MIMA is home to quite the variety of interactive marketers. Even on the board, the mix includes some folks with blogophobia and some very diligent bloggers.

To keep giving you the MIMA content you’re craving, we’ve added three guest bloggers to the roster for your reading enjoyment. Keep coming back to the MIMA blog for more entries from the board and these contributing writers:

Chris Dohman is self-employed with North Rock Publishing …
* Favorite blog: SEOmoz
* Also contributes to: A new blog at North Rock Publishing that focuses on helping Minnesota small business owners with web development and Internet marketing tips.
* Quick tip for aspiring bloggers: Figure out who your target audience is and remain focused on them. It’s OK to go off track occasionally but the bulk of your content should be on-topic and written for this target audience so they can get the most out of it.

Gwyneth Dwyer is the director of writing services with Larsen …
* Favorite blog: Michael Beirut’s Design Observer
* Also contributes to: Marketing Profs Daily Fix, the top 25 marketing blog connected with MarketingProfs.com and LarsenIdealog, the Larsen blog on design, writing, marketing, and digital media.
* Quick tip for aspiring bloggers: Find your niche, keep it fresh, start a conversation.

Karen Sams is an interactive marketing manager with Ameriprise Financial …
* Favorite blog: Search Engine Land
* Also contributes to: Her own interactive marketing blog
* Quick tip for aspiring bloggers: Make sure you blog on a regular basis to keep visitors coming back.

Link building has evolved significantly since the days of laborious ad hoc Internet research and notorious link farming. These days, linkers are much more strategic about acquiring incoming links, which has resulted in less time spent on tactical implementation.

Competitor Analysis
They may be your competitors but they are an excellent source for building a quick list of link opportunities. Those linking to your competitor would more than likely be interested in linking to you.

There are some great online tools to help you identify incoming links to competitor websites.
o Touchgraph creates a picture of the link universe in which a particular website lives. Think of it in terms of “6 degrees of separation”.
o Back Link Analyzer is a free link analysis software that shows all anchor text linking into a given website.
o Yahoo Site Explorer also allows you track incoming links to a particular web page or domain.

Link Bait
Nothing generates an influx of inbound links like a viral campaign. Whether you come up with an incredibly useful resource or just a cool experience, if Internet users love it, you’ll get links. Link baiters need to think like ad and PR people. What will catch people’s attention?

A great example of link bait is “Will It Blend?” This is a website that sells blenders, a very uninteresting household appliance. The website brings the product to life with videos of obscure items being blended. They are currently blending the iPhone….

Social Media
The Social Media approach also plays the viral card. Building a network allows you to communicate with a large number of people that could potentially link their website back to yours. You have to be strategic in how you build your network to make sure links back to your site are as qualified and relevant as possible. You can also leverage social networking sites to create profiles that list your contact information and include a link back to your website/blog.

• Can’t live without it
• Never breaks
• Highly profitable
• Cool!
• [Your answer here]

Join the discussion over at Marketing Profs Daily Fix Blog — especially if you attended MIMA’s September 12 presentation by Peter Merholz, President of Adaptive Path.

Merholz asked all the MIMA members in attendance (and we heard it was a record-setting crowd) a variant of the question above:

“What’s the highest compliment a product can receive?”

His answer was “cool!” And one of his examples was, guess what, the iPod, because of its visually appealing, drop-dead-simple interface.

(Speaking of cool, Merholz sure maintained his despite a computer crash that caused him to stop his presentation for almost 10 minutes.)

Is Merholz right? Is cool the ultimate compliment?

This past summer, three MIMA board members (Jason Kleckner, Julie Vollenweider and I) joined 25 other interactive marketing association board members from across the U.S. to discuss best practices, membership benefits, programming, organizational structure and operations. We’re not talking about starting a national interactive marketing association, but we wanted to compare notes and see how we can offer members more and strengthen the interactive community in each region. In addition to sharing some innovative ideas, the associations agreed to keep the conversation going via a message board and teleconferencing, and we’re also establishing a speakers bureau to share resources.

