Twitter, But Don’t Be Boring
An article in the New York Times about small businesses that Twitter offers a few tips on how to Twitter as a small business owner and one of the rules is “Don’t be boring.”
In fact, we summarize this article with the following points:
- First, listen – Twitter is great for listening to your target audience. You can get some great feedback from your followers.
- Don’t be boring – Emphasis mine. Hey, keep it interesting, or entertaining.
- A live FAQ – Answering questions that your followers submit is better than having an FAQ on your website. It’s live and interactive.
- Create a focus group – This format takes getting feedback a step further. It’s an interactive focus group. The example in the NYT is a bakery that invited followers to show up at the store and taste a recipe then give feedback on it. That’s one way to get them into your store!
- Start a soapbox (for thinkers) – This is a pretty popular Twitter strategy, but one that works. Submit links to interesting articles about your niche. Make them interesting! But you are getting people thinking and if you do this well you’ll turn those links into interesting questions that your followers can answer.
- Start small – Really, there’s no shame in being small. You don’t have to have 100,000 followers to be successful with Twitter. Some of the most successful Twitterers have only 1,000 followers, or less.
Twitter is a useful tool and nothing to be afraid of. Take some time to familiarize yourself with it before you jump in. Then, when you’re ready, develop a social media strategy for your Twittering.
How’s Your Long Tail Hanging?
Google has confirmed rumors that a recent algorithm change has taken place, and that’s a rare event. Not the algorithm change; that happens all the time. But Google confirming reports of an algorithm change rarely happens. Nevertheless, Google is pretty specific about who is affected by this change.
Here’s what I find interesting about the news:
Based on Matt’s comment, this change impacts “long tail” traffic, which generally is from longer queries that few people search for individually, but in aggregate can provide a large percentage of traffic.
In other words, there are some sites out there that are going to do better with their long tail keywords and other sites that won’t do as well. So here’s the question: Which are you?
You should know by now if you’ve seen a rise or a drop in your long tail search rankings. If you see no effect then your site probably hasn’t been affected at all. But if you’ve seen a rise in long tail keyword rankings then Google has helped you; if you’ve seen a fall in similar long tail keyword rankings then Google socked it to you. But don’t take it personally.
These types of algorithm changes are about one thing: Providing searchers with the best web pages for their search queries. If Google made this change then it’s because they believed that the search results were dominated by a certain class of webmaster to the detriment of others. I think this change means that top-notch SEO is not always necessary, but knowing how to do it will improve your changes at getting good rankings.
Would You Buy SEO Services From Your Local Newspaper?
Ever since Google started selling convincing AdWords campaigns to small business owners, newspapers have been in decline. Their advertising customers have been giving up the newspaper ads and doing PPC instead. The revenues have been falling.
I guess they’ve tired of that so now newspapers are selling SEO services. Is that a good thing?
I suppose for the newspaper, it is. But what about the customer?
There is one edge that newspapers have over professional SEO firms. They know their customers. And they can offer personalized local optimization services based on the needs of their customers. So I guess that’s two edges. But can newspapers perform SEO?
I think the only way that will work is if the newspapers employ SEO professionals on staff, or outsource the SEO work. Reporters are not SEO professionals. Advertising representatives are not SEOs either. So it seems to me that if newspapers are going to survive as SEO companies then they need to hire SEO experts. What do you think?
Facebook Privacy: A Business App Killer?
Facebook has officially announced that it has changed its privacy protections for users. Specifically, the changes indicated will
- (Source)
- Provide one click blocking of third party sites
- Give users one click blocking options regarding Facebook applications
- Make it simpler to customize your profile’s privacy settings
While the jury is still out on whether or not these changes will be effective in giving users the privacy they want, from the face of it there could be a slight hindrance to marketing through Facebook. The question is, by how much?
And the answer is, no one knows. Not yet.
But if users can block third party sites more easily then your marketing efforts through Facebook could be hampered to a degree. If users can block your applications more easily then that could hamper your marketing to a degree as well. Now it’s up to you to figure out how you will navigate those hurdles.
The only sure way to overcome these types of user-control hurdles is to build trust your brand. If users trust you then they will recommend you to their friends. If they trust their friends then you’re in like Flynn. That’s not really any different than it has been in the past. The only real difference is you’ll have to work harder to build that trust. Are you up to the task?
Would You Pay Twitter For Its Data Streams?
Twitter has changed its policies to let publishers and developers know that if they make money from advertising by publishing Twitter data as a primary function of their website then they could be paying Twitter for the privilege of using that data. Do you think that’s a fair deal?
Of course, Twitter is talking about charging only the large publishers at this time, but whose to say that wouldn’t eventually trickle down to the small fellow? After all, data licensure is data licensure.
If I understand this correctly, this would be akin to buying the rights to use movies in your business presentations. That happens all the time. If the licensure fee is worth it to you and you can profit from it then it’s a good thing, right? Well, many online publishers are already making money off of Twitter data and it seems that Twitter is getting tired of not getting any of it.
What do you think? Should Twitter get a piece of the action?
How To Properly Plan Your Internet Marketing Strategy
Internet marketing is too important a task to leave to chance. It is important that you do a few things to set up your campaigns and measure your results along the way. Without measuring your results you cannot know what is working and what you need to change.
The first step to planning an effective Internet marketing campaign is to take inventory of your business. What are your strengths? What are you good at? How do you differ from your competitors?
You should write down your core values and mission statement. These are your guiding principles – offline and online.
