The Credibility Branding Blog

Leveraging Social Media for Competitive Research

This is great advice from Google Organic Blog in general also offering good specific tactics to perform competitive research. Building credibility means knowing what the competition is doing (and noticing what is working for them and what isn’t). The point of his article is research which is an underused tactic. Read and implement! (This is an excerpt of the full blog.)

Know thy market

Google Organic Blog

Sit back and ask yourself the following question;

How well do I know my market?

Hmmm, this is something that most will say they know very well, but do you really know it?

There was a time when I though I knew my market well. However after a few months I quickly realized that I was dead wrong.

Do you really know who your competitors are?

I have the luxury of reviewing current and future competitors because I also maintain a fairly good sized affiliate program. So knowing that I have the ability to review these sites regularly, I also have an advantage because I can do some competitive research on them.

Researching competition is VITAL. You have to know what they are doing, take what they are doing and see if it is working for them. If it is working for them, is it something that you are willing to take a risk on? If not, is there anything they are NOT doing that you could be to counter that? (*cough GET SOCIAL)

How can you quickly know what they are targeting?

Watch this and this for starters.

Keyword research

Ok, this is something that most already do, but how well you do it might need tweaking. Going after big money keywords is a great thing if you have a strong enough site with the right copy, but lets face it, not all sites were created equally and only THREE websites really matter organically, so if you place a huge emphasis on the best paying organic keyword and are not on page one, forget about it for a while and start looking for other keywords, like long tails.

Any natural web site is going to rank somewhere for something, knowing where you rank is important not only for the “Viagra” of your niche, but those long tail searches can be just as helpful. Not to mention that you should know what your competitors are targeting as well, they probably have some keywords that you never even thought of.

End of Excerpt

Click here for the rest of the post… it goes into some great content about the importance of web statistics

Increase the Credibility of Your Press Release Through Social Media Optimization

This post from Tom Foremski over at The New Rules Communications Blog based on a post by Brian Solis "Everything you needed to (or should) know about social media news releases."

Brian Comments: "I offer how to make them work, alternatives for formats, what not to do, why PR should/shouldn't participate, examples, as well as a "greatest hits" of blog posts I've written on the subject"

It really needs any comment from me. It delivers the goods on how and why to do a social media optimized press release. This is the first post I have found that gives a holistic picture of this with multiple examples. Thanks Tom!

Understanding The Social Media Release

By Tom Foremski, The New Rules Communications Blog

I had no idea that I would start such a controversial subject when I wrote "Die! Press Release! Die! Die! Die!" I was asking for a change in the format of the press release by adding URL links, deconstructing it, and labeling/tagging different parts of it for easier assembly of information.

Some of the response to the post was antagonistic, the rest was very positive. Since the publication of the post many people have worked hard to change the format of the press release and bring it into the new media age. Some call it a "social media release."

Brian Solis, principal at FutureWorks PR,  has a written a very good overview of the subject at WebProNews:

...the Social Media Release has been pushed by many influencers, including Tom Foremski’s public outcry for the death of crappy press releases; Todd Defren who offered the first template and remains an authoritative champion; Chris Heuer who helped lead an effort to propose a standard for their construction and distribution; Stowe Boyd who reminds disingenuous, lazy or opportunistic PR people that they’re not invited to participate in Social Media (and rightfully so); Shel Holtz who hosted the original NMRcast, and continues to demonstrate the value of new releases; Shannon Whitley's work to help PR "get it;" and the many others who continue to carry the flag forward.

...The social media release, aka SMR, aka social media press release, aka new media release, aka hrelease, is not a miracle pill to cure the ills of poorly written press releases. It is merely a tool that is most effective when combined with a strategic arsenal of relevant company blog posts, traditional releases, relationships, and an emerging category of press releases that tell a story (written by people for people using SEO to reach them).

There is also a case study: Click through to Read the rest and see a physical example of a press release for Coca Cola's Virtual Coke program plus some other links to relevant sources.