Altitude’s Weekly Round-up (August 26, 2011)

Every week I spend a considerable amount of time reading industry blogs and newsletters to keep up with all of the evolutions and revolutions in online marketing and technology. The purpose: to generate new ideas and recommendations for our clients—and for you, our faithful readers.

SEO

Optimizing Your Google Places Listing in 10 Steps

More shoppers than ever before are discovering new businesses through Google Places, and in many industries a well-conceived, highly rated Google Places profile is critical to attracting these prospects. This post centers on the absolute best practices of Google Places page creation and optimization, fully organizing their strategy into 10 steps any marketer can start taking right away. (Search Engine People) August 18, 2011.

Bing’s 18 SEO Fundamentals

The Bing-Yahoo mystery is slowly being dispelled, and savvy marketers are taking notes from one of the new major players in the search engine arena. Released just recently, this list of 18 organic search fundamentals is designed to enable websites of every kind rank competitively in the Bing habitat – a place that is now starting to enter serious discussions about search marketing in organizations across the world. (Search Engine Journal) August 23, 2011.

8 Ways PPC & SEO Work Better Together

Although PPC and SEO are often seen to occupy two diametrical poles of the search marketing spectrum, this couldn’t be farther from the truth; search marketing specialists have always been coupling both strategies to drive the ultimate search goal – visibility – and they’re not going to stop now. Learn the 8 reasons why paid search and organic search can happily coexist, so you can have a fuller, more effective search portfolio today. (SEOMoz) August 24, 2011.

How to Drive Leads Through PPC

Your PPC campaign is likely one of the most poorly funded ones in your search portfolio, so why not make every dollar matter by having your strategies work harder and smarter? This post introduces several methods for attracting qualified leads through your paid search ads with a velocity your CMO can only be proud of, so you can contribute to bottom-line business growth and earn top-level recognition. (RKGBlog) August 23, 2011.

Social Media

Social Marketing Starts With Listening

Listening is a skill we learned at an early age. And it’s a skill we should embrace in the corporate world when engaging in social media (engaging being the operative word). (Forbes) August 25, 2011.

How to Combine QR Codes With the Power of Facebook

Are you looking to leverage the popularity of QR (Quick Response) codes with the wide-spread adoption of Facebook? Over the past several months, QR codes have inserted themselves squarely into digital media conversation (even appearing on late-night TV). This article starts by walking you through the process and an example campaign, and concludes with an analytical discussion examining five need-to-know success factors. (Social Media Examiner) August 18, 2011.

The Path to Co-Creating a Social Business: The Early Adoption Phase

The figures vary but in the last several years a major change has begun in organizations around the world. Sometimes the efforts are small and unsanctioned, sometimes they are big and bold, but increasingly businesses are employing social media strategically to engage deeply with both their workers and customers. The challenge is turning formal and informal efforts into a well-oiled machine. This article describes how to do that. (Dachis Group) August 18, 2011.

Four Things Mark Zuckerberg Should Tell Every CMO

The team at Syncapse dug deep into Facebook data to paint a picture of the future, given today’s marketing practices on Facebook. After hundreds of hours, several cases of energy drinks and an in-depth review of the 300 top brand pages on Facebook, the picture was clear. If marketers don’t get better, they will fail to capture the value of social media marketing. (AdAge) August 18, 2011.

Highlights from the Army’s Social Media Handbook

The United States Army just released the second edition of their Social Media Handbook. Its 48-pages of detailed information include everything from instructions on how to start a blog to what not to tweet. The tips in the handbook essentially fall into one of two categories. The first category is made up of pretty useful social media tips that apply to everyone; the second comprises of quasi-cryptic instructions on how not to embarrass the Army or get someone killed because of a tweet. There’s a ton of great advice here. (The Atlantic Wire) August 24, 2011.

Master the Delicate Art of Social Media Etiquette

Social-media users need to learn to mind their manners, writes comedian Nick Kroll. That means no non-ironic LOLing, no RIP tweets for dead celebrities, and no over-sharing. “Don’t give me constant updates of where you are eating or shopping. The only person who cares about that is your stalker, and the real joy for him is the hunt,” Kroll warns. (Details) August 24, 2011.