Auto Blog Samurai Verses FreeAutoBlogger

In this corner we have Auto Blogger Samurai 

In this corner we have FreeAutoBlogger 

Which is better and which should you get?

 

Introduction: Both of these programs are intended to increase your automation and auto pilot blogging for wordpress and blogger blogs. You create, add blogs and then rss feeds to automate the posting process. There are pros and cons for each and each program is entirely different.

Auto Blogger Samurai

 

The Pros:

Instead of relying on your desktop or server resources, this program posts all the posts from the rss feed immediately to your blog by the blogs scheduler.  The program does not have to be on since it relies on the blogs post schedule feature for posting ahead.

 

You can modify the feeds and even translate the languages. Has many configuration features and templates.

 

The Cons:

This program downloads all the feeds to your computer first allowing the modifying stages, but in so doing, you will need to configure blogger blogs with an image ftp server for the images to appear on your blogspot blogs.

 

FreeAutoBlogger

 

The Pros: Quickly adds rss feeds either manually, from text file, or drag and drop box. Pretty easy to use.

The Cons: Your PC will need to be on and program running for updates.

 

Conclusion

Deciding which is better is not easy as it will depend entirely on the user! The nice thing is you can download both of them in a fully functional demo that does not expire and try them both out and see which one fits best for you. Of course in the demo version many features are disabled until you purchase, but you get enough functionality to be able to judge the programs. I suggest you try them both and decide which you prefer rather then go by individual rants and raves!

Both of these programs are very useful for automating your whole marketing scheme. Blogs are great for SEO, backlinks, search engine traffic, and can also be tied in to all your Social Media in a bigger automation process to further your traffic and profits regardless of what market your in!

Free tool helps congregations save money, reduce emissions – National Catholic Reporter (blog)

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Cash Against the Clock: in Cannes, a High Price to Pay for Celebrity Interviews – ABC News (blog)

The phrase “time is money” has long applied to the world of celebrities, in which product endorsements and press junkets are nothing new. Even so, the recent celebrity a la carte fiasco at the Cannes Film Festival was too much for many members of the press to swallow.

Days before the festival kicked off, Canadian distributing company Alliance Films attempted to charge journalists for interview slots with talent from two films that are now festival favorites: “Killing Them Softly,” starring Brad Pitt, and “On the Road,” starring Kristen Stewart.

Carmite Cohen, vice-president of publicity and promotions for Alliance, previously said that the organization wasn’t charging an interview fee, but rather, “decided not to contribute to the costs of the Cannes junket.”

Cohen did not reply to email and telephone requests from ABC News for comment.

A press junket is the industry term for a product promotion, in this case, a motion picture. While most press organizations carry the financial burden of sending reporters on interview assignments, or to events like Cannes, distributors typically foot the bill for any “journalistic” costs during the trip; things like travel and accommodation, and even meals. In return, the journalist agrees to certain terms and conditions, such as “off limits” questions. They’re usually cost effective for distributors and production companies, since they generate positive publicity otherwise expensively procured through advertisements.

Those accustomed to covering celebs have no problem with things like paying their own way to events like Cannes, or convincing their editors to let them share hotel rooms with fellow journalists in order to attend celebrity-studded parties and galas — but most draw the line at the idea of handing over cash for a tete-a-tete with talent. Other distributors apparently feel the same, since no others seem to be following Alliance’s lead.

Canadian film critic and blogger for Maclean’s published what he termed the Cannes “face time menu.” According to Alliance, the price for a roundtable with Stewart is approximately $950, while Pitt’s time is apparently much more precious, $15 a minute, to be precise. Alliance asked for approximately $3,000 per televised interview with the actor.

True to the calling of an ethical, unbiased news source, most press outlets will not pay for interviews. Hard cash in exchange for celebrity interviews during press junkets and publicity galore- the Alliance tactic is definitely the first of its kind, and hopefully the last. It doesn’t seem to be catching on, at least.

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What Money Can't Buy – Willamette Week

Fresh off his May 15 primary victory, mayoral candidate Charlie Hales fired most of his staff last week. As a gesture of appreciation, Hales handed each an autographed photo of himself posing with the staffer he had just canned.

