President Barack Obama gave his first State of The Union Address to the nation on Wednesday night. During the live broadcast and for a long while after, the #SOTU (State of The Union) hashtag and several other related phrases were trending topics on Twitter. The President has his own Twitter feed @BarackObama that had live updates with direct quotes from his address to the nation and to Congress.

During the State of The Union Address, I kept an eye on Twitter through my phone. There were several quotes I wanted to Tweet, but I had trouble typing them and paying attention to what he was saying. I thought I had found a solution to the problem: the @BarackObama Twitter feed. However, to my dismay, I was unable to RT (retweet) his posts because of the 140 character limit. I’m not a fan of the new RT features on Twitter and I’m not alone. Very few people that I follow employ the new retweet feature. The new retweet feature is confusing to those seasoned Twitter users who are used to the original retweet, “RT @mikehalvorsen blah.” In addition to this, the new RT feature does not allow additional comments, such as “I love USA RT @BarackObama I never said change would be easy…”

At the end of his address, I checked out the Twitter feed on my desktop and to my shock, almost all of the Tweets made from his account during the address were near the 140 character limit. Out of 12 Tweets posted during the State of The Union Address, only two were RT-able using the old school retweet method.

For anyone using Twitter as a way to spread their brand or message, you must cover all bases. If you want your message to be spread around the Twittersphere, you must fully understand its limitations 140 characters at a time.

For those in charge of handling Barack Obama’s Twitter account and that of The White House, give us a call at 1-800-310-0317 for free Social Media consulting. Make sure you ask for me.

I will be joining Anita Campbell, editor-in-chief of Small Business Trends for a free one-hour webinar: 10 Quick Tips to Give a Boost to Your Website & Online Marketing Efforts.  It’s presented by the Verizon Small Business Center.

Details:
Date: Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Time: 2:00 PM, Eastern Standard Time
Cost: FREE!
Registration: https://verizonevents.webex.com/verizonevents/onstage/g.php?d=665731581&t=a

If you’re a local Twitter user and want to do some networking with your fellow Northeast Ohio tweeple, then come to the next NEO tweetup being held at Maize Valley Winery on October 29th.

Not only will you enjoy great networking with NEO tweeters, you’ll also have the opportunity to check out all that Maize Valley has to offer, including wine tasting, wagon rides, corn maze, etc.

Follow@NEOtweetups for more details & to RSVP.

The Karcher Group is sponsoring a social lounge/tweetup at the upcoming Networking in the Middle event being held at the Akron Canton Aiport on September 23rd.

There will be free food & drinks, not to mention an awesome networking opportunity. You can RSVP with Cleveland Plus here: www.clevelandplus.com/nitmvii and let us know you’re coming on Facebook, too.

Follow @NEOtweetups for the latest NEO tweetup information!

Earlier this Spring, YouTube unveiled a push into news video by offering a new local feature that offers an online outlet for local news stations, local newspapers, radio stations and even some college sources and has dubbed this new feature “News Near You“. This new feature uses the Internet address of a visitor’s PC to determine the user’s location and whether any partners are located within a 100-mile radius.

The New York Times (NYT) reports that earlier this summer, YouTube “invited more than 25,000 news sources listed on Google News to become video suppliers. The site is also promoting videos from ABC News, The Associated Press, Reuters and other outlets. This year, it began featuring breaking news videos — including ones submitted by citizens in Iran, where protests are being captured by cellphone users — on its home page”.

NYT also reports that  “to date, nearly 200 news outlets have signed up with YouTube to post news packages and split the revenue from the advertisements that appear with them. In addition, Google searches now show YouTube videos alongside news articles, helping the videos reach a wider audience. But news media companies may have reasons to be wary. Few TV stations have figured out how replicate profits on the Internet. YouTube can easily act as another competitor”.

It will be interesting to see if these local videos will be watched and more importantly will the local news outlets be able to profit from “News Near You”!

Come out to The Karcher Group office on Wednesday, July 1st to meet local tweeters from the Canton/Akron area.  Come and spend some time with your tweeps and enjoy food & drinks – TKG is picking up the tab!

Follow @NEOtweetups on Twitter for the latest info.

YouTube.com is quickly becoming the fastest growing resource for online searchers.

Internet searchers are looking to video sharing website, YouTube to provide them with the information they’re looking for. Gone are the days of soley using Search Engine’s to find what you’re looking for.

I know, this is old news….but some companies have yet to connect the dots.

