It often depends on whom you ask.

Last month, I moderated a panel at SES San Francisco that explored that issue. Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz.org, and Benu Aggarwal, president of Milestone Internet Marketing, made the case for SEO. Arguments for SEO included the great land grab that exists for placement in local, news, blog, video, image, product feeds, and Web results and the opportunity for much better return on investment, based upon how much might be spent on the time/staff/agency necessary for the rollout of SEO. Rand contended that “PPC is easier” (which might lead you to believe that he’s “pro” PPC), but then said “that’s not a competitive advantage”. In other words, anyone can do PPC. It is actually a competitive advantage for people who put effort into a sound SEO strategy, because so many others (competitors) just can’t seem to get their act together.

Thomas Bindl, CEO of Refined Labs GmbH and Melanie Mitchell, SVP, search strategy at Digitas, made the case for PPC (define). They said it offers flexibility in spending, quick results, ability to adjust quickly, less reliance on IT/Web team to modify to the website, full transparency (pretty easy to understand), targeting options, available, and the location of the paid results in relation to organic results, with the influx of universal search and other things taking up the above-the-fold real estate.

Despite these divergent views, participants on the SEO-PPC panel seemed to agree that there are some very good reasons why you should do both. You can learn which keywords are performing from paid search and develop organic strategies to go after these, naturally. Proper optimization of pages leads to better Quality Scores for paid search. You can own as much real estate as possible on the page. You can leave less space for the competition. Then, there’s the 1+1=3 argument, which involves the thought that a presence in both leads to a multiplier effect on the amount of clicks that you can gain.

PPC Versus SEO: An Elusive Balancing Act

Because many companies are now preparing their 2011 marketing budgets, I thought it was a good time to examine what companies may actually be doing.

A look at the SEMPO State of Search Engine Marketing Report – 2010 by eConsultancy) makes one thing clear: search engine optimization is not getting enough attention, focus, and budget.

Here are a few select questions and responses from that survey:

Question: What was your company’s budget for search engine optimization (organic search) in 2009? (Including agency, staff, and technology costs)

Responses:
9 percent said zero
43 percent: $1.00 – $25,000
18 percent: $25,000 – $75,000
13 percent: $75,001 – $150,000
The remaining 16 percent spent anywhere from $150,001 to more than $3 million on search engine optimization, in 2009.

Mind you, this is a SEMPO survey. Nine percent of respondents spent $0.00 (absolutely nothing) on search engine optimization? Not a dime, even when asked to include “agency, staff and technology costs.”

Next question…

Question: What was your company’s budget for paid search (PPC) in 2009? (Including media, agency, staff and technology costs)

Responses:
2 percent said zero
29 percent: $1 – $25,000
17 percent: $25,001 – $75,000
8 percent: $75,001 – $150,000
8 percent: $150,001 – $250,000
7 percent: $250,001 – $500,000
10 percent: $500,000 – $1,000,000
10 percent: $1,000,000 – $3,000,000
4 percent: $3,000,001 – $5,000,000
The remaining 6 percent said they spent anywhere from $5,000,001 to more than $10,000,000 per year on paid search advertising.

What’s interesting about this is that, according to comScore’s paid click report and comScore Marketer search intelligence tool, 92 percent of all clicks are organic and 8 percent of all clicks are via paid search.

Next question (this one really got my goat)…

Question: Spend on search engine optimization by company size (revenue)

Responses:

28 percent of the biggest companies (those with revenues exceeding $1 billion per year) surveyed spent nothing on search engine optimization.

You can imagine how crazy this seems to me. I mean, even if companies were to budget for SEO for strictly reputation management purposes, you would think that there would be some budget allocated to search engine optimization. Judging by what I have seen from some of the largest e-commerce websites, I’m not completely surprised to see this, however. There are many top retailers that blindly funded paid search initiatives without much thought of how they might actually gain some efficiency by spending a little time and money on search engine optimization.

Next question…

Question: Budget for paid search by company size (revenue)

Responses:

0 percent of the biggest companies spent $0.00 on paid search. In fact, only 1 percent of the biggest companies “only” spent $1 to $25,000, in 2009.

The largest spend bracket for the biggest companies, for paid search in 2009, was the $5,000,000 to $10,000,000 per year, with 63 percent of the biggest companies saying that they spent this much in 2009.

