I have been reading Paul Gillin’s new book “Secrets of Social Media Marketing”. Great book for anyone wanting know what other marketers are doing with social media, and to learn some success stories and tips. My favorite secret so far- start with the business goal, not the tools.

Out of all the social media tools available, a blog is one of the most adoptable that can help you achieve a number of goals you have in mind. One of those goals may be to increase search engine optimization for your Web site.

Search engine crawlers love updated content. For many company Web sites, their content is not updated regularly for the search engines to keep viewing it as relevant, therefore your site can go further and further down the rankings for your keywords. A blog can help remedy that situation.

Check out this post from Lee Odden titled SEO Benefits from Blogs.

He gives eight reasons why blogs help SEO. Here are the first five.

1. Fresh content - Both readers and search engines reward fresh content with repeat visits. From a search engine perspective, that means your site can be crawled more frequently, allowing your new content to become searchable more quickly. Fresh content is also indicative of a more authoritative web site.
2. Active community - Comments and trackback features in blog software encourage interaction. An active blog community creates the kinds of citations or signals from other sites (annotated and contextually relevant links) that search engines tend to reward in the rankings. Loyal blog readers can boost a site’s visibility through advocacy on other blogs, in forums offline at conferences as well as on their own blogs and within the comments of your blog.
3. Crawlable URLs - Most blog software offers uncomplicated URL structure, making it fairly easy for search engine spiders to find and crawl blog content.
4. Inbound link magnet - One of the biggest benefits, blogs link freely to each other - much more than web sites do. Blogs are also a significant source of many posts to social news and social media web sites. Text, audio and video are all easily supported for syndication by blogs. The more media available, the more likely it will attract incoming links. Additionally, there are many widgets and plugins that make it easy to share blog content, thus encouraging links and traffic.
5. Structured content - Blog software with category features allows the aggregation of content according to themes. This makes it easier to algorithmically categorize content. If you can make it easier for search engines to understand your content, you have a much better chance of ranking well on those topics.

A week ago I presented to a group of students about social media as a form of strategic communication at KC Ad Club’s annual career day. I asked the students to raise their hand if they knew you could build a career off social media, I was surprised that few did. Maybe they were afraid to answer back, or maybe they really didn’t know, but it made me wonder how much these future grads are learning about social media in their journalism classes. I realized that while we marketers are trying to figure out Web 2.0, teachers are probably struggling with how to teach Web 2.0.

I don’t blame them. Traditional public relations is changing. Suddenly you have to learn how to pitch to a reporter and a blogger; how to write a press release and a social media press release.

Job descriptions are changing as well. What now reads,” Excellent written and verbal communications skills, plus knowledge of new media is a plus.” Soon may read, “Excellent written and verbal communications skills, plus experience pitching to bloggers, leveraging Twitter for brand interaction, and superior understanding of search engine optimization.”

Web 2.0 is a fast changing world. How do you keep up? It’s hard, but check out this post on Mashable from back in July. It gives 35 examples of what corporations like Starbucks and Nike are doing with social media right now.

After you read that…just jump in!

I invite you to attend the B2B Power Exchange Webinar: Identifying Key Online Influencers

• Date: Friday, Nov 21
• Time: 11:00 AM-12:00 PM Pacific
• Location: Online
• RSVP at Valerie Jennings–Identifying Key Online Influencers

Description: Join Valerie Jennings, CEO and president of Jennings Public Relations and Advertising as she speaks about her expertise in social media. She will communicate how to promote green initiatives through social media strategies, showing how companies are taking their brand online and the importance of communicating with online audiences such as blogs and news sites to grow your business. Learn about the art of online storytelling, how identifying online audiences will help develop organic SEO, and the impact of using promotional video. View results from a social media relations campaign that engaged top bloggers within the sustainability blogosphere along with architects. These outcomes will have a substantial impact in how you engage social media relations in the future.

The best way to grow in social media is by doing your research, engaging others in the field, and putting the multitude of products available into action. I recently had the opportunity to sit on the BMA http://www.bmakc.org/ Social Media panel for their “Social Media Engagement and Monitoring” seminar and discuss products, innovations, uses and results. Presenting alongside Justin Gardner of AMC and Adam Comes of Social Radar was a pleasure and I would like to thank the Kansas City BMA for this opportunity. I encourage businesses to join the BMA and continue their interest in social media. A copy of my presentation can be found here — KC BMA Presentation

The purpose was to bring together the core elements of social media marketing and gain a perspective from the technology, client and agency side. The two most frequently asked questions were: How do I find time to learn Web 2.0 technology? and, How do I find time to keep up with the applications? A recent blog post Wrangling Time for Social Media highlights how long people think social media really takes. Using a social media company not only relieves you of the labor but also can show measurement of your social media efforts.

JPRA has used social media tools to create buzz for our clients with individual campaign results of:

• $1 million in sales leads
• 500 clients prospect leads
• Tripling sales leads on website
• Placements on top blogs such as Jetson Green and The Green Meeting
• 90+ online release placements

Social media is an important tool not only for managing your online portfolio, but offline as well. With many traditional newspapers and magazines switching their content to online publications or adding online elements such as reporter blogs to their sites, the usage of social media is one that will cross medium lines in many ways.

Our company www.jenningspr.net was recently featured in The Changing Face of PR, an article in Electronic Retailer Magazine www.electronicretailermag.com. The article highlights the evolving dynamics between PR technicians and journalists and the enhanced usage of social media in today’s market.

The Changing Face of PR

The digital world is turning the public relations industry on its head. New tools, new media and new strategies enable companies and PR professionals to disseminate content with a speed and breadth never before seen.

If you run a business which could use a boost in the ol’ PR department, my newest article in Electronic Retailer magazine might give you some information, insight, and tools you can use to increase your visibility. And lets face it, with times like they are, your company can probably use all the help it can get, right? Read more — http://martyfahncke.wordpress.com/2008/10/16/the-changing-face-of-pr/