And so, although it pains me to write this, here are some of the dark sides of online community-building:
A. Building an Online Community Before You’re Ready
Doing anything before you’re ready, or fully equipped, is generally a discouraged practice. The opposite of “analysis paralysis” this “rush to act because everyone has an online community” can actually be detrimental to companies looking to build their site. Without a carefully-contrive strategy that’s been vetted by leadership and all relevant internal parties, your community won’t have the foundation or nutrients to grow. Does your leadership love social media? Are they focused on your content marketing efforts? Is it all about the leads? And most importantly, who is going to support this community on an ongoing basis? Without getting these questions answered, a community might be dead in the water before it’s even live, causing you to lose credibility and stalling your progress in the online marketing space (also making you fall behind competitors).
To get ready, a company must be very honest with what its goals are for the community, and what its internal appetite is to invest time and money into the site. There’s a big different between a pilot community effort and full-blown launch, so don’t waste a lot of time or resources if you don’t need to. A “quick win” (i.e. quick rise in rankings, or certain number of leads) might be all you need for your company to determine how and why they should proceed with further online community developments.
B. “Set-it-and-Forget-it”
Communities don’t build themselves, and they don’t manage themselves. If you build an amazing site and do nothing with it, you could potentially do serious damage to your brand. People will visit the site, see stale content (or no content) or an outdated design, and come to their own conclusions about the validity of your offerings. This ties back into Point A, in that you should know what your goals for the community are (and get alignment on them) before taking time to develop the site. When developing your site, be realistic about how much time and effort you’re going to spend on the site. Do you have an internal design team to keep your site looking fresh and SEO-friendly? Do you have enough content on your community to keep readers engaged? Are you active enough in social media to integrate those capabilities in your site? For these and many additional reasons, many companies choose to outsource their online community building and management activities to an outside firm, or certain elements of them. It’s a lot of work, and it needs to be done right in order to get the desired impact.
C. Information Overload – and Inconsistency
You spend a lot of time building your company brand and reputation, but what many companies don’t realize is that in a short amount of time, a poorly-built or managed online community can take it all away. For one, your site shouldn’t duplicate your company website (see Point D for reasons why) or a place to just store all your content marketing pieces haphazardly. This is where strategy comes in, and where you need to determine what kinds of content will be best for your community audience and then test which pieces have the highest impact. Giving them what they crave (perhaps a “how-to-manual” or video) rather than your own marketing pieces will build the credibility of your site – and your company – positing you as an industry leader rather than overbearing salesperson. Although many companies use a community for lead generation, be careful to balance what you “gate” (i.e. require people to sign-up for viewing) with what you offer in good will to your audience. The more valuable information they absorb on their own, first, the more likely they’ll be to trust giving you their information in the future.
It’s also important that your branding and messages be consistent across all your marketing campaigns, including your online community. If your corporate website is serious and stuffy, but online community uses a wildly different color-scheme, tone of voice or style, you might confuse your audience about what your company really is. Be thoughtful in what you want your online community to look like, and include, and follow through with it week in and week out. This extra attention to detail will make a huge difference in how credible and trustworthy your community is perceived to be.
D. All About You
It’s so tempting to talk about yourself (isn’t’ that what I’ve been doing this entire blog post?) But an online community can’t be all about your company. This is one of the things most companies struggle with when managing their sites. You want it to be a well-branded, promotional site but you know that it needs to be educational, and encourage collaboration. So how do you achieve that?
For one, take a step back and listen to your audience. Visit other sites they’re going to, and join their LinkedIn groups. You’ll see the information that they post and like to share- so focus on that on your online community.
Think of your online community as just one pillar in your online marketing strategy, supplemented by your social media sites and corporate website. Combined, the three create a powerful marketing engine, driving your profitability and brand awareness. But, each piece of the strategy must have different goals and objectives, and when it comes down to it, your corporate website should be the place that’s “all about you.” Other sites, like your Facebook account or online community, should host a healthy balance of company and consumer voices, with more weight on the latter. Again, this is why many companies build a site through a third party or media site- because thought leadership and objectivity is key in getting an audience to trust you – and it takes time.
