According to Todd, storyteller marketing has been somewhat abandoned due to the short-sided nature of performance marketing. Most search marketers think in terms of click-to-click or campaign-to-campaign, but storyteller marketing takes a bigger commitment.

Todd recommends that marketers look at communication goals and understand what they want people to believe about their business. Once that is determined, marketers can then develop a storyline with those goals integrated into their brand.

Next, Todd says marketers need to commit to that storyline for a minimum of three years. While this doesn’t mean using the same ad over and over, it does mean building and developing the storyline in a variety of ways.

Storyteller marketing is a powerful way to connect with people, so why not utilize it?

All the search engines have recently stepped up their efforts with semantic search and hope to better understand each user’s intent. For example, if a user searches for “cougar” are they looking for an animal, a car, or a TV series?  Semantic technology has potential to provide a better understanding of that intent.

While many questions pertaining to semantics remain, one certainty that Dana Todd of Newsforce points out is that semantics go beyond keywords and produce new and intriguing data layers to calculate.

Where do you think semantics will take us moving forward? Do you have concerns about semantic search?

Some marketers are overwhelmed by the social media outbreak and have trouble integrating it into their business. It is important to remember that social media is a powerful force that can increase brand awareness, control reputation management, and more.

To begin, Dana suggests looking into your business structure and target market. Secondly, determine what you need to do to improve your business and how you can engage in it with your target. Once that is done, the question of which social tools you should use should be clear.

Have you found the right fit for social media in your business model? If so, how did you reach that determination?

First of all, the print media is noticeably struggling but this only means more and more people are going online for their news. According to her presentation on “News Search SEO” at SES New York, Dana says news sites have more than 250 million readers.

Additional data from Dana further proves that the news industry is not going anywhere anytime soon:

-    The newspaper digital audience has grown 60 percent in the last three years.
-    44 percent of all Web users visited newspaper Web sites in January of 2009.
-    Newspaper views are up to trillions monthly.
-    Alternative news sources (search, Twitter, blogs, social media, etc.) offer more opportunities.

Social media in general, but especially Twitter, have renewed an interest in news for many people. The fact that Google is now including Twitter results into Google results is just more evidence of the value and opportunities of news online.

This information is valuable to NewsForce because it allows the online news space increase their prominence and visibility in the traditional news space through its advertising channel.