Thunder Booms! Search and Social Favorites for September 16, 2011

It's no secret that Mexico has been plagued by violence in recent years, with most of it being related to the cartels. This past week a note was found with two victims that read "Post something we don't like online, and your next. I am about to get you." This kind of violence makes it hard for authorities to distinguish between scare tactics and legitimate threats. Whatever they may be, certain anonymous citizens have had enough. Even when they have been threatened with extreme acts of violence, people continue to tweet and to blog about what is transpiring around them in the community. They have had to clothe themselves in anonymity in order to be able to continue their diligent campaigns. The main thing is that they are making sure that the story gets told, and that’s all they can really hope to do. For now. 

Ever since brands started diving into social media, they've been looking at quantitative ways to measure their efforts and evaluate their investment. But unfortunately, tracking the ROI of brand humanization can be a bit difficult. Of course, Rand comes in with a whole lot of awesomeness with an comprehensive analysis on social's role in the conversion cycle, as well as helpful social metrics to track. He also goes beyond the standard Twitter and Facebook tracking and looks at the value of LinkedIn, Google+, Reddit, SumbleUpon, Quora, Yelp, Flickr, YouTube, Blogs, and Forums as worthy conversion channels to pay attention to. He wraps up his post with a beefy list of social media measurement tools, some of which you've probably used, and some that you've never heard before. Somewhere in there is the perfect combo to effectively and efficiently track those metrics and put together the social media reports your clients have never even dreamed of.

Have a big client pitch coming up? Ray Comstock over at Search Engine Watch, having had his fair share of successful & failures when it comes to selling he's agency's services, came up with three simple points to remember when it comes to pitches. This aren't part of some magical "how to guide" but you'll definitely want to keep them in mind when preping for a pitch. 

1) Keep it Simple-  As you may forget from time to time, most people aren't  SEO geeks & have no idea about ranking factors. So keep that in mind & explain with enough detail to show compitence & expertise, without loosing the audience in industry specific phrases. 

2) Have a Plan- Do your homework on them. Don't give away solutions, but show them their SEO short comings & generally how you'll fix them. 

3) Be Passionate About What You Do - This should be fairly obvious, but bringing your passion to the pitch can do wonders with the prospective client's confidence that you're the one(s) that perfect for the job.