Twitter as a Cross-Platform SEO Tool...

I’ve had some discussions within the media planning community about how Twitter can be seen as an extension of the search marketing discipline.

There’s still a lot of head scratching going on about the use of Twitter and it has yet to be embraced by SEM specialists as a search related practice. For obvious reasons, it took an abrupt landing into the social media landscape but looking closely, it’s got all the ingredients of an effective search media tactic.

Amidst the rising conflict about ghost writing and how the network seems to be rejecting the thought of using the platform as a feeding frenzy for publicity, there’s something to be said about moving in the right circles with the right messages. Hiring people to spam a large following of 10,000 plus with random messages is one way to do it. But there are more sophisticated ways of creating dialogue and connecting with the right targets using different writers.

I think it’s ok for one brand to show its range in voice. The tone that a brand x uses with males will be different than the tone used for women. Going a bit deeper, if brand x decides to work heavily on an environmental strategy; there’s a whole new rulebook of communication that needs to be followed. For this to be executed properly, brand x needs to consider setting up more than one @ handle.

It’s not as easy as AdSense in that you can select keywords and attach relevant messages. It’s more about finding groups or clusters in a more literal sense. Rather than focusing on the static ranking algorithms offered through Google, Twitter works more in the recency realm. Once a community is established, relevancy and recency create a potent media opportunity. For now, search results are available on engines like Twitter Search, Hashtags and OneRiot. Tomorrow, the distribution of search may multiply across the net.

Targeting on Twitter is fairly rudimentary right now. It takes some time to set up your broadcasts. As in any cultural situation, it’s important to spend some time observing before jumping in and assuming immediate acceptance. Pay attention to the varying target audiences; understand the topics of discussion and the tone of communication.

Varying strings of tweets across communities act in the same way as SEO campaigns do. Relevant content, frequent updates and link sharing all come into play. Twitter’s distribution across other platforms like Facebook give it an edge of Google because the links are directed straight from point a to point b but have the added benefit of pre-qualified intent for the context.

As long as brands continue to provide value to communities, it won’t be seen as the spam that seems to be surfacing today through mass tweeting into an abyss of followers that are in many cases, only following for the sake of belonging to a “mass tweeter followship”.

Oh, and it’s free…for now…

Co-op Advertising – The Local SEO Link

I’ve been spending some time on the local search side of things over the past few weeks. There have been some interesting discussions about the use of Co-op advertising or, as some would suggest, the under utilization of it.

Co-op Advertising also known as Co-op ads or Cooperative programs is defined as ad costs divided between two or more companies. Generally, the programs are born out of incentives offered by manufacturers to distributors or retailers in order to encourage promotion and advertising of particular products.

In discussions with local business owners, their awareness of programs is minimal. While they understand the general concept, they are generally not well informed about the opportunities presented by their suppliers and are therefore, missing out on hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of advertising. In some cases, the manufacturers have not taken advantage of their channels to build their brands online.

Brand advertising at the local level is still in its infancy but the potential is enormous. Currently the largest movement is coming from retail based search engines like Krillion but Local Search sites like YellowPages.ca have understood the value of brand association at the local level for some time and have built their systems accordingly.

Taking advantage of Co-op programs could help to drive SEO programs for local businesses as they broaden their searchable content through the products they may carry.

The win-win of these types of programs is clear. The manufacturers drill down to the local level while the small businesses broaden their search results for minimal cost.

The challenge to date has been the communication barriers to the local businesses as well as the amount of time required to study the programs, follow the guidelines and seek out the proper channels.

In this day and age, it would be prudent to mobilize the local troops to boost brand presence across the local media landscape. There are so many opportunities for publishers as well as small businesses in this space. I’ll be researching this much closer over the next little while. Drop me a line if you have input or are interested in the output…

Surf & Scrub... ReputationDefender

On a final note about managing reputations this week, I thought I'd explore the personal side of reputation management solutions.

Amidst the news stories of how employers are using social networks as reference and sensitive information checking tools, it's no shocker that services would appear to scrub online content that may negatively affect an individual's chances for employment.

I looked into Menlo Park, CA based ReputationDefender's services today. ReputationDefender was conceived in mid 2006 as a service that offers a monthly subscription based service that scrubs the internet for all content related to an individual. The service is still in beta, but has launched with subscribers receiving monthly reports detailing all references and content pertaining to the individual online so that they are then able to select what areas they would like to have deleted or "destroyed".

Most social networks allow users to submit requests to have items removed from their networks. The process can take some time but it is definitely available. For individuals that have been tagged in photos without permission, there are tools allowing them to disassociate themselves by removing tags.



ReputationDefender's value proposition may be found more in the reporting than in the destruction of negative content. They do not act as legal counsel and will not send cease and desist notes around the web. They simply go through the clean-up process on behalf of the customer.

The business reminds me a lot of the incorrect listings issues faced by the online yellow pages industry. While all the directories allowed businesses to submit correct information, the process was arduous and the results were either unsatisfactory or unacceptable in terms of time to correction. Finally, solution providers like Localeze stepped up, built partnerships with the major directories as "trusted sources", and put subscribing clients in the fast lane for listing corrections.

While the commercially driven need to manage reputations online is well established, the idea and demand to manage personal reputations has not yet reached its full potential. As late adopters continue to flock towards the social networks, the boom for this sector will emerge and echo for that matter.

I believe this type of service will become just as relevant as anti-virus software. The winners will be those that can provide the sleekest reporting and the fastest results. Early players to the field may benefit from their establishment as trusted sources with the major social networks and their unquestionable influence on the API features made available to procure the services.

A natural extension for this type of service would be to provide copywriting services to create positive content across the web. Once again, I'm drawing parallels with the Localeze model where the business profiles were created and pushed through the platform insuring consistency and SEO friendly rich data.

Let me guess what's next for personal reputation management companies....SEO friendly resume copywriting & management?

Reputatition Defender's Blog has a great NYTimes article about the usage of social networking investigations in the workplace...How to Lose your Job on Your Own Time