It was 7 years ago today that I started this blog as an experiment to document industry news and develop my writing skills. With the help of many different people, it’s turned into quite a bit more than that.

THANK YOU for reading, sharing and contributing your insights. They are all very much appreciated and help fuel the continued publishing of this blog after thousands of posts:  2,496 to be exact and I’ve had the privilege of writing 2,075 of them.

The year 2010 provided to be one of focus on Social Media and Content Marketing topics over our past emphasis on SEO and Online PR. All are great topics in the online marketing mix, but as you’ll see below, readers are eating up social media content as fast as they can get it.

Here are the top 10 posts from Online Marketing Blog published in 2010:
(according to visits)

1. 10 Ways to Create a More Engaging Facebook Page – Facebook marketing is hot in 2010 and with close to 600 million users, it’s only going to get hotter in 2011. These basic tips are a great starting point for companies that want to increase their reach and customer engagement on Facebook.
2. 22 Social Media Marketing Management Tools – With 1,495 retweets and nearly 200 Facebook shares, this post about social media was very popular. Due to the meteoric rise of publishing and sharing tools, the social web can be overwhelming for marketers. These tools are part of growing category of software that help marketers, advertisers and public relations professionals manage their brands’ social participation.
3. 11 Free Tools for Social Media Optimization - You can’t scale social media marketing or search engine optimization without tools and the intersection of social media and SEO offers a tremendous competitive advantage. These tools offer a range of benefits for creating and measuring search friendly social media content.
4. 5 B2B Social Media Winners - Social media isn’t just for consumer products and services. Content marketing and relationship building are key to longer sales cycles common to B2B marketing and social media offers an exceptional platform for engaging prospects with content and social media. These examples show how successful B2B companies are implementing social media into their marketing mix.
5. 25 Women That Rock Social Media - Let’s hear it for the women of social media. A response to a listing of (mostly men) top social media pundits on ClickZ by Erik Qualmann, this post lists 25 women who are rocking the social media world.
6. 5 Examples of Social Media in Healthcare Marketing - In line with our editorial plan that offers a matrix of tactical marketing tips intersecting with vertical markets, this post resonated with marketers part of the huge Healthcare industry looking for examples of social media in action.
7. Social Media Strategy – A Definitive Guide – Tapping into the amazing network I’ve been fortunate to develop of the past 10 years or so, this list of social media strategy advice comes from a range of industry luminaries. It also offers contrasting views between Guy Kawasaki and Chris Brogan on social media strategy vs. tactics.
8. Why Do So Many Companies Suck at Social Media? - This was another post about social media that did well socially, with 1,159 Retweets and 300 Facebook shares.  While numbered tips posts do quite well, personal observation posts like this one seem to connect with other marketers (and consultants) experiencing the stumbling of many companies and their efforts to make sense of the social web.
9. 5 Ways to Weave LinkedIn Into Your Marketing Mix - LinkedIn is on the rise with over 90 million users and every Fortune 500 company represented. A plethora of new features and integration with other social channels has made LinkedIn a place worth spending time on outside of recruiting.
10. 5 Steps to Build a Twitter Marketing Strategy - Sometimes the best blog posts come from answering people’s questions via email. That’s the genesis of this post on practical and first hand advice on building a successful Twitter marketing strategy.

Overall, the most visited pages for this blog included our famous BIGLIST of SEO Blogs and the best list of Blog and RSS directories.  Based on social signals, search referring traffic and other KPIs, numbered lists continue to dominate the format that gains greatest exposure for content we post here. I’ll continue to provide those kinds of insights in 2011 and also welcome your feedback

If you’re a regular reader, what were some of your favorite posts over the past year? What would you like to see more of? Would you like to see more posts form other TopRank Marketing staff? Industry news? Videos (besides my travel videos of course), interviews, conference liveblogging?

After 7 years of blogging the focus of this agency blog is still to document what TopRank Marketing considers as topics worth discussing with an emphasis on Content, Search and Social.  Advertising, PR and Email will also enter the mix a bit more as well as some new faces from the TopRank Marketing team.  On top of that, your feedback is especially welcome.

Thanks again for reading and Happy New Year to you!

