In an interview with Abby Johnson, Fox started by defining a few terms.  Earned media is “when someone says something about you, rather than you saying it yourself.”  Paid media is then “when you pay to place your content on a third-party channel,” while owned media is “your own channel.”

Next, Fox stressed that it’s important to combine these media types when marketing something, since this approach carries the content to a much wider audience.  Using multiple channels – like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and YouTube, for example – is important, too.

Worried about the expense or lack of other companies in the field?  Don’t.  Fox has seen paid social efforts achieve a clickthrough rate of 0.55 percent, whereas a display campaign might be lucky to achieve 0.09 percent.

Also, she explained that the main thing keeping companies from adopting social media marketing strategies is just a lack of awareness, followed by a lack of knowledge.

About 70 percent of Internet users spend time on social media platforms, Fox pointed out, so social media marketing is just a matter of going to where people are.  She stressed, “Social needs to be woven into the DNA of the organization.”

In this WebProNews: The Insider video, Managing Editor Mike McDonald connects with Ward via webcam to discuss the finer points of link building today, what constitutes good link bait, and creating a good balance of organic and paid links.

What is linkbait?

Linkbait can be anything – anything that inspires somebody at another website or blog to link back to it. The only boundary is creativity.

What makes something linkable? We can only speak with examples and general guidance, but:

Whatever it is, it should be clever and useful to the end-user, either by “interestingness” or by its ability to solve a problem.

Widgets, then, make sense as great linkbait.

Good linkbait is pure, not coming off as “slimy” or “cheesy.”

“In the long run,” says Ward, “the end user votes with the mouse.”

How do you develop a linking strategy?

Strategies should mesh with the intent and market of the website being promoted.

Any link is not necessarily a good link. Quality links matter. The right audience matters.

Timing is important. If you want to promote something for next week, organic SEO isn’t going to work. You may need to buy some links or bid on some keywords.

Use organic SEO for promotions far in the future (if for the Christmas season, begin in September).

There is no optimal balance of paid and organic links. It depends on what the end goal is.

Get the content in front of the audience you care about.

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Microsoft announced plans to purchase health search engine Medstory.com. Medstory works towards filling the needs of customers and health professionals who look for information on medical topics. Search Insider’s Mark Simon imagines Microsoft moving forward to triumph in the search wars. Simon thinks Microsoft has landed a huge advantage in the health market with the vertical search engine Medstory.

The world’s largest video search engine Blinkx teamed up with Motion.tv to include user-generated video content to search indexing. Blinkx has developed a reputation for complete video searching. Motion.tv permits anyone with a video camera to distribute his or her video clips online and make money while doing it. Blinkx plans on indexing more than four thousand Motion.tv video clips to make them more crawlable.

Michael Alan Crooker sues Microsoft for failing to hide porn. The FBI invaded Crooker’s home in 2004 to look for homemade explosives. The FBI took his laptop to analyze data and discovered a variety of porn. Crooker seeks compensatory and punitive damages from breeches in data security, because he set Internet Explorer to delete his browsing history after five days and Crooker claims the software failed to do so.