Fionn Downhill will be appearing at this week’s SES San Francisco Conference. Downhill, who is President and CEO of Elixir Interactive and one of the co-Founders of SyCara, Inc., will be part of the much-anticipated “SEO is Dead. Long Live SEO!” panel to be held on Day Two of the event.

Fionn Downhill

The panel, moderated by Dana Todd, will address the question as to whether search engine optimization is still a powerful tool for companies and brands looking to succeed online. The rise of social media and whether networking and sharing sites support search engines or are supplanting them is sure to be a part of the discussion.

The SEO panel will be held on Wednesday, August 17th at 4:45 p.m and will feature Downhill along with Mark Jackson, David Naylor and Todd Friesen. Downhill will also participate in the new “Meet the Speakers” luncheon which is being held at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday.

Meet Fionn Downhill at SES in San Francisco is a post from: Elixir Interactive Social

When it comes to marketing your business, the Internet is an important place to start. Millions of people browse the web every day both for fun and for work. One of the biggest reasons that people use the Internet is for shopping as well as researching companies to work with.

Often when potential customers are browsing the web looking for services, they don’t know exactly what they are looking for ‚ they don’t have specific companies that are considering. So they go to one of the many search engines ‚ Google, Yahoo ‚ and they type in they type of service they are looking for. This is where SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, comes in.

The results that appear through each search engine query are not random. They are selected through a complicated algorithm and meeting certain criteria. Because most people will probably not scroll past the first couple of pages, it is important that businesses have highly ranked pages; the higher the pages rank, the earlier they will appear in the results.

There are a couple of ways to maximize your businesses ranking and, although you can do some of it on your own, it is typically best to work with a company that specializes in SEO. Sometimes the HTML coding of the site can be adjusted to improve your ranking, while other times content writing will do the trick.

When you work with a SEO specialist they can help you design a plan that will fit your business’ specific needs and provide the desired results.

Elixir Interactive Review: What is SEO? is a post from: Elixir Interactive Social

Elixir Interactive’s very own CEO & President, Fionn Downhill, is one of the experts scheduled to present at the upcoming SES Chicago search conference. Downhill has spoken at several of the SES conferences around the country and is excited to be invited to participate in the Chicago event.

“Digital Asset Optimization” will address the multiplicity of blended search results. How have videos, images, audio files, slides and other media besides simple web pages showing up in the search results affected your marketing strategy? How popular are these blended results with the average web searcher? What does it all mean for your business?

The panel will also feature Yahoo!’s Director of Product Management, Kaushal Kurapati and Jim Yu, Founder & CEO of Brightedge. It will be moderated by Chris Boggs of Rosetta. It will be held on October 21st which is Day 3 of the conference.

Downhill will also be presenting on Day 1 of SES (Oct 19th) on the topic “Brand, Trademark & Reputation Management.” She will be moderating a panel discussion titled “Selling Search to the C-Suite” on Day 3.

Elixir CEO Scheduled to Appear at SES Chicago this Month is a post from: Elixir Interactive Social

Companies and individuals with solid online reputations are not safe from attack by unscrupulous competitors or vengeful individuals. Elixir Interactive has published a case study documenting a systematic and malicious smear campaign waged against the company’s brands since early 2010. The goal of the study is to reveal the tactics that can be used to intentionally damage a brand as well as provide an example of how to defend against them.

“Brands Under Attack” documents months of investigation and analysis of the methods employed against Elixir as well as information about the current threats against brand reputations. Elixir CEO Fionn Downhill warns “No one’s reputation is safe online.” She also cautions that when a reputation management company with a solid brand can be persistently harassed, it is easy to extrapolate the damage that can be done to an unsuspecting company or individual.

The anonymity of complaint and social media sites makes creating false reports and fake accounts to support those reports practically effortless. The current state of digital law is so far behind the realities of the internet, that even outright slander is free from prosecution. Anyone with an axe to grind, or a competitive edge to gain, can easily attack individuals, companies, or even entire industries. In fact, the attack against Elixir was part of a larger campaign against multiple online reputation management companies.

Elixir, as an experienced ORM company, already had considerable defenses in place when the first complaints were filed. In the months since, the company has taken steps to reinforce those digital assets and create new ones in order to bolster their brand results and guard against the continuous filing of false complaints. The case study documents these steps, which can be utilized by any company or individual to safeguard against such an attack or to respond once an attack is underway.

Case Study from Elixir Interactive Warns of the Dark Side of Online Reputation Management is a post from: Elixir Interactive Social

Twitter baffles most people. It is often asked: why would anyone care about what you are doing? This goes even more so for companies. Most people who aren’t on twitter already think of it as being something that you add on there things like “I just finished another piece of paperwork for the new clients.” It isn’t like that for most companies though. When you have someone with enthusiasm tweeting about the company, it is contagious and other people will want to share your enthusiasm. This gets the company noticed, and more people move on to the website to learn more.

The goal for your company should be to build the company brand and let people know that you are out there and what you can help them with. Each of the short messages should convey this. This means that instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?” try answering the question “What did I find that is interesting?” Don’t be afraid to add links back to your own sites, don’t be afraid to add links to things that relate to your company, but aren’t competitors. Talk with your competitors and your loyal customers. Let Twitter be one big conversation, and it will take your company far.

There are a few things you will want to think about as you are setting up a Twitter account. Make sure there is more than one person tweeting at the company. They can all use the same account, but people leave or go on vacation, and it can be nice to have a little variety. Make each tweet useful to your followers. If you do post a link, add a question or a comment with it. Also remember that this is a good place to ask questions of the people who are interested in your company. Twitter is great for getting opinions.

How Your Business Can Use Twitter is a post from: Elixir Interactive Social

Setting up your company’s LinkedIn profile is easy and doesn’t take a lot of time. For that reason it is also really easy to just keep putting off. The truth is that it would take less time to get through making the profile than it would to keep coming up with excuses. Here is all you will need to do.

Get onto Linked In and click on the link that allows you to add your company profile. Fill in the name of the Company, and work in some of your targeted keywords to get better search results. Make sure you have available an email address that is not currently associated with any other LinkedIn profile, but is still from your company. Something like administrator@yourcompany.com will be fine.

After that, all you need to do is continue to fill out information for the profile. Fill out as much as you can so that it will be easier for people to find you. Use keywords, but don’t drown the description or other fields in them. This will make it more likely that you will be picked up by search engines.

Setting Up a LinkedIn Company Profile is a post from: Elixir Interactive Social

Every company needs a social media presence. Facebook is often a good place to start with this. The first thing you will want to do when you do decide to get your company onto Facebook is to make a page. You don’t want a group, you are going to set up a fan page.

To do this, you will need to find the link that lets you create a fan page (go to Facebook.com and click “advertising” and then “Pages”). Once you are there, you can choose the category your page falls under. They are pretty broad categories and you may feel that several of them fit, but choose the one that best matches your company. You will then be asked to enter in a name, this should be your company name, but don’t be afraid to incorporate some of your target keywords as well.

Once you have done these things the page is created. However, you will need to make it look presentable. Make sure that you have a square image to use as your icon. Try to make the image around 140pixels x 140pixels. This will keep it around the right size and proportion so that it can be easily resized, larger or smaller. This is also the time to add pictures and content, such as posts and videos, to the page This will be what attracts people to the page and encourages them to interact with your brand. You will want to keep adding these things regularly so that people will get in the habit of checking back for new content. Remember not to add too much content all at once after your initial set up, and also not to stop posting to it. If you stop posting to it, you will lose your connection to your fans, and search engines will be less likely to pick it up.

Facebook for Every Company is a post from: Elixir Interactive Social