Connect with us and join the conversation: What are some of the downsides of building an online community that weren’t covered in this article? Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter
Throughout the discussion, Allen and Tehrani highlighted how online communities are growing in popularity as a great SEO-booster, mainly because they are content-driven and offer truly valuable and educational information to site visitors – something the search engines love to see.
Here are the 2 SEO techniques Allen and Tehrani emphasized during the webinar as “critical practices” online community managers should consider when building and maintaining their sites.
The Top 2 Techniques Are….
Surprise surprise: Quality content and clean design (followed closely by social media integration). Now, even though you probably already knew this, what you might not know is how to use these 2 techniques in the best ways. Here's what the experts had to say about that:
1) Content Matters (When You Know What You’re Talking About)
As Allen and Tehrani pointed out during the webinar, recent search engine algorithm changes have thrown a skewer in some companies’ organic ranking. Why? Because they are cracking down on “black hat” or bad SEO practices, and rewarding the most valuable asset of all: Credible content. This means that companies need to start focusing on their content efforts by creating content that’s both SEO-friendly (keyword-driven, innovative, educational) and generates a response from readers (the more social sharing that happens, the better!) Create content that will generate an interesting response or reaction from your reader, or that poses questions to them, and don’t be afraid to have a little fun!
One webinar attendee asked: “How does having a knowledge base of industry/technology information impact your search engine results?” It’s simple; of course it helps. The more information you have, the better your search ranking will be as long as the information is organized, and unduplicated. So, choose carefully how you want to present your information and focus on relevance to the reader, like what you’d find in a case study or white paper.
2) Make the Content Shine
A crisp, clean online community design is the perfect partner to credible content. One participant asked which design elements work best, which the speakers responded with “navigation links that make your content easy-to-find is key; Also, a clean and simple design works well, with organized content and dominant calls-to-action (sign up for this newsletter, talk to an expert).” The overall theme? Try not to overrun the page with too many ads or promotional content; the more informative and educational the better. This is why online communities are so effective in helping boost SEO and position a company as a thought leader; because the intent of the online community is not to promote a brand, but demonstrate that your company has the most cutting-edge, relevant and educational information that consumers crave when making purchasing decisions. That, in turn, turns into trust, and site visitors will come to your community again and again, as long as the site design and content is fresh. Change the ads. Change the content. Change the calls to action- make people wonder what you’re going to do next.
Another design top is to spread out your content on your site, making multi-page communities highly effective. This allows you to create a great experience for the user because the content is organized and easy-to find (case studies on one page, product demonstrations on another, and the latest research reports on another). Think about your users first, and what’s going to matter most to them, and build your site to reflect that understanding.
Link Tip: Even though having multiple pages is great, make sure they are all connected, link back to each other and have consistent keyword-usage. That way they are working as a simultaneous SEO-campaign on your behalf, not to your detriment.
See the Results – Over Time
SEO is not a “quick win”. The most successful campaigns adhere to the adage, “slow and steady wins the race.” Although at TMC we’ve seen some of our online communities rank highly, organically, on search engines in as little as a month, typically it takes around 3-6 months to actual see results.
There are a few contingencies: Obviously the term(s) you are looking to rank for plays a major factor; a long-tail result on the first page where the terms are unpopular could be fairly easy to rank quickly on.
And, of course, it all comes down to content. The more content you put out there, the faster you'll rank. But, don’t think that by just streamlining your links on Twitter will help; Google isn't necessarily picking up links as much from Twitter in its rankings anymore, so be sure to be thoughtful about places you post your content, like relevant forums, groups on LinkedIn, or industry sites.
Connect with Us and Join the Conversation: Do you agree that these are the top SEO practices a company should implement on online communities? What are some of your tips and best practices?
Jonathan Allen, Director of Search Engine Watch, teamed up with TMCnet’s CEO Rich Tehrani to discuss the latest research and best practices for boosting your company’s SEO, and ways to use online communities to do so. Even though many companies are utilizing smart SEO practices to boost their search engine ranking (hopefully many have learned from recent SEO-punishments as a result of the Panda update) there are still 3 myths which came up during yesterday’s session that I think yesterday’s webinar dispelled, and would like to gather additional reactions to.