Meanwhile, Rep. Jefferson Smith, the surprise second-place finisher, says he wanted “healing” after a tough campaign. So his backers swarmed Twitter, Facebook and blogs to pitch for the support of the candidate whose hopes Smith had extinguished, Eileen Brady. 

Voters may be sick of the campaign just finished, but Smith and Hales are already working to win in the November general election. 

And no one has truly answered the question that Portlanders are still asking: How did Brady—a candidate who started with every advantage and spent a record $1.3 million in the primary—fail in such epic fashion?

Until the primary, former City Commissioner Jim Francesconi, who spent nearly $1 million in the 2004 mayoral primary, only to lose in the general election to a former police chief, Tom Potter, was the high-water mark for political folly.

The title now belongs to Brady. She won just 22 percent, spending a jaw-dropping $46 per vote—three times what her opponents spent per vote, and more than double Francesconi’s historic $21.

Many of Brady’s faults overshadowed Hales’ and Smith’s own shortcomings, and with her gone, their weaknesses will stand in stark relief.

The way this race played out has provided lessons for Smith, Hales and future city candidates—but most important, lessons for voters as well.

SMITH: He’ll face challenges trying to please police and street protesters alike.

Know Thyself.

Brady’s early polling showed an unbeatable combination: a 50-year-old businesswoman with ties to a beloved Portland institution, progressive cred and no connection to City Hall. Her potential was “off the charts,” say two people familiar with Brady’s early numbers. There are struggles in running for office that can be daunting even for someone with a successful career, including establishing one’s identity with voters. Brady sought to define herself as the sustainability candidate who could bring jobs to Portland. 

But Brady often contradicted herself. While draping herself in green, she flip-flopped on the proposed $3.5 billion Columbia River Crossing and adopted a “build, baby, build” approach to win business and labor support.

She was also unprepared for scrutiny. When her claim of being a co-founder of New Seasons Market came into question, Brady attacked the news media for questioning her; her son, Colin O’Brady, recently blogged that his mother was the target of an “unfair and editorialized sexist negative campaign.” (Brady didn’t return WW’s calls.)

When WW reported that a police officer had excluded her from Tom McCall Waterfront Park in 2003—and noted her threat to call “friends” at City Hall to help her get out of the ticket—she responded by calling the cop a liar. When her answers ran long during KATU’s debate, Brady on live TV complained that the floor director (who stood in plain view) was making it difficult for her to see when her time was up.

By contrast, Smith and Hales took their knocks in stride. Smith dealt with public exposure of his attention-deficit disorder, spoke frankly of the medication he takes to manage it, and acknowledged a history of managerial mishaps without getting defensive. 

Hales faced revelations that he’d avoided Oregon taxes as a Washington resident while continuing to vote here—and at first didn’t tell the truth about it. But he apologized (sort of) and addressed the issue directly (if incompletely) at campaign events.

They also showed they knew who they were and weren’t afraid to run on that image. When Smith entered the mayoral race last September, he was five months late to the party and, because of an injury, wore a patch over one eye. The two-term state lawmaker—ostensibly the “Keep Portland Weird” candidate—promised to run a “fun” campaign. He cracked jokes, turned cartwheels in the street and tweeted madly.

As a former city commissioner, Charlie Hales also had an identity: He’d championed the streetcar, knew City Hall and promised steady (if slightly dull) leadership as mayor, not unlike the campaign he ran. Hales’ persona was as gray as his hair.

“I’m pretty comfortable in my own skin,” Hales says. “I also, unlike others in politics, have an actual life to go back to if voters disagree. This gives me an even greater freedom to be myself than someone who might be desperate for the next office.”

Know Thy Audience.

Brady oftentimes left events having won more votes for her opponents than for herself.

She was the guest of honor at a dinner hosted last summer by two of Portland’s busiest networkers, Stimson Lumber CEO Andrew Miller, the city’s largest political contributor, and divorce lawyer Jody Stahancyk.

Neither Miller nor Stahancyk would comment on the 20-person gathering, but others who attended describe the evening as a debacle for Brady. Stephen Houze, a leading criminal defense lawyer, and other guests pushed Brady without success to describe the rationale for her candidacy.

