aimClear Search Marketing Blog

photo credit: Nick J Webb

Whether dealing with a Twitter avatar,  teenager, office associate you see each day, ex-boyfriend or StumbleTrolls, resorting to ugly name-calling is counter productive. Because social media amplifies physical life and vice a versa, it’s doubly important to be civil.

A review of the daily news and subsequent social media buzz highlights how damaging rhetoric flares between physical and online channels. Read the rest of this entry »

I had a near out of body-real-time SMS/search/tweet experience last night interacting with our attorney, Laura.  (No, the picture’s not Laura.)  She’s in Manhattan to attend the Social Media Risks and Rewards legal conference, and pinged me to quick-search for information about a ruckus she was observing outside the famed Waldorf Astoria.

Our innocent little text exchange and my ensuing searches (illustrated later in this article) make it entirely clear there’s a radical new type of query intent (what users’ are looking for): situational. It turns out Google’s not adept at some situational searches which, to some minds,  leaves them vulnerable to services like Twitter in a substantial segment of emerging search inventory. Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: SkitterzPRO

Today’s panel at SES San Jose had a lively round table discussion on the ethics of white hat vs. black hat practices in social media. The outstanding cast of speakers featured (the never ghoulish) Lee Odden CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, Beth Harte Principal of Harte Marketing, Chris Bennett president and founder of 97th Floor and the notorious Dave Snyder co-founder of Search & Social.

The bottom line is- don’t be stupid, consumer trust is sacred and they can smell BS from a mile away.
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Just because you have 20,000+ followers doesn’t mean your Twitter feed is successful. Rebecca Lieb, Li Evans and Jennifer Slegg- the lovely and intelligent panel of SES San Jose’s “Extreme Makeover: Live Twitter & Blogging Clinic” session took audience volunteers’ Twitter and blogs and ever so kindly tore them to shreds. Warning: bad Twitter practices below (and some awesome advice).

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Six months ago, I was a complete tweet-novice. I heard people on the street saying, “Twitter is just a narcissistic portal in cyberspace where social butterflies on steroids and self-proclaimed web-celebrities can self-indulgently broadcast their personal agenda to the world (so long as it’s under 140 characters).”

For a while, I was one of these skeptics. I didn’t understand Twitter and doubted it had much to offer, something I regularly heard from friends, clients and family. Read the rest of this entry »

The social Internet is about conversations that propagate virulently and index at various speeds.  Twitter, the fastest feed community of all,  can be easily leveraged to “proof” marketing concepts for slower social channels the same way SEOs use PPC (pay per click) to prove organic landing pages.

Read on for a tactical starting point to use Twitter’s flashpoint sharing environment to test your linkbait, promotional messages, calls to action, friend-making and branding. Read the rest of this entry »

With the plethora of social media platforms available, small businesses can acquire loyal customers, gain valuable insight and boost business by getting involved. Small companies with smaller budgets can still benefit by freely tapping into the world of social media.

SES NY Day Two session,  “Small Voices, Big Impact: Social Media for the Little Guy”, consisted of presentations from Jennifer Evans Laycock, Director of Social Media,  SiteLogic and Tim Kendall, Director of Monetization for Facebook with a Q&A in between.

Additional members of the panel included: Amber Naslund, Director of Community, Radian and Christina Kerley, Marketing Specialist, ckEpiphany.  How do you do it?  What should you do?  These and other answers to the question about whether or not size really does matter. Read the rest of this entry »

Periodic, if not constant, change in search marketing is a certainty. Proof positive is that “Google” didn’t even exist 10 years ago and is accepted in the vernacular as a verb (“She “Googled” this or that”). The growing use of online media provide new avenues for searchers. Watch for the changes, and always ask yourself, what is out there and how will your customers find you?

Today at SES New York, speakers focused on what Google has done and what they could do better in “Beyond Googling: Where Will Your Customers Be Searching in Five Years?” The session was moderated by (one of our favorites) John Marshall, SES Advisory Board, CTO, Market Motive. Read the rest of this entry »

Twitter and cell phone text messaging (<= 140 characters) have us expressing ourselves in sound bytes, sharpening our writing chops and communicating more whilst using many less words. It’s nothing short of cultural revolution, as our increasingly plugged-in populace evolves to more succinct communication.  In  my opinion this efficiency serves to counter ever-escalating online cacophony. Read the rest of this entry »

Greetings from Danny Sullivan’s Keynote address from SMX West. I’d just like to take a minute and invite everyone, @SMXWest or not, to join the Twitter Table pal-around. It takes place at lunch today, Noon-1:15pm(1 hr 15 min). It seems to me that a Twitter lunch here can (and will) include folks from EVERYWHERE! Does that sound like fun or what? Read the rest of this entry »