1) You need to rank on page 1 of search engines
2) Social Media doesn’t contribute to your bottom line
3) B2B companies can’t get passionate community followers
1) This is a little misleading by categorizing it as a myth, but I think yesterday’s speakers brought up two interesting points to consider for people who think that ranking on page 1 of a major search engine means you’ve hit SEO-gold.
To start, you don’t need to be on page 1. You need to be number one (no pressure!) Let me explain. With the rise of mobile and tablet usage, a smaller screen means companies really need to rank in the top positions of a search engine results page (check out Search Engine Watch’s statistics on just how much time people are spending on these devices). But don’t let this scare you, because there are ways to achieve a place at the top. Companies need to get very targeted with their keyword usage, and really look for long tail opportunities and combinations, since many people will re-search again and again using different variations of terms to get the information they want, rather than scroll through a long list of results (example: Dog Kennel might be a hard to rank term, but “Dog Kennel with outside play area in the Bronx” – well that, probably not so much).
If you’re not on page 1, there still might be an opportunity for you to rank on the Google News page, meaning you’ll get picked up in Google news alerts and rank on that page rather than the main search results page. Why is this important? People searching to buy a product might go to the News page for recent press releases, reviews, and articles on your company. By getting your content funneled through a major media source that gets up on these pages, you’ll have an opportunity to still rank high on major search engines and be linked with the latest industry news as well – a win-win if you ask me.
2) LinkedIn rocks, and can contribute to your bottom line.
Even though many companies struggle with how to use Twitter and Facebook to actually make their company money (without paying for sponsored ads), Jonathan Allen brought up the great point that LinkedIn has become an amazing resource and even lead generation tool. With the professional, credible structure of LinkedIn, and the ability to join networks with people who have similar interests as you (example, I’m part of the Creative Product Managers group) it’s more likely that your content, if relevant and credible, will be linked to and shared by your fellow group members. For example, Search Engine watch saw an increase of 600% in traffic to their website from LinkedIn in the last month. Yes, you read that right. An increase in traffic, combined with aggressive content marketing and lead capture process, can mean real results for your company in a relatively small amount of time.
3) It’s possible to be passionate about printers!
Many people speculate that it’s almost impossible to get a B2B audience passionate on social networks. But, as Rich and Jonathan advised during the webinar, don’t let these assumptions deter you from trying it out! If you use the right methods, it actually IS possible to get a community involved about your product- yes even a printer. How? Get in a dialogue with your audience, and get them to contribute topics they want to learn from you. Give them valuable, educational content, and give them the answers to their questions. By interacting with your audience, you’re not only giving them a reason to talk about your services and products, but also getting content ideas from them.
What are your thoughts on these 3 myths? Join the conversation online: Twitter|Facebook|LinkedIn
That’s right. Dell, Aflac, SAP, Whole Foods and Cisco were some of just a few companies who spoke about their experiences developing, deploying and measuring effective social media campaigns. And the more case studies I heard, the further I realized how similar companies of all sizes are when dealing with online marketing and social media, as the questions echoed what we at TMC hear from our clients regularly: What works best? How do you measure results? How do you get your C-suite to buy-in?
Here are some lessons I learned
1) Figure out your strategy and figure out a way to measure it
Most companies have social media accounts, but the biggest takeaway from this week’s Summit for me was that the most successful campaigns were ones that started out with a clearly defined and measurable purpose. For the WWE, it was to get a community of all their fans to go to an open forum and “like”, “dislike”, comment, post pictures and be truly passionate “fans” of their wrestling stars (who also Tweet across dozens of accounts. Yes, the wrestlers tweet.) But for Marriott, their approach is quite different as they host a closed community for certain members of a status club and use that as a way to keep that group of customers engaged. All the companies who had a clearly defined objective were clear that the vision needed to be vetted with leadership and approved so when results or ROI were requested, everyone was clear on just how successful the campaign was.