Such scenes repeated throughout the campaign. In private meetings, Brady (and her advisers) told people she would be mayor and they needed to start dealing with her.

Smith and Hales, with more campaign experience, learned long ago to listen and respond. Hales stuck to the script he knew from experience that voters wanted to hear: He would return basics to City Hall. Smith knew his audience as well—progressive Portland. He’d oppose the CRC and fight for equity.

Going forward, however, both may encounter tension as they try to serve competing interests—a challenge a mayor must face. While folksy, Hales’ campaign took in more than $200,000 from development and real-estate interests, and spoke of giving breaks in fees worth millions to business.

Smith has to reconcile his divided image as both the Occupy Portland candidate (as The American Prospect called him) and the choice of the Portland Police Association (which endorsed him and kicked in $10,000). 

HALES: The candidate (left) risks getting painted as the new favorite of special interests.

Know Thy Opponent.

Brady and Hales expected to run against a weakened incumbent, Mayor Sam Adams. But Adams changed the game in July by announcing he would not seek re-election. Hales—traditionally the proverbial tortoise in his campaigns—changed his message to fit the new circumstances, but the recalibration was subtle. Smith jumped in after Adams was out.

Brady never found a way to rebut Hales’ “experience” claim. Nor did she take Smith seriously—until it was too late.

“What she was saying behind closed doors in terms of how real our candidacy was, I don’t know,” Smith says. “But it was not Eileen but Charlie who told me I didn’t have a chance.”

Smith and Hales are already trying to define each other. Hales is calling for more results and less rhetoric—a jab at his opponent, as Smith talks about an era of new ideas—a poke at Hales’ being a retread.

Watch Thy Cash.

In his winning campaign, Hales spent $798,000. Brady burned through nearly that much cash by April and hadn’t yet bought a TV ad. Her campaign had big overhead costs, as if it were a stimulus package for political consultants, yet ignored basic media strategy, including cable TV and direct mail. She finished deeply in debt after loaning herself $250,000.

Hales ended up loaning himself $100,000 while taking another $25,000 loan from a contributor. 

Smith’s campaign hoarded its limited cash, making DIY ads out of footage recycled from campaign events. “I’m somewhat proud of being the only candidate to not go six figures into debt,” Smith says.

But Smith and Hales handled their early money well and kept pace with Brady in the most important area: cash on hand. That’s what buys TV time, and Brady’s spending allowed them to overtake her. 

Know Thy City.

Portlanders see politics similarly to artisanal meats—they want to know how the sausage is made. They want a personal touch and know the difference between grass roots and AstroTurf.

Smith had a head start on his opponents in amassing and deploying an army of volunteers to canvass the city. His focus on the “ground game” was bolstered by the endorsement of key labor unions. Similarly, Hales, a veteran of old-school retail politics, says, “I was on the doors for months and months with no company.”

Brady took a different tack. She branded herself the big-money candidate by telling The Oregonian in January she planned to raise $1 million for the primary. Her endorsement by the Portland Business Alliance, the city’s most influential business group, only reinforced that image.

Brady’s advisers persuaded her to run for mayor as if she were running for the U.S. Senate, saturating the broadcast media with ads. In contrast, Hales and Smith counted hundreds of volunteers spread out across the city. Brady’s couldn’t fill a bus.

It all ended in a sad scene on the afternoon of Election Day. Brady sat at a table in Pioneer Courthouse Square for “office hours.” Two supporters held a banner behind her, and a third aimed a campaign video camera on Brady, who waited for voters to approach.

At first no one did, so Brady invited passersby to stop. Many had already voted. Others just weren’t interested.

Brady found a woman to stop and speak with her, and the candidate looked hopeful.

They talked for a long time, before the woman told Brady she wasn’t registered to vote. 

Staff writer Aaron Mesh contributed reporting to this story.

