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Posts tagged 'findability'
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Posted on January 6, 2007
Get LinkedIn to Your Competition
BY JENNIFER EUBANKS
Guy Kawasaki recently wrote about 10 ways to use LinkedIn, the tool that helps professionals connect. While the biggest use of the service is simply to get in contact with someone to make sales or get a job, Guy writes about a few other uses that may not be as obvious, and are part of why he feels the tool is underutilized.
In addition to such benefits as increasing visibility and improving connectability when searching within the site, Guy's #1 and #2 items, taking advantage of the service and fully filling out your profile can have a few side benefits such as improving your Google PageRank and search engine results. Since LinkedIn is indexed by the search engines, it provides one more way to provide visibility when users search for information relevant to you or your field.
Many of the items listed are directed towards those who are either hiring or want to be hired--you can use the service to check out your prospective employee/employer and find other references within the company. But one of the uses that is often overlooked is that of tracking your competitors. You can get info on people within your field, see if they are initiating new startups, and use it as another handy tool for keeping track of the latest goings on.
If properly filled out, your profile becomes another asset in your Reputation Management repertoire. You will make it easier for people to find useful information about you and your business, and by keeping track of your connections and competitors, you can stay abreast on any major developments.
Not just for researching those potential employees or basic networking, take Guy's advice and see what this tool can do for you and your business.
Posted on November 9, 2006
Google Base...
BY BEN CASTELLI
Equals more of your products in the consumers face. Google Base is great service that allows you to submit the products and services that you offer directly to Google. By uploading specific product information to Base, you are more likely to have your products show up in the search results on Google when a user searches on a relevant query. Check out the search results for "striped beach chair":
Best Promotions is coming up at the top of the natural search results because the beach chair is an active item in Google Base. This is cool because Best Promotions is a fairly new website and would not necessarily have visibility on the first page in Google for this search term yet.
Uploading to Base will also give your products and services visibility in Google related sites like Froogle and Google Local. It is important to make sure your items have pictures and good descriptions attached to each item.
The Base interface shows you impressions and clicks for active items although it would be nice to have the ability to run cumulative reports similar to Ad Words. There are 3 ways to submit Google base, upload individual items manually via web form, submit multiple items through a bulk upload or the API. The bulk upload dashboard was recently redesigned for easier use and to show more useful data.
If your products or services are not getting any visibility in Google, consider Base to help them show up in the search results when a user types a specific query that matches what you have to offer.
Posted on November 2, 2006
Tips for a Successful Blog Launch
BY JENNIFER EUBANKS
A successful blog launch is not an inherently simple process. Like most things in life, a new blog only gets one chance at a great first impression. You need to generate enough buzz about your blog to get people to visit, but you also need to ensure that you have all of the proper elements in place to convince readers to come back for more.
In addition to having great content, a directory site called Aviva has created a list of 21 Surefire Tips for a Successful Blog Launch. You may not feel that all of the tips are relevant for your site, but using them as a guide can provide a great starting point for making sure your blog has some visibility.
One great tip is to make sure you don't launch before you have at least 5 blog posts. This may mean that the launch is delayed a bit while you find enough content, but the result will be worth it. One initial post isn't enough to give readers a sense of what your blog is about--having more posts will also increase the chances that you will get linked, as your voice will already be more established.
Making it easy for people to read your great content is another way to help ensure success. You should provide several ways to syndicate your content, including easy to find links to RSS feeds, an opportunity to receive posts via email, and even those trendy social bookmarking icons to make it easy to submit great posts to those sites.
You shouldn't rely on your readers to submit your best posts. If you feel you've provided something that is helpful and informative, you should submit to all the major sites, such as Digg, Del.icio.us, etc.
The article also mentions a topic we've delved into in the past: strategic commenting. The motto here is that you get what you give. If you participate in other conversations and leave a link to your site, the chances are that people interested in that other site might pay you a visit to see what you have to say. Getting traffic that is already like-minded can help boost your readership. However, you should still include a link in places such as your email signature or your Myspace profile--every little bit helps.
I encourage everyone thinking about creating a new blog to check out the article. For those of you with existing blogs, the list provides an opportunity to see if you are taking full advantage of all social and syndicating tools available. If you're not making it easy for people to find you, link to you, or subscribe to you, then you are most likely losing out on reaching a larger audience and your blog is not reaching its full potential.
Posted on September 25, 2006
Distributing News by Feed: Simpler, not Lazier
BY JASON CORMIER
On Sept. 19, I wrote this posting for the Poynter Institute's group weblog E-Media Tidbits (which is read mainly by mainstream media pros) that caused a little stir in the PR field.
See, part of what I do is journalism, so consequently a lot of PR folks unthinkingly add me to their press release e-mail lists. I really, really don't like that. In fact, I routinely flag any unsolicited press release as spam. I strongly prefer to get news by feed, and I subscribe to lots of feeds on the beats I cover.
It's not that I'm closed to new sources. In fact, PR reps for prospective sources can always e-mail me to request permission to send me releases. If I think they're relevant enough, I'll first ask for their feed URL. If they don't offer a feed, then I'll let them send me e-mail only if I think their content truly is on-topic for me.
Not surprisingly, several PR pros were alarmed that I'd flag their precious releases as spam. Tough! It's my inbox, and have no trouble finding good leads from diverse sources.
On Saturday, PR blogger Barbara Iverson picked up on my theme and encouraged PR pros to offer feeds. I appreciate her support in that community.
In the comments to her post, I asked Iverson whether she thinks most PR folks know how to set up a feed, or know enough to ask their tech people to set it up for them. From her reply, I gather that most PR pros probably don't even know what feeds are, let alone how to set them up.
Then she responded with a good question of her own: "Do you think most reporters know about feeds or how to ask for them?"
Here's what I told her, plus more reasons why organizations should publish their news via feed...
Beyond Blogs: Moleskine Goes Where the Conversation Happens
BY JASON CORMIER
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| My Moleskine reporter's notebook -- which is holding up well, despite frequent abuse. |
Moleskine notebooks aren't fancy. In fact, this brand's reputation hinges almost entirely on quality, and on a vocal, dedicated community of customer evangelists -- such as Merlin Mann of the popular productivity site 43 Folders.
Therefore, when sharply worded complaints about Moleskin's quality and service erupted on the 43 Folders Google Groups forum on Aug. 15, Modo & Modo (manufacturer of Moleskine notebooks) had a pretty big problem.
Apparently, some Moleskine notebooks started falling apart after just a few weeks or months of use. Some owners of these defective notebooks tried contacting Moleskine US, but got no response. Later, it turned out that Moleskin US is not the US distributor for this brand. The official US distributor is Kikkerland Design Inc. But in the meantime, these customers believed Moleskine was ignoring them. Not good.
Clued in by e-mails, Moleskine maker Modo & Modo began checking out the online complaints. On Aug. 30, the company posted a sincere apology on its blog. They offered an explanation of their late response: they're a small company, and in Italy everyone's on vacation in August -- not a great answer, but an honest one. They also offered clear instructions on how owners of defective notebooks could get their problem addressed.
Even smarter, Modo & Modo posted the full text of this statement onto the 43 Folders forum where the complaints arose. It's interesting to note that, despite earlier frustrations aired in that forum, all the responses to the company's apology were positive and supportive.
This story demonstrates the importance of three lessons for all organizations who understand how conversational media can help make or break your reputation...
