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With communities in the driver seat over product, a shift will happen as communities can define the spec of future products and therefore multiple brands will bid for their business. As a result, we should expect the agency model to flip over, where PR agencies start to represent communities of customers -rather than brands.

Barry makes two great points in this post you should look at if you are looking to develop a web strategy for your business.. He makes two great points that are very important for businesses to realize when crafting a social media or community building strategy. If you can engage an audience around your brand by providing them content where and how they want it - you will succeed online and see real conversions - whether it is leads or sales.

With more and more people flocking to social media sites, it is important that your audience can engage with your brand through as many channels as possible.

A couple insights to future Google additions to their ranking algorithm: brands as noise filters and relationship awareness. Exciting stuff....

If you ask Matt Cutts what big SEO changes are coming up he will tell you "make great content" and so on...never wanting to reveal the weaknesses of their search algorithms. Eric Schmidt, on the other hand, is frequently talking to media and investors with intent of pushing Google's agendas and all the exciting stuff that is coming out. In the last 6 months Mr. Schmidt has made a couple quotes that smart SEOs should incorporate into their optimization strategies - one on brands [15], and another on word relationships [16

A great tool to build social media press releases

PitchEngine shakes up the PR industry making it possible for PR pros, brands, and agencies to build and share digital, social media releases with their contacts for free. Our PitchEngine SMR takes the press release to the next level, eliminating the need for antiquated email attachments, word documents, image CDs, and more. Upgrade to a customized newsroom for your brand or client and we'll host a full archive of your PitchEngine SMRs for your corporate website and share them with our database of media users. Save money, save time, and step up your PR to the next generation with PitchEngine.

Start with goals for well defined outcomes

Measuring the effect of SEO for Public Relations benefits should start with well defined outcomes. To get a good handle on SEO effectiveness, it's important to match the purpose for the effort with specific metrics. For example, if improving brand visibility is a goal, then documenting brand mentions in connection with news & PR content at regular intervals can demonstrate the effect of content promotion and link building.

There's something very straight-forward about Google's branding. It doesn't complicate the experience with flowery user design or site mascots. It offers exactly the type of experience you'd expect to receive from a company that showcases its name in mostly primary colors. However, when Google announced today's additions to the "Google Services for Websites" suite, it took us a minute to remember what the company blog post was referencing. In a world where even browser names conjure images of animals or finely tuned cars, the company's simply named "Google Services for Websites" is extremely useful but often easy to forget.

There's something very straight-forward about Google's branding. It doesn't complicate the experience with flowery user design or site mascots. It offers exactly the type of experience you'd expect to receive from a company that showcases its name in mostly primary colors. However, when Google announced today's additions to the "Google Services for Websites" suite, it took us a minute to remember what the company blog post was referencing. In a world where even browser names conjure images of animals or finely tuned cars, the company's simply named "Google Services for Websites" is extremely useful but often easy to forget.

Social Monitoring Tools, Keyword Targeting, Noise Elimination, Refined Mentions, Analysis, Take Action... The Social Media Monitoring Funnel is a great guide

The following is a guide to social media monitoring. Before I get into the nuts and bolts of the article, I want to emphasize that each company needs its own strategic thought and implementation - and that no two companies should have identical forms of monitoring. Each brand is different, each website is different, and where people talk about your company and what is being said is going to vary. With that in mind, I present to you the Social Media Monitoring Funnel.

You typically have to create some number of social interactions to leave the trail of signals of quality to make Google want to trust a site enough to put it in front of a large traffic stream, especially if you are starting a brand new site and are trying to operate within Google's guidelines. As Bob Massa says "search engines follow people."

There are two points in this post that I want to emphasize... First off SEO is an ongoing process. There isn't a magic trick that pushes your site to the top of rankings. It takes work.. Rinse & Repeat. Analyze & Tweak. Secondly there is a great point that if you hire an SEO expert you will get your site in front of the thousand other relevant people in your niche. This is very hard and takes a lot of work. So, you should create Outposts. Creating outposts is part of a content marketing strategy where you distribute your content among various networks to build up multiple sources of traffic... Great quote from Bob Massa explains it perfect!

Situation: You run a social media program at a corporation, and you need to measure to improve your program, but more importantly to show to your bosses that this 'new media' program is worth it's weight. Challenges: You see the immediate value of a community program but your management is unconvinced. Furthermore, the brand police and the traditional hard-liners don't like your 'open-thinking' type of revolt. There may be other challenges too: lots of activity but few people, or you simply don't know where to start. Goals Deliver a report that demonstrates the value of a social media program as well as helps you improve the program over time.

Great overview on how to measure the social media aspect of your business's web strategy...

How Wal-Mart got social media wrong and how they fixed it

Rather than forcing the message with their own branded community, fake blogs, and corporate blogs, Walmart gets it right by creating a platform for customers and pundits to tell their story

Andy, you may want to add the tag "groundswell" to your bookmark.

Great rundown of social media and new media success in 2008

2008 was a newsworthy - albeit, topsy-turvy - year for marketers and researchers. Importantly, social media evolved from experimental sideline to a mainstream attraction. Twitter saw huge growth rates, Barack Obama rewrote the rules of digital marketing, and user-engagement, and "service is marketing" Zappos.com re-wrote new rules for building brands and rewiring e-commerce. Facebook trended upward, MySpace held steady, and reputation-broker Wikipedia continued marching to the top of Google search results.

It's fantastic that interest in social media is so high, but I'm alarmed at the number of brands and agencies that are ready to jump into social media to take "advantage" of audience concentration in Facebook, Twitter, and other fast-growth outposts. What's lacking in most social media programs is an actual strategy. If you don't know precisely why you're in social media, with whom you want to engage, and how you're going to measure success, you're not ready to start.

You're responsible for the direction of your online strategies for your company or organization, specifically using social media and computing tools to reach, connect, and build communities around your brand. Most folks at your company know this space is important, but don't know how to do it, they are relying on your expertise to think holistically, integrated, and strategically.

The influence of search visibility as well as word of mouth on social media sites (the social web) is too significant for companies with any kind of brand equity to ignore. Lucky for readers of this blog or those you pass it on to, there are two upcoming opportunities to learn in depth about how to tackle online reputation management.

For years the Public Relations industry has ironically one of the worst reputations -esp since they are hired to look after the reputations of their own clients. Things only got worse as some brands got punk'd; the introduction of self-publishing tools that allowed anyone to connect to each other using social technologies, causing a shift in power. We've already talked to death about the risks and the changes that are happening to this industry, yet I'm hoping to elevate the viewpoint out of the gutter and focus on the larger opportunities -and risks at the industry level.

An example of bad email marketing...

Let's start with the subject… They used the horribly generic "Newsletter" in their subject. What most people don't realize is the easiest way to fail at email marketing is to use generic, non-descriptive subjects in their emails. A subject must be compelling, brief, and indicate the content of the message. This fails at all three and it doesn't even indicate a brand. This will be passed up in most users' inbox.

Search for a brand and see it's online popularity

ORM is the process of following online references to a brand, company, person or service while having a plan in place to deal with any negative feedback. You can think of it as a three-step process, although they may not always occur in this order:

From time to time you'll probably want to send a website visitor who tries to access a page that has moved, been deleted, etc to a brand spanking new page of which quite possibly will have the content they were looking for. In this article I'll introduce you to the 301 re-direct, show you how to create one, and you'll see why sometimes just depending on the 404 page isn't practical. I'll also show you various methods to create one by using PHP, ASP, and HTML.