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The Good Leads – Wall Street Journal (blog)

Links for the informed adviser…

Markets

The Facebook Fiasco has utterly captivated the markets…and now the regulators are coming.  The latest here:  (DealBook) and (Business Insider)

Euro Summit gets underway, futures already lower on more Grexit talk.  Have fun today!  (MarketWatch)

Actionable

In the wake of the PCX disaster, is there any bottom in sight for the trashed coal (KOL) names?  (Stock Sage)

Bullish and bearish factors for equities from the strategists at Morgan Stanley.  (TRB)

An iminent breakout in the US dollar (UUP).  (Dragonfly Capital)

The new hottest emerging markets bank stock is PVD, get to know it.  (Emerging Money)

Industry

The Top 10 Most Complained About Financial Products.  (Telegraph)

The secret to financial advisers and social media? Don’t be giving advice!  (FInancial Planning)

Mike Alfred: It’s time for a uniform performance standard for financial advisers.  (Forbes)

Underwriters at MS: No, we did everything right on FB.  Just look at the stock, tis merely a flesh wound! Duh!  (Investment News)

Schwab survey shows a huge disconnect between HNW investors and their advisers.  (Above the Market)

In the meanwhile, China is working on building its very own version of Goldman Sachs.  (Reuters)

LOL

The chief strategist types are out in force defending Facebook.  Now it’s become a “great long-term hold.”  (I ? Wall Street)

Josh Brown is a contributor to the Financial Adviser blog. He is a vice president at Fusion Analytics, an investment advisory firm, and the author of the The Reformed Broker blog. His commentary here is for informational purposes and should not be construed as research or advice. Mr. Brown buys and sells investment instruments for his own and his clients’ accounts, and will disclose if he holds a position in a company or industry he writes about. 

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Investing Like a Poker Player – U.S. News & World Report (blog)

Rob Russell

On a recent business trip to Pittsburgh, PA, I had the pleasure of hanging out with one of the best advisers in the country, Michael Reese from Michigan. But it wasn’t his financial prowess that impressed me; it was his mastery of poker. That’s right, poker. So, it got me thinking: Can investors do better if they start to think like poker players? I say yes.

You can do better because world-class poker players think differently about money. Now, I’m not saying you should gamble with your retirement. Rather, there are certain attributes that when correctly added to your investment strategy can really juice up your returns and limit your losses. Before you’re you go “all in,” learn some of the common traits held by the world’s top poker players:

Know the odds. The best poker players only bet when they believe their cards have a statistical edge against the other contestants. How’s the market any different? Are you blindly investing with the herd or looking for the edge?

Know when to fold ’em. Casinos and Wall Street have one thing in common: They can’t control when you cash in and get up from the table. The most important thing you can do as a trader is limit your losses. In other words, when you place a trade, know your exit strategy. The best poker players lose more hands than they win, but they limit their losses by folding early on, and the big money is made on winning hands when the odds are in their favor.

Don’t bet with scared money. The best sleep insurance you can buy is to only trade with money you can afford to lose—money that, if you lost it, it wouldn’t change your lifestyle.

Check your emotions. Investing, like poker, should be emotionless. The hardest thing for novice and expert traders is to not let their emotions get the best of them, causing them to deviate from their disciplined strategy. Know exactly at what price you’re going to buy and exactly at what price you’re going to sell to remove the emotional aspects of investing.

Disciplined strategy. Are you a buy-and-hold investor? Do you invest for the long-term hoping for a good return? These aren’t strategies. It’s called being lazy—the way Wall Street wants you to be. The responsibility of preserving and growing your money rests squarely on your shoulders. You and only you can rescue your retirement dreams, and the process begins with implementing a money management strategy that limits your losses and lets your profits run. But you have to stick to it!

Taking back control of your financial future starts with implementing the best habits of the best poker players on the planet. If you can apply all of these common traits, then you’ll have an edge over the vast majority of investors and financial advisers.

Robert Russell is CEO & CIO of the Ohio-based Russell & Company, a private wealth management firm specializing in helping affluent individuals ages 45 and up create and preserve their wealth. He co-hosts a radio show, authors The Rob Report blog, and is a frequent contributor to FOX Business and CNBC.

Securities offered through Kalos Capital, Inc., Member FINRA, SIPC. Investment Advisory Services offered through Kalos Management, Inc., 3780 Mansell Rd. Suite 150, Alpharetta, GA 30022, (678) 356-1100.  Russell & Company is not an affiliate or subsidiary of Kalos Capital, Inc. or Kalos Management, Inc.

