A few months ago, many of the brightest minds in the social media space came together for a common good. A Meet up dubbed the “Social Hackathon” was created, sponsorship by Bing and Windows Live Hotmail, with the purpose of helping Donorschoose.org address their marketing problems. Attendees of this event included names such as Chris Brogan, Beth Kanter and representatives from Twitter, Facebook, Bing, Google and more.

The event was a brainstorming session to help not only DonorsChoose, but non-profits learn a variety of techniques that will help them drive online traffic to their site, increase donations, and manage online engagement. It is important to note that the strategies developed in this session will not only apply to non-profits but for any business with the desire to improve their online presence.

A free e-book was created, featuring many of the ideas shared during this brainstorming session, as well videos including interviews with the experts who attended:

The Goodness Engine E-book
The Videos
Downloadable Whiteboard notes
Bing’s post

The book discusses what the Social Hackothon is,  and some of the challenges faced by DonorsChoose.org. There are several excellent tips within the book including the use of e-mail marketing, telling a story, usability and more.

I wanted to take a moment to share a brilliant PPC marketing strategy by Converse. Watch the video below to learn more:

Unfortunately, this strategy would not work well for many small to medium sized businesses due to resource and budget constraints. However, it is nice to see large brands focusing on more creative tactics such as this, instead of throwing money into their ads without much thought. The video also serves well to get your creative juices flowing.

Instead of using this tactic in PPC, you can use it to help boost traffic to your business blog. I often suggest that owners of business blogs use these types of long tail queries and questions when brainstorming ideas for their posts. If you can come up with an interesting, relevant post that addresses this query, you have just attracted a potential customer to your site.

For example, if you are a small business selling beauty products you may see searches like “How to get rid of under eye circles” suggested as a search term. Your post can not only help the reader, by explaining ways they can achieve this at home (gaining their trust) while also pointing them to products you have available that can help with this. By solving that searchers question – you have developed a relationship with the reader while getting your products and services noticed.

I also suggest developing a list of these types of queries and creating a “Common Questions” section within your website or blog. Don’t just sell products, sell products by delivering solutions to common issues. You can place these questions right in the side of your blog, or even as a drop down menu where customers are already searching.

Don’t forget to combine this with the power of social media. If you see a problem common to one you have answered on your website, send them a tweet with a link. Going back to our example of dark circles under your eyes, you can use Twitter to search for phrases similar to this and create a feed that you can follow.

What ideas have you used, or would you like to share?