Gone are the days of writing content specifically targeted at search engines. The mantra “Content is King” has officially been replaced with “Relevant Content is Godly.”  Relevance is extremely important these days because focus has shifted from creating content that search engines understand to creating content that results in high-quality end-user experiences.  Engines have their secret sauce, but it has become abundantly clear that search engine algorithm changes are now increasingly prioritizing great end-user experience.

What does that mean to content creators?

Search engines also use web analytics. They can measure inferred and direct user interaction with your website and their search results pages. For example:

• Engines can infer user experience by measuring bounce rate:
  If a user clicks on a link to your site and eventually comes back to the same results page to visit another link, the engine may use that information to either favor or hinder your website’s rank in future results pages for that specific keyword.
• Engines can infer user experience by measuring search refinement rate:
  If a user isn’t sure of what they should be searching for to get relevant results, they may test different keywords.  If a search user clicks on a link to your website but comes back to the search engine and refines the keywords they used, that may affect the positioning of your site for the original keyword, and the follow-up query as well.
• Engines can even directly measure user interaction on your site:
  Many browsers support toolbars, some built-in and some as add-ons.  If users don’t opt-out of “anonymous usage statistics,” these toolbars can feed metrics back to search engines for potentially all web pages visited by an end-user.

Remember how I said “gone are the days of writing for search engines”?  It’s true.  Search engines can sniff out a bad egg; there are hordes of people that try to game the system . So, when you’re designing websites and crafting web copy, make sure you are designing and authoring for great end-user experience that’s relevant to search queries you want that content to rank for.

The inaugural #smmeasure weekly Twitter chat took place on Thursday, July 29 and it was a blazing success!  There were almost 400 tweets, over 80 unique contributors and #smmeasure made it to the top of the trending list in Toronto according to trendsmap.com.  I want to thank everyone who participated and helped spread the word.  A big thanks to Sysomos’ Community Manager Sheldon Levine @sysomos for co-hosting the chat.

#smmeasure chat #1 recap

We introduced this chat with high-level questions that spurred lots of debate.  Below is just a small taste of the great conversation we had. A full transcript is also available.

Q1: What are the most important elements to measure in social media?

• @AlexConde: “brand mentions trump bulk followers. Better to have a small number of people actively talking than no one talking”
• @iMediaMichelle: “Social Measurement should ultimately help you make a business decision that provides value back to cust, cmty and ur biz”
• @NehalKazim: “it starts with followers and mentions but it goes deeper than that. Our objective is driving people to our content”
• @Marketwire : “Lots say that # of followers/fans don’t count. But it does. It makes the conversation MUCH more interesting.”
• @smmeasure: “Goals come from strategy! RT @theelusivefish: most important elements will stem from your goals ie: there is no one number to rule them all”
• @GetPushing: “search & site metrics/traffic generation, list & follower growth, # of interactions, RTs & favs, link stats via tiny or Bit.ly”

@iMediaMichelle asked a great question about Twitter lists and their relevancy.  We may revisit this topic in the future, but we touched on it, as described in the transcript.

Q2:  What tools do you use to measure social media?

• @ellerich:  “The new %-age format of weekly page updates from facebook is a good topline measurement tool for Official Pages”
• @iMediaMichelle: “scaling measurement requires focused investment. But some of the “freeish” tools can add unique color.”
• @smitty1996:  “Large orgs will likely need and enterprise tool that reaches out. They dont favor open cloud with their metrics”
• @EvolveTom: “use Google Analytics to track referrals, simply monitor activity via search. And our site. Nice to have metrics.”

Interesting articles that were brought up during the chat:

• Brian Solis wrote a fantastic piece on how to measure engagement
• Collin Douma wrote a piece on how to definitively measure social media in rainbows

Check back here every week for #smmeasure announcements and weekly questions.  If you have any questions or specific topics that you would like us to discuss in the future, please tweet @smmeasure or @marketwire.

Join the Social Media Corner LinkedIn Group and Marketwire Facebook page and let’s continue the conversation again next Thursday, 9:00 am PST, 11:00 am CST, 12:00 pm EST.

Until next time,

Nick

If you’ve never written a press release, much less read one, you might not know what a boilerplate is. So let’s take a look at the history, form and function of the boilerplate.

