think of it as the blood pressure for the brand in the social web. In the report, we introduce this index and show the SIM Scores of 5-6 brands in 4 industries. We also compare the online numbers to offline share of voice data to demonstrate how those two worlds are blurring.

Read Fluent, the Social Influence Marketing report and come back to the blog to share your thoughts, comments and criticisms. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be delving into the insights more deeply over here. And if you like the report, please tell others about it!

April 20th, 2009 | by Lon S. Cohen
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Lon S. Cohen is a writer and Director of Communications at @ALSofGNY. He is @obilon on Twitter (Twitter reviews).

There are plenty of strategies for approaching Twitter. It’s getting more complex each day, but in the end it can be boiled down to a few simple approaches.

From Twittering on behalf of yourself to Twittering for a company, playing the part of a classic character to being a robot, here are seven ways users approach Twitter.

Introduce yourself and tell us about your Twitter approach in the comments.

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Digital Marketing Guide: The Social Web
-by Abbey Klaassen and Beth Snyder Bulik

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=135590

Isn’t the entire web social these days?

To an extent, yes. If 2008 was the year everyone — and their grandmas — joined a social network, then 2009 is the year those networks’ social graphs spread their tentacles beyond their borders to other sites across the web. Already it’s common for many sites, including major news sources and entertainment properties, to have commenting and sharing features. So we admit the social web is a pervasive concept. But there are several interesting newer developments at Twitter and Facebook, as well as in the widget space and the app world.

http://www.youthedesigner.com/2009/04/01/5-ways-to-optimize-your-portfolio-for-local-traffic/

Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your site to rank better for certain keywords such as ” Business Card Designer ” in search engines such as Google. Many designers overlook this online marketing tactic and if your site is not optimized for keywords you could be missing out on gold mine of business opportunities!

The problem is some of these terms like the one I just mentioned can be very competitive and hard to rank for. A great way to get around this is to start off by targeting local search traffic. For example if you live in Westchester County, New York you could target related phrases people might type in such as “westchester county graphic designer”.

Terms like this are usually easier to rank for because there is less competition and the traffic might not be much, but it will be very highly targeted. Below we will go over some steps to optimize your site for local search engine traffic, in particular for Google.

optimize-your-portfolio
Local Search Engine Optimization Tips for Graphic Designers

1. Keyword Research

Before you can begin optimization you need to do some keyword research. Now, a lot of local traffic terms may not show up in the Google AdWords Keyword Tool because they get so few searches, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use your own brain to think up terms. Stat off with the free tool to see if there are any very good local search phrases and then branch off from there. Create a list of keywords and organize them into closely related groups so you can create pages for each group which we will talk about later.

2. Page Title Optimization

This is one of the simplest ways to optimize your site. The title tag should be included in the head section of your site’s code and look something like this: Graphic Design Blog, Tips and Jobs | You The Designer. Its better to include keywords and keyword phrases at the start of the page title, try to keep the title under 50 characters long and make it easy to read. Its also a good idea to include your business name or your name in the title for branding purposes and in case people use that to search Google.

3. META Description Optimization

While the META description tag does not have much of an impact on your ranking it is extremely important for getting people to click your listing in the search engines If you do rank for a keyword. Your page title and page description are the two pieces of content that show up when you do a search for a keyword and this is what people read to decide if they want to click through to your website or not. If these are optimized well for search engines and for people who use search engines you will be on your way to making the most of what search engines have to offer.

4. Unique Content

It its extremely important to have unique content on your site. If you want the focus to be on your designs, you can easily create new pages dedicated for targeting keywords. So for example you could create 10 pages, each page optimized for a different local traffic keyword.

Each of these pages should have a paragraph or two of unique content that has some of your target keywords mixed in and should also include some titles and sub titles to break up the text. The main title should be styled as an h1 tag, because this tag is considered the most important of the title tags by Google. Sub titles could be h2 and unless you have A LOT of content you prob don’t need to go any deeper with title tags.

Don’t forget to include a “call to action” on these pages, which will direct readers to a contact page, services or portfolio page so you can actually convert them into new clients. You could also consider starting a WordPress blog which is a great way to easily add fresh content on your site in the form of blog posts, which can be optimized as well for search engine keywords.

5. SEO Friendly Site Structure

The structure of your site is essential for search engine friendliness. If the search engines can’t crawl ( navigate ) your site and find your content, it won’t get listed in the search engines easily. You should have a CLEAR navigation with normal HTML links. You also need to have a sitemap which you can link in the footer of your site and you should submit a sitemap to Google directly using Google Webmaster Tools.

If you have a bunch of pages you created to target keywords you can simply link those in the footer or just let them get indexed via your sitemap, if you don’t want a bunch of links at the bottom of your site. Hope you enjoyed these graphic design search engine optimization tips. Stay tuned for a post on how to increase rankings once your site has been better optimized!

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Google Local Business Center for Designers
http://www.youthedesigner.com/2009/04/08/google-local-business-center-for-designers/

In a recent post we talked about how you can Optimize Your Site to attract local search engine traffic from Google. One of our readers mentioned Google Local Business Center as another option, so I thought I would expand on this useful comment.

Google local business center allows you to register your business for free and add lots of information so that people can find your business via Google search and Google Maps. This is extremely useful, because search engines are including these local listings in more and more search results. For example if I type in “Business Cards” I actually see local listings of businesses in North Carolina.

Maximize Your Design Business Listing

While its easy and free to create your listing, most people breeze through it and do not take advantage of the many listing enhancements available. For example you can post a video, an image of your business, get reviews of your business and even offer coupons, all from Google Local Business Center! Adding all this extra content to your listing will make it stand out more, which can give you a large advantage over the other local businesses.

So if you are a freelance designer or studio owner, you should create your free listing today and spend a few extra minutes adding everything you possibly can to your listing and you will have taken a great step forward towards getting more business!

Jeff Johnson

Internet Marketing With, SEO, youtube, Myspace, Facebook, RSS Feeds and More…

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In early 2008 I spoke at the Secret Society of Traffic and Conversion Seminar for my friends Buck Rizvi and Brock Felt. The attendees paid thousands to be there but I’m sharing my 3 hour presentation from the seminar with you for free. I outlined the social networking and web 2.0 strategies that I personally use to drive tons of traffic to build my list and make more sales. I covered dozens of topics including, but not limited to, internet marketing, creating a sales funnel, search engine optimization (seo), myspace, youtube, squidoo, email marketing, wordpress, rss feeds, openx ad server, affiliate marketing, blogs, getting more traffic to your sites, social profile pages, social networking, social media, and more!

How can a bid-managed Pay-Per-Click advertising campaign improve website sales and lower your cost-per-acquisition? Learn from Neutralize (*\*) the UK’s most experienced search engine marketing agency in this introductory presentation.

Pulled from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_optimization

Social media optimization (SMO) is a set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites. Methods of SMO include adding RSS feeds, social news buttons, blogging, and incorporating third-party community functionalities like images and videos. Social media optimization is related to search engine marketing, but differs in several ways, primarily the focus on driving traffic from sources other than search engines, though improved search ranking is also a benefit of successful SMO.

Social media optimization is in many ways connected as a technique to viral marketing where word of mouth is created not through friends or family but through the use of networking in social bookmarking, video and photo sharing websites. In a similar way the engagement with blogs achieves the same by sharing content through the use of RSS in the blogsphere and special blog search engines.

Social Media optimization is considered an integral part of an online reputation management (ORM) or Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM) strategy for organizations or individuals who care about their online presence.

Another Resource: http://social-media-optimization.com/