Years ago, being at the top of Google’s search results was the #1 goal for most companies regardless of the phrase.  Then, it was getting to the top of the heap for the phrases that would increase sales/leads. Over the last few years, with the emergence of social media, companies are finding that “SEO” doesn’t just include optimizing for the Search Engine’s anymore, but rather optimizing where your customer base is…

If you need to fix a leaky sink, searching in Google could provide articles that you’d have to  read — OR, a user could just as easily search YouTube and watch a DIY video! Understanding the need for this type of marketing is vital to any company’s web marketing initiatives.

The shift for some searchers to YouTube versus the other Search Engines requires a need for YouTube users to be employing optimization efforts in this space (as well as on all other domains). It’s now just as important to show up at the top of YouTube’s search results as it is to be visible at the top of Google’s results for those targeted converting phrases!

Want to read more about the shift to YouTube? Check out:

TechCrunch & DMNews

Corey & I are excited for our social media presentation this Thursday to the Leadership Akron Alumni Group, which is being held at the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank! Unfortunately, this event is closed to the public; however, if you’re interested in learning about how your business can leverage social media marketing, request a free social media analysis today.

The Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank has been helping people in need for 26 years. Serving Carroll, Holmes, Medina, Portage, Stark, Summit, Tuscarawas and Wayne Counties in Northeast Ohio.

Help the Foodbank help those in need by donating today.

In case you haven’t noticed….We’ve moved out from under the TKG.com domain and now have our very own domain: TheSEOBlog.org! Now that we have a new domain – we need a fresh new look. We’ll be launching a new design in January, stay tuned…

Guest Blogger: Corey Hammond

I wanted to do a follow up to my post Embarrassment with these 4 Employment Strategies. I just read an article that Andy Beal mentioned on his blog called One in five employers uses social networks in hiring process. CareerBuilder.com did a study of more than 31,000 employers and 20% of them say that they will use social media when looking for job candidates. Here are some of the top concerns that stood out to me from the article:

• Information about alcohol or drug use (41% of managers said this was a top concern)
• Inappropriate photos or information posted on a candidate’s page (40%)
• Bad-mouthing of former employers or fellow employees (28%)
• Inaccurate qualifications (27%)
• Unprofessional screen names (22%)

Wow. It makes you want to go to your social network profiles and search through all of your wall of comments to make sure that someone hasn’t said something that could be taken the wrong way or tainted the image you are trying to portray to an employer.

I have a short and interesting experience from a couple weeks ago. The Karcher Group belongs to a lot of the local chamber of commerce groups here in Canton, Ohio and we did a company bio plus an informational session on social media to the Young Professionals Network. I would say the group is all between the ages of 20-35 and is currently in the workforce. A bunch of the group has Facebook or MySpace and a couple have LinkedIn profiles. Out of a group of approximately 20 people, only about 2 people at most knew much about social media and its relationship to their reputation management. I would have figured that a group of that age would know more about this stuff. Sure they use social networks everyday and they never think twice. The fact they never considered was those same social media profiles could potentially hinder or prevent them from getting a job. Here are a couple quick tips to help manage your online reputation:

1. Use social media – Don’t be scared of it just because people can find you. If you are setting up the profiles, you have control of what shows up on them. This control allows you to dictate your image online and can help you. The article says that the “study did find that 24% of hiring managers found content on social networks that helped convince them to hire a candidate. Hiring managers
   said that profiles showing a professional image and solid references can boost a candidate’s chances for a job.” That leads right into the second tip…
2. Network – Everyone has heard the phrase “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” I’m not saying that I agree with this 100% but I think there is a lot of power and influence that comes with strong references. Social networks allow you to network and meet people that in some cases you would not be able to get to know. These connections could benefit you in some way down the road.
3. Actively monitor and interact – It’s good to have a profile on a social network to help with your online reputation management but creating it and “friending” some people is not good enough. To get the best return on your social media profiles you have to interact with the other people on the network. It is also important to monitor what gets posted and what you, yourself post. Imagine this; A couple years down the road you are looking for a new job. You start doing some research and find Company XYZ. You are about to apply when you realize that John Doe, a friend you went to high school with, works there. Now, have you really kept in touch with John over the years where you can ask him for a referral or reference, or did you just befriend him because you went to high school with him? That relationship now could make all the difference and you probably never took that into consideration when setting up that social network profile.

Being in the search engine marketing industry, sometimes I forget that most people don’t know everything about social media and the implications it can have. There is so much information out there and so much that I am still learning about it as well. Hopefully through articles like this and other publication outlets, others will be able to learn more about social media and be able to manage their own reputations online.