Combine SEO, Blogging and Social Media to Optimize Your Marketing Efforts

[Update: The presentation slides have been added to the end of this blog article.]

Today at 1:00pm EST, we will be giving a free webinar on how to combine SEO, blogging and social media to fully optimize your inbound marketing campaign . As a prelude, we wanted to give you a brief overview of the material that it will cover and a few tips to get you started.

More often than not, consumers are researching the blogosphere, checking out friends' first-hand reviews or simply using Google to learn more about products and services. Smart marketers adapt to this consumer behavior by making content readily available for consumers to find, using tools like blogs, social media and SEO.

While many marketers understand the benefits of each tool, unfortunately they often aren't used together. For example, a company may work to increase SEO, but only a handful maintain a blog. Of those who blog, only occasionally do they integrate social media.

Here is a breakdown of an easy three-part campaign that any marketer can easily adopt into his or her own strategy. Within the campaign, I will break it apart to illustrate how blogging, social media and SEO work together in each step.

1) Publish Content

• Blogging : Start by writing a great blog article. Make your content interesting and helpful.
• Social Media : Post your blog article on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and -- when appropriate --  Digg. Ask people what they think!
• SEO : Make sure your content is fully keyword-optimized. Include lots of links to further information. Also, blog often to create as many pages as possible to be indexed in Google.

2) Monitor What People Say About Your Content

• Blogging : Read other people's blogs. Respond to those people commenting on your blog. Set up an RSS feed for easier tracking. 
• Social Media : Look around on Facebook and Twitter to see who's talking about you. Tools like search.twitter.com are great to monitor your top search terms and company name. Respond and interact with those talking about your company. Build relationships.
• SEO : Watch for Google alerts to see who is linking back to your site.
  

3) Promote Your Content and Content Created About You

• Blogging : When monitoring the blogosphere, did you find a blog post that you enjoyed? Write a follow-up post in your own blog and link back to them. 
• Social Media : Submit your content to Digg or StumbleUpon. Tweet about it on Twitter. Did someone write a blog post about your company or one of your products?  Promote that article through social media sites too! A third-party recommendation is invaluable. You want as many people to find it as possible. 
• SEO : By promoting a blog that links to you, you are increasing that article's traffic, as well as the possibility that someone else will link to it. This strengthens the inbound link to your site, improving your SEO.

So what do you think? Do your campaigns use one tool more than the others? What other advice would you give to marketers looking to fully utilize all three?

Click here to sign up for today's webinar at 1:00pm EST on How to Combine SEO, Blogging, and Social Media for Results.

Presentation Slides: How to Combine SEO, Blogging and Social Media for Results Webinar