Web Strategy

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.

great insight from GaryV on monetizing your blog / vlog / podcast / etc.

Gary Vaynerchuk sits down today and shows you how he thinks you should approach monetizing your content.

In the end you will realize, as I did, Google AdSense is just the beginning of your online income. Once you expand your horizons, you can make serious strides toward expanding your bottom line.

Now that the idea that RSS and email can and should coexist has taken hold, what can bloggers learn from the email marketing world and use to make RSS to email (even more) worth their while?

A great starter guide for SEO - if you want to start learning, this guide is a great start.

Our Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing. We felt that these areas (like improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and more) would apply to webmasters of all experience levels and sites of all sizes and types. Throughout the guide, we also worked in many illustrations, pitfalls to avoid, and links to other resources that help expand our explanation of the topics. We plan on updating the guide at regular intervals with new optimization suggestions and to keep the technical advice current.

Some of these *really* do work.. I'm testing others on GetANewBrowser.com

Some of these are re-hashed but it's a great review on ways to optimize your website to increase RSS subscribers

Free landing page templates - but most importantly a quick overview on what a landing page is and why you need to use them.

A landing page is a special page created for the express purpose of "converting" website visitors - to get those visitors to take some action such as filling out a lead form or subscribing to a newsletter. If, for instance, you were running an ad campaign to generate leads online, you would point the ad to your landing page, rather than to your home page where the visitor might get lost or frustrated.

In the ever-evolving world of social media, public relations professionals (PR) and journalists have more opportunities than ever to build strong relationships. It serves each of us well to stay up on social media trends-learning faster, easier ways to share information. With that, here are 10 of the best social media tools for PR professionals and journalists:

A great guide on trying to get more user interaction with your blog or website. Comments are the first and easiest way to start a discussion... Discussions with your community are KEY to an effective web strategy.

But even when your blog software hands you all your commenting capabilities, there are other things you can and should do to get people to comment. So here it is: the 7 step guide to getting more comments.

Twitter is a great resource for doing research...

Twitter search for Web Strategy

An intro to Diigo Groups and a call to join Diigo if you haven't yet. Oh.... and join the Web Strategy Group...

If you are a Diigo user (you *have* to be if you do Social Bookmarking) - check out the group I made today - Web Strategy. If you are interested in Web Strategy, Social Media, Internet Marketnig, etc… you are advised to join the group to share great articles and get in on the Web Strategy discussions.

Have you ever tried to look at your website/blog/etc on a mobile phone? If you have you know it generally renders crappy and takes forever to load. This is a great option for WordPress users to make their blogs iPhone friendly... It is the #2 smart phone now - do you want to turn potential readers away?

Simply put, it's a complimentary theme installed as a plugin on your WordPress blog or website that will format your content with this Apple-inspired, full-featured theme when your visitors are using an iPhone or iPod touch.

Good intro into SEO for New Media

Some great insights into SEO for New Media... Excellent thoughts and best practices from some gurus in the space...

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.

A list of great post from Jeremiah Owyang - THE web strategist

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.