Companies have been rushing to embrace social media in droves over the last year. While it's great to see companies embracing Web 2.0, I worry sometimes about the number of companies rushing in to talk rather than listen. After all, one of the greatest benefits of social media is having the ability to find out what your customers are talking about. Bill Balderaz points this out today over at The Buzz Saw.

Bill writes:

Want to know what vegetables working moms feed their kids? They are talking about it. Want to know what music teens are downloading? That is there too. The software IT administrators at hospitals in Tallahassee are buying? Them too.

Now search on your brand name and your competitors' brand names, what a treasure trove of market research, all generated by real consumers, voluntarily and free!

His point is spot on. Companies are getting a better handle on the idea of online reputation management and many are already tracking the conversation about themselves online. It's a good start, but it doesn't go far enough. People gather in communities to their likes and dislikes. You can learn a lot by listening.

Aaron over at AjaxNinja has a great post this week exploring why niche social media sites are better than Digg when it comes to driving traffic and conversions to most web sites. While I've never been much of a Digg fan myself, (it's like news for the angry ADHD techie) I see true value in niche, topical social bookmarking sites. The trick is, finding the audience that best fits your content.

Aaron writes:

Digg has an immense amount of traffic and getting landed on the front page will send a tsunami of new readers to your blog or website, but getting onto the front page is incredibly difficult.

Getting onto the front page of a smaller, more appropriate niche portal, by contrast, is much easier, quicker, and ultimately you get a better return on your time/traffic ration in the short run.

He goes on to outline seven reasons why companies should look beyond Digg and seek out niche social media sites.

1. Digg has a very hostile user base; niche sites have supportive ones
2. A lot of Diggers are in it for promoting themselves as power users
3. Digg has too broad of an audience
4. Digg's high volume of stories makes it hard to get noticed
5. Digg's Categories are Too Broad
6. Digg is not transparent; we don't know why some stories get buried
7. In order to improve your effectiveness and visibility on Digg, you have to invest a lot of time into its social network

Aaron goes on to give examples in each of those categories of alternative sites more targeted to his content where he's see positive results. While the sites Aaron mentions likely won't work well for everyone, they're demonstrative of the need to find the sites that target your audience. Remember, just because something is the most popular doesn't mean it's the best.

If you've been thinking of playing in the social news and social bookmarking realm, I'd suggest you carve out some time to go hunting for options other than Digg. Think of it as the long tail of social bookmarking.

Ok, so she's not "our" Diane Aull as much as she's Acroprint and Nine Yards' Diane Aull, but she is a regular writer and forum moderator here. Liana Evans has an entertaining (and information packed) interview with Diane over at Search Marketing Gurus this week as part of her Women of Internet Marketing Wednesday series.

One of the most interesting segments was Diane's perspective on working as both an in-house search marketer and as a SEM consultant.

Q: You are in a very unique position, in that you are an in-house SEM but you also consult, could you enlighten us on what the major differences are for you?

A: The in-house work is totally hands-on -- everything from server administration to web design to content development to search marketing. Whether I do the work myself or I direct the work of a contractor, I'm very much responsible for everything that happens with all our web properties. While I also manage the websites for some subsidiary and "sister" companies in other lines of business, the main body of what I do is quite focused on a single fairly "niche" industry. It's been a chance to go very, very deep in terms of industry, business and product knowledge, which has proven to be fascinating.

On the consulting side, my partner and I both spend our days in hands-on roles so we enjoy the opportunity to do something a little different in our own business. Our focus is on offering education and empowerment -- helping our clients learn for themselves what it takes to make their own sites better. While we will occasionally take on a particularly interesting site makeover, by and large I see my consulting role as an adviser and guide.

You can also hear her perspective on the paid link debate, on SEO verses PPC and what advice she'd offer up to women looking to enter the industry.

Beyond that, there are some juicy tidbits about how she got her forum nickname (Torka), who her search dream team is and whether she'd pick Robert Clough, Stoney deGeyter or Matt Bailey. (My personal vote is Robert, but only because it's his birthday today and he's now old and needs to feel special.)

