TMCnet Online Community News
Ken Murray (News – Alert), co-founder of VanillaSoft, manages two powerful Online Communities on TMCnet. An early adopter of social media and online communities, Murray first invested in a TMCnet Online Community in 2008, followed by a second community built 8 months later in 2009. The deployment of both these Communities has led to a strong increase in brand awareness for VanillaSoft, as well as high ranking on search engines due to a heavy focus on strong keywords and a high-volume of quality content created for the site every month.
The Decision to Create Online Communities on TMCnet
In a recent interview, Murray explains why VanillaSoft chose to invest in an Online Community with TMCnet, stating “We were looking at micro-sites because we play in a very competitive SEO space, so wanted to hitch our wagon to a major content provider which was likely to take our key words and organically get those up higher in the search engines faster than we could.” The first keyword they chose to build was for Telemarketing Software, but very quickly decided to build a site with the term Lead Management Software as well.
How to Gain High Search Engine Ranking? Link, Link, and Link Some More.
With an avid interest in content, specifically blogging, Murray’s objective for his channels was to incorporate content from VanillaSoft and TMC (News – Alert), and share the content across VanillaSoft’s other social channels in order to build up their links back to the TMC channels – a strong driver of high SEO. Once he started sharing his content pieces and blogs with his TMCnet editors, Murray states they “saw a real impact and our Channels moved very quickly…. to first, second or third position organically on Google (News 
– Alert) because of the weight TMC carries as a content provider.”
The key to this high ranking is that VanillaSoft works with TMC to create a content piece, leverage it across as many channels as possible, and always link back to the two TMCnet sites. By taking the VanillaSoft content and leveraging, linking and re-directing people to it, Murray states that he and the TMC team were able to achieve success very quickly with the two channels by making those sites comprehensive content resources rather than just branded microsites.
Tips for What Content Really Counts
In order to get the high volume of links needed to rank a site, you need to have the right kinds of content your audience is looking for. For Murray, it’s content that is instructional and specific, which he finds resonates more with his audience and positions VanillaSoft as the “go-to resource for specific topics and information.” Some articles, he has found, even get up to 500 views due to their informative nature.
In addition to articles, Murray states that using video on the channels has also been a successful technique for keeping visitors engaged, and also posts educational white papers. A tip for using white papers on channels? Don’t gate them all! Murray’s advice is to “use [them] as a branding and advertising tool so that people will read it, like it and come back to your site.”
When it comes to video, Murray is now also experimenting with longer and shorter types of videos to measure which ones are more successful: A 5 minute video versus a 45-second executive summary.
Working in the Social Aspect (News – Alert)
VanillaSoft is on the social networking train, and really charging ahead with some best practices that other companies could learn from. For example, all channel articles are pushed to Twitter to broaden the availability of site content to their 12,000+ followers. Their approach for leveraging content across social platforms is to write a piece, then push it to Facebook, LinkedIn (News – Alert) and Twitter to re-tweet. As an avid blogger, Murray states “we are ‘in’ with both feet with social media, and have been pleasantly surprised with the results” with the exception of Facebook, which he is still looking to see the long-term value of engaging with.
The key for engaging in social media is to “not be too promotional” and to really create a network of partners and followers who will promote you, follow you, like you and push your content out. This means that in order to be successful at social media, you need to be involved in it, too. You can’t expect people to engage in your content if you’re not engaging in theirs and chances are people will share content from people who have done the same for them, or engaged with them in some way or another.
Other key aspect of social media is discussions. Murray’s tip for engaging in conversations about their online content is to juts answer questions that are posed to you, or respond to comments without being too promotional. Be open, honest and an expert about what you’re discussing, but avoid using this platform as the opportunity to promote your company or services: Keep it about the topic-at-hand.
Measuring Success and Seeing Real Results
People know who VanillaSoft is as a result of their aggressive branding initiatives, including these channels. From the moment they launched, the channels have been a very successful platform for VanillaSoft to promote their brand. With a “quirky company name” according to Murray, the company needed SEO help, stating “we used to invest a lot in boosting keywords, but the channels have been instrumental in boosting our brand and achieving this goal.” The results? Murray states, “We’ve been able to build a pretty amazing brand in the marketplace. Now people link the VanillaSoft company name with our keywords in their minds.”
In addition, the online content created for their sites has been widely shared on other sites and gain a high number of viewers. This shows the “power of the internet and being part of an online community” in getting your content out there and shared, quickly.
Let’s Talk Numbers
In addition to high search engine ranking, each of the VanillaSoft channels on TMCnet average around 10,000 page views per month, with around 2,500 unique visitors each. And, with the continued effort Murray is taking to socialize their online content, these numbers are sure to climb in the months and years ahead.
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Tammy Wolf is a TMCnet web editor. She covers a wide range of topics, including IP communications and information technology. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.
Article source: http://www.tmcnet.com/channels/communities/articles/180747-seo-online-content-tips-from-tmcnet-online-community.htm
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