You can’t read any marketing material without hearing about social media – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN, Google Buzz, tec. — but blogging is also a social platform. Twitter is defined as a micro-blogging service. Instead of a whole paragraph or a whole page, it is a 140 character blog post to the Twitter service. Who says you can’t blog?

Why blog?

A bunch of reasons including to demonstrate your subject matter expertise; for publicity (PR); to become a Trusted Advisor; for reputation; or to just be heard.

In general, you blog for marketing.

A side effect of blogging (and other social networking) is SEO (search engine optimization) – or at the very least, search engine results. If you create enough organic, genuine content around your subject or topic (or keyword), the search engines will ikely find it (eventually). The more content and the more frequent you create content, the better your search results. So blog often.

On Twitter Sarah Evans asked what the difference was between marketing and public relations to be answered on twitter in less than 140 characters. Here are some answers:

• Marketing is what gets people through the door, PR is what keeps them coming back.
• In my world? Marketing connects people to me as a service or brand. PR connects me to people as a person.
• Marketing gets people to the dance. In sales, you have to do your own dancing. PR makes sure there are people to keep dancing with.
• Marketing=first thing people see.  PR=showing what’s underneath
• On a cynical side, marketing is selling face – PR is saving face

Since I started in sales and moved to marketing, I wouldn’t agree with all of these answers, but I can see how PR people would.  To me: PR is media spin.  Marketing is messaging and buzz to your target audience. Sales is actually getting dirty to pay the marketing and PR people.

All too often, people in marketing, social media, PR, lead generation (SEO and SEM), and advertising have espoused how they deliver. I have to tell you: until the salesperson closes the deal, nothing happened.

Brand Autopsy has visual representation of the differences among marketing, PR, advertising and branding. It boils down to: Advertising is when you tell people how great you are. PR is when someone else says how great you are. But in PR the person saying it is usually a paid spokesperson. Referrals, testimonials, and customer reviews are truly the best sales tool.

In website design and web marketing there are two terms everyone talks about: SEO and pay-per-click. Here are two PowerPoint presentations on SlideShare about SEO.

• The first is titled: SEO and PR for Digital Public Relations.
• The second is titled: SEO Copywriting: Submitting SEO Press Releases

Your press releases should be optimized for your keywords, just like your web content (whether that is on website page or blogging platforms). There are free wire services like PRlog.org but th epaid wire services get better traction on the most often viewed sites like MSN and Yahoo.

This isn’t a quick fix. This is a slow way to build a reputation using a combination of tools: website, blog, newsroom, PR, and others. Combined it makes you look like an expert — and easy to find.  [thanks to PRsarahevans for pointing them out]