A Little History

In the mid-1800s, “boilerplates” were steel plates used to make steam boilers for ships. Fifty years later, the newspaper industry adopted the word, and its connotation of sturdiness and reusability, to refer to “a unit of writing that can be used over and over without change.”*

The Modern-day Boilerplate

Today, a boilerplate, in reference to news releases, is the last section of the release where you include general company information.  This chunk of text is usually reused for each news release and across other marketing channels so that messaging is consistent despite the type of communication that is being distributed. 

An example of a company boilerplate:

Write Your Own Boilerplate

To see more examples of company boilerplates, visit the Marketwire website and click on any of the recent press releases that were being distributed. If your company does not have a boilerplate in place, here are seven tips to help you write one:

1. Keep the boilerplate to one to two paragraphs max, to make it concise and easily scannable.  Remember, you are able to tell folks much more about your company on an “About Us” corporate web page.
2. Stick to verifiable facts.  Do not make any claims or insert any opinions in your boilerplate. Standard factoids might include: the date the company was founded, office locations, public or private status, etc.  Avoid statements that are open to interpretation.
3. Include a link to your company website.  If you’re submitting a press release, there is a high probability that you have used an anchor text to boost your SEO campaign.  It’s a good idea to insert a full hyperlink to your company website.
4. Consider a positioning statement or an added value statement.  In addition to the usual company facts, including a compelling fact about your organization attracts readers to a section of your press release that is often overlooked.  For example, if you’re a nonprofit organization, include interesting stats on research, volunteer participation, fund-raising or event attendance.  Reporters and media can take these stats and promote your news release even more.
5. Avoid industry jargon.  Just as we recommend avoiding industry jargon in your press release, avoid it in the boilerplate as well.
6. Use relevant keywords.  SEO still matters, whether it’s the first 150 words of a press release or the last 50. Be sure to insert the right keywords so that the boilerplate continues to flow.
7. Keep it up to date.  Once in a while, re-read your boilerplate to make sure it’s accurate and, if it’s not, revise it so that it remains current and factual.

Do you have any additional tips on perfecting a company boilerplate?  Please comment below or Tweet or Facebook me.  Also, feel free to copy and paste your boilerplate (or link your press release) for others to comment and make suggestions.

*Source: Online Etymology Dictionary

I’m excited to announce a new weekly Twitter chat, co-hosted by @marketwire and @sysomos. Inaugural chat starts this Thursday, July 29th.

The details:

Who:

• Nick Shin, social media specialist, Marketwire
• Sheldon Levine, community manager, Sysomos

What:

Social media measurement Twitter chat focusing on social media and analytics.

When:

Weekly one-hour chats every Thursday at 9:00 am PST, 11:00 am CST, 12:00 pm EST

Why:

To initiate ongoing discussions about social media and analytics surrounding it. Hopefully, we’ll all learn a thing or two.

Hashtag:

#smmeasure

This week’s topic:

1. Most important elements to measure in social media
2. Tools to measure social media

How to participate:

• Use hashtag #smmeasure.  I recommend using Tweetchat or Tweetgrid.
• Tweet @smmeasure for topics or questions you’d like discussed or answered.  We’ll take these into consideration for our next chat session!
• Please tell a friend to tell a friend.

I hope to see you there!

Ask Craig Newmark to describe what he does, and he’ll respond with the most humble of answers: “I do customer service for a living.” Even his business card lists his title as simply “customer service rep” — oh, and on the same line, given the same level of prominence, “& founder.”

We sat down with Craigslist’s philanthropic entrepreneur this week in San Francisco as part of Marketwire’s ongoing media relations efforts (although I must admit this particular visit proved to be among my favorites).  What we learned from Craig further underscored what really matters: A company can make a difference and still make a profit by always striving to do the right thing. Putting the customer first and asking “what’s the right thing to do?” — something Craig Newmark and Marketwire have in common.

As Craig sees it, this decade is pivotal with a rebalance of power shifting to the people. “Trusted social networks win,” he said. Which is why it’s so important for all of us to listen to the conversations being had and to engage with those communities. Marketwire’s acquisition of Sysomos offers a powerful tech tool for doing just that and more, and we’re thrilled that Craig’s interested in giving it a spin. He, too, is interested in finding out what’s being said about him and the things most important to him.