By establishing up-front what the objective of the community was, the easier it was to deploy those initiatives and know what to measure. Was number of “likes” and “fans” for the WWE important? Yes. But, for Whole Foods social media is more than likes and friends- their objective is to have a number of fans who are interactive and contribute to the site, even if in smaller quantities.
Plus, as a speaker from Adobe pointed out, the CEO might not care about how many tweets or “likes” you have. They want to know what all these activities are doing for the bottom line – and the sooner you figure out what your goal is, the sooner you can measure.
2) Use communities to serve your customers better
The TurboTax approach for social media is a great one. Get retired CPA’s engaged online and have them answer customer questions during tax season. This not only saves money on the company’s side in reducing how many people need to be hired during that busy time, but also creates an open community of people with a common interest. Whole Foods has a corporate Facebook page, but encourages each individual location to have sites, run promotions and get involved in their local community charities and events. Using social media to actually generate leads and sales is quite difficult to achieve and even measure, but using social media for customer engagement and retention is a lot easier. Answer customer questions online and ask them how satisfied they are. Take polls, give them exclusive offers and make them feel valued and important to your company. This creates a tribe of loyal followers which is one of the most important things a company can have.
3) Nurture your community of followers
We all know what Lead Nurturing is: Take your leads and instead of bombarding them with sales pitches, slowly over time engage with them, feed them relevant information and nurture their needs until you’ve formed a trustworthy bond with them. Communities and social sites also must be nurtured to grow over time and take collaboration, openness (too much monitoring or cutting off conversations restricts people from doing what’s in their nature: discussing openly). Nurture your groups by asking them questions, giving them special deals (Aflac ran a great campaign that was a competition asking people to submit videos explaining what Aflac was- which was extremely successful) and give them relevant content that will make them interested in what you’re going to share with them next.
One of the best quotes I heard during the summit was “track, listen and learn what your customers and prospects want – and give it to them.” A simple formula that any company, big or small, B2B and B2C can use and be successful with.
What are your biggest challenges with social media? What are some ways you’re overcoming them?
Connect with Us and Join the Conversation:
But two interesting trends also arose from this study. For one, 84% of companies use Facebook to promote themselves, 75% use Twitter, and only 52% using LinkedIn according to the survey. This surprises me: For one, it’s clear that even though social media is a hot-trend for most companies, research shows that many aren’t confident they are “doing it right” nor do they have firm measurement in place to track their efforts. Secondly, it seems like LinkedIn should be where most of the investment is made, as it’s “the place” to be doing business (most of my comments and articles get way more responses and interactions on LinkedIn than on my Facebook or Twitter account).
Another trend that arose was that many companies are starting to outsource their social media efforts, in an upward trend from last year. Now this actually doesn’t surprise me. Recent reports have been showing this angst in companies over how to engage in social media appropriately, so “leaving it to the experts” seems like a logical solution. With search marketing spend on the rise, and an increase in spend in social media, it makes sense that Online Communities often appear as the solution that achieves both these goals in the most cost-effective way. Companies who do Online Communities well often integrate their social media sites into one “portal” using tools that share any content that’s created across all 3 sites seamlessly. With this streamlined process for providing links to your content, your search marketing initiatives can be met as well.
Just some thoughts- though. What do you think about these trends? Do they sound familiar with what you’re experiencing at your company?
Join the Discussion Online:
]]>In a past post, we discussed the challenges some small companies face while trying to obtain high search engine ranking for their websites. Challenges included lack of history/back links to their site, not enough content generation and strain on resources trying to sustain the activity needed to drive SEO. But, the moral of the article was not to discourage small businesses but suggest Online Communities, specifically ones that as a solution that can help streamline efforts, minimize workload and integrate various marketing initiatives to reduce costs and boost sales.
SMB-focused analyst company Techaisle recently published the results of their social media study, which also portrays a pretty grim picture of small businesses struggling with social media marketing initiatives. The study found that these small businesses want to do more with social media but don’t feel they have the necessary experience or strategy to implement it properly, with 45% of respondents stating they are “not sure how these technologies would help our business.”