Blockbuster provides a perfect real-world example of a company struggling to get it right. Sometimes they get the DVD in the tray and sometimes they don't. (That analogy sounded better in my head!)

One of the neat features of Blockbuster Total Access is that along with being able to exchange mail envelopes for a free DVD in the store is that they also send you a monthly coupon that can be used for either a DVD or a game. Real quick, let's do the math on all of this. I pay just about $10 per month for the one DVD at a time plan. Let's say that I only watch movies on the weekend so every week I get my DVD in the mail, watch it, exchange it for a freebie in the store and then wash, rinse and repeat the next weekend and so on. That's two movies I watch per per week, eight per month plus a ninth movie (or game) using the free coupon. I'm paying just over $1.10 per movie.

If I were to do the same process with the next level of service, two DVDs at a time, I'd be paying about $0.88 per movie. Not a bad stinking deal, and again, which is why I'm in love with Blockbuster Total access. I'm sold on the service, but where Blockbuster goes wrong is in the customer communications department.

Last week I received an email from Blockbuster notifying me that my ecoupon was ready. I was curious about that. I wasn't sure how these ecoupons would be delivered. Here's the email I got:

The email is great! It's only missing one thing; a link to the actual coupon. The email does everything right except the one thing that they absolutely MUST get right. It provides no link nor any instructions on how to print the coupon. Well, thanks for the notification, but, uh, what now?

I look through the "related links" to see if maybe a link to the coupons was included in that list. No luck there. The best I can do is to "Sign In". So I click on the sing in link and am taken to the login screen. I enter my info and am taken to the standard you're-logged-in home page. I don't see any special notice that tells me my ecoupon is ready to be printed. In fact, there is nothing on this page about my ecoupon whatsoever.

I finally figured out to navigate to "My account" and look for a little button that reads "print ecoupon". Talk about making the customer do all the work! An email such as this should, at the very least, contain instructions on how to get to the coupon. Don't make the customers spend time trying to figure all this out. Even better, though, would have been an actual button in the email to "Print ecoupon." This could have led the customer directly to the coupon page saving everybody a bit of time and frustration!

Discuss this article in the Small Business Ideas forum.

Earlier this week in my article about aiming for less competitive phrases in the early days of your SEO attempts, I mentioned the fact that most searchers conduct several queries and visit several sites before making a purchase. This action mimics offline sales patterns as well. Research has shown over and over again that it takes multiple exposures to a product before a consumer is ready to buy. Yesterday, Patrick Schaber over at The Lonely Marketer drew a simple, but pointed analogy on this concept.

Patrick writes:

While at SES San Jose conference and exhibits, I had the chance to be the attendee and not the exhibitor in the exhibition hall - meaning I got to walk around and evaluate different products and services that I may be able to use in my job. When I walked in the hall for the first time, I was greeted by a representative from an exhibiting company wanting me to carry around a bag with their logo on it to carry all the little trinkety, cheap giveaway handouts - or better known as "schwag" - that is handed out by exhibitors. Having decided I wasn't going to pick up any "schwag", I declined.

He goes on to talk about making a few more visits to the expo hall over the course of the show and how he eventually started spotting some items he thought he might like to take home. He also notes that every time he entered the expo hall, the company with the big red bags was there waiting for him. Eventually, he was laden now with enough items to actually need the bag.

To my pleasant surprise, the same company was there offering that bag and this time, I happily said yes. I then wandered around filling the bag with junk that never would make the trip home with me. But, I was carrying that big, flashy red bag with that company's logo on it everywhere I went.

Patrick's goal is to offer up a simple reminder about the need to get in front of your audience in many ways and at many points in time. Simply capturing a single click thru from a search results page isn't enough. You need to capture them at multiple points of the search buying cycle. You need to capture them in their bookmarks. You need to capture them via email marketing. If you're a brick and mortar store, you need to capture them with your store experience and your promotions as well.

Search engine marketing and analytics provide an amazing way to see exactly what a visitor does when they come to your site. Unfortunately, that knowledge has led many a site to discount the actions a visitor might take after they visit your site. What are you doing to capture your audiences attention more than once?