Listening to a series on building communities around your company, how, why…etc. It’s Chris Brogan presenting and he is a smart guy, does this for a living.

My thoughts after his presentation?

First of all, it seems to me that you’re already part of a community, what you do with it is up to you. It doesn’t matter if you’re a big business or a new start up, you have relationships. You have relationships with your vendors, relationships with your customers, relationships with potential buyers. The relationships are your currency, the connections are the important thing. The importance of community was highlighted by the presentation, but I think one thing he didn’t say, which should be obvious (but so many times is not) was simply that …this is already happening. So whether you choose to participate online, proactively, with an implemented plan and strategy? Well that is up to you.

We’re doing this. We do it with our blog, with our Twitter followers, with our Facebook page, with emails. With phone calls, with meetings, with forums. Platform is not important, the connection is important and maintaining contact is important. Listening. I think the lines being open and maintained with regularity are the main factors in success. Are you listening? how are you listening? Are you customer-focused, or do you have your own agenda? We’re going to encourage you to be like the companies you like and value. How do they treat you?

If you can’t walk into a networking group offline and successfully connect, it might not be a good idea to try it on Twitter.

One thing I loved was Chris’s example of going to someone’s house for dinner, eating till you’re stuffed, having great conversation and then being handed a bill. That would change the entire dynamic of the relationship.  But what if it was a Pampered Chef party? I think that imagery is a great analogy, highlighting the mistakes that I see folks making on social media with their communities and community-building attempts. If you want to sell to them, be up-front about it. There is a way to do that without making people feel used. You invite them to a sales environment. They understand that it is a sales environment and accept the invitation. Otherwise, don’t make it a sales environment. But also remember that ROI doesn’t have to be about dollars, it can be about Influence, about ideas, about information that has a serious value. Also remember that no one like to be used. Celebrate your community members, value them, and use the golden rule.

Okay, so that said… a quick guide to building online communities:

1. Evaluate where you are and where you want to go and what kind of return you want.

Why are you building a community? Do you want more sales? You don’t have to sell directly to community members, you can use the information you learn about your brand/services to improve on your product or service and develop new products. That increases sales. Example? We have asked for critiques from people… just average joes, other designers, some business owners on our site designs and it’s helped us to make changes in how we do things and improve. So we sell more. It doesn’t necessarily mean we sell to the people who we directly interacted with, but their feedback had real value. But this kind of planning …knowing what you want and what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it, that has to happen before you start out.

2. Pick a platform.

You might have multiple platforms, depending on the engagement level of your community. The community has to be seen as a whole. Our community includes the forum members we interact with as well as the Twitter followers, blog subscribers, newsletter subscribers, Facebook “likers.” But they all have different engagement levels and they are all, individually, different relationships and that can’t be dismissed. If you’re just getting started then one or two platforms should be your focus and you need to track what kind of relationships you’re building.

3. Pick your measurement tools

There are a lot of different measurement tools out there and which one you choose will depend on what you want to measure. We use StepRep and Hootsuite and Google Analytics mostly. We have other arcane tools that our Internet Strategist pulls out and makes reports with, but the important thing is to have your goals and then have your measurement tools track your progress to those goals.

4. Listen and adjust

What will happen as you make connections is that you  will have goals change, ideas change, mindsets change. Take time to evaluate regularly and adjust your course. It’s important.

___________

Just some final thoughts. If I were a small business, new to the whole world of social media and learning how to use it, I’d go to some live, in person networking groups a few times and take notes on how interactions flow and get ideas for online networking. I’d practice offline a lot. I’d also listen to (and read) some Zig.

It bears repeating. You’re already part of a community around your company. What you do with it is up to you.

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There are three main basic components to SEO: Link Building, Keywords, and Search Friendly Architecture. Link building happens when people like your content and share the link, link back to it. Keywords should be considered in light of your customer’s place in their buying cycle. They could be doing research, they could have already decided to purchase and be choosing between items or brands, or they could be ready to buy. That will affect the keyword they search on. So your keywords should include broad phrases and words for those doing research, it should include brand phrases or more specific phrases for those in the later stages of their buying cycle.

This is of course, assuming you have a product to sell. If you’re a blogger who just wants traffic in order to sell advertising, your blog becomes the product itself. If you sell a service, you’ll have to think about and adjust your keywords accordingly. Think of your service as a the product. If you’re a blogger? Your topic or area of expertise is going to dictate your keyword choice.

Use Keywords to your Advantage on your Website

Finding keywords should start with brainstorming but not end there. Interview or survey customers or people you know who represent your customers. Don’t ask them for keywords, just talk to them about your product/service/area of expertise but pay attention to the words and phrases they use when they answer you. Review your current web analytics to discover what phrases and topics are garnering the most traffic -with and without conversion- for you now. Conversion might be when someone contacts you, subscribes to your blog, or tweets about you. But it is important to watch for both the content pulling traffic that does not convert and the content that pulls traffic that does convert. Likely there will be both. Here’s the thing, some people…a lot of people… are merely looking for information and have  no intention of making a purchase now or ever. But those people might link back to you or talk about you, which will increase your online visibility and ranking. Also talk to sales and service staff if you have them. Listen to the phrases they use. Review their customer inquiries in their emails.  Lastly, review your competitors content, check out the words and phrases they are using.

What you might find is that your content focus has been in one place …and it needs to shift.

You need to only focus on one or two keywords or key phrases per page. Use them in title tags and title meta tags, headings, paragraph titles, emphasized or bold text, inside anchor tags (links), in your image alt text, and in your meta description tags.  Make yourself a little checklist and go through the pages of your site and make sure those bases are covered. Title tags on each page of your site should be unique. Don’t use more than one H1 tag on a page. Use sentences in your titles, 6-10 words or around 65 characters. If you have thousands of site pages, then you may need to generate the titles dynamically.

