This document outlines the topics and schedule for a course on best practices in social media for communications professionals. The November 10th meeting will focus on responding to negativity, issues with information going "off the record" online, and search engine optimization (SEO) for PR professionals. The guest speaker will be Tony Adam, President and CEO of Visible Factors, who will discuss online reputation management. Students will complete a final project involving a situation analysis, goals, target audiences, competitive analysis, strategies, tactics, and measurement metrics.

1. Best Practices in Social Media
for the Communications
Professional
Instructor:
Erik Deutsch (@ErikDeutsch)
#SocMedUCLA
Meeting 5 (November 10):
• Responding to Negativity (revisited)
• Nothing is “Off-the-Record”
• SEO for the PR pro
• Online reputation management
• Guest speaker:
Tony Adam (@TonyAdam)
President & CEO, Visible Factors
UCLA X469.21 Fall 2015

2. 1. Situation Analysis (a few paragraphs – no boilerplate)
2. Goals (bullet points – well defined)
3. Target Audiences (bullet points – demo/psycho)
4. Competitive Analysis (a few paragraphs)
5. Strategies (bullets)
6. Tactics (bullets)
7. Measurement (starting point + benchmarks)
UCLA X469.21 Fall 2015
The Final Project

3. UCLA X469.21 Spring 2015

4. If, When and How to Respond to Negativity,
and How to Avoid it In the First Place
• Do the right thing
• Offer a “pressure valve” for negative feedback
• Institute a “comments policy”
• Be accessible – turn problems into solutions
• Have your defenders already place (before you need them)
• Assess each detractor’s influence and legitimacy before
deciding if/how to respond
UCLA X469.21 Fall 2015

5. Social Media is:
• Easy to post
• Easy to share
• Easy to find
• Hard (if not impossible) to delete
UCLA X469.21 Fall 2015

6. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of
improving the visibility of a web site or a web
page in search engines via the "natural" or un-
paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.
Other forms of search engine marketing (SEM)
target paid listings.
UCLA X469.21 Fall 2015

7. 1) Relevance - How relevant is your page content to
the keyword query of your visitor?
2) Authority – Based on the company you keep. In
other words, which sites link to your site, and who
shares your links on social media
UCLA X469.21 Fall 2015

8. • Visible (on-page) and non-visible (source code) content
• Meta Tags - Optimize your Title and Description tags
• Alt Tags - Alternative text attached to images (to provide
search engines crawlable text in the webpage code)
• Headings - Titles and subtitles (e.g. H1 and H2 tags) on the
page help break blocks of content into smaller, clearly labeled
sections.
• Body Text - Focus on 2 or 3 keywords per page and write for
users, not the search engines (avoid “keyword stuffing”)
UCLA X469.21 Fall 2015

9. • External inbound links – Value depends on credibility and
popularity of the sites that link to your site. Note .edu and .gov
trump the rest, and the NY Times trumps a small-time blogger
(links from spammy sites can actually reduce authority).
• “Anchor” text – The visible, clickable text in a hyperlink should
be keyword-focused.
• Link relevancy – How relevant is the content on the linking
page and the target page?
• Popularity & Trustworthiness – What’s the “Page Rank” of the
linking page?
UCLA X469.21 Fall 2015

10. SEM - Search Engine Marketing
•Purchasing links
•Akin (in PR speak) to "Earned" vs. "Paid" media
UCLA X469.21 Fall 2015

11. The results that come up when you
perform a Google search
UCLA X469.21 Fall 2015

12. And remember...
all content and links are not created equal.
"The solution to pollution is dilution."
UCLA X469.21 Fall 2015

13. Develop multiple content assets to help push down negative links (as well as
negative, autosuggested searches).
Tactics: YouTube videos, topic-specific landing pages (with embedded YouTube
videos), press releases through online wire services, blog entries and social
media profiles.
"The solution to pollution is dilution."
UCLA X469.21 Fall 2015

14. Instructor:
Erik Deutsch
(@ErikDeutsch)
#SocMedUCLA
Best Practices in Social Media
for the Communications
Professional
Meeting 5 (November 10):
Guest speaker:
Tony Adam (@TonyAdam)
President & CEO, Visible Factors
UCLA X469.21 Fall 2015