If you haven’t thought about search engine marketing (SEM) or search engine optimization (SEO) yet, it’s time to jump onboard the search train. Think about some of the goals of your marketing campaigns – building awareness, boosting ROI, and increasing conversions. What do you think your company’s website is for?

Reach

One of the most important goals of marketing is to increase brand awareness. The great thing about online advertising is that marketers can target consumers at any time during the buying cycle. Social media allows us to reach our consumers in a timely, efficient and measureable manner.

ROI

Analytics help you make decisions about your brand. When we optimize new insights and data, we optimize our marketing budgets. This is why it is important to select relevant keywords for your SEO campaigns. Your consumers (potential and current) use search engines like Google, Bing and YouTube to find information regarding your products/services.

YouTube has over 3 billion views every 24 hours.

Think of the influence YouTube has had on musicians, brands and reputations – Justin Bieber, Orabrush and Domino’s Pizza have gone viral via video marketing. As marketers, we need to understand that not everyone is going to be influenced by traditional media alone. With the increase of fan and follower participation through social media, consumers are clearly interested in interacting with brands and businesses.

Video marketing can help enhance your SEO campaigns and maintain a strong social profile. An important aspect of videos is that they can be picked up by both social media and search engines. They can even rank higher than your brand’s website in search engines. “You Tube is actually the biggest social media site […] it’s bigger than Facebook or Twitter” (Scott Imbrie, “6 Best Practices For Small Business YouTube Marketing”, 11.6.2011).

When it comes to video marketing, I say go big or go home. Marketers need to constantly experiment and test ideas. We don’t know what really works until we try. Test and tweak ideas as much as needed to get your consumers excited and involved.  After all, the use of videos is a great way to boost visibility and drive engagement.

When you get a chance, check out this really cool interactive film by Chris Milk ft. the Arcade Fire (built in HTML5) – The Wilderness Downtown

Content marketing is more important than ever before. To ensure that you are getting the most out of your marketing efforts, you must develop a content marketing strategy that is unique, relevant and measurable.

“The goal of delivering exceptional content & stories to engage audiences in a company’s brand and value proposition is not new — but with the growing importance of online marketing and social media to deliver these messages, it has become essential to consider content development (and storytelling) a primary lever within today’s marketing strategy (particularly in B2B)” (Lydia Vogtner, 9.15.11, www.business2community.com).

Take a risk

In this day and age, it is extremely important to be experimental. The goal of content marketing is to be at the top of SEO rankings. Marketers have an obligation to find out what works and what doesn’t for consumers. We will not always be able to sell our ideas to consumers, but we must be able to create deliverable solutions for what they want. To be successful, B2B marketers have to develop a content marketing strategy because it is not a onetime deal – it is an ongoing, reoccurring process that will boost mobile and online media efforts.

Develop unique content

Search marketing is an essential medium for B2B marketers. Organic searches determine what content is original, relevant and engaging. Well-written content also builds the relationships you create with consumers. You do not want your content to be overly messaged – but it is a good idea to develop themes. For example if you host webinars, create a series of topics based around a theme such as mobile marketing. If you develop a popular video series for your website, make sure those videos feed off each other’s content – again as long as it is relevant and engaging.

Promote your social content

In this economy, some marketers are on a tight budget. Here’s the good news – the most popular analytic tools are either relatively cheap like Raven or free – like Google Analytics and AddThis. SEO tools determine the top keywords in searches, but they also have the ability to identify the social media content that people are buzzing about. In addition to tracking the top content, landing pages, referrals, and search engines these SEO tools can provide traffic analytics for the amount of clicks, shares, posts, etc.  Marketers should incorporate social metrics into their content marketing to generate measurable results.

Marketers need to take the plunge and build a relevant marketing strategy that integrates original and engaging content. Think analytically – monitor your content strategy because it is an interactive process that promotes social content and puts your brand at the top of SEO rankings.

For a few years now, SEO practitioners and other online marketers have been stressing the importance of the long-tail keyword. If you have been focusing your efforts on trying to rank for one- or two-keyword phrases and haven’t seen your site budge in the results, it’s time to shift your focus to the long-tail.

