SeoAlchemist

You’ve decided that it’s time to give your brand some exercise on the web. And doing this in-house is the best way to do it. But as you start to train for the big event, you start to see some hurdles in your path. With proper planning and action, these hurdles can be overcome.

Hurdle #1: Isn’t social media the same thing as search engine optimization?

Social media and search engine optimization can certainly go hand in hand, but they’re definitely not the same thing. Social media requires a lot more personal attention and focuses more on building relationships with your clients and customers.

Hurdle #2: There are so many social media sites out there, how do I know which ones to use?

The answer to this depends on what kind of company you have and what type of market you’re trying to target. However, consider penetration. With sites like Facebook and Twitter taking over the Internet, can you afford not to be there?

Hurdle #3: My company’s name is taken on the social media sites, what do I do?

Get in contact with the network’s help desk. You can bet that they’ve dealt with such a situation before and likely have a policy in place. My tip: When you contact them, use a corporate email address. It will give you tons more credibility in your request.

Hurdle #4: What area of the company does social media fall under?

Search Engine Optimization is one of those things that seems to float between IT and Marketing, and social media isn’t any different. However, given the more intimate setting of conversation and relationship building, it’s probably best managed by your communications department.

Hurdle #5: What do I do with all these social media accounts?

The thing about social media is that it can very easily consume your day – your nights and weekends too. The best idea is to set up a schedule, ensuring that you’re monitoring each account regularly. Allocate time based on the investment in the network. For example, you would probably allocate more time (and daily) to Twitter than you could a smaller network, possibly allocating time weekly, or every couple of days.

Hurdle #6: How can I monetize all this new publicity?

I want to stress that social media is a really successful communications tool, and awesome for relationship building with your customers. However, you can absolutely use it to bring in sales. There’s nothing wrong with posting about awesome promotions or sales, as long as it’s not the only thing you’re using it for. Also, by monitoring what people are saying about your niche, there are tons of opportunities to bring in new customers. Check out this story about how Tony & Alba Stole $75 From Jake on Twitter.

Almost 60% of Americans judge a company by their online presence. Now, how many companies actually use their brand to its fullest potential online? One of the greatest myths about online brand management is that only technology or marketing companies can do this effectively. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Zappos.com is a fine example of an online retailer using Twitter to reach out to their customers, both existing and potential. By using Twitter, Zappos effectively brings a human quality to what sometimes can seem like just another computer account.

Of course, the bigger your brand the more legwork you may have to do. For instance, one issue that companies are running into is brand name squatting. This is happening all over various social media outlets as big brand usernames are being snapped up, left unused, or even worse, being used maliciously. The first thing you should do is obtain all the brand accounts you can. Check out www.knowem.com to see if your brand name has been taken at many popular social networks.

Remember that social media is a relationship-building and conversational tool. You should be watching what people are saying about your niche and your company. You should be chatting with the people who are talking about it. Address as many comments as you can, both good and bad. Most important, be an ambassador for your company – bring home the gold medal.

Lyndsay Blahut is the Director of Online Marketing at Canada’s Web Shop in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Six Hurdles to Clear When Exercising Your Brand In-House

Google AdSense has just made the AdSense-Analytics integration available to all publishers. This feature which was gradually rolled out to selected AdSense publishers the past couple of months provides useful information about site traffic to individual pages and how users interact with publisherss’ sites.  Linking AdSense and Analytics accounts gives AdSense publishers more control on how to target their contents for a more profitable Google AdSense implementation.

Specifically, linking your AdSense and Analytics account will give you the following additional reports on your Analytics homepage:

• Top AdSense Content - more details about specific pages on your site and analyze ad performance. You can see which pages on your site have more pageviews, so that you can implement additional optimization effeorts on these pages.
• Top AdSense Referrers - how different incoming traffic sources contribute to your revenue.
• AdSense Trending -  lets you analyze how your site generates revenue during different times of the day and different days of the week.

To integrate your AdSense and Analytics accounts, just login to your AdSense account and you’ll see a link to integrate AdSense and Analytics at the AdSense report page.

Once you’ve linked your AdSense and Analytics accounts, you will see a new “AdSense Revenue” tab on your Analytics account. This will enable you to compare your AdSense revenue from new visitors coming to your site against existing visitors.

Here’s a short view demonstrating the AdSense and Analytics linking process.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Google AdSense, Analytics Integration Now Available to All Publishers

Google calendar is an awesome, multi-feature and easy-to-use productivity tool. Let’s see how we can make it even better:

Google Calender Feature Enhances

Go offline:

By utilizing Gears, an open source project that adds features to your browser, Google starts offering offline version of the calendar. You can get a read-only access to your Google Calendar when there is no Internet connection. Just check “Offline (beta)” link in the top right corner of the page when logged in to your calendar. The further steps are quick and easy:

Integrate with Gmail:

Since recently Gmail has been offering its own official way to add Google Calendar to your Gmail interface. It is added to the sidebar:

Another way to add Google Calendar to Gmail sidebar: Add Your Agenda To Your Gmail (Greasemonkey) Install the latest edition here here.

Add an extended Google Calendar to Gmail: Integrated Gmail (also available as an experimental addon): integrates Google Calendar onto the same screen as your email inbox and lets you manage it from there:

Integrate with Facebook:

Facebook to Google Calendar: adds Facebook events to a Google Calendar you are currently logged in.

Facebook Fixer is another great Greasemonkey script that integrates Google Calendar with your Facebook account. It adds links on any profile to add their birthdays to Google Calendar. It also adds a link on the birthdays page that lets you export an iCalendar file with all your friends’ birthdays. This file can be imported into Google Calendar (as well as other time management tools).

More features:

Google Calendar Notifier: turn Google Calendar into the reminder - bring its updates to your browser. The addon integrates with your Google Calendar and notifies you of upcoming events. It does have some bugs reported though like time zone problems and errors.

The Milk FireFox extension talks to Google Calendar when it detects that you’re adding a task related to an event in your calendar, and “automagically” figures out when your task is due.

Google Calendar Beautifiers:

Better GCal is a great addon that beautifies Google Calendar. It is a compilation of user scripts written by several Greasemonkey scripters, most of those scripts are either abandoned or never updated, so it is better to install the addon.

Alternative Management:

Google Calendar Desktop Gadget: allows to manage your calendar without logging in using web interface.

Twittercal.com allows to manage your Google Calendar from Twitter. Just follow gcal and send it Tweets. Note: you will have to disclose your Google Calendar login information for the bot to put your event on it (I didn’t do that but that’s up to you).

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

10 Ways to Turn Google Calendar into an Effective Time Management & Productivity Tool