I had the privilege of being the first outside vendor to present at the Arizona Coalition to End Homelessness and Arizona Department of Education conference this week. Governor Janice K. Brewer was the featured speaker at the 16th Annual Statewide Conference on Homelessness, “Growing Home: Nurturing the Present to Cultivate the Future.”

My topic was “Social Media Marketing and Non-Profits – A Winning Combination to Grow Donation and Volunteers.” It was a packed room with non-profits from all over the state interested in using social media for their organizations. The level of participation was very high even though the majority in attendance knew very little about blogs. Surprisingly, about 90% in attendance were not on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.

Some of the interesting points that have the most interest are leveraging Google Maps to show the resources, housing and food shelters and emergency food in Arizona. What surprised me the most is that the homeless and working poor typically have cell phones and even laptop computers. This makes the need for mobile access to resources and maps that much more important. We also discussed the contributor network concept for blogs and the new WordPress author plugin created by Mint Social that fits well for all businesses trying to solve the content problem. Below is the presentation from Monday October 26th. If you are a non-profit  interested in learning how social media marketing and online branding can help connect you with volunteers and donors, please call 602-206-8089 or email us.

SEMrush.com shows you which keywords that your websites rank for and the number of searches done for those keywords per month. This is very valuable information when deciding which pages to optimize on your current site or which keywords to target when developing content.

Why do I care?

The basis of all search engine rankings is keywords. Yes, search engines employ all kinds of technology that is beyond the average person’s comprehension…but it all comes down to words. Search engine users enter keyword phrases into a search engine to find the information they need. You need to find yourself on top for those keywords. Do you know which keywords people are entering and how to choose the most appropriate ones for your website?

Want to Learn More?

Since we are such big fans of the mommy blogger networks, here is a great article from Internet Based Moms on the topic: http://www.internetbasedmoms.com/seo/keyword-research-analysis.html

SamePoint.com is presently tracking millions of conversations, taking place across in more than tens of thousands blogs and social media sites. User-generated discussions are typically not indexed by major search engines, such as Google, as they do not reside on static pages. SamePoint.com converts these discussions into web pages, or permalinks, and organizes them within a tag cloud.

Why Do I Care?

As user-generated conversations and content are becoming the dominant form of online media, consumers and marketers alike are seeking new ways to tap into the dialogue and become part of the conversation. Using a search engine like Samepoint can help you easily monitor conversations going on around your brand, product or service and allows you to inject your thoughts, feelings and solutions into these conversations.

Want to Learn More?

Check out the fresh info: http://samepoint.tumblr.com/

Twitter Counter is an app that shows you how many twitter followers you have and also provides a graph of the growth of your followers over time.

Why do I care?

This data can help to show you how fast your twitter base is growing and what behaviors you were exhibiting at the time to get growth: Tweeting about certain topics, tweeting with more frequency, @replying to your current followers etc.

Want to learn more?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

Google Analytics represents a treasure trove of data for measuring the effectiveness of your web marketing. Use Google Analytics to learn which online marketing initiatives are cost effective and see how visitors actually interact with your site. Make informed site design improvements, drive targeted traffic, and increase your conversions and profits.

Why Do I care?:

Use Google Analytics to learn which online marketing initiatives are cost effective and see how visitors actually interact with your site. Make informed site design improvements, drive targeted traffic, and increase your conversions and profits.

Want to Learn More?

Check out this fresh article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Analytics

Search engines often use the number of backlinks that a website has as one of the most important factors for determining that website’s search engine ranking. In basic link terminology, a backlink is any link received by a web node (web page, directory, website, or top level domain) from another web node.

Why do I care?

Back links are more than a powerful measurement for the status of your SEO strategy. They can prove paramount in helping you monitor your biggest fans and harshest critics. Word of mouth has always been the strongest form of marketing and reputation creation, and links are the new voice of the people.

Want to learn more?

Here is a Wikipedia article all about backlinks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backlinks

Google Page Rank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.

Why Do I care?

Pagerank is the general algorithm of Google which ranks a site on the basis of its back links. In fact the main element of allocating a Pagerank to any webpage is the number of sites linking to the webpage and their own Pagerank value. This can also be taken as a popularly contest between high interest sites. This contributes directly to the overall keyword ranking of your site and, ultimately, the traffic you can bring over time. Pagerank is measure with a scale from 0 to 10—10 being best.

Want to Learn More?

You can read all about Page Rank here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_page_rank

Matt O’Brien explains the 5 basic ways to measure results with social media marketing and online branding.

For those of you that have been in the Internet marketing business for a while, you more or less see social media as another search engine marketing tool that you can pull out of your tool box when needed. Others may not have a search engine marketing tool set and therefore may not have the big picture with social media. However, this does not mean you are not going to look into why there is so much hype around social media and if there a fit for marketing you an/or your business with it.

Let’s start with one of my favorite concepts, getting hired on account of the strength and quality of your network. Interview questions may soon be more like, “how many people are in your LinkedIn network” or a bit more of a stretch is “how many followers do you have on Twitter?” This makes sense today if you are looking to get hired as an online marketing or social media marketer. But the time is coming or may already be here that the strength of your network will make a difference to getting a job, especially if you are in sales. More on this topic, about under being ‘The Hunted’…

So what does this have to do with delivering an ROI with social media? Well, that depends on what your goals are. If you are out of work, social media can help you find a job and this can be a huge ROI for you. Let’s switch gears and talk about businesses. There have been some great articles on social media and ROI and one of my favorite quotes about it by Steven Smith:

“The problem with trying to determine ROI for social media is you are trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable.”

I could not agree more but for some reason companies not in the game and prospects I call on think this is a cute saying but they want to know what results they can expect or they are going to remain on the sidelines. In addition to saying to them, “well the conversation is going on around your brand with or without you” we also say, “let’s work with the number 5”. We see there are 5 basic ways to measure the results with social media marketing and online branding that are specific and measurable:

1. Increase mentions online through publishing of content on multiple online sources and create inbound links to website
2. Improve overall keyword rankings and specifically the top landing pages
3. Increase traffic to website
4. Build an online community through social media marketing
5. Help create inquiries and awareness of the online brand

We can then take each of these 5 benchmarks and set goals that we can measure on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis.

Matt O’Brien is a blog marketing expert and is the founder of Mint Social. To learn more on creating ROI with social media please visit www.MintSocial.com or call 602-206-8089.