The phrase “long-tail” in this sense refers to group keywords that target more niche or specific markets, and typically involve more words (“Neapolitan-style pizza in Chicago” vs. “Pizza”). A report from Hitwise found that search queries longer than six words increased by 3 percent from June to July. While shorter search queries still account for the majority of total searches, long-tail keywords combined (more than 5 word phrases) account for 18 percent of all searches. As users continue to get more specific with their searches to get more relevant results, this trend will continue to grow.

How do you rank better for long-tail keywords? The possibilities are endless, but here are three things you can do today:

1. Write quality content that people actually want to read. The days of writing for search engines are long over. Writing content for human beings means you’re more than likely using keywords and phrases that people actually use in conversation. Users that enjoy your fresh content will link to it from their blogs, tweet it, +1 it, etc.

2. Create internal links within your site’s content to relevant pages. Remember to create variations of these keywords so you don’t go overboard with your optimizations. If you are a marketing agency, switch up the way you refer to yourself across your site. You might be both a “b2b marketing agency in Chicago” as well as a “Chicago social media marketing firm”.

3. Write very descriptive title tags. Write these titles in a way that users would search to find that content. Don’t stuff your titles with keywords separated by a ‘|’. That form of title is very effective for certain sites, but most people don’t actually search Google for “Best Pizza | Chicago Pizza | Chicago Pizza Parlor;” instead, they’ll search: “what is the best pizza parlor in Chicago?” Therefore, this would probably be a better title: “Mike’s Pizza – The best pizza parlor in Chicago”.

If you’re concerned with the idea that focusing only on the long-tail reduces your chances to show up for broad terms, consider adding paid search into your marketing mix. This gives you have the ability to control and craft your message the way you want, plus the added bonus of seeing immediate results for your targeted keywords.

Get to work on your long-tail terms and watch your conversions and on-site user engagement increase!

Mike Hernalsteen is the Senior Interactive Marketing Specialist at LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency where he develops comprehensive online marketing strategies for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by Mike)

Watch as Mike Hernalsteen, Online Marketing Specialist from LoSasso Advertising, discusses the difference of subdomains and subdirectories.

Mike Hernalsteen is the Senior Interactive Marketing Specialist at LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency where he develops comprehensive online marketing strategies for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by Mike)

Evolve or become the next fossil in the wake of social media and brand management. The days of sitting in the ivory tower on a pile of cash are over, you’ve got to be with the masses in the muck to get any kind of footing in the new business of curating the attention of others.

But how?

Be a thought leader, become a peer, and transform your brand into a competitive, free-content driven resource for others to utilize. “It used to be so easy when dollars equaled dominance, but now there’s a digital fly in the ointment,” (Brand Week, 4.4.11, p. 12) and that fly is causing huge ripples for brands.

It’s all well and good to be a big dog brand but without drawing people’s focused attention to your content, a big old fossilized dog your brand will become. Content can be bought but the reality is content is generated every second by a spectrum of free agents, and catering to and providing for that new power is essential.

It is important now to bolster one’s in-house talents and recruit those well-versed in generating interest in the new way — social media. Whether brands adapt or not, those who are watching them are most likely tweeting, facebooking and blogging about them — after all “a person’s a person no matter how small” (thanks Dr. Seuss).

Welcome to National Poetry Month!

Each April, the Academy of American Poets celebrates poetry and its vital place in American culture. The first Poetry Month was inaugurated in 1996 and has caught the attention of numerous government agencies and officials along with educational figures, publishers, artists and (of course) poets.

We’re showing our poetic passion this month by participating in an SEO Poetry Slam contest organized by the editors at SEOBoy.com. The contest invites online marketing practitioners to compose a haiku about Search Engine Optimization. A haiku is a form of Japanese poetry consisting of 17 syllables assembled in three lines of 5-7-5.

Here’s where you come in. We’ll be posting SEO haikus throughout the month on the LoSasso Advertising Facebook Page. At the end of April, we’ll submit the poem that our fans have deemed the best through Likes and Comments. So let us know what you think! And if you catch the poetry bug, feel free to join in by tweeting us, commenting on this post, or posting on the Facebook page.

