WordPress and Typepad both have their merits.  We at Raidious choose to work with WordPress because it allows us complete control over the design and coding of the platform.  This ensures that we have access to make any changes necessary to allow for scaling and flexibility of the blog.  Another major perk is that the code lives on our server, we own it, and can do anything we like with it.

Typepad is a great option if you don’t need as much control over your blog.  If you just want to pick a design and start writing, then this may be the way to go.

Below, I will go into more detail on some of the key differences between these two platforms.

When comparing these two platforms, the power of crowd-sourced development cannot be ignored. When thousands of minds are all actively helping drive development, you end up with a quality product.  Typepad is great for entry-level bloggers, but when it’s time to step up and build powerful, solid, and secure platform, we recommend WordPress.

In the past, digital marketing was all about “eyeballs,” making your website “sticky,” and drawing tons of traffic to your site. In today’s real-time, two-way distributed digital media environment, the notion of getting people in your front door and keeping them there is as dead as Dillinger.

The fact remains, however, that if you’re engaging in ecommerce you still need to attract users to your site and turn them into customers. So how do we do it?

It may seem illogical, but pushing your content–or rather, links to your content–out to as many sources as possible is the answer. Backlinking is one of the most fundamental components of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and now thanks to social media it can be one of the easiest.

Backlinking is, quite simply, putting descriptive links back to your website from somewhere else on the web. One heavily weighed factor in search is the quality of backlinks, meaning (among other things) that the site where the backlinks reside should be relevant, and the link should resolve on a relevant page on your site.

While there are still online directories, the link farming days of the past are long gone. Now, however, with so much emphasis on the social sharing of content it is possible to sow the seeds of your own link farm all over the fertile grounds of the web.

The Social Media Effect - click to enlarge

The smart folks at Social Reflexion created the infographic illustrating “The Social Media Effect” shown here in this post. Although it’s now dated due to the inclusion of Digg, the process and concept are still relevant.

The infographic shows the flow from initial content creation through Twitter and Facebook sharing to other blogs responding to your topic. Each of these steps along the path creates a link back to the original piece of content–yours.

Given that search engines index Twitter and Facebook, as well as the rest of the web, when shared properly and extensively your content unit has the potential not only to reach millions of potential visitors via the shared links but also to climb in search ranking. As Google, Bing, and other search engines index the web, they take into account the number of links back to a site or piece of content. If these links are reputable, your page’s ranking will increase.

If one major blog like Salon, The Huffington Post or Social Media Today (just to name a few) publishes a piece based on your content and includes a link, your ranking will climb even further. Your content is essentially being vetted for search engines by humans.

What this all means is that it’s absolutely essential to proactively share links to your content via social networking sites and platforms. The more interesting, relevant and valuable the content, the more likely it is to be shared by others, each with their own extent of reach and influence. The more quality backlinks that are created via these means, the more valuable your content will be in search.

When it comes to content strategy, you’ve heard them all before. You know, the “lines,” the “buzzwords,” that kind of stuff related to us social media nerds.

Examples?  “Content is King,” “You must be ‘engaging’ your customers,” blah, blah, blah.  As a matter of fact, I’m sure I’ve used lines like this before in my presentation of new media marketing and search engine optimization.

But the reality is that content isn’t king, and who really writes the rules of engagement anyway?

Raidious is a content builder, strategy creator–all things online in one stop. But we’ll get to that in another post. For this one, I want to focus on making … creating.

What’s really so important about creating new stuff for your brand anyway? (Great question!)

There are hundreds of thousands of brands out there. I don’t have a percentage, but I think it’s safe to guess that probably ¾ of them have websites. I mean I’ve seen hundreds of websites…some good, some bad, and some downright ugly.

Just because you have a website, doesn’t mean it’s going to get you what you want (and what you want–or should want–is brand loyalty and sales … just in case you were wondering).

A static site is not going to get that for you. What I mean by static site is one that gives you a whole lot of information. One that sells, sells, sells! But most importantly, one that never changes.  Like, “Here’s our site that we created two years ago. It’s had the exact same thing on it for two years!”

I’m not a huge SEO (search engine optimization) girl. I understand it enough to work with it, but I just don’t know the crazy google-ish science behind it.

What I do know, is that a strategy that prioritizes creating new, helpful, clear, and understandable content on a regular basis not only helps with SEO, but also helps your clients and customers.

So, yes, content creation is certainly important, but just as important as regularity. So, get out there and make, create, dominate.

Got a great email from eMarketer this morning on one of our favorite topics:

Blending Paid, Owned and Earned Media for Branding from eMarketer.

The first concept: Owned Media. It does a really good job of explaining the difference between earned media (what ad agencies do), paid media (what PR firms do) and owned media (what Raidious does). I wrote a post on this last year, and Forrester Research has covered the subject as well.

There were a couple of other topics the eMarketer research addressed as well that are important concepts. These seem to come up regularly in “shop talk” around the office.

The second concept is the concept of paying your marketing firm to accomplish an objective, rather than paying for production deliverables, like an ad or a press release. This is how we price our services at Raidious (we call them “initiatives”, not to be confused with “campaigns”). We think it’s an idea whose time has come.

The last concept is something we run into regularly (really two concepts) – direct response vs. brand oriented mindsets on the client side.

In our experience, the client-side marketing universe is divided into two camps, neither of which really understand the other very well: The Direct Marketer, usually an eCommerce / lead-driven mindset, and The Brand Marketer, someone who is more focused on what some people would call “soft” metrics, like preference, awareness, and other measurements of hearts and minds.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”  F. Scott Fitzgerald

We take a lot of pride in our understanding of both approaches, and our ability to deliver on objectives from either side of the equation. But, if a genie granted me three wishes, the first would be for world peace, the second for an Audi A8, and the third would be for client side marketers to reconcile these seemingly opposing points of view. They’re both valid, and valuable approaches, but as the eMarketer article points out, they work best when they work together.

