aimClear® Search Marketing Blog

Sometimes it takes a grownup, in physical life, to remind us the basics of online community management. Celia Cohn was handling Ambassador duties at the front entrance of the Westin™ Kierland Resort, the official #SMX Social Scottsdale hotel. Her job is to greet guests in the hotel lobby, guide, engage and support.

She greeted me as I walked by, “Mr. Weintraub, how did your speaking go today, or is it tomorrow?” The familiar greeting surprised me, as I did not remember engaging with Celia prior.  Best practice number one: She did her homework. I did not realize until after the conversation that she had scoped out my #SMX Badge, which has my name on it and flags me as a speaker. She also knew that the conference was two days. I was so much more interested in the conversation because she had taken careful notice and engaged me along lines I care about, my speaking. Nice work Celia! This lady executes the basics, really well. (Author’s Note: I think we’ve also proven that Celia is great at link-building, as evidence herein .)

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For years, the “Site:” search operator has provided a quick method to distill mainstream SERPs (search engine result pages) down to results from a single website or class of websites. The operator works for major international search engines including Google, Bing, Yandex, Baidu, and others. Concatenate keywords to filter SERPs matriculated by both site and keyword. When focused on identifying conversations in social, the “Site:” search operator becomes a powerful tool indeed.

Read on for a closer look at how this all works. Read the rest of this entry »

During the summer of 2010, an interesting international client encouraged us to take a look beyond our borders and check out where Facebook was popular in other parts of the world. With Facebook’s 500 million (at the time) users easily eclipsing the total U.S. population, it was clear that the phenomenon was not limited to our country, and we wondered how far it might continue to grow before eventually maxing out. The research project enlightened our team to the massively extending global reach of the still-young social network… and what a difference a year makes, as Facebook approaches 700 million users worldwide, wins a true social search patent, and prepares to launch what may be the definitive cloud-based music service.

While it seems Facebook continues to reign supreme across most of the wired globe, we also got to thinking that it’s not enough to gauge international social media activity by  how much of a population is on Facebook. If you really want to understand, connect with and market to demographics in another country, you have to get familiar with their homegrown channels. What other networks already have a stronghold in each country? Where is Facebook “uncool?”

This post kicks off a series of country-specific social networks overviews, complete with best practices, advertising opportunities, and example demographic targets. Up first under our microscope is the “OG” Google social network, Orkut. Read the rest of this entry »

From pharmaceutical mega-corporations, attorneys, and health care purveyors to insurance companies and universities, skittish B2C and B2B online marketing managers operating in regulated industries are still afraid to participate in social media. Other unregulated companies, led by old school PR-adverse managers, self-restrict to a ridiculous extent out of paranoia, misunderstanding or ignorance. Such are the realities of the micromanaged marketer, some of whom need to (literally) get every tweet and Facebook post approved by legal. This article offers proven social media tactics to navigate even the most onerous industry regulations and/or paranoid managers. Read the rest of this entry »

Well friends, it’s that time of year again. SMX Advanced is all set to take place in soggy lovely Seattle next week, June 7-8, and we’re just stoked. The aimClear team is heading westward to participate in this hallmark event– Lauren (yours truly) will be churning out live coverage (via @beebow) and full write-ups right here in aimClear blog, and our own Marty Weintraub (@aimClear) will storm the stage at 10:30 am PST on Wednesday, June 8 to tag-team the Facebook Ads, Meet Search Ads panel.

SMX Advanced means two days jam-packed with top-shelf sessions, but even when the main event wraps up, we’ll rest easy knowing there’s still a ton of awesomesauce in store. aimClear’s Facebook Marketing Intensive Workshop is back on the SMX landscape, and we’re looking forward to hosting marketers for a full day of soup to nuts training in all-things Facebook. From organic optimization hacks to paid Facebook advertising, and harnessing Facebook’s massive online community to achieve KPIs, it’s an all-you-can-eat brain chow buffet. Read on for a closer look at what we’ll be serving up… Read the rest of this entry »