aimClear® Search Marketing Blog

Welcome back, you winsome, worldly, and, let’s face it… possibly war-torn Community Manager, to the ultimate resource made especially for the tougher times on the job: The Community Manager’s Guide To Intra-Community Bloodshed. Last week, we tore open a box of Community Manager Puffs and dug deep for The Community Manager’s Dilemma Decoder Ring– a super useful tool for deciphering between a manageable social media conflict and a more serious, red-level social media crisis.

This week, we’re tackling ways to prep for potential fracas by establishing a Code of Conduct for your social community as well as a Crisis Protocol for your in-house team. Knowing what’s fair vs. foul, and having a solid plan of attack just in case are two surefire ways to not only lower your blood pressure, but make for smooth sailing in cyberspace. So whether you’re a newbie on the CM social frontier, looking to sharpen your crowd control  samurai sword set chops, eager to batten down the hatches before the snot hits the fan, or recently recovering from intra-community bloodshed, saddle up and let’s march onward. This is Cover Your Assets: How To Prepare For Social Community Meltdowns, Facebook edition. Read the rest of this entry »

A blessed component of my job, as CEO of aimClear, is traveling all over the world to speak at online marketing conferences.  Tonight I’m pretty tired after the 14 hour return flight from Sydney to LAX, 3 hours to Minneapolis and another half hour on to Duluth. Still, the excitement at having spent 7 glorious days in Sydney and Manly Australia has not waned a bit, even in light of exhaustion.  I simply could not wait to share a few tasty samples from hundreds of pictures taken.  Many thanks to the home town hosts at SMX Advanced, eMetrics, and SMX Elite, Sydney. From incredible Aboriginal art to the Royal Botanical Gardens, click on any thumbnail for a larger image. G’day Mate! Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome, fellow community managers, to the first installment of aimClear’s tips for lowering blood pressure, keeping cool, and effectively engaging irate customers in cyberspace, also know as part one of The Community Manager’s Guide To Intra-Community Bloodshed.

We unveiled this series last week with a sympathetic yet motivating  20,000 foot glimpse at the utter crud conflicts some of us as community managers have to deal with… trolls, haters, spammers; negative reviews on products and service; comment threads rife with false accusations; spiteful backlash from sharing benign stories; community member pitted against community member pitted against brand for reasons not even Dr. Phil could comprehend. Crises galore. But hold on a tick… are these in fact crises? Read the rest of this entry »

Ahh, Facebook… a household name in social networking that needs no introduction. Nearly 600 million strong, Facebook is a fertile watering hole for enagegement-(and distraction)-hungry users, calculating community managers, and advertisers on the cutting-edge. Targeting capabilities are killer, CPCs are comparitively cheap, and the userbase continue to surge. As kids today say, “Facebook is where it’s at!”

In spite of all this, seven-year-old Facebook is still very much in its infancy, and these social waters have only begun to be charter in a seriously deep way. For marketers who’ve yet to get their social-sea legs, as well as those looking to deepen their know-how & sharpen their social skill set, aimClear is excited to unleash the second wave of our Facebook Marketing Intensive workshop this June at SMX Advanced. Read on for the scoop. Read the rest of this entry »

Did I just lose a contact, or does it seem like the lines between public-relations practitioner and online marketer are blurring? An increasing number of SEOs seem to think so (I happen to agree), but their perceptions of the role PR pros play in the SEM sandbox range from toy-sharer to sand-village slave.

Recently, I read a Search Engine Watch article by Jeremy Bencken that focused on the link-building benefits of PR. The post shared some sweet tips that any PR practitioner should implement, but some advice centered on PR primarily as a link-building tactic, neglecting the fact that PR is a strategy in and of itself: to drive the awareness that leads to the search. In other words, a story placed through media-relations efforts might not include a link, but if it led a reader to search for more information, it did its job. More on this concept after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »