From Website Magazine, a short list of very valuable link- and authority-building techniqes:

In the eyes of search engines, it’s both the quality and quantity of recommendations that matter. It’s not about making sure your site is worth a link (it is expected that our sites satisfies even the most critical user), it’s about going out and getting them. That concept understood, let’s look at few basic link building tactics you can (and perhaps should) employ in 2009.

Write and Distribute Press Releases Frequently

You very well might have the next great idea or that next amazing product that everyone needs to have, but if no one knows about it then you’re pretty much spinning your wheels. One way to spread the word is through the use of press releases… In 2009, resolve to send out press releases to your list directly via email or using services such as PRWeb, BusinessWire or PRleap.com.

Become a Guest Blogger

One of the easiest ways to get attention on the Web (regardless of the industry you are in) is to work for free. Now I know that this idea might go against every fiber of your business-savvy being, but the value of doing something (which in itself is extremely valuable) for someone else works and it works well. Guest bloggers have a captive audience and an unmatched opportunity to build a viable relationship with an audience that is not their own. … Identify blogs or email newsletters which you think your message would be valuable to and offer to share your expertise (for free of course) in exchange for a link or even some advertising.

Share Your Insights Through Commenting

One of my favorite down-time activities is writing comments on blogs that I find using the StumbleUpon toolbar… Search the service using individual keywords and couple that effort with comment tracking services such as CoComment for the purpose of measurement. The benefit of course is that you are identified as a participant in the conversation, which positively impacts your future link building prospects.

Do Something Nice

…for example [if] you write a weblog on music like WM’s Senior Editor Mike Phillips; why not consider writing a post on how to give back to music charities – someone will notice and grant you a link! Resolve to reap what you sow in 2009 and you’ll be that much closer to Web success at the start of 2010.

Create Authority Documents and Share Socially

An authority document is one that people look to for guidance on a) how to do something, or b) how to do something better. Content does not exist in a vacuum however – it won’t pull people on to your site on its own merit. You must share that information through an active network of Web friends and colleagues to make it stick in the Web’s sphere of influence…Resolve in 2009 to develop one well-thought out authority document each month of 2009 and, build out your social profile and share your content on as many social networks as possible, encouraging you friends to do the same.

I have used all of these tactics (except press releases) in the past and have had a very good success rate with them. Consider adding at least two of these activities to your marketing plan for 2009, and it will build toward your success. Finding good press release services and using them regularly is in my plan for this year.

Jason Falls has started a stimulating conversation on What Is The ROI For Social Media?

Measuring the return on a conversation is tricky.

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.

To illustrate that point for all our measurement and metric geeks out there, what you are trying to do is assign multiple choice scoring to an essay question. It’s not possible.

… “Ultimately, the key question to ask when measuring engagement is, ‘Are we getting what we want out of the conversation?’” And, as stubborn as it sounds Mr. CEO, you don’t get money out of a conversation.

To further the discussion a bit, I sat down with Katie for an episode of SME-TV, which will be added to this post later today.

What Katie evangelized a bit in her session was that the conversation (comments on your content) was the best measure of a level of engagement. Avinash Kaushik says much of the same in his discussions on web analytics. This isn’t an end-around the need for ROI, it’s the answer. Or at least a big part of the answer.

(Side note – Provided this is true, isn’t it sad that most companies haven’t even upgraded the technology used on their websites to enable commenting and conversation. Of course, it’s even more sad that if they had the technology right, they’re still afraid to use it. I digress.)

When you ask businesses why they are participating in social media, what do they say? If they say, “to make money,” then they will fail because currency in the social web is found in both relationships and content. If they say, “to grow our business,” they’re just saying, “to make money,” in a nicer way. If they say, “to participate in the conversation,” which is the more appropriate reason to be involved in the social web, then why on earth would they not measure success by the value of the conversations they have?

Stop the focus on metrics

I have to disagree with the “metric-centric” message of this post. It may be true that there is no way to quantify the conversation that takes place in the Comments section of your blog. But there is a way to measure the effectiveness of the conversation that your market is having. The tool I use for that is called “Google”, and when someone is searching for a product or service that you provide, the quantity and quality of conversation (as in links to your site, and to people talking about your business) is displayed for all of the world to see.

At the risk of breaking my arm patting myself on the back I’d like to point to an example of this, using my own “product”: the series of posts that I wrote about applying the 7 Habits of Highly Effective people at Productivity in Context (hdbizblog.com – I know, poor branding, lesson learned). Many of my readers had e-mailed asking for this kind of information, especially looking for worksheets and templates to use to learn these skills.

We had a conversation about it, and I wrote about it. Now, if you type “7 habits worksheet” into Google you will see this:

This is definitely a quantifiable result of the conversation that people are having.

Focus on fostering the conversation

When there is a conversation going on about a segment of your business, you need to get involved. As in the example above, I am in the business of helping people improve their productivity and one of the tools that I believe in is in the form of a worksheet. I make a lot of worksheets. I write about them and have conversations with my readers about them.

And some of the readers turn into clients.

Make money “because of”, not with

The “because of” effect is much more powerful than the “with” effect. One of the commenters on Jason’s post, Mack Collier (The Viral Garden), hits the nail on the head with:

…companies that are NEW to social media, wanting to use metrics and measurements that they are used to when using TRADITIONAL marketing methods to ‘get their message out there’. Their thinking is ‘how do we make money from this?’, whereas companies that have been active in this space for a while, such as Dell, understand that by PARTICIPATING that they will make more money as a BYPRODUCT of their efforts. Dell has been in the game long enough to see the impact that their efforts are making, and as a result have shifted away from the ‘how do we make money with this?’ mentality.

Attempting to DIRECTLY monetize social media efforts is the quickest way to ensure they fail. But companies that aren’t familiar with this space don’t know any better. In a few years, after more companies are more familiar with these tools, I think we’ll see them looking to INdirectly monetize their efforts, while putting the focus on SM as a way to DIRECTLY connect with their customers.

One of the best lessons that I learned from the SOBCon event that I attended in May was that blogging (and Social Media in general) should be treated like a business. That business is the marketing of your products and services & establishing yourself/your business as an authority. The goal of that business is to make money because of your blog (or Social Media efforts), instead of with your blog.

What say you?

UPDATE

David Meerman Scott addresses this question in a similar fashion in a recent presentation:

Melissa Campanelli has an article at Entrepreneur.com about how to start an online business in the down economy. But what if we already have a small (or large) business? What can we do?

In general, e-commerce is the bright spot in the retail world today.

“Online retail continues to grow at a pretty nice clip,” says Jeffrey Grau, retail e-commerce senior analyst with eMarketer. “If you look at total retail sales, annual growth is in the low single digits. However, the online channel has been growing in recent years in the low to mid-20 percentile.”

While Grau warns that the economic downturn is slowing e-commerce sales, online sales are still growing at triple the rate of store sales.

“It’s still a very desirable marketplace,” he says.

And more and more online shoppers are turning to the web instead of paying for gas to go to the mall.

A new poll conducted by RetailMeNot.com, an online coupon website, found that nearly nine out of 10 American consumers have changed their shopping habits as a result of high gas prices.

The poll found that out of more than 1,000 respondents who voted multiple times:

* 45 percent said they plan shopping trips together to use less gas
* 42 percent said they shop less
* 22 percent said they do as much shopping as possible online
* 11 percent said there was no impact

Whether or not the economy is bad, there are some best practices to keep in mind…

Campanelli goes on to describe some steps for researching how to start an online store. For those of us that already have a business, I recommend the following:

4 Steps to Increase Your Online Presence

• Make sure that there is a link to a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page. I am sure that we can all come up with a list of the top 10 questions that our potential customers ask. Write them down, and answer them as completely and honestly as you can.
• Create a second page of “Questions that You Should Ask”, the top 10 questions that we would like our prospects to ask us in order for us to build rapport and let these probable purchasers know that we are a credible advisor and expert on the topic.
• Give value first. Make sure that your website or blog has obvious links to your products and the latest pricing. Include the pricing of your competitors, and let the reader know why your product is preferable, even if the price is higher.
• Invite your prospects to join your community in Social Media, whether it is Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn – people like to make connections. LinkedIn is a great resource, as it has the “Question & Answer” feature, allowing you to get in front of people that may be looking for a solution that your business can provide. Search through the questions, and answer the ones that you can, without making them into ads. Establish yourself as an expert.
• Reach out to your existing community. Find the people that are already talking about your business and listen to them. Ask them if you can help with their business in these tough times. You may find a way to “partner” with a customer and create a profitable synergy.

This is just the starting point for increasing your social media presence, and I suspect that these steps will lead to more questions. In fact, other internet marketing experts are starting to talk about the very same thing, with a great deal of enthusiasm for starting something new. Naomi at Ittybiz had a post on this very topic – “Blood in the Streets” – and this is what she has to say on the subject:

1. Small business competition is flatlining.

The average person is looking around saying, “I’ll keep my safe day job, thankyouverymuch.” (Yes, because your day job is SO F*****G SAFE right now.) The rate of new business creation is going to slow dramatically. The rate of people bailing on their existing businesses is going to skyrocket. People are running scared back to the best day job they can find, and as the illustrious NYT tells us, “the unemployment rate rose to 6.1 percent in August, a five-year high, so …small-business owners might find it harder to land another job“.