In addition to Marketwire’s leveraging of the latest technologies to advance the way the world communicates, we’re also interested in social networking…the old-fashioned way. And so we’re equally thrilled to offer our services and to participate in the Craigslist Foundation Bootcamp on Saturday, August 14 at UC Berkeley. With 1,500 people gathering to strengthen their neighborhoods and empower their communities, we encourage more to join us and this remarkable group to discover, engage and to make a positive impact on the future.

This article was recently featured on SearchEngineWatch.com.

Although YouTube isn’t the only option in video distribution, it’s hard to deny that if YouTube was a search engine, it’d be No. 2 in the world behind Google.  A strong argument could be made for producing and optimizing video for SEO results, especially if you think about how much time you devote to content marketing to garner rankings for web pages.  Given the amount of competition on the written web, ranking for video in YouTube may be much easier and — as an added bonus — top spots in YouTube often mean an equally attractive position in Google’s universal search results.

Optimizing YouTube videos for SEO

The YouTube algorithm relies on three signals when ranking your videos within YouTube’s search results:

1. Text in your titles and descriptions.
2. Number of views, and recent trending.
3. Ratings.

Since I’m more of a cat person, I tried searching for “stupid dog” (dog lovers: don’t worry I’m equally allergic to both).  Here are the results:

Surprising results! You’ll notice that the top result for “stupid dog” only has 1.2 million views, and the second place result has over 3.3 million views.  Despite over 8,000 comments, and over 5,000 “likes,” “louisck” can’t catch a break, as trending for their video is relatively flat over the past two years.

Even though “camilamrgh” isn’t sharing their analytics, you don’t really need to know how their trending looks. It’s probably the deciding factor.  We know the following:

• Both videos have short titles, and no mention of “stupid dog” in their description
• louisck’s video has more views
• louisck’s video has more ratings

What’s the deciding factor here?  Obviously, camilamrgh’s video views have been trending higher over the past two years, and earned them the top spot.  Lo and behold, look at the top results for “stupid dog” in Google search:

Some may say this is a terrible example because these videos aren’t optimized at all, but that’s the point.  These videos are poorly optimized, but rank extremely well, even in Google!  Just imagine if the video was optimized for “stupid dog” and any number of other keywords that could be relevant.  Here’s a checklist you can follow to optimize your videos in YouTube:

1. Title text: You have 99 characters to optimize your title text, so consider your target keywords and any other keywords you may want to rank for, but don’t forget including your branding and descriptive text.  If you have little chance of getting that top spot, aim for second to boost views by proxy. Related videos also get lots of views.
2. Description: You have 5,000 characters, which is a lot, so use all that space to write as much about your video as possible.  Since user ratings and views play a factor in your search rankings within YouTube, and therefore Google, make sure to ask for people to rank your video, but also share and embed your video.
3. Tags: Useful for search terms you use in your title text and description, including names and branding.
4. Broadcasting and Sharing Options:
   a.    Privacy: Most marketers may set videos to “Private” while working on them prior to an official launch date or campaign. Just make sure to set them to public when the time comes.
   b.    Comments: It’s up to you whether you want to enable comments or not, just keep in mind: If you disable commenting, users will go elsewhere to talk about your video, your brand or your message.
   c.    Video responses: These help boost views because they are automatically linked to your original.
   d.    Ratings: These have a direct impact on your rankings, so make sure you set this to “yes.”
   e.    Embedding: Blogs and social media shares really boost views and help your message get to new audiences outside of YouTube. It’s a good idea to keep this enabled.
   f.    Syndication: Again, anything to boost your views will help your video rank higher in YouTube and Google, so keep this enabled.
5. Getting views:
   a.    YouTube considers a video “viewed” after eight seconds of runtime, so make sure your video has enough “pull” to get you past that hump.
   b.    Embedding it in your company blog or on product pages can boost video views and encourage discovery.
   c.    Post your videos to your Facebook channel.
   d.    Encourage others to share your video on social media platforms within the video itself by asking people to share it in your video itself and in the description.
   e.    Seed your videos on bookmarking and listing sites.
   f.    Distribute links to your videos in press releases and embed them in social media releases.
   g.    Promote views of your video by buying them through Google Adwords.
   h.    Group your videos into smaller parts and link them all together using playlists.
6. Getting ratings:
   a.    Rank your own video – I’ll never tell.
   b.    Encourage others to rank your video by asking for it within your video, description, etc.