When you’re done with that, you want to also work in your social media channels and do the same types of things, especially in anchor tags that link back to your site.

Search Engine Friendly Website Architecture

A search engine reads text. It doesn’t read Flash (doesn’t read it well, Google has started to index Flash and can read xml that is fed into Flash, but text is better) , it doesn’t read images. So if your site navigation is built without text links between pages, this is not optimal.  With CSS you can use images with your text and control how the links are presented (pretty) while still using search-friendly text. Breadcrumb navigation with specific keywords/keyphrases is the most search engine friendly type of navigation. Don’t use AJAX, Flash or Javascript alone, provide alternative text navigation as well. You also need to have text linked within your content to other pages in your site.  Another important web site feature to have is an html or xml site map, this will greatly help you with search engines. This doesn’t have to be a separate page, you can put it in your footer. You can see a great example of a site map style footer here. This can be a great means of providing alternative text navigation if you do use AJAX, javascript, or flash.

Other things to make your site search engine friendly: add new content regularly, make sure  your content is themed logically, make sure your robots.txt file (the file that talks to search engines)  is built correctly.

When you link to any page on your site, make sure you use the exact same structure to link to it. For instance, we own http://www.redtoadmedia.com and http://www.redtoadmedia.net, but when we link to the site, we need to link to http://www.redtoadmedia.com. Not to http://redtoadmedia.com without the www. Or http://redtoadmedia.net without the www. Otherwise, you’re using multiple links (to a search engine) to direct to the same content and you dilute your search engine visibility.

When you do make changes to your web site, make 301 redirects to re-map links to the old pages to your new content.

Link Building

Inbound links from other, relevant and authoritative web sites are a huge part of making your website visible and making it rank higher on search engines. Think of it like this… if an expert talks quotes you or refers to you positively, it makes you credible. It works sort of the same way for a search engine spider, who will regard a highly ranked site as an “expert” and treat that link back to you as an endorsement.

There are people who try to game the system by building what we call “link farms.” In general I think this is a bad idea. I think gaming the system will always cause problems. You want to garner genuine linkbacks. If you get a lot of linkbacks and they all use the same text to link back to you, then it will not have as much impact (it might look like you are gaming the system, or be disregarded as a signature file on a forum for example), so you need to have links that vary in what they say. It is also best to use keywords when you link with your own text (not “click here” ).

How do you get inbound links?

You want to create quality content and then promote it on social networks, link to your own content internally, partner up with others in your industry to link to each other, embed links in emails and news releases and articles, and syndicate your site content via RSS. You can use your profiles on other sites, paid and unpaid directories, conference and association sponsorships, award badges, contests, surveys, wikis, forums, the list is endless. Your link building strategy will really be dictated by your goals and your product.

Want to see what your inbound links look like right now?

Try this tool:

http://ericmiraglia.com/inlink/

You need to manage your link building with software like you would with Customer Relationship Management.  There are many software packages you can use to do this, some are free.

Things to watch for as you measure your website SEO efforts

How many pages are actually indexed by Google and other search engines? Are there any crawling errors? Compare your ranking reports to yourself (and not others) over time. Track your inbound link quantity and quality. Track how long those inbound links stay published. Track keyword traffic. Track social media traffic. Track your goals and conversions (whatever they are).

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Even though every blog and site is different, there are some best practices you can follow to be successful.

1. Big Ideas

Use your blog to talk about ideas and topics that appeal to a wide range of people. If you’re a plumbing parts vendor, blog about home decor. If you’re a spa/salon, blog about beauty or stress management or health tips. If you’re a real estate agent, blog about neighborhoods, city life. If you’re a florist, blog about event planning. The idea is to blog about topics that you are familiar with and are more general, and then you establish your expertise while garnering traffic and drawing people in.

2.  Include Polls for Feedback In Your Sidebar

A lot of people will not post comments on your blog. They might not feel comfortable doing so, but the anonymity of a poll will be something they can interact with, giving you valuable feedback.

3. Use first names when you reply in your comments.

It’s all about connection. These are people, treat them with respect.

4.  Be consistent

Have a blogging schedule. Blogging takes time and has to be scheduled like anything else. An abandoned blog or blog that hasn’t been written in is worse than no blog. If you approach it as something you will do consistently, on your schedule whether it is monthly, biweekly, weekly or daily, then you will be more successful. Things might happen to throw you off of your schedule, so when that happens, start again and blog consistently even when you don’t see traffic or comments. Building a blog takes time. The only way to fail is to quit.

5.  Use the media you are comfortable with.

Blogs don’t have to be written, though they should have at least a paragraph of written text for search engines. However if you feel more comfortable speaking, consider video or audio blogs.

6. Have a formal comment policy on your blog

If you’re worried about negative comments, then be proactive and state your comment policy up front.  It’s okay to moderate comments. But great companies take the time to address problems head-on. A negative comment can be a great opportunity to shine. If you reach out, be respectful and respond to any negative feedback then it can reflect positively.

7. Avoid Banner Blindness

There is such a thing as too much content on a page. Ask your readers what they think after a design change and listen to their responses. Carefully consider the site structure and the way the information is arranged. More important information needs to go closer to the top and simplify, simplify simplify. Consider consulting with a designer even if you’re doing it yourself for ideas on how to make improvements. Remember a blog is never finished, so feel free to make changes and track results, then adjust accordingly.

8. Measure.

You can measure site traffic, comments, number of subscriptions, poll results, link-backs, tweets and retweets. The important thing is that you measure and track the results. Are you measuring? If not, why not? Identify key metrics and start tracking the blog traffic data now, then use the data to refine your processes.

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