Read More at Clickz

Note: this list is a little different from other “how to be popular on Twitter” articles in that I understand hotels need to maintain their brand reputation. Some of the more aggressive tactics used in other industries probably should be avoided.

That said, here are some proven ways you can get more Twitter followers – even if you have none now:

1.Leverage your reputation. You’ll notice most of the top Twitter users are celebrities elsewhere. Bringing their brand to Twitter helped them quickly grow a fanbase in the network. If people recognize your company, simply taking part will cause others to spread your message and grow your influence.

2.Leverage your existing web presence. If you have an existing online profile – large or small – use it to promote your Twitter account. This may be Facebook, your blog, or your main website. Link to your Twitter page and actively encourage people to connect with you there.

3.Tweet regularly. Predictable, regular updates increase the chance people find you. You’ll appear in the public timeline, Twitter searches, and the likelihood of people retweeting your message goes up.

4.Look at the big picture. Talk about things other than just you and your hotel. Depending on your target audience, this could range from business travel tips to art shows in your city.

5.Provide value. Why should people follow you? Have a compelling reason.

Read the rest of the story @ Hotel Marketing Strategies

The Chesterfield Hotel in Mayfair, London is at the top of the table for the 21^st week running now.

Download this list as a PDF here

(List is correct as of 30^th Aug 2010)

The data in this list differs slightly to that of our Facebook list and is ranked according to the hotel’s influence on the twitter verse.

We’ve used twitter.grader.com to rank each hotel on twitter. This clever little app considers many different factors including number of followers, number of followings and number of posts (among many others). This creates a score, enabling each twitter account to be ranked out of all the accounts that have been graded in the twitter network.

It basically gives you an idea of the impact each tweet has.

The grade is out of 100 and represents the percentage of accounts that have less of an impact than yours. For example, a TwitterGrade of 95 means tweets from your account have more of an impact than tweets from 95% of all other graded accounts on twitter. Pretty impressive hey?!

As with all our lists, we’ve done our best to recognise every contender for the list but a few are bound to have slipped through the net. If you think your hotel should be included on the list, please let us know by commenting below, remembering to include your “@” twitter account name.

The list is open to all hotels in the UK.

While social media use has grown dramatically across all age groups, older users have been especially enthusiastic over the past year about embracing new networking tools.  Although email continues to be the primary way that older users maintain contact with friends, families and colleagues, many users now rely on social network platforms to help manage their daily communications—sharing links, photos, videos, news and status updates with a growing network of contacts.

Half (47%) of internet users ages 50-64 and one in four (26%) users age 65 and older now use social networking sites.

Half of online adults ages 50-64 and one in four wired seniors now count themselves among the Facebooking and LinkedIn masses. That’s up from just 25% of online adults ages 50-64 and 13% of those ages 65 and older who reported social networking use one year ago in a survey conducted in April 2009.

Young adult internet users ages 18-29 continue to be the heaviest users of social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, with 86% saying they use the sites. However, over the past year, their growth paled in comparison with the gains made by older users. Between April 2009 and May 2010, internet users ages 50-64 who said they use a social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn grew 88% and those ages 65 and older grew 100% in their adoption of the sites, compared with a growth rate of 13% for those ages 18-29.

One in ten (11%) online adults ages 50-64 and one in twenty (5%) online adults ages 65 and older now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves or see updates about others.

The use of Twitter and other services to share status updates has also grown among older users—most notably among those ages 50-64. While just 5% of users ages 50-64 had used Twitter or another status update service in 2009, 11% now say they use these tools. On a typical day, 6% of online adults ages 50-64 make Twitter a part of their routine, up from the 1% who did so in 2009.

By comparison, social networking sites have gained a much larger foothold in the lives of older Americans over time. One in five (20%) adults ages 50-64 say they use social networking sites on a typical day, up from 10% one year ago. Likewise, 13% of online adults ages 65 and older log on to social networking sites, compared with just 4% who did so in 2009.

Get the rest of the story from Pew Internet

For the 3rd week running the Fitzwilton Hotel, Co. Waterford remains unbeaten at number 1 on the list.

Download the list as a PDF here

(List correct as of 30^th August 2010)

The list is by no means final so if you feel we’ve missed you out, please let us know by commenting below and your hotel/group could appear on next weeks list.

The list is based on the number of fans the Facebook page has and is open to all hotels in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

This list only considers Facebook Pages as opposed to groups and personal profiles.

A Page or a Group, which is better? Well the answer to that depends on you and what works for your business.