Taking Control, and Taking Chances
Many of our clients come to us with similar questions: How can we incorporate social media into our marketing efforts? What tools work best? What kind of content should we share? How should we get followers and monitor? How do we even start?
A few books have been published to answer these questions, like “The Zen of Social Media Marketing” by Shama Hyder Kabani, as well as countless articles, White Papers, Webinars, and Case Studies.
My biggest piece of advice is to go out there and test the waters. See what other companies are doing and emulate that. Don’t get overwhelmed, try one thing at a time, and of course test, test, and test again to find what’s really working for your company. For example, I really like Online Communities that have a box showing scrolling Twitter feeds, not only from their company but others with similar concepts and ideas so that the site truly becomes a one-stop resource. I also like content-sharing tools like http://twitterfeed.com/ that easily let anyone share a blog post across multiple social media channels, fast. Check out this article for 5 other ways to quickly and easily “go social.”
A Global Challenge
But experiencing challenges with social media strategies isn’t just “small business” issue- as the next big thing for online marketing, most companies globally are engaging in social media in one capacity or another. According to Useful Social Media’s Corporate Social Media survey, statistics show companies engaging with social media full steam ahead, even without dedicated departments and firm strategies and measurement in place:
Even more interesting is that when asked “Do you feel confident that you are accurately measuring the impact of your social media marketing?” only 40% said yes, and only 55% even measure the ROI of their social media campaigns.
Companies big and small are still sorting this social media thing out, and the great thing about this is, as companies keep experimenting and implementing new social initiatives, other companies have instant access to the latest trends and concepts and can implement them for themselves. Nothing is private or secret on the internet, especially on social sites, which actually gives these small businesses and advantage they might not have had before. And, with Online Communities (click here for sample TMCnet Online Communities) increasingly become the best way to market online, I actually think the outlook for marketers of small and large businesses alike have a unique opportunity to take their initiatives further than ever before.
But that’s just my glass-half-full opinion. What do you think? Join the conversation here, or on our Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn sites.
]]>How do you write “SEO-friendly” content? To find out, I turned to the experts here at TMCnet, who had the following tips and best practices to share based on their experience building Online Communities:
1) Make it Meaningful
Scott Bouchard, Web Director of TMCnet suggests that when writing content, keep it original, stating: “Even if it isn’t a breaking story, put your spin on whatever you are covering.” If the piece is unique and demonstrates your company’s insight or opinion, chances are it will be viewed as more credible by search engines. Bouchard also recommends brief, targeted and engaging titles for content that will grab interest while also making it clear what the article is about. Finally, Bouchard recommends linking with care, meaning that links are important but must be relevant and balanced, much like how references are used in research papers as supporting documentation or for further reading.
2) Call Out Your Keyword
TMCnet Web Editor Stefanie Mosca suggested that content be focused on, and heavily promote, a certain keyword. We all know that keywords help you get ranked on search engines and are a great way to reach your target audience who is going online to look for information about your term. Mosca recommends getting the keyword incorporated early-on in the content piece and incorporating it throughout, but with balance. And, going back to Bouchard’s comment on linking, be sure to link your piece back to articles or sites that also include your keyword term.
3) Check, Double Check then Check Again
Similar to how you should audit an Online Community periodically, so too should you constantly check your links, your spelling and your grammar. These things, like they did in grade school, matter in how well your piece gets “Graded” on SEO-friendliness.
4) Stay “In the Know”
Even though you may have mastered these tips, one thing to realize is that the rules are always changing, as Stefania Viscusi, Assignment Desk Editor tells us the “one thing that’s stuck with me the 5 years I’ve been here is that the rules never stay the same.” Keeping up with the latest techniques and “black hat” versus “white hat” SEO practices is the first step to ensuring you are writing SEO-friendly content that gets you ranked on major search engines.
