Joanna Lord on SEM and social media from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

This summer I had the chance to sit down, on a sun-splashed day in Santa Monica, with Joanna Lord, a colleague at Socialmedia.biz who’s a leading industry expert in search engine marketing (SEM).

Joanna is co-founder and chief marketing officer of YourJobStop (formerly TheOnlineBeat), one of the top job search services, and last week she announced plans to move to Seattle (we’ll miss you in California, Joanna!). Seattle is where she presented at Search Marketing Expo (SMX), a search-heavy conference that tackles subjects like SEM, pay-per-click (PPC) tactics and search engine optimization (SEO).

In this 9-minute video, she talks about how brands should be using Twitter to identify strategic contacts and push your content out, the use of SEM, the importance of monitoring and tracking your brand’s reputation, and some of the things that companies need to take into account in an era of social media and empowered consumers.

Watch, embed or download the video on Vimeo

A few highlights from our conversation:

• Joanna: You have to sit down as a brand and ask yourself, what do you want to get from all the time you’re going to put into social media? more traffic? more sales? rehabilitating your brand’s reputation?

• Make smart use of the tools at your disposal to build out new connections and measure your success. Backtweets, for example, lets you measure how viral your article, video or other media has gone and what is its reach. “Twitter applications have become almost a full-service suite of trackable information,” she says.

• Brands’ activity in social media is really picking up. “Now you’re seeing brands that never really had an online presence jump online and jump into social media. You’re starting to see local people embrace social media and how you can be found locally.”

• Overwhelmed by all the new tools and platforms? Join the club! “We’re all drowning a little bit” given all the fast-changing developments in the field, she says.

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JD Lasica is founder of Socialmedia.biz. We work with large companies and nonprofits on social media strategies and campaigns. See JD’s business profile, contact him or leave a comment.