aimClear® Search Marketing Blog

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 »

Welcome to #SESCHI! The Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Chicago is bustling with the sound of caffeine-buzzed marketers hustling to and fro on the scene of Search Engine Strategies trying to decide which session to attend all while trying to steal the best seats in the front row… or maybe that’s just me.

After an eye-opening morning keynote with Mikel Chertudi, Senior Director of Marketing at Adobe (on the money traps and mistakes a lot of “guilty” and “wishful” marketers fall victim to and the questions every aspiring successful marketer must ask about their efforts in order to ensure the marketing budget is not squandered on poor choices and lack of clear objectives, if you must know…), some of us launched into the Winning! Measuring Social Media Success session. Moderated by Jason Yormark, VP of Marketing and Social Media for Strategies 360, and featuring speakers Tami Dalley, Director of Insights and Analytics for Buddy Media and Eli Goodman, a self-proclaimed Media Evangelist for comScore, Inc., the panelists walked the crowd through various practices in social media measurement. Keep on reading for the nitty gritty details! Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to aimClear’s coverage of #SES San Francisco 2011! Feeling blue over your company’s lack of funds for social media? Lusting over the top quality video production and team of whip-smart writers employed by Old Spice? Overwhelmed by the rich world of social media marketing and all the heavy-weight competition?

Fear no more. Search Engine Strategies San Francisco, affectionately abbreviated #SESSF, to the rescue!

Convincing your boss of the potential benefits and virility a well-planned, well-executed social media marketing campaign can offer is not always an easy task. Factor in an already-tight budget across marketing and tech departments, the TLC social media deserves can quickly become lost in the shuffle. The good news is there are a plethora of tools and strategies at your disposal, many  free, or reasonably low cost, that can help drive traffic, generate brand awareness, and foster engagement between brand and community.

Day 1 of #SESSF kicked off (post-keynote) with a team of social-savvy pros ready to share their two cents on the cost-effective social media solutions the world (wide web) has to offer. Moderator Christopher Heine, Staff Writer, ClickZ News, introduced speakers Nathan Bransfordt, Social Media Manager, CNET/CBS Interactive, Jeffrey Harmon, Chief Marketing Officer, Orabrush, and Greg Jarboe, President & Co-founder, SEO-PR, and away we went. aimClear live-tweeted this AM-sesh via @beebow. Read on for the full round-up. 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 »