If you don’t have the technical resources, infrastructure or budget to host your own video, YouTube is the best way to get great SEO results for your videos, so make sure you do everything you can to maximize views, ratings and influence.

Optimizing Hosted Video for SEO

Optimizing hosted video is like optimizing video for YouTube.  However, there aren’t hard and fast rules that can be formulated in a handy checklist with specific instructions on fields to use, maximum character counts, and other tidbits of tribal knowledge.  Not much has changed with respect to optimizing hosted videos — it’s a lot like optimizing normal web pages. You have to consider the three main tenants of organic search success:

1. Delivery: Accessibility, geo-gating, speed, video sitemaps, media RSS, multiple formats such as HTML5 vs Flash vs Silverlight, iTunes and iPod/iPad-friendly video types, etc.
2. Content is King: Organization of player code should be as good as a well-optimized web page. Relevance is still important. Use metadata wisely. User experience (especially from organic search) should be paramount.
3. Links: Encourage sharing, allow embedding, watermark your video, submit video to video-specific engines, seed lists and bookmarking sites.

Although video isn’t new to the web, many marketers and businesses fail to make the best use of tools and social networks that will take their video and SEO results to the next level.  If you’re going to invest time and money in boosting your SEO efforts this year, do yourself a favor and consider video in your marketing mix. You’ll be glad you did.

It’s been two weeks since Marketwire acquired Sysomos, and we are off to an amazing start.  The integration of Sysomos’ people and products into the Marketwire mix has caused a major buzz:  Our clients are excited to learn more about social media monitoring and analytics, and are eagerly anticipating one-on-one demos of the MAP and Heartbeat tools.  And our news has made news — take a read:

• Deirdre Breakenridge’s Marketwire Acquired Sysomos: A Discussion with Key Executives
• The Wall Street Journal’s Private Equity Beat blog post Press Releases Aren’t The Only Game In Town For Marketwire
• TechCrunch’s Marketwire Acquires Social Media Monitoring And Analytics Startup Sysomos

We’ve been meeting and greeting our new colleagues offline and online (hello, @40deuce), sharing ideas and laying the groundwork for some truly amazing things to come (don’t worry, we’ll keep you posted).   Speaking of sharing, we’d like to share with our readers a terrific video courtesy of Mark Evans, Can you say Sysomos.  Sysomos is a Greek term meaning “everything together,” and we highly recommend you take a few minutes to watch this video.

As always, stay tuned to the Marketwire blog for more about how Sysomos is bringing true business intelligence to social media, and giving communicators the insight they need to drive their business forward.

One of the trends outlined in Mashable’s “5 Social Media Trends to Watch Right Now” is the increasing surge of companies adopting official social media policies, which run the gamut from short guidelines to jargon-y legal documentation.  As more and more companies embrace the ways in which social media can endear them to their consumers, official documentation just makes sense.

Inc.com lays out some guidelines in “How to Write a Social Media Policy,” which includes the following important tips:

1. A social media policy is crucial for any size business in order to “outline for employees the corporate guidelines or principles of communicating in the online world.”
2. There are two approaches to writing a policy:
   a.    Writing one complete policy that applies across all current social media or
   b.    Writing separate policies on an application by application basis as they become relevant (such as having separate policies for LinkedIn, WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, etc).
3. A policy covers both crisis management (maintaining the company’s image and protecting its confidential information) and brand opportunity (becoming another important arm of the marketing campaign).
4. Identify your company’s “social media evangelists,” those most active within the framework of social media, to collaborate on the policy.
5. Focus on what your employees can do rather than what they can’t or shouldn’t do.

Returning briefly to point #3, it’s important to remember (both from an employee and an employer perspective) that social media consumers often don’t distinguish between a personal and a professional message. So if you’re writing about your company in any social media forum, be sure to add a disclaimer to any message that you post. For example: “The views expressed here are mine alone and not necessarily the views of [insert company name here].”

Additionally, use good judgment and discretion when posting on your personal pages or you might get dooced (fired for posting objectionable content on a personal web page, like the Brixx pizza employee who was let go for insulting a customer on her Facebook wall).