Facebook Groups:

1. Set up for more personal interaction, they are highly active and require constant engagement.
2. Connected to the profile of the people who administer them.
3. When you post something as a group administrator, it appears to be coming from you and is attached to your personal profile.
4. Groups are great for organizing on a personal level and for smaller scale interaction around a cause.
5. If the group is under 5,000 members, group admins can send messages to the group members that will appear in their inboxes.
6. Permissions settings make it possible for group admins to restrict access to a group, so that new members have to be approved.
7. Groups can’t host applications.
8. You can advertise your group.

Facebook Pages:

1. Access to a Page, however, can only be restricted by certain ages and locations.
2. Page admins can send updates to fans through the Page, and these updates will appear in the “Updates” section of fans’ inboxes.
3. There is no limit on how many fans you may send an update to, or how many total fans a Page can have.
4. Pages can host applications, so a Page can essentially be more personalized and show more content.
5. Pages can benefit from social ads that publicize the fan connection between a Page and a specific user.
6. Pages are better for brands, businesses, bands, movies, or celebrities who want to interact with their fans or customers without having them connected to a personal account, and have a need to exceed Facebook’s 5,000 friend cap.

Neither Groups nor Pages have great moderation features. If someone posts spam on your Group or your Page, you have to remove it manually, and you can also remove specific members.

So it’s up to you who best suits your business right now and going forward.

Be sure to check back every Monday to see if your hotel has made the list!

Your Blog Is Not Getting Traffic?

Maybe you’ve set up a blog to advertise your business. Maybe you’ve set up a blog to run AdSense and earn money from the search engines. Maybe you just have a message you want to share. Whatever your motivation, your blog needs traffic to achieve those goals, and to do that, you need great content.

Today I will share with you some blog writing tips from my own experience that are pure gold, and will have you building traffic, and repeat visitors, in no time!

1.Get Your Blog Read and Followed

When it comes to the internet, there’s one golden rule that stands head and shoulders above the others: content is king. Although there are other types of content out there that you could post on your blog, that usually means you need to write great blog posts. Here are those sins, and how you can avoid them:

2.Using Jargon or Technical Terms

If you think writing blog posts that require a degree or a post grad in nuclear physics to understand, you’re not going to get a big following. No one cares how smart you are, or how smart you think you are. What they want is concise, interesting, and most importantly, intelligible content. Always write in layman’s terms (unless you are really writing for nuclear physicists – in that case, you’re on your own!)

3.Using Complex, High Brow English

You might be interested to find that the average internet user reads at high school level. That means that that entire high brow English you think is impressive is actually a giant yawn fest. When it comes to the level of language, I follow the K.I.S.S. principle: Keep It Simple Stupid! That way, everyone can read and understand your posts.

4.Writing As If You’re Authoring a Textbook

Blogs are not designed to be highly technical pieces of literature. They’re designed to be chatty – as if you were having a conversation with a friend. Write your blog posts to be funny, interesting and most importantly, as if you were talking to an actual human.

5.Not Using Keywords

Okay, so your blog posts need to be people friendly. That doesn’t mean they can’t be search engine friendly too. A peppering of keywords here and there will help your blog be more visible to search engines. This is especially useful when your blog links to a site, or when you are using AdSense or another service to earn off your blog.

6.Keyword Stuffing

All right, so it seems contradictory, but if you’re going to use keywords as I mentioned before, you can’t just stuff them in everywhere! Slow down! Remember, your posts still have to make sense to actual humans, so save the keywords for places where they actually make sense, and where using them won’t confuse your reader.

7.Long, Unbroken Chunks of Text

People read blogs and other web content to get information. However, when faced with a screen dominated by a solid block of text, it’s very hard for them to follow your train of thought. Use headings, subheadings, bullets and lists to break up the monotony, and make your text easier to scan through. You’ll have far more chance that visitors will actually finish reading your posts!

Read More @ Techipedia

The Travelodge Ireland in Nationwide is at the top of the table once again, Well done!

Download the list as a PDF here

(List is correct as of 27th August 2010)

The data in this list differs slightly to that of our Facebook list and is ranked according to the hotel’s influence on the twitter verse.

We’ve used twitter.grader.com to rank each hotel on twitter. This clever little app considers many different factors including number of followers, number of followings and number of posts (among many others). This creates a score, enabling each twitter account to be ranked out of all the accounts that have been graded in the twitter network.