Your competition is scrambling to find a job at Denny’s. Hello!?

Ah, yes, the New York Times thinks that this is a terrible time for small business – that we should shut the doors and go back to working for the big companies.

Nancy Levine, a senior executive recruiter at the Pacific Firm in Berkeley, Calif., also has observed an uptick in the number of candidates who are business owners. “In slower economies, we get more calls from sole proprietors,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like musical chairs: the economy stops and entrepreneurs dash for a spot back at the larger companies.”

Go, entrepreneurs, go! Now the field is opening up for the rest of us. Now is the time to pick up the pace and get out there, make something happen. Buy out our competition.

Let’s have a discussion about how you can get your business noticed. Leave a comment!

The Social Media Contract: Turn the Market into a Network

Before we begin to build or even plan a website or blog for our business, we need to consider the importance of the Social Media Contract and its relationship to our market. My friend Jon has an e-book about this concept (read about it here [link]) and the exciting possibilities of the newly emerging realities. The basics of the Social Media Contract are as follows:

1. Give the market the opportunity to understand you and your products when and where they want to
2. Provide access to your people, your product, your competitors and your customers
3. Discuss openly your products and brand successes and failures
4. Trust the market and your customers to differentiate your product
5. Deliver a quality product based on the peoples’ needs, not the perceived uses
6. Listen to understand your product’s place in the market
7. Move your message to be relevant to the conversation

What does the Social Media Contract Mean?

As Steve Johnson says, “It’s easier to find products for people you know than it is to find people for products you know.” How does this work in terms of our business?

We must build a site that makes it possible for our market to talk, to hold a conversation about our business. We have a product or service, our market has people. Our goal is to turn our Market into our Network. Let these people find and talk about our business, and tell the people that they know (the “find products for people that you know” from the above quote), rather than trying to find people for our product.

To this end, number 6 in the list above is one of the most important steps:
Listen to understand your product’s place in the market – Go to the places where people talk about products like ours. Forums, blogs, and groups where people discuss these products and services are fairly easily search-able and a good place to get involved in the discussion. Rule number one for getting involved: Listen more than you talk, at first, and when you do talk make it highly relevant to the conversation. Whatever we do, we must avoid looking “spammy” or “ad-like” in our posts.

Learning what our market is talking about will drive the design and features of our own site, in order to create a welcoming environment for our market (the people that use and talk about our business) and invite them to become part of our network.

The Social Media Contract is about Access

The first three points of the Contract are all about access. Access to our business, access to our employees, and above all – access to our market and network.

1. Give the market the opportunity to understand you and your products when and where they want to – Our customer service department may not be open 24 hours a day, but our blog and forum, and many times our network, are.
2. Provide access to your people, your product, your competitors and your customers – This kind of access builds trust, credibility, and brand-recognition. Keep in mind that we do not own our brand anymore, the market/network does.
3. Discuss openly your products and brand successes and failures – Once again this goes to credibility and trust. This type of open discussion can often lead to collaboration and innovation. See this article at Insight magazine [link - Co-creation Theory]

The Social Media Contract is our starting point for building our website. Once we have determined how we will address these issues – specifically for our business – we can begin to work on the technical/operational aspects (which we may find to be much easier!).

The Social Media Engine for Business

After the strategic plans for the website and its community-centered goals have been determined, the rest of the development plan for our business website or blog can be described in a few basic steps:

• Planning – Create the content plan. For example: will the site contain a blog and forum? How will the Market/Network talk to each other? Next, we create an implementation plan (if we are building the site internally) or write a Request for Proposal (RFP) if we decide to outsource the project.
• Design – Determine design features, content considerations and technology to be implemented on the website. Features generated in this step include design concepts and a site map. Include a summary of any budget or timeline issues.
• Implementation – Create the website, on time and on budget. We need to keep a watchful eye on the scope of the project and proactively manage the time-line and budget, as well as any changes to the plan suggested or requested by others. Be sure to review all site content at least twice during implementation, ideally, partner with some customers to look at the nascent site and solicit their feedback.
• Testing – Check all of the links and connections within the site.
• Promotion – Publish the new site and register it with search engines, as appropriate. Talk about it on Twitter, and get involved in those forums!

Once the process is complete, we need to monitor, update and evaluate the site on an ongoing basis. A steady addition of new content will keep things fresh for the search engines. (We will be discussing analytics and traffic in later posts.)

Your Social Media Strategy

Let’s have a discussion about how you and I can implement the Social Media Contract, leave a Comment!