For employers, it is important to note that your employees are a great resource for promoting your business via social networks. Utilize their social media expertise and their reach to maximize your company’s message.

Looking for some examples of other companies’ SM policies?  Check here.  What’s your take on social media policies? Does your company have one?

There’s been some confusion as to what real-time content really is, so let me help clarify: Real-time content happens when there is no delay between the time you type/write and the time you publish. It’s an immediate response to a comment or question. Think Twitter. What is not real-time content are blogs.  A blogger usually ponders, writes, then posts; therefore, the response time is not as immediate or instantaneous.

That said, how is real-time content optimized for search engines? Because of it’s instantaneous nature, is it even possible? Definitely! Here are a few tips to make sure your real-time content is SEO-friendly and searchable:

1. Add keywords to your tweets and updates.  As search engines continue to tweak their algorithms to incorporate real-time content, it’s important to support your updates with keywords.
2. Keep the content relevant.  Nothing beats posting content that is relevant to your audience and chances are, this content will stick around much longer than if you were to just focus on the trending topics.
3. Republish the content.  Take note of how popular or how well received a particular update is and then repurpose it to create a blog post.  Expand the content and republish.
4. Collect your content and post on your blog.  Similar to “republishing content,” take note of the popularity for a group of tweets, then incorporate your collected tweets into your blog.
5. Use hashtags strategically.  If you are going to use hashtags (#) on Twitter, don’t spam your followers by adding a trending topic hashtag at the end of every tweet.  The purpose of a hashtag is to organize your tweets into groups.  If you are posting a link about SEO or involved in a conversation about SEO, then use the hashtag #seo.

Whatever content you publish — whether it’s through Twitter or your blog — you want people to find it, in which case, it should always be SEO-friendly, or searchable on search engines.  It’s safe to presume that posts on your blog will be indexed in search engines as most content management system platforms like Wordpress are built to do just that.

How has real-time content affected the way your company markets?  What are your thoughts on real-time SEO?

I have been to a lot…a lot of networking events/workshops in the DC area, but on June 30th I was a part of the most beneficial event yet: Robust, Readable and Riveting: Writing that Compels in the Age of Now! The event featured Ann Wylie, PR and communications maven, and was presented by the DC Metro chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators, with the help of Johns Hopkins University and Marketwire.

This event was a fantastic learning opportunity and gave me a wealth of knowledge to share with my clients with regards to writing effective press releases.  Ann split the conversation into two sections: How to Think Like a Reader and Cut Through the Clutter.

During Think Like a Reader, Ann explained something that seems so obvious, yet so many people fail when it comes to making the reading experience beneficial for the reader. So, put yourself in the reader’s shoes: What’s In It for Me?  Ann touched on this, and other, strategies that will help you get noticed:

• When you are writing a release, keep the WIIFM strategy in mind, especially for your headline and subhead, for better results.
• Readership and media want to know how your news is going to affect them so focus on that rather than pumping up your own brand.  Give the people what they want and your brand will get the recognition it deserves.

The second part of the event was focused on how to Cut Through the Clutter.  The main point of this section was, again, to make the reading experience more beneficial for the reader by writing content that is easy to digest.  The easier your copy is to read, the more likely it will be read, picked up, blogged about, retweeted, etc…

Ann provided a ton of other useful tips which you can find at www.revupreadership.com. Here are a few more that I liked:

• Get publicity from publications by presenting them with key benefits
• Quantify and specify to get people involved — People must understand exactly how your message will impact them personally.
• Narrow the focus – find what is truly important and focus on that. As Ann said, “No need to write 400 words about grade school. Write about the sandwich.”
• People will read sites that have smaller paragraphs (Pointer Institute)
• 14 words is the average word count for a sentence to be fully understood
• 8 words for a news headline

Special thanks go to Shonali Burke for getting myself and Marketwire involved in such a fantastic event.

More details on the event can be found at: Waxing Unlyrical, Capitol-Cast. For additional writing tips, check out other posts on the Marketwire blog:

• Keeping up with the latest buzzwords
• How to write a feature press release — ideas, tips and tricks
• How to choose target keywords in your press releases in 4 easy steps

Pictured above, left to write: Ann Wylie and IABC/DC Metro Chapter President Shonali Burke as well as sponsors Jane Twomey of Johns Hopkins University and Colby Cox of Marketwire.