Anna Ritchie : Community Maven
Anna Ritchie
Marketing & communications practitioner, and product manager for TMCnet. Focus on content marketing and social media with a specialty in Online Community-building for businesses. Follow @Connectincloud and @apritchie
| Expertise and Advice on Successful Online Communities

March 2011

You are browsing the archive for March 2011.

To Video or to Podcast on an Online Community?

March 31, 2011

During our recent Webinar about building Online Communities for businesses, we got an interesting question from a participant about using videos versus podcasts in their marketing campaign. This particular participant was wondering about the differences between using these two types of pieces, and while the differences are slight I do feel it raises quite an important question: How do you know what kind of content/multimedia elements to incorporate in an Online Community?

At TMCnet, we've seen Online Community sponsors use a wide range of multimedia- from audio clips, to videos, to podcasts and product demos. The possibilities are truly endless, and really it depends on your internal resources or the external resources you have available to you to decide which elements to use.

Building a Trustworthy Brand With an Online Community

March 26, 2011

From the recent Podcast, “No One Buys Without Trust”: Linking Thought Leadership & Branding to Sales through Online Communities.

Listen to the full Podcast Here.   

Rich Tehrani, CEO of TMCnet, recently sat down with Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO for the second installment of their Online Communities Podcast series.  

If You Build It...

March 25, 2011

To learn more, contact Anna Ritchie.

Why Social Media is Perfect for Small Businesses

March 25, 2011

A recent article published by TMCnet contributing editor Gary Kim touches on what we recently wrote about in "A Word about Gaining High SEO for Startups", that small companies often struggle with how to maximize their online marketing spend to reach their objectives. In addition to partnering with an outside company to take advantage of its resources and technology, Kim also discusses how small businesses can leverage social media to quickly "spread the word" about, and the build the reputation of, their business.

 We talk a lot about the need to build credible, high-quality content for your company so that it gets spread across multiple online channels, boosting your brand and building trust with potential and current customers. Kim references a recent American Express survey of small business executives, and found that 82% "get new customers through word of mouth." Leveraging social media channels are a smart way to spread the word about your company. Plus, they're free and it's relatively easy to build a following quickly if you do so in an integrated, consistent way.

St. Patrick's Day and "Lucky" Online Communities

March 25, 2011

Shamrocks, pots of gold, green beer and bagpipes: The signs of St. Patty’s day are abound today, and everyone’s feeling a little “lucky”.




Some people think that an Online Community needs luck to be successful; that if you follow the steps to build one and cross your fingers, it will rank highly and receive thousands of followers immediately. A recent study called “The Social Break Up” found, however, that luck has nothing to do with the success of such a site. The study, conducted with over 1,500 Twitter and Facebook users, found that “internet users who unsubscribe, unfan, or unfollow brands on social networks do so because of irrelevant, too-frequent or boring marketing messages.”

The study also points to what makes Online Communities “work” well; Communities need specialized, targeted content that visitors can actually use and learn from.




I have the content...now what?

March 25, 2011

by Anna Ritchie

Every day, I stumble upon an article, blog or tweet about how to create the best content for online marketing purposes – the content that will get readers engaged, spread the buzz about your company, and position your company as the “go to resource” for information about your industry.

So you tweet, Facebook, blog, and write articles. You create pages and groups and blog a little more. You have all the content you could ever need.

Video Promoting Upcoming Online Community Webinar

March 25, 2011

Check out the latest video promoting our upcoming Webinar: "Building Communities Online: Reduce Marketing Spend While Boosting Sales, Search and Social Initiatives"

http://www.tmcnet.com/tmc/videos/default.aspx?vid=4224

To learn more about TMCnet Online Communities, click here or contact Anna Ritchie.

A Word about Gaining High SEO for Startups

March 25, 2011

by Anna Ritchie. Product Manager, TMCnet Online Communities

A recent article, SEO is No Longer a Viable Marketing Strategy for Startups, touches on a few points that we at TMCnet have been emphasizing in recent blog posts: That the SEO game is a tricky one, and one that truly does rely on a special balance of high-quality content with a large quantity of inbound links.  The author of this particular article states that unless a company has been around a long time with a history of links to support its presence online, or is willing to partake in “black hat” SEO techniques, that high ranking is almost unobtainable and the quality of content won’t really matter to ranking well on major search engines like Google for newer companies. To read the article in full, click here. 

How Your SEO Firm Can Get You Banned From Google

March 25, 2011

Are you watching what your SEO firm or team is doing?

SEO professionals sometimes use questionable techniques and if they are exposed, your company is the one who suffers the potentially detrimental effects which impact not only your search rank, but potentially your profitability as well.

Take the J.C. Penney story. 

Free Educational Webinar about Building Online Communities

March 25, 2011

As you know, TMC is passionate about building successful Online Communities for our customers. That's why we're hosting a FREE Webinar on Wednesday, March 30th at 2:00pm ET, titled: Building Communities Online: Reduce Marketing Spend While Boosting Sales, Search and Social Initiatives.

Learn more about this Webinar here and Register today! You can also contact Anna Ritchie for more information. We hope to see you there!


Mythbuster: All targeted marketing and SEO products are not created equal

March 25, 2011

Myth: Online Communities offer the same benefits as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads

Mythbuster facts: If you currently purchase, or are planning to invest in, a search term from a search engine, you might want to think again. Online Communities offer a more credible, cost-effective and comprehensive targeted marketing product that will give you stronger results and consistently high, organic rankings on online search engines like Google and Bing. 

What’s an Online Community?

Rich Tehrani's SEO and Online Community Interview

March 25, 2011


TMC's CEO Rich Tehrani was recently interviewed by Peter Radizeski who in addition to being a TMC Blogger is an expert on the telecom channel and a sought out social media and marketing consultant.

In this interview, Rich discusses how companies can maximize their SEO initiatives through TMC's Online Community product. He also provides a video of him being interviewed by Paul Ritter of Interactive Media Strategies regarding online community building and how TMC builds targeted audiences on-demand via specific content and sophisticated, proprietary content-management systems.

Check out the podcast here, or read Rich's blog entry on the experience.

Want to learn more about TMC's Online Communities? Contact Anna Ritchie.