These are just a few of many tips, of course. What are your favorite practices for ensuring your content is SEO-friendly? Comment here or find us on Twitter (@ConnectinCloud). To learn more about the best ways to use Content on an Online Community, check out our upcoming Webinar.Led by Adam Sherk of Define Media Group, the session covered a few SEO tips I found relevant for not only company websites, but Online Communities as well. Here are a few highlights:
Site Auditing
Site auditing should be standard practice for website and Online Community owners, and what I would argue to be one of the top things you should invest in if you don’t have the resources in-house to manage it (interestingly, for the large session size, almost no participants had dedicated SEO experts managing their company website for them). Auditing means that you’re looking at your content, design, click performance, keyword visibility and action items to ensure that every single piece is optimized and that the site is fresh and engaging (see “Keeping Content Fresh” for some tips on maintaining fresh content). This is even more important if you have an Online Community, as the purpose of these sites is to promote exactly that – Community – and without new, interesting content, readers won’t feel compelled to return to your site or discuss and share the content on your site, negatively affecting your SEO.
Site Triage
After your audit comes decision-making time. What are you going to improve on your site? Few companies have the time or resources to completely overhaul a Community once the potential flaws or gaps are identified, so Sherk presented a three-category “triage” system where companies should determine what their highest, medium and lowest priority “Action Items” are. What’s High Priority? Problems with your redirects, duplicate content, error reports and URL structure are a few examples. Things like internal linking, SEO style guides, image optimization and social might take a “Medium” level of urgency, and so on. Every company is unique, though, and we often find that since every Online Community sponsor has different objectives for their site, they have different priorities during a site enhancement as well. We encourage anyone who manages an Online Community to think through the site’s original objectives in the audit process to make sure they are being met, but also be flexible to incorporate changes based on new company directions or initiatives.
Making Content a Priority
Sherk concluded the session with a subject I feel very passionate about: Content should be a top priority on your website and Online Community. We’ve written about this subject numerous times, so I won’t duplicate myself too much here (For articles on optimizing content, read “I have the Content…now what?” or “The Need for Quality Content is Clear”) but I strongly feel that without a strong CMS and high-quality SEO-friendly content, that no matter how much time and effort you put into an Online Community, chances are that it won’t be as successful as it can be. Things like duplicate content, dead links, overly salesy-language or unstructured-content can be detrimental to an Online Community. And once the content is up, audit and track and measure and audit again. Always be looking to make improvements, incorporate new ideas and refresh the site to keep visitors coming back for more.
“End Scene”
Sherk spoke of the need for “Good Exits” on a site. This is a great concept for Online Communities; make sure the reader leaves the site with something valuable or interesting that will make them want to come back again. A “thank you for visiting” pop-up, perhaps? Coupon? Really solid research? The possibilities are vast.
Tell us what you think. Performed site triage? Have a Community that works well? Know a great example of a “Good Exit”? Let us know!
Follow us on twitter @ConnectinCloud or email us!
To learn more about maintaining content on an Online Community, join us for our upcoming educational Webinar “Using Credible Content to Promote Thought Leadership and Drive Sales”
Rich Tehrani, CEO of TMCnet, recently sat down with Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO for the second installment of their Online Communities Podcast series. When the conversation turned to the importance of branding, I was immediately reminded of many of the challenges many of our Online Community sponsors face: How to balance the desire to advertise with the need to be perceived as a thought leader. Here’s what I gleaned from the Webinar:
1) That it’s Important to Invest in Building Your Brand Consistently and Frequently
In order to be considered a credible, trust-worthy company, you must first have a recognizable brand that you promote consistency and frequently. This is very important in an industry that’s not “impulse-oriented”, meaning purchases are usually more expensive and take a long time to purchase. By getting your logo and company name in front of a potential customer over and over again, you will be subliminally speaking to your prospects and differentiating your product in the marketplace, almost guaranteeing that when the customer is ready to buy, they will consider your company.
The key words to focus on here are consistency and frequency: A short-term “Brand boost” effort doesn’t really make an impact, as a brand needs to be reinforced over time to be considered credible. Just think of how many customers you miss if you only brand for one quarter. And, if your message varies your credibility will also suffer, as consumers typically react more favorably to brands they feel they can recognize, and trust.