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Top Online Marketing Posts for 2010 & 7 Year Blogging Birthday | http://www.toprankblog.com

Top Online Marketing Posts for 2010 & 7 Year Blogging Birthday is a post from: How To Get Backlinks To Your Site

By embracing these two philosophies as part of their digital marketing DNA, small businesses can carve out a search marketing strategy that runs circles around larger competitors.

Today, we’ll briefly explore why creativity and agility are advantages small businesses have for search marketing, and some quick tips to activate each.

Creativity as a search marketing advantage

Large = more risk management – Small = creativity/individuality can shine

Larger corporations are naturally risk-averse. Most won’t create blogs that take sides on issues, create controversy or linkbait, push the envelope with snarky ideas or allow shining examples of individuality. Which is why individuals and smaller companies have a continued advantage: there are far less stakeholders so it’s easier to sell creative, controversial or compelling ideas. The more creative your content is, the more editorially earned, organic links you’ll attract from the web community that content builds.

Tips to activate for SEO benefit:

Develop creative linkbait – small, creative groups have the perfect environment to brainstorm linkbait. Where larger companies will mostly follow proven archetypes, a small business can break the mold with clever, catchy and outside the box linkbait ideas. It’s an opportunity to create the kind of linkbait social web influencers are looking for but larger competitors do not understand. By embracing this it’s possible to outpace those who can only engage in manual/mechanical linkbuilding efforts because the content they are working with is dry.

Create controversy – success in small businesses comes from dedicated team members passionate about their industry of choice. Due to this passion, they will naturally have strong feelings about the industry they are in. Why not turn that passion loose on the web to attract others who feel the same? It’s going to be more authentic, let you leverage an angle larger competitors can’t or won’t use, and more closely connect with an audience. Even those who disagree with you play into this strategy, because as they respond to you in droves, they bring an influx of links and referral traffic. Individuals in your niche are dominating the SERPs by leveraging this approach and it’s an opportunity if your small business can artfully direct controversy.

Leverage a creative CMS - where large competitors are stuck using SEO-unfriendly CMS platforms, your small business can take advantage of cheap/free SEO-friendly online publishing tools like WordPress. Creative web developers can turn WordPress into an entire CMS to power your site at an extremely reasonable cost. If you need something more powerful, a CMS like Expression Engine is both affordable and natively search engine friendly. Small businesses have a choice where larger companies frequently get locked into complex systems or dated technologies.

Agility as a search marketing advantage

Larger = slower moving – Small = the advantage of speed and agility

Agility isn’t just a factor for influencing the social web. It’s an effective way for a small businesses to create an SEO strategy disruptive to competitors. Because larger corporations naturally have complex layers of approval processes, lawyers and committees, smaller businesses have an opportunity to exploit this by being first. Many small businesses try to act like large corporations, however this is not embracing the advantage possible by being able to turn on a dime.

Tips to activate for SEO benefit:

Flip your mindset about web content from formal to improvisational – particularly with content published through a social channel such as a blog.  According to the recent TopRank Marketing survey on blogging and SEO 94% of bloggers reported seeing measurable SEO benefits from blogging within 12 months. A majority see benefit, since more content  equals more hooks in the water for search engines. Data from Hitwise showing search phrases are getting longer reinforces this, showing you should feed the tail now more than ever. By having an agile content development process, smaller companies can and do outpace larger competitors who have more resources, but can’t get out of their own way.

Embrace personal brands – when a company embraces their team members having personal brands, this will as a by-product provide a search marketing advantage. For example: in interviews, on their own blogs and through their own exposure, a company and the individual both benefit since both parties frequently get mentioned/linked together. It’s a win-win situation. Where larger corporations use their many partners as an advantage for links, small businesses can encourage and embrace their passionate, trusted team members to develop personal brands in their industry.

Break news – as we’ve noted previously in social media marketing applications (and also discussed by Brian Clark at Copyblogger): every company is now a media company. By breaking news right along with media, you’re going to attract links and referral traffic. Instead of relying on external entities for attention, your company will start to become a trusted source as its own brand of media. To embrace this in a way that matters, agility is essential.

The more small businesses take advantage of their ability to be more creative and agile than larger competitors, the more their online content marketing and SEO programs will succeed.

What other advantages do you think small businesses have for search marketing?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Two Biggest Advantages of Small Businesses SEO |
25 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Two Biggest Advantages of Small Businesses SEO is a post from: How To Get Backlinks To Your Site