3 little blogging nuggets

Seth Godin, Steve Mann and Jeremiah Owyang on social media for business

Mostly junk but this pseudo-interview provides a few nuggets of wisdom:

• "Research shows prospects who engage in community interaction at the beginning are more likely to convert"
• "It’s about conversation. Don’t be a narcissist."
• "Forrester research: opinion of a friend: 83% trustworthiness. Online review by a blogger: 30%"

12 Tips for Social Media

12 Tips To Creating Social Media Communities

It's another "to do" list of the best ways to birth a social media program. Boiled down, the keys are:

• Goals
• Focus
• Reward
• Freedom
  

This one uses an odd example of a social media site for doctors, but the point illustrates that even the niche-iest of topics can garner success when it comes to the Social Web. Not every community will become gigantic, nor should they expected to be. But the totality of them will move the industry.

Yahoo Local moves over into Search

Yahoo! Reorg: Local Goes to Jeff Weiner

Ya, ok, the news is a few days old, but this blogger has gotten a bit behind in his news. Even so, this change is significant enough to warrant the attention even now. Yahoo decided to put the Local product line into the Search product department. It remains to be seen what that means to the future of Y! Local but it should be interesting. As previously noted, local searches make up a large percentage of total online searches, so the fit may be right. Noted in the previous post, however, is the GM's belief that community and content still are king. Does Search know that?

IYP becoming "more and more of a commodity."

Questions for Frazier Miller, General Manager of Yahoo Local

An interview covering everything from where Frazier thinks the state of being is in the Local Search industry to their new pilot initiatives in hyper-local via community forums. My favorite quote is

"The Citysearches and Internet Yellow Pages I see as being very advertiser driven... optimizing for the advertiser experience. Ourselves and Google are looking very much at this from the search angle."

Inventory searches on the rise

NearbyNow Identifies Top Local Search Trends for 2008

According to a self-promoting blog entry, the volume of all searches that are "local" in purpose is about 30% of the total search market. According to NearbyNow, the growth of search sites that can direct users who are looking for a particular product will finally put IYP into its own league beyond plain old paper-based YP. Will the audience learn to type in "Diesel shoes in Peoria, IL" into the search bar or will they still go hunting by store names? Or more aptly perhaps, how long will the re-training take?

The 5 goals of social media marketing (SMM)

Social Media Marketing Campaigns: How to Set Goals and Define Your Target Market

DoshDosh suggests that there are 5 primary reason to get involved in SMM:

1. Brand awareness
   
2. Reputation management
3. SEO
4. Site traffic generation
5. To drive sales

I suspect the end-goal of all marketing is to drive sales, however. But in this posting the specific goal is to promote a new product release or similar via a trusted blogger in the community.

The post wraps up with this gem: "social media visibility = brand awareness + word of mouth = new customer." Obvious in a way, but worth including in any marketing materials on selling blogging.

SEO v. SMO, the battle rages on

10 Misconceptions Why SEO is Better than SMO Refuted

Among the suggestions from Tad Szewczyk is that SMO should occupy about 95% of time and effort within SEO efforts. In this posting, Tad spells out some common misconceptions about who can be successful in social media, blogging in particular. The general point is that small business can and should participate, whether they do so with humor or do so with utmost seriousness.

Marchex goes blogging (locally)

Marchex to launch local blog network

Following on the heels of the SuperPages launch into the world of blogging (noted previously), Marchex now plans to launch "neighborhood" blogs, starting in Seattle. With its relationship with Yellowpages.com this firmly places blogging into the next wave of Local social media expansion.

3D mapping combined with Local Search

UpNext: Wicked 3D Maps of NYC on Facebook


Take Google Earth, add a dash of local search, and bring in reviews from around the web and you have UpNext. It's plainly in a beta-like mode still, buggy on my own browser before I switched back to IE, and a bit difficult to navigate. But it's cool and fun!