Numbers and statistics are never true by themselves, it always depends on how you interpret them. On the other hand, without numbers you have no idea what’s going on. Thus we have to study statistics and all other data we can get to stay in business.

Here I’ve collected 35 crucial SEO, Twitter & social media statistics for business people to get an overview of what’s going on actually.
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These days it’s hard to keep up with new gimmicks presented by Google. You could spend hours or days just coming to terms with them. Most of these new services and features are in some way connected to social media. Google’s social media strategy seems to be trial and error. Continue Reading »

To be or not to be

A recent statistic has opened my eyes. While I still somehow assumed to be an early adopter of social media in its still early days a Forrester Research study has shown that 80% of US Internet users use social media in one or more ways. While most of them are lurkers which is no surprise a large amount of the people actually contribute in an active manner. Social media in Europe is not as popular yet but the trend is clear.

While pondering the results it dawned on me that most of the businesses I encounter are far behind.
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Over the past two years I collected quite a few PDF and other downloads about social media in general, blogging, social media marketing and SEO.

While blogs offer quick tips and overviews ebooks and white papers have the necessary depth to cover more intricate topics.

Ebooks are particularly apt for the quite abstract concepts of social media marketing and SEO. That’s why I compiled this list of 25 free social media marketing and SEO ebooks, white papers plus other downloads.

These downloads stem from highly respectable sources and are free as agencies and specialists tend to promote themselves showing off their expertise for for free to gain recognition as experts. So this is a win to win situation for the sides, you the reader as well as the authors. Continue Reading »

Recently there is an enormous amount of social media marketing advice floating around the blogosphere. Much of it is repetitive, much is obsolete, much is quite useless for most business owners. It’s simply social media marketing confusion.

Stop it, stop reading all that.

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You don’t have to be a prophet to foresee what’s coming up in 2009 and beyond. Why? Most of the future web trends are already unfolding. For others the foundations are laid by hardware, web infrastructure and the broader economy.

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One of the major issues at the social media panel I was a speaker of has been online reputation management. While I prefer the more proactive ways of reputation building instead of the emergency like reputation crisis management nonetheless most of the businesses not familiar with blogging and social media need basic advice on how to deal with bad press online.

So I decided to collect 8 very simple steps of emergency reputation management. These measures should help in cases where a forum or blog post shows up in the Google top 10 for your product or brand.

Most importantly before we start thinking about fending off a reputation issue we have to agree that we do not want to sweep things under the rug. Many people mistake reputation management for just that. Reputation management is about dealing with negative issues, facing not ignoring them.

1. Discover negative publicity early via simple tools like Google Alerts or Technorati Watchlist.
2. Reply as a representative of your company. Example: “I work at x and we have lots of clients using y with good results.” Do not make these clients up of course.
3. Show that you care. Example: “We have contacted our local dealer to deal with your problems, he should call you shortly.” Contact your local retailer to just do that.
4. Be matter of fact. Example: “This seems to be a serious issue you have. We will do everything to ensure your and other clients satisfaction. Please give us some time to deal with it internally.” Then be quick to deal with it.
5. Offer a refund if the client is too disgruntled already.
6. Offer the publisher a way to test the product or a new version of it if he hasn’t before or the last version failed.
7. Link to other clients or positive cases studies, even within your reply.
8. Contact the publisher directly to research and sort out the issue, do not rely solely on the published part.

While employing these simple measures always remember that you need to address the real underlying issue. Inherently flawed products or services will make others vent their frustration too so make sure you tackle larger issues not one by one but systematically even by discontinuing a product.

Also do not call your lawyers unless this is a evident case of slander. Silencing legitimate bloggers and consumer advocates will backfire manifold. You might end up with lots of negative publicity.