It basically gives you an idea of the impact each tweet has.

The grade is out of 100 and represents the percentage of accounts that have less of an impact than yours. For example, a Twitter Grade of 95 means tweets from your account has more of an impact than tweets from 95% of all other graded accounts on twitter. Pretty impressive hey?!

As with our Facebook list, we’ve done our best to recognise every contender for the list but a few are bound to have slipped through the net. If you think your hotel should be included on the list, please let us know by commenting below, remembering to include your “@” twitter account name.

The list is open to all hotels in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Be sure to check back each week to see if your hotel has made the list.

That being said, it does provide a new way to communicate with your customers and that is exciting (or terrifying for some). Your desire to be at the center of attention for your niche/industry is understandable. And since we all want instant gratification, there is a tendency to ask the wrong question.

Here are some questions that you should be asking of yourselves and anyone you hire in regards to social media.

1. How can we optimize and improve our existing social media programs?

Wrong question: What’s the hot new trend in social media that we can use for our company?

Use something that you know that works and then expand. Don’t focus on the new and shiny because you don’t know if the ROI is truly there!

2. How can we encourage existing customers to truly engage with our clients on the social Web?

Wrong question: What’s the best way to get the most possible Facebook “likes” and Twitter followers?

Focus on quality rather than quantity. You don’t just want “likes”, you want advocates or fans of your product and service. The numbers will come if you deliver!

3. How can we optimize a video so that prospective customers find it in search results?

Wrong question: How can we make a viral video that gets thousands of views?

There is no guarantee of anything going viral. If you could, don’t you think they all would be? Think of it like hit records…you can’t predict which one is going to bust the charts and which ones will flop. Do something that makes sense and shows up in searches instead. If you get something viral, that is a bonus!

4. How can we integrate email and social media to increase customization and relevancy?

Wrong question: How much money should we be pulling from the email budget, to support social media?

You can’t substitute one for the other and expect dramatic results. In the same maner, social media is a tool, it is not a replacement for your other marketing efforts!

Better question:

5. How can we create content in multiple forms and locations that will demonstrate our expertise?

Wrong question: How can we convince our clients that we’re good at social media?

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Think about the method that ecology employs. They repurpose. Take an article that you created and submitted to the article directories. Make a blog post from that same info. Repurpose that into a powerpoint presentation that you can put on SlideShare or some other application. Then take that presentation and turn it into a video and also a podcast.

6. How can we distribute social media knowledge across the entire firm, including ongoing training and knowledge sharing?

Wrong question: How can we find a social media guru to add to our team?

There aren’t any “guru’s”. There are folks who are really good at what they do and have certain things they do better. No one knows it all. Your better bet is to have an objective and make sure as you want to implement it that word doesn’t just trickle down to everyone in the organization. Keep everyone in the loop and spend time training/informing on what you are doing and what you are trying to accomplish!

Read more at Social Media Dudes

Despite recent improvements, Facebook’s  in-site search doesn’t necessarily offer the best way to see such data. However, there are various services that provide a dedicated way to either search Facebook’s 500 million-strong data stream (at least what’s made public), or see what’s “trending” on the site in a way that’s similar to Twitter.

While we can’t overlook the fact that search engines like Google and Bing have begun offering “social search,” we think the five services listed below offer a more useful way to find out what people are saying about a particular topic, or even find out what’s being “Liked” in your social circle.

1. Kurrently

Kurrently is a dedicated search engine for both Twitter and Facebook, but you can narrow down the options to see results from one service or the other.

Kurrently’s great selling point is that the search results continue to refresh after you’ve looked up a word or phrase, so you can experience the kind of auto-updating hashtag search we’re already familiar with on Twitter.

Kurrently’s programmer Gilbert Leung said he started the site because he wanted to get a sense of the global sentiment on a certain issue.

“Twitter Search was the obvious tool at the time,” says Leung, “but my immediate question was, ‘What about Facebook?’ Why am I searching through a community of around 60 million when a network of around 500 million exists?’”

2. It’s Trending

Right now It’s Trending offers a non-searchable, real-time feed of the most shared content across Facebook, which is useful for anyone who wants a snapshot glimpse of the social web’s current zeitgeist in an incredibly simple and uncomplicated way.