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Facebook: Now What? – NPR (blog)

Why does a senior finance regulator peppers his speeches with references to popular music?

Unlike many scarce resources, lungs aren’t for sale.

Mark Zuckerberg will owe nearly $200 million in California state taxes.

more

Planet Money is a multimedia team covering the global economy.

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3 Blogging Tips to Boost Reader Satisfaction – Promotion World (press release) (blog)

There are many blogging tips to be found that speak about how to get more traffic to your site but what about building reader loyalty? Bloggers know that their primary goal when they post updates is to capture and hold the attention of the people who view them! In this way your blog posting can help you build loyalty with people who land on your site and in that spirit here are 3 things to check for and avoid before you post updates to your blog!

Too Much SEO

Paying too much attention to optimizing your content can easily result in your blog posting being difficult for visitors to read! As true as it is that a properly optimized entry can get a higher search engine ranking and thus allow you to get more traffic, your efforts are futile if nobody understands what you wrote! Your primary focus should ALWAYS be on creating something of interest and easy to read which is something your optimization efforts do NOT address!

Veering Off Topic

When you post updates you need to compose your content much like you do an email message keeping it as brief as possible and stay on point! Quite often bloggers may tend to veer away from the original intent or point of the entry which can easily serve to distract, confuse and possibly even annoy readers! In the short run all you’ve accomplished is to create more ‘needless’ work for yourself in composing material irrelevant to your topic! In the long run you’re also at risk of losing readers because your entries tend to ramble on without making their intended point! Make sure your blog posting stays on point and when tempted to veer off topic simple use these thoughts and/or ideas for future postings!

Too Much YOU!

People don’t really have an interest in your personal feelings or opinions UNLESS it serves a purpose for THEM! Remember as a blogger your main priority is to serve your readers and NOT your own purposes! This will lead to a drop-off in your reader subscription base and this I promise! On the other hand if you’re compelled to post updates that may be based on your personal feelings be sure to do so in a way that’s entertaining! Remember even if your content holds little interest for visitors you can still entertain them with your wit, humor or even sarcasm otherwise steer clear of using personal rants or opinions as the focus of your blog posting!

The 3 blogging tips offered above are intended to help you avoid common errors many bloggers unknowingly make when they post updates to their site! Although it is quite natural for folks to center their focus on how to get more traffic to their platform, their efforts don’t always breed reader loyalty! The fact is that your blog posting needs to be compose for the human eye rather than the ever fickle search engines, and that your efforts need to reflect the interests of visitors to your platform! In the end by satisfying your readers you will ultimately get more traffic through referrals which is the best way to develop your platform!

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Retirement is a Transition Opportunity – U.S. News & World Report (blog)

Retirement has a ring of finality to it, but this doesn’t need to be so. There are many careers in which retirement only means a transition out of that particular career and into something else. For example, the average retirement age of an NFL player is 30 and most elite gymnasts are retired by 19. To these athletes, retirement is just another phase of life.

Short careers. Many athletes have short careers because of the injuries and the performance drop off the body experiences as we age. Some athletes who made a huge amount of money have financial problems later in life. Perhaps it’s because they live for the moment and strive for immediate peak performance in their next game or competition. I think this sort of short-term goal probably spreads to other facets of their lives, and many athletes don’t plan for a future with less lucrative earnings. However, some athletes are able to successfully transition to other careers, and we should learn from them.

Career transition. Some athletes leverage their skill and knowledge to transition into a career in a related field. For example, Phil Jackson became a coach after his NBA career and led the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers to many championships. During the recent downturn, many employees were laid off, but many also became self-employed and parlayed their knowledge and connections into consulting positions instead of remaining unemployed. These days, no job is secure and it is prudent to plan your next steps, even if you make good money and enjoy your current job.

Save and invest. Many personal finance experts recommend three to six months worth of emergency savings. This fund can be used as a cushion to prevent debt when emergencies such as a car accident arise. This amount of liquidity is good when you have a stable job, but we probably need more of a safety net during a career transition. That’s why we need to invest in an after-tax account as well as retirement accounts.