Come back and visit our site in the coming weeks, we’ll be exploring all of these ideas. In the mean time, if you’d like to talk to a firm that can help with all of this (owned media, objective driven marketing, direct and brand approaches) . . . give us a call!

Image via Wikipedia

In an interview in Salon, Richard Rosenblatt, founder and chief of Demand Media, defends the company’s content creation approach.

“People want the information and we are providing it,” he said, dismissing charges that Demand-owned sites like EHow are flooding the internet with poorly-produced, unwanted content. This factory approach has been blasted by luminaries such as Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and Richard McManus of ReadWriteWeb (and even little guys like yours truly) as being content farms, leading to the mass production of the lowest common denominator.

This is the same model that has doomed the major label music industry. Demand Media uses search data to drive the content they produce, determining the value of that content by the dollar value of the clicks it will generate. This is much the same model as the music industry has used for decades, deciding what albums will be released and what they will sound like based on what has sold in the past because they “know what kids want.”

I call it The Nickelback Approach to content production.

Regardless of the time and money spent producing content, is your company content to let a third party be the voice of your brand? A third party who has no interest in your reputation, the quality of your products and services, and who leeches visitors and customers from your site to theirs? A third party who will take ownership of content about you and then happily sell you advertising on relevant pages on their sites?

I didn’t think so.

Don’t let content farms like Demand Media sell your own products back to you. Take charge of your online reputation and the money you spend on search engine optimization. Your hard-earned marketing budget should enable your company to take the lead in getting your message out there.

Sure, it will cost you. But wouldn’t you rather get the credit and the conversions that come from being the experts in your field, rather than letting an outsider fence that expertise for their own profit?

Get in the game. Tend your own garden. Get in touch. We’ll help you.

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• Jay Rosen Interviews Demand Media: Are Content Farms “Demonic”? (readwriteweb.com)
• Ad-Driven Content – Is it Crossing The Line? (readwriteweb.com)
• Demand Media May Be Bad for Social Media, but Not for Journalism (poynter.org)

Image via Wikipedia

Search engine optimization is no longer about gaming the system by stuffing loosely related (or completely unrelated) metadata keywords into a site’s header. Search algorithms are finely tuned to prioritize a site’s actual written content over almost all else.

What does this mean? It means that search engines are built to “read” a site as a human would. An outstanding model to follow for web content writing comes from elementary school.

The old “tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them” structure you learned in fourth grade holds true.

The first paragraph of a page or article gives a summary of the entire piece. The body paragraphs contain the relevant information with examples, data, lists, and quotes/testimonials. The final paragraph is a conclusion on what has just been read.

And let’s not forget the importance of proper spelling and grammar; while Google may not care about good spelling, it helps to keep the “search spiders as humans” concept in mind. Would you trust the New York Times if it were full of spelling mistakes?

All too often the job of creating web content is left to web developers, sales managers, or even the secretary. Looking again at the Times, do the Editor in Chief, Ad Sales Manager, or receptionist have a hand in reporting? Or is the job of finely crafting news and editorial content up to the journalists who have expertise in not only their reporting field but also in writing about those topics?

Finally, remember peer reviews? Reading and commenting on other relevant blogs is a great way to not only promote your own site, but also get other folks reading and commenting on yours. Easy-to-understand content will help others in the process of vetting your information by commenting and linking to your site.

So it’s not just important to have great content; putting your site out there for review/comments is a great way to promote and get links.

If your company lacks the resources to hire content producers with an intimate knowledge of the Chicago Manual of Style, at the very least you can remember your elementary school compositions and keep it short, simple, and relevant. You will undoubtedly find your site is rewarded with the A+ grade of increased search ranking.

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• With Quality Content, Article Writing Always Shines Through (ronmedlin.com)

Let’s assume (quite correctly) that content freshness is one factor in search relevance. One of the primary means to ensure content is constantly updated is with a blog.

Okay, now you’ve got your corporate blog. How can it actually make you money?

As the old saying goes, you don’t make money writing checks. Your corporate blog should demonstrate ROI (the bottom line) and increase brand awareness (marketing goal). But how do you get there?

The key here is patience: is your goal spiking short-term traffic or establishing longer-term customer relationships?

If your goal is the latter, the SEO specialist promising to get you to the front page of Google overnight is selling you a bill of goods. Rome wasn’t built in a day, remember?

You are a professional marketer. You know how to market your services, but it’s your product line specialists who can really help your products shine. They can translate their expertise about your company’s products and what they can deliver into an online body of knowledge that will establish you as a respected, trusted authority.

This authority is achieved by writing thoughtful, insightful pieces at least once or twice each week, purposefully building up the amount of quality information about your products in the digital space.

Your job as the marketing expert is to take this information produced by your product specialists and align it with your marketing goals and initiatives. What’s the use of having all this information on your website if it’s inconsistent with what you’re currently trying to say?

Once product specialists have submitted their blog posts, take a crack at editing them. Utilize a list of Google AdWords suggested for that product or service and make sure those key words and phrases appear often in the posts. Use the same language and tone as what’s being used in your current press releases and media buys.

You and your customers know there are many, many sites out there claiming to be experts on any given product or service.

Those that are successful actually provide information and help to current and prospective customers, not just a list of available products.

As your store of information fills out, people will find you and link to you because while you’re definitely trying to sell them something, you are above all else helping them learn. Your blog posts will receive organic incoming links from other posts and Twitter tweets.

And all of these factors will help ensure you are the source of truth in your field. That’s what builds business.