One of the first panel discussions I got to see at the Inbound Marketing Summit was Innovative New Marketing Programs Using New Media.  Moderated by Chris Brogan, this panel addressed a variety of new tools available to marketers.  Everything from selecting the right video publishing platform to search optimization was discussed in the chat.

During the break immediately following the discussion, I was fortunate to have a chance to interview one of the panelists, AJ Gerriston.  Aside from being a really nice guy, AJ is one of the founding partners of 451 Marketing, a Boston-based inbound marketing firm.

Check it out.  And, sorry for the poor shooting quality in the beginning.  It was pretty crowded.  The footage gets better near the middle of the clip.

Walking the Walk
What I liked about AJ and his company is that they definitely practice what they preach.  Aside from ranking a few pages from their site for their brand name term, you can also see social profiles positioned in the SERP.

The company’s Facebook profile, company profile on LinkedIn, as well as a few directory listings show up in the first 5 results.  Likewise, they run a PPC campaign to help drive traffic to their site through the sponsored links.

Google Gives the First Brand Impression
In the old days of SEO (all of 3-4 years ago), the winning strategy was to take a website, optimize it, and get as many of the key pages to be indexed on the first page of Google as possible.  PPC then supported that placement for more competitive organic terms.

Today, the game has changed because of massive volume of links and content found inside social networks and the ability for companies to invest in multiple Internet presences.

At the user level, humans now have the option to experience the organizational culture  of a company through the context of a well-positioned Facebook Fan Page.  Users can easily see how they potentially are already connected to the people inside the company by using the visible social graph of a LinkedIn company profile.

Today, a doorway to the entire brand experience of a company can be delivered through a simple Google search.

Thoughts on this?  When someone searches for your company name, what comes up?  What kind of first impression are you giving to your customers?  What options to they have to engage in your brand experience?

nateriggs

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