Be prepared. Your 401(k) and other retirement accounts are very easy to set up, and they are the best way to maximize your earnings if your employer contributes to the investment. However, you may have to pay a penalty to access those accounts before retirement, so it’s important to invest in other accessible accounts as well. A savings account is a great place to keep your emergency savings, but the interest rate is low, so we shouldn’t keep too much money there. We can get a better rate of return by putting extra savings into CDs, bonds, stocks, person-to-person lending, or other investments. In addition to an emergency savings account, you should consider keeping at least two years worth of expenses in various after-tax accounts. This will give you time to find a different job or career if something happens.

Over the past few years, we have seen that a career isn’t a permanent placement. Companies will lay off their employees when the economy turns down, and there will always be younger replacements who will take on the job for less. Retirement from a career doesn’t have to mean retirement from employment. Many people have two or more careers, and we should plan for the next phase even if things are going well.

Joe Udo is planning an exit strategy from his corporate job by reducing expenses and increasing passive income. He blogs about his journey to early retirement at Retire by 40.

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5 Common SMB Online Marketing Optimization Issues Solved: Q&A with Lee Odden – Search Engine Watch

Small and medium businesses face a number of challenges inherent to their size; many simply don’t have the budget, manpower, or in-house expertise to pull off the online marketing campaigns bigger companies can manage.

Selling online has this wonderful equalizing factor, making it possible for even the sole entrepreneur working from home to connect with markets they otherwise may never have accessed. However, as search engines continue to evolve, placing more and more emphasis on content and user experience, many SMBs are finding it difficult to compete with competitors that may have the capacity to churn out content, win in social, and outrank them at every turn.

Lee Odden, author of “Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing,” offered to help us solve five common SMB online marketing problems. We receive a lot of questions and feedback at Search Engine Watch through comments, emails, social media contacts, and at events like SES. A number of problematic issues have cropped up in conversation with SMB owners and entrepreneurs:

They know their website needs major work but don’t know where to start.Content creation is daunting and time consuming.They’re trying different things in social but don’t know what to do if one channel doesn’t pan out or they have to choose to focus on just one.They have too much social data to digest and aren’t sure which metrics matter, or if it’s worth the effort.They know they should be more active online but need time to actually run their business.

So what is a marketer with limited resources to do? Though there are no one-size-fits-all solutions, Odden’s recommendations can help get your SMB web presence optimized and on the right track.

This seems to be one of the bigger issues plaguing SMBs. Often, many small changes and updates are made over the years, without much thought as to how these constant tweaks affect the site as a whole. When a website no longer lives up to what users or search engines expect of it, where do you even begin?

“A site evaluation through audits can help determine how much of an asset the website is currently and can be in the future,” said Odden. As to what that should entail, he recommends, “An SEO audit will cover keywords, technical/code, SEO copywriting, the linking footprint and social presence. Through the audit, a sort of GAP analysis can be conducted to identify where the site needs attention for most impact.”

Odden shared the example of a medium-sized business site with thousands of pages, with a simple SEO error of duplicate title tags. This might be updated using basic programming to extract content off the page (like product names) to dynamically populate title tags, he said. If the site has many, many articles that are frequently found through search and have a good number of social referrals, then embedding social share functionality can increase social distribution of those articles just by making it easy.

“In most cases, the low hanging fruit identification comes from having an evaluation of the website and expertise to determine where to apply resources in order to reach business goals,” Odden explains. Use an audit to identify problems and opportunities, then prioritize and take action.

We asked Odden what advice he has for entrepreneurs who have shied away from blogging and/or social because they don’t feel they can produce enough contenton a regular basis to keep things interesting.

“I often say, ‘If a company doesn’t have anything interesting to say, they have bigger problems to solve than where their next blog post is coming from,’ Odden responded. He knows it’s a bit of a jibe, but it does reflect the need for a change in perspective. He notes that, “Many companies see themselves as a vessel, with a finite number of ideas and pieces of information. In other words, their view of content is fairly static and self-centered. Once they’ve said all there is to say about their own products and services, the well goes dry.”

Instead, marketers need to look at blogging as a byproduct of the ongoing listening and engagement between a brand and its customers, he advises. “A change in perspective that allows the brand to see things from their customer’s perspective with empathy can reveal many opportunities for making observations, answering questions and interacting with the community through blog content,” said Odden. “Just checking for commonly asked questions that customer service and sales people hear can be a rich source of blogging ideas.”