So…are you curious about what’s happening with interactive marketing in other parts of the country? Check out these IMA websites. Sign up for their email newsletters or just see what they’re up to. And if you’re traveling to these cities, why not attend one of their events? We’re reaching out to these organizations to make MIMA even better, but we encourage you to network with them, too. Other IMAs can be great resources for job searches, recruiting, making connections and building your business.

Atlanta
Boston
Chicago
Dallas-Fort Worth
Houston
NY
Philadelphia
Portland
North Carolina
San Francisco

These IMAs weren’t able to join us in Atlanta, but they are going strong in their regions:
Milwaukee
South Florida

If you’re aware of others, let us know. Email Jason Kleckner, our National Partnerships Chair.

As a side note, did you know that MIMA is the only interactive marketing association in the country to hold a full-day interactive marketing conference? If you haven’t registered for the MIMA Summit yet, don’t miss it. It’s your chance to hear amazing speakers, find out what’s hot in interactive marketing and network with over 400 MIMA friends! Sign up today.

If an online marketing agency promises you number 1 ranking in Google, don’t be deceived. Achieving high ranking is a long process that depends on the keyword phrases targeted and the website in question. Remember, there are no guarantees.

Here are 6 tips for gaining high ranking in Google:

#1 Perform Keyword Analysis
Be wise about the keyword phrases you target. Use a keyword popularity tool to analyze the popularity of a given keyword phrase. However, don’t rely solely on popularity in your selection; the most popular keyword phrases will more than likely also be the most competitive. Weigh popularity against the number of competitors for a given keyword phrase, along with your ability to provide dedicated and detailed content in support of that phrase.

#2 Choose One Theme
Make sure that your website is focused on one specific subject and does not attempt to include several unrelated threads. Google is looking for websites that are authorities in their subject area and the best way to become an authority is to focus your web copy on one specific topic. Just as a website about deep sea fishing would not come up in the results of a search on “Toyota cars”, a website that doesn’t appear to have one common theme will not be perceived as an authority in a particular subject and will not rank highly in searches.

#3 Regularly Update Your Content
The best way to become a subject matter expert (SME) is to regularly add new and relevant content to your website. Attaching a blog to your website is a great way to add fresh detailed content on a regular basis. In order to get the most out of a blog, you need to post to it at least once a week. Also make sure that your blog lives under your website’s domain, otherwise, you will not gain credit for the new content.

#4 Optimize Press Releases
Press releases are another way of generating fresh content. Optimizing press releases with relevant keyword phrases and distributing over a number of newswires also help you achieve high ranking for those keyword phrases. Aim to distribute an optimized press release at least once a month. Gain credit for the fresh content by posting each new release to your website or blog.

#5 Link Building
Just as Google looks at the type of content your website provides to assess whether you are an authority in your subject, the search engine spiders also look at which websites are linking to you and how many. Just like content, incoming links must be relevant to the your website and are intended to confirm your position as a subject matter expert.

#6 Add ALT Tags to Images
Search engines read text, not images. If you use graphics for buttons and use images on your website, it’s a good idea to attach text to those images so that the search engine spiders can read the tags.

Thank you to everyone who was able to attend the MIMA Happy Hour on Wednesday at Brit’s. Thank you especially to our sponsors, who made it possible for us to give away 6 super prizes.

Congratulations to the winners:
- Joel Eisfelder of Campus Media Group won a free pass to the 2007 MIMA Summit
- The following people all won free passes to the September event “Brains Before Beauty: Information Architecture and User Experience”:
– Michael Gonsalves of Target Corporation
– Jennifer Meyer of Web Emarketing
– Jennifer Educate of TMP Directional Marketing
– Randy Roland of MBI Publishing Company
– Aleks Stancevic of Entropy Design Lab

I ran into some MIMA old-timers as well as an encouraging amount of newcomers. On the newcomer list were Scott Lobash and Dave Wencel from AdFusion as well as Rob Wiens, President & Founder of Luggage Pros.

AdFusion works with a network of publishers to disseminate client branded, consumer-focused content to print and online markets.

Luggage Pros is a Minnetonka-based luggage retailer with an e-commerce website selling leading brands such as Tumi, Hartmann, Swiss Army, Travelpro, Boyt and Samsonite.

Looking forward to seeing everyone at the event on September 12 – “Brains Before Beauty.”