Here’s our first haiku, just to get the poetic posturing percolating.

Search Engines. Look.
Have you seen my website? It’s great!
Fine, I’ll get more links.

Another windy morning in Chicago last Thursday ushered in an intrepid LoSasso quartet to The Drake Hotel. Awaiting LoSasso President, Scott LoSasso and Vice President, Mark Hollingsworth were professors from colleges and universities around the Midwest, plumbing the depths of LoSasso’s interactive marketing expertise at the 2011 Spring Marketing Management Association Conference. The talk was organized by Don Jones and resulted in great dialogue between area professors and our LoSasso team.

The presentation addressed changes in the marketing industry and what businesses are looking for in new hires, especially those undergraduates hot off the presses. Particular attention was paid to content driven interaction: the driving force behind creating a space for consumers to interact with one another and with businesses. Industry forums and social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquare) have become the new quilting circle or local watering hole where information is readily exchanged, available and digested at a rapid pace.

The message was clear: the toolbox has changed but the fundamental principles of marketing have stayed the same. Developing a relationship with a client is still at the core of those principles; it is the way in which we enhance that relationship that has grown to include social media, SEO (search engine optimization) and the need to build a presence both physically and virtually for every client.

Frequent and consistent messaging continues to be of utmost importance but a close second is the need for silos within businesses to break down. More than ever, direct marketing and public relations are completely meshed together: communications and marketing departments have to interface constantly to maintain that consistent messaging for optimal success in their campaigns.

The discussion was also centered around best practices for hiring and what makes a new hire successful. Scott LoSasso initiated the conversation by outlining optimal job candidates that contribute to a team work environment. Incoming new hires are strong writers, positive team players, involved in an array of social media platforms, creative thinkers and detail-oriented. For more information about skill sets businesses look for in new hires, visit iMedia Connection.

Thank you to the Marketing Management Association, Don Jones, The Drake Hotel and all in attendance for a great open discussion about our evolving industry!

What does net neutrality and its ensuing court battles have to do with B2B and B2C marketing strategies?  A bushel and a peck.

Since fall of last year, the F.C.C. and large corporations (Google, Verizon, AT&T, Comcast) have been duking it out over government regulation of the internet – which as of right now is still considered an information service and therefore a public resource.  The internet is the last standing outlet for democratized free information — telecommunications services are far more privatized, without F.C.C. regulation, and so can determine what information a user views.

“The suits could potentially free Internet service providers from regulation — allowing them to treat their own content better than that of rivals, and block content that they didn’t like or competed with. Verizon and AT&T have about 60 percent of wireless subscribers. And 80 percent of Americans live in areas with only two wireline broadband providers. In a market with such slender competition, consumers are likely to lose out.” (3.6.11, Net Neutrality, back in court, NYT)

So how does this affect a marketer? Well, it’s really quite simple.  Social media has exploded in the industry as the best way to establish working relationships with established and would-be consumers.

Interactive marketing works off diverse and publicly accessible platforms to interact freely with the masses.  Marketers on the small side of business and upstarts would lose the advantage of the last free information channel and new clientele.  Now, that open channel is vulnerable to restriction and tiered-pricing for faster access to predetermined content.

At the very least if net neutrality becomes a thing of the past, the SEO (search engine optimization) and mobile marketing games will have to adapt and at a cost.

You can create and design a great website, but if no one can find it then it doesn’t have much value.  At Losasso we try to impart the importance of SEO to our clients.  We are not in the camp of “all traffic is good traffic” but rather we believe that driving qualified traffic to our client’s sites through solid search engine optimization is what is important.

There are some fairly simple steps you can follow to make sure your website is optimized and easy to find.  In an interview with USA Today, Google’s Matt Cutts imparts some of his SEO wisdom to the masses.  From making sure you are properly utilizing you “tags” to creating a blog, take a look at this article to read all the simple steps Cutts suggests in order to get your site in good SEO standing.