A few other tips and tools Odden recommends for ongoing information to inspire content creation:

Social media analytics data.Social media monitoring tools with suggested topics related to areas of interest around products and services being tracked.Web analytics can reveal questions people most often use on Google that send them to the company website. Blog posts can be planned to answer those questions.

Odden has been blogging as a business owner for more than eight years and he understands the challenges in regular content creation.

The key to persistent, productive blogging, he said, is to “have a plan, be adaptable and use blogging as a platform to share useful information that provides value to readers but also reinforces sales, referrals and social shares. Ongoing engagement will mean a never ending source of things to blog about.”

This is a unique challenge that happens more often than you might suspect. We asked Odden how SMBs should handle social channels that just haven’t worked out enough to justify ongoing management. Once you’ve given Facebook or Twitter an honest shot, is it better to delete the account if it’s not meeting your goals, continue without much of a presence, or is there another alternative?

Odden had some creative recommendations for SMBs, noting that he would approach it differently, depending to what the goal was and what social platform was being used.

“On Twitter, I might just discontinue manually posting to the account and determine it to be a source of news information,” he said. In order to accomplish this, Odden told us he would do a relevant query on Google News, take the RSS feed of the search results for that query and run it through Twitter feed and populate the account with news stories once or twice a day.

“I’d still check the account once a day for engagement opportunities, but I’d probably not kill it if it can continue to provide some value,” he offered. He would only consider deleting the account if it could not provide value and there is no chance of it being used again.

He would approach a struggling blog differently, Odden notes.

“Then I might absorb the past posts into a resource center format without comments, but still organized by category. It would not look like a blog but more like a collection of articles on topics that would be useful to prospects and customers,” he said.

In this case, he would discontinue daily or weekly blogging but new articles could be added from time to time, possibly incorporated into a company newsletter or as bylined articles in industry media.

Big companies have teams analyzing trends in their social data, measuring goals, making recommendations… where should a smaller business even begin?

“Optimize” offers insight into identifying goals that work in tandem with measurement.

“The first step in understanding social KPIs (key performance indicators) and business objectives is to establish what the goals are,” Odden said. “In many cases, goals might emphasize customer acquisition or revenue. There are other revenue oriented goals that can be affected by integrated SEO, social media and content marketing like the length of sales cycle, order volume, order frequency, per transaction profitability and referrals.”

Other goals covered in the book deal with increasing the effectiveness of PR objectives like awareness and building thought leadership. Yet other goals may augment content reach and effectiveness, for customer service or talent acquisition.

“The social KPIs worth measuring should help you track progress towards your goal,” Odden recommends. “For example, if you think better search ranking of optimized content will result in more qualified visitors and sales, then the things that affect ranking are KPIs worth tracking, such as inbound links, social shares and other SEO metrics.”

In another example Odden shared, he uses the premise that the number of unsolicited media pickups will increase if the brand can become present in the social streams and news feeds of key journalists and bloggers that cover the industry. In that case, he advises, you would work social engagement and content into your social media tactics. Social KPIs might be the number of retweets and shares of your targeted stories, the direct interactions with bloggers and media through comments, shared content and direct messages.

SMBs, in particular, may not be able to justify the overhead to hire online marketing talent to work in-house. What should they be looking for if they decide to outsource?

“The industry is mature enough that outside consultants should be able to show that they have experience implementing solutions and solving difficult problems using an intentional approach vs. social or SEO guesswork,” Odden said. “In many cases, it makes sense for a SMB to engage a consultant at a strategic level who can provide assistance with overall approach and oversight of implementation. For others, the need for niche expertise is what’s needed.”

Either way, he said, marketing professionals should be able to listen and understand the nature of the SMBs business problem and offer a thoughtful approach and tactics to solve it. Some things can be done by the SMB and some by the consultant.

For more of Odden’s tips and advice on integrating SEO, social media and content marketing, get “Optimize” online from Barnes & Noble or Amazon, or grab your copy in-store. If you have more SMB online marketing questions, let us know in the comments!

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