Giving you a new way to see hot topics across categories (video, news, sports, tech, gaming, comedy, etc) and across popular sites (Cracked, YouTube, Vimeo , DailyMotion, TechCrunch, Huffington Post, NY Times, CNN and yes, Mashable ) it’s a good-looking service that has big plans for the future — so definitely one to watch.

3. Openbook

While many of you may already be familiar with Openbook, it’s worthy of a place on this list for how simple it is to search, or see what others are searching for.

Also worth mentioning for marketeers or researchers is Openbook’s unique ability to see search results from just male or female Facebookers — something that’s an incredibly useful tool if you need to narrow down data on a gender basis.

4. Booshaka

Recent startup Booshaka offers a real-time look at what’s trending on Facebook based on open search keywords, as well as via topic if you’re interested in more a general browse.

Main channel topics include news, music, sports, politics, gossip, TV, fashion, movies, deals, travel, brands and games (with each broken down into further sub-topics). Clicking on one of these will give you a stream of updates from relevant accounts.

Once you’ve carried out a topic search, you can see how many “Likes” and comments a Facebook post has received, and narrow down the results by what’s trending now, what’s most popular, what’s most recent, and what has the biggest “buzz.”

These further options could potentially help identify up-and-coming trends, as well as find out what folks are saying about established ones.

Read more @ Mashable.Com

The answer is BOTH! Having hundreds of thousands of followers must be nice. But we all know that the depth of the relationships you maintain with your tweeple is paramount.

This article will reveal five great Twitter tools that will help you find and engage with quality Twitter followers.

Notice I mentioned “depth.” However, there must be another side to this coin. The reach. And if you want to have “reach” on Twitter (getting 10+ retweets, for example) on regular basis, chances are you will need a large number of followers.

This article will focus on getting you those numbers.

Specifically, I want to explore how to generate new followers, how to manage your newly found follower surplus and how to turn those shallow relationships into deeper ones using the top 5 most indispensable Twitter tools.

1. Blast Follow

Blast Follow is indispensable for finding people in your niche (and beyond) and mass-following them with a single click.

How does this help YOU gain more followers? Because of the Law of Reciprocity.

Take advantage of Twitter’s “Law of Reciprocity” nature and blast follow hundreds of tweeple with a single click and get followed in kind.

The law of reciprocity is a basic mammalian urge. When apes groom each other, they are engaging in the Law of Reciprocity. In fact, if you take a trip to your local zoo, you will notice that the most social apes are the best-groomed as well.

I will go as far as to say that the reason Twitter is so popular is because the human urge to reciprocate is such a strong driving force behind our actions.

Twitter is a Law of Reciprocity platform. You follow me; it’s only fair that I follow you back.

Most social media experts (Chris Brogan , Guy Kawasaki) recommend a mutual-follow policy.

Note: Chris has changed his own policy due to spam, but the basic idea for the rest of us still stands.

Here is a nifty list of Twitter superstars who WILL follow you back.

2. Tweepi

Tweepi allows you to unfollow those who do not reciprocate.

Easily shake off the deadbeats. Tweepi enables you to unfollow those who do not follow you back, 40 deadbeats at a time.

The only thing I would add is to be careful not to unfollow someone you would prefer to continue to follow.

Why would you want to follow someone who doesn’t follow you back? One reason could be that their tweets are super-interesting.

The overall strategy for using Blast Follow and Tweepi is to blast follow 100-200 people today and give them a week or so to follow back. If they don’t reciprocate, clean them out with Tweepi. Then repeat.

OK. What’s next?

3. twAitter

I hope that I don’t have to sell you on the notion of maintaining a presence on Twitter. One tool that is indispensable in maintaining a presence is twAitter, which allows you to schedule your tweets in advance.

Now, that’s not all that amazing on its own. Many tools allow you to schedule your tweets. Social Oomph comes to mind.

twAitter will soon be renamed to Gremln; the ability to schedule, rotate and repeat your tweets will remain unchanged.

twAitter is unique in that it allows us to rotate and repeat our tweets. Social Oomph allows for a similar functionality (and a lot more), but it’s a premium service for which you’d have to pay. twAitter, on the other hand, is free.

Why would you want to repeat your tweets?

Twitter is a drive-by platform. Most people login for 10-20 minutes at a time and unless they see your tweet in that time, chances are they will never see it. Unless you repeat yourself.

Don’t abuse this awesome power.

Guy Kawasaki repeats his tweets four times with at least several hours in between. I repeat my tweets every few days but do not limit myself to four.

Read More at Social Media Examiner