2) That Thought Leadership Takes Trust to the Next Level
Thought Leadership works in a similar way to branding, but it often takes a much longer time to build a reputation as a thought-leader than it does to promote a brand. Typically, the decision to position a company as a thought-leader must come from the top so all corporate initiatives are aligned and focused on the same goal. The marketing plan must be aligned with this vision also, so that all projects and messages are aligned and focused on presenting a company as a thought leader. And, to be a thought leader you need to cover the news surrounding your entire industry, even if it mentions your competitors. Many companies that build Online Communities deter from publishing a competitor’s information on their site; however this can only boost your brand, as your messages and brand will surround your competitor’s news, giving your company the position as true industry leader. People will want to return to your Online Community over and over again, because they’ll know it’s where they can get the widest range of relevant information – fast.
3) That Companies Need to Do More of Both
Many companies don’t do enough in either of Branding or Thought Leadership areas. Why? Because it’s difficult to measure the ROI of such activities if you’re not immediately gaining leads and closing sales from them. It’s important, however, to think about the long term goals of your company and think about the consistency/frequency focus we just touched on with the following “hammer and nail” analogy. If you hit a nail three times with a hammer, you may get it to stick a little bit, but it may also easily wiggle out and become loose. But, if you hit it over and over again, for a long period of time, your nail, or “brand” will be “stuck” in the minds of the consumers, and the sales that will generate from those firmly-built relationships will be invaluable.
An Online Community that displays your brand and messaging along with industry-related content is one of the most powerful ways you can achieve these two top marketing objectives. For example, if your company publishes a white paper on your Online Community, you will be boosting your thought-leadership initiatives but also your brand, since the research is distributed by your company and decorated with your logo. And, if you gate this content, you will likely generate leads who are interested in your industry or products and willing to learn more. White Papers are just the beginning, too. eBooks, Webinars, product reviews and videos are just some of the many ways you can build your brand, boost thought leadership and generate leads , all the while continually building trust with your audience – and a bond that will be hard to break.
To learn more:
- Listen the full Podcast, click here.
- Listen to Part 1 in the Online Community Podcast Series,”9 Minutes of SEO”, click here.
-Register for the upcoming FREE educational Webinar about how to build a successful Online Community that boosts your sales, search and social initiatives
Or, Contact Anna Ritchie for more information.
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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. By neglecting to nurture your Online Community in the right ways or by “overcrowding it”, it’s likely that the site will fail to attract visitors and ranking.
Online Communities, like social networking sites, should also not be used primarily for marketing or advertising messages. The study showed that “41% unsubscribe or un-follow a brand because their newsfeed is overcrowded by blatant marketing overtures.” Building trust with your Community audience is key (as discussed in our recent Podcast, “No One Buys Without Trust”) and consumers are getting pickier about how and where they receive marketing messages. A social site or Online Community that positions itself as an informational resource on a specific topic is not the place to promote a brand too overtly.
You can cross your fingers all you want, but getting your Online Community ranked is going to take more than that. Lucky for you there are ways you can learn how to build a Successful Online Community, like attending educational Online Community- building Webinars or reading Case Studies to learn best practices and tips. To learn more about what makes an Online Community successful, you can also contact us.
Top O’ the Rankings to Ya!
Anna Ritchie
Product Manager, Online Communities
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.
Now what?
You need content curation- or a way to pull all your content together into one, cohesive environment. This is also something you probably know, as tools for content Curation are becoming increasingly popular. In a recent article, “Content Curation: Shaping and Influencing your Social Reputation”, Rich Karpinski provides a brief overview of some of these popular Content Curation tools. According to Karpinski, these tools allow you to “express thought leadership, juice SEO rankings, streamline content marketing efforts and even attract and nurture leads.” That’s a tall order for some of these tools, which can certainly act as content-management systems, but sometimes stop there without providing a lot of interactive opportunities, innovation or visual appeal.
Managing a content-curation tool can also be a time-consuming and budget-eating endeavor that can sometimes distract from other important company initiatives. And, these tools don’t create they curate, meaning that you still need to spend time creating new content to supplement what’s being pulled from other resources.
