Susan Bratton: You’re listening to the Community Powered podcast series. I’m your host, Susan Bratton, and I’m here with Lee Odden, the CEO of Top Rank Online Marketing live at South By Southwest. Hi Lee.

Podcast is here and transcript below.

Susan Bratton & Lee Odden

Lee Odden: Hi Susan. How are you?

Susan Bratton: It’s great to finally meet you meet space.

Lee Odden: Yeah.

Susan Bratton: We’ve been online friends.

Lee Odden: Yeah. No substitute like being in person.

Susan Bratton: Absolutely. So you’re going to answer a couple questions for us today. I really appreciate that. Thank you. Here’s my first one: what one pearl of wisdom can you share for a brand that’s just getting into social media marketing?

Lee Odden: Well I think one of the first things a company needs to focus on is their strategy. And one thing that we work on with a lot of organizations that they’re really interested in is coming at social media from a strategic perspective. One of the mistakes that fees into the answer here is that a lot of companies come in tacticly. They’ll read in an article or hear at a conference, oh, Face Book’s a hot thing, Twitters hot, so, hey somebody could go set up a Face Book account, go set up Twitter, and really it’s a siloed segmented kind of thing that doesn’t really tie into the overall brand objective. So we have a process that’s, again, it’s a social media roadmap, starts with understanding audience behaviors specific to that company and their demographic and who it is that they’re trying to target. Identifying specific objectives, what are they trying to accomplish, what are the business goals they’re trying to reach, and then putting together a game-plan in order to define that as a strategy. Specific tactics, like well okay, it does, based on our research, make sense to have social networking as a component or it does make sense for Twitter or blogging or media sharing like video and audio and images or whatever. And then the specific services, the specific technology, does it make sense to be on Face Book compared to Linked In, and that all folds up to objectives and audience and so forth. And the final part of the roadmap has to do with measurement, metrics, analytics, and those really need to roll up to objectives. If these are thought leader, public relations related objectives, then we want to measure those kinds of things, pick up conversations, influence sentiment, that sort of thing. If it’s a sales oriented objective, then of course we need to measure the things that lead up to that in conversions. So that’s, that’s, follow a strategy, create a strategy, incorporate something that’s going to take into account the overall goals of the business, and I think a company will get a lot more out of their social media efforts.

Susan Bratton: Makes a lot of sense. Take your time and get a plan and work it so you have some metrics and results…

Lee Odden: Exactly.

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Lee Odden: It’s going to have to be if it’s an investment, it has to be defended at some point. You know, it’s trendy to do some of this stuff, but someone’s going to have to answer, and why not have some stable, accountable, you know, some real data to support why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Susan Bratton: And there’s plenty of data out there to be had. It’s not difficult to get the data, so…

Lee Odden: Absolutely.

Susan Bratton: understanding what your objectives are and measuring them. So here’s my next question, and I like to, I’d really like to ask this one to you Lee, I’m glad you chose to answer this question for me, because you and I are SEO, PR kind of geeks and we love social media as well, so it’s kind of our little blender of SEO, PR and social media. What is really turning you on in social media space right now? Just you personally, what are you taken with?

Lee Odden: You know, one of the things that I really get excited about that folds into just about everything, every conversation I have has to do with the listening component, the software and tools that are out there that we can use to aggregate data, organize data and make, take actions, you know…

Susan Bratton: So do you mean like online reputation management, listening as in what are people saying about your brand online or different?

Lee Odden: Well there’re tools that, that’s an objective, and so some of those monitoring tools, in the social media monitoring category some of the tools are there. What, what I’m really excited about, and I don’t know who’s doing this well yet because no one’s public about it, but is the integration of web analytics and social media analytics. You know, there’s this emphasis on real time data, right? I mean Twitters bringing us kicking and screaming into that world, right? Twitter search, that sort of thing. But the data that you can collect through something like a social media monitoring tool, like Buzz Logic, Collective Intellect, Radiant Six or whatever, married with web analytics, like Google Analytics, Amateur, Web Trends or whatever. That’s what I’m really excited about seeing, and I know people are working on this, and if anybody’s listening that’s working on this please let me know ‘cause I’d love to write about it, I’d love to do a review of it, but that I think is, that’s what I’m most interested and what I’m most excited about is that kind of development.

Susan Bratton: So the net is, where is social media creating traffic to my site, when and how and from what sources. So you’re measuring the traffic that’s created on a site based on the social media activity, real time social media activity?

Lee Odden: Absolutely, absolutely.

Susan Bratton: I like it.

Lee Odden: And it’s opportunistic marketing. I mean we look at social media monitoring tools that have traditionally been used for brand monitoring and we look at buzz, topics that are buzzing, and then we’ll bring that information back to a client and go, “Look, people in your category are talking about this. Lets create content for that so that you rank for it highly in the search engines”, so by the time that buzzing topic hits mainstream media, you’re already there, you have a first mover advantage. And we’re already using these tools different, as different entities for this purpose, what I want to see is this stuff tied together.

Susan Bratton: So when you just said that Lee, I just looked over at Aaron Strout of course who is here with us with Powered, and he’s live Twittering and doing the HD video and we’re recording and all this stuff, and I looked at Aaron when you said that and you said, “Making content that feeds that interest that consumers are discussing on social media”, I looked over at Aaron and I was like, “That’s the gem. That’s the gem right there.” You’re twittering it right now, aren’t you Aaron? He’s like, “Yes I am.” I love it. Well last question for you Lee, ‘cause I know you have a busy schedule. What are the two things that you’re most focused on accomplishing here at South By Southwest?

Lee Odden: You know, the first and foremost is connecting with really wonderful people like you and Aaron…

Susan Bratton: Like me and Aaron, whoo!

Lee Odden: and all the other great people. It’s amazing, you know, coming to an event like this and, you know, you see the mass of people, there’s like 10,000 people or something registered for interactive. It’s unbelievable. And then walking into the blogger lounge and it’s like…

Susan Bratton: Old home wheat…

Lee Odden: It’s like walking into a house party where all your best friends are. It’s just, oh my God, it’s amazing. So making new connections, renewing old connections, is really, those are the two things. Really. You know, making new connections, which I have, which is amazing, but also reinforcing existing connections and talking with people, and there’s so many smart people here and I just, I can’t get enough of smart people, you know, and really good people too.

Susan Bratton: Oh I know Lee. You’re a smart and good person…

Lee Odden: And so are you.

Susan Bratton: And I really appreciate the time that you came here to sit down with us and share your incredible thoughts at our Community Powered podcast. You just got to meet Lee Odden, Top Rank Online Marketing. Check out his wonderful blog and follow him on Twitter. Is it, it’s just Lee Odden at Twitter, on Twitter, isn’t it?

Lee Odden: L-e-e-o-d-d-e-n.

Susan Bratton: Perfect.

Lee Odden: Great.

Susan Bratton: We will be following you. We are your followers. I’m your host, Susan Bratton. Thanks so much.

Lee Odden: Thanks Susan.