Online Communities can serve as content curation tools if developed and deployed correctly, and if you partner with a third-party company you can receive a few additional perks that you won’t get with a standard content-curation tool.
First, you’ll have the ability to leverage best practices in content sharing, social media integration, thought leadership and branding so you can have a site that actually integrates your different marketing initiatives successfully, with little time or effort actually required by you. Plus, if you partner with third-party with expert writers who actually create content for you, you will further build the credibility of your site by adding original outside content and objectivity- both huge factors in building trust with your audience. This allows you to be viewed as a thought-leader and positions your Community as a comprehensive resource, rather than another advertising vehicle that holds your re-purposed marketing messages.
Most importantly, however, is that you won’t lose the personal touch that matters more and more these days, as content turns to clutter and audiences seek for the most trustworthy sources. Unfortunately, tools alone cannot add that connection. Communities can.
At TMCnet we believe that with the new direction Google is taking with its algorithms that the outlook is a bit more positive for new companies. Google has stated that it will be rewarding websites with high-quality content with higher rankings. We also know from experience that partnering with a third-party media company like TMCnet, who has been building successful Online Communities for over 10 years, experiences millions of unique visitors per month and produces high-quality content, can give any company, old or new, the chance to rank well and get found at the top of major search engine results with our Online Community program.
For more information about our Online Community Program, click here or contact Anna Ritchie for more information.
Take the J.C. Penney story. Recently, the popular chain retailer had been enjoying tremendous rankings on Google due the efforts of its SEO consulting firm SearchDex. A wide range of search terms, from luggage to clothing to furniture, all provided to same results on Google -- J.C. Penny was listed at the top each and every time. Suspecting something was awry, the New York Times investigated, sending the results of their research straight to Google. The article exposed that this SEO agency was using black hat link-building techniques which are frowned upon by Google. As a result, Google immediately took “manual action”, and J.C. Penny not only received a tremendous amount of negative publicity, but its rankings on the search engine immediately began to plummet significantly according to the New York Times.
According to J.C. Penny, they were not aware their SEO firm was posting links back to their company website from thousands of low quality pages on the web. And as a result of hiring a search firm and not being aware of what practices were being employed, they have found their future search results will potentially suffer greatly online. According to the article: “One moment Penney was the most visible online destination for living room furniture in the country. The next it was essentially buried.”
In the past, BMW’s German site was banned from Google due to the use of doorway pages (pages that exist solely to provide links that drive SEO) which the search engine frowns upon. While at this point Google has not banned J.C. Penney, individual product results plummeted over 70 spots in two hours.
The Lesson Learned? While focusing on SEO is obviously important, the use of black hat techniques such as paying for links or hiring people to place links on blog comments can get your company in a lot of trouble. Companies should be careful about the firms they hire to help boost SEO, and consider alternative ways to drive traffic, such as utilizing quality, relevant content via an independent Online Community.
If you’re found and reprimanded by Google, your SEO will suffer, as demonstrated by the J.C. Penny event. And since almost everyone goes to a search engine when they want to find something, if your company isn’t showing up on that search engine, you may be difficult to find. As we all know, ranking highly on search engines is imperative. In fact, 34 percent of Google’s traffic goes to the No. 1 result, about twice the percentage that goes to No. 2, according to the New York Times.
How to Build Trusted Traffic Online: This incident has shined a bright spotlight on the traditional link-building practices employed by SEO professionals. So, going forward, the traditional methods of building traffic and leads will likely not work as well as in the past as companies like Google will be less and less permissive of such techniques and will keep a close eye on those they suspect are utilizing them.
A much safer way to build trusted traffic, generate leads and boost thought leadership online is to partner with a respected company who builds highly ranked Online Community websites legitimately and provides relevant and useful content that attracts a targeted audience, which subsequently causes it to rank highly on search engines, organically.
TMCnet has been building these for over a decade for hundreds of customers by attracting a targeted audience via related content. The result? A majority of our sponsored communities rank high, even # 1, on major search engines. If you want to learn more about how your company can benefit from a TMC Online Community, contact us.
Anna Ritchie- Product Manager, TMCnet Online Communities
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