After you have written down your core values and mission statement and discovered how you fit into your industry and how you differ from your competitors, you can begin to set your budget and line out how you will market yourself online. Your Internet marketing plan should contain, at a minimum, the following details:
- Your website – The hub of your Internet marketing plan. How many pages will you need? What keywords will you target? Figure out your approach to search engine optimization and build from there. Make sure your website design represents your core values and mission statement.
- Pay Per Click Marketing – Will you incorporate a pay per click campaign into your Internet marketing strategy? If not then state so in your plan. If so then you need to set a budget and plan your keywords.
- Social Media Marketing – Will you use social media? If so, which sites will you benefit from the most? What percentage of your overall marketing budget will be devoted to social media? Be specific in detailing your social media marketing plan.
- Blogging – Will you benefit from a blog? Include the details of your blogging strategy into your plan as well.
- Video Marketing – Will video be a significant part of your Internet marketing strategy? Will you embed video on your website or simply use it as a traffic generation tool? Outline your video marketing plan in as much detail as possible.
- Other Marketing Initiatives – What else is important to your Internet marketing strategy? Include it in your plan. Whether you plan to use article marketing or mobile marketing, put it into your plan. If there is anything you plan to incorporate into your online marketing plan then it needs to be written down.
Don’t worry about whether you’ll stick to your plan completely. At this stage you are simply making a plan. You can change it later. You can modify it as needed. But failing to plan is planning to fail and no one wants to engage in Internet marketing only to fall on their face. Least off, you.
How To Twitter Effectively
Twitter is one of the most misunderstood social media platforms. On the one hand, you can’t really call it social networking. It’s got some social networking qualities, to be sure, but it’s more like blogging in a real sense. That’s why it has been a category all to itself – and the many Twitter clones on the market – called microblogging.
Twitter is a great place to start, and join, conversations. But too many marketers are flocking to Twitter to “build a list”. However, many of those lists are unqualified lists of followers that have no interest in the person they are following. On Twitter, reciprocal following has little value.
The value in Twitter comes from the marketer’s ability to attract people who are interested – truly interested – in them as a personality. You could call it “personality marketing”. Some people call it “conversational marketing”.
To be most effective on Twitter, don’t focus on gathering a quantity of followers. Rather, focus on spreading useful niche information and draw people interested in that information to you. That’s how you win followers who will buy from you.
Why Reciprocal Links Are Not Evil
Back in the old days of link building, two sites would get together and agree to link to each other using their most desirable anchor text and promising to link from the page with the highest PageRank. Often, those sites wouldn’t even be related in content. The practice worked – for awhile.
Today, that practice will get you penalized. As a result, there are thousands of SEOs running around telling people not to accept reciprocal links because they are “black hat”, “evil”, “not good”, “bad practice”, etc.
But, they’re not.
Reciprocal links are still valid if they are natural links. That means, if you would link to each other anyway because it’s good for your customers then it’s a good link, reciprocal or not.
Problems with reciprocal linking come in when site owners try to game the PageRank and search engine ranking system by trading non-relevant high-PR links. These links rarely do what they’re supposed to do if you approach the topic with some level of common sense and go about it naturally.
Ask yourself this question, “If I link to this website will it benefit my visitors?” If not then don’t do it, even if the other website owner promises you a high value link. If you can answer the question in the affirmative then go ahead; even a reciprocal link will be better than no link.
Stop The Google Local Hijacking
There is a florist in New Zealand performing community penance for hijacking the Google Local listings of her competitors. I rather think she should get jail time, but that’s an aside.
If you have a local small business and you want to start marketing your business online but don’t know where to start, Google Local is the perfect place. You don’t even need a website. But if you don’t claim your business on Google Local then someone else just may do it for you and take any traffic or business that you might have received had you done it.
While this is considered criminal, consider that it could happen from someone in another country hijacking your business listing. If that happens then you may never see justice.
It’s best to prevent it from happening before you see your business in a compromised situation. Claim your business on Google Local, Yahoo!, Bing and Ask.com. It’s free and it will save you a ton of headaches.
Facebook Could Have Made A Huge Mistake
When you’re approaching 500 million users is not the time to make a move like this. Of course, because of Facebook’s unprecedented growth, I’m reasonably sure that this would not have followed were it not for nearly 500 million users.
You don’t need 10,000 fans to know that Facebook almost cut out over half of its fan page customers and maybe more. I think they may have realized that themselves after the backlash.
But keep something in mind. When you’re in the growth stage of a business, you can’t afford to step on as many toes as this decision would have done. And certainly not on a segment of the market as vocal as the small business community, a community that tends to vote with its feet.
Did Facebook make a mistake? Yes, in all likelihood it was a big mistake. But it could have been bigger. At least they relented.
Are Your PPC Ads Too Impersonal?
One of the great truths about online marketing in general is that personal is more effective. Internet citizens do their best to avoid advertising. The old interruption form of advertising is shunned like the plague. Therefore, online advertisers have learned to make their ads look more like entertainment and less like advertising. During the “entertainment” they try to make a personal appeal to the hot buttons of their audience.
What makes online advertising, including PPC, effective is that personal connection – the feeling that a specific ad was written just for me. When you can make that personal connection then you can say that your advertising is working.
But how do you do that with PPC?
There are a number of ways to achieve the personal connection you want through PPC advertising. Here are a few tips:
- Imagine that you are writing your ad for a specific person.
- Narrow your keyword targeting down to the smallest denominator.
- Remember that the purpose of your ad is to get the searcher to click on it and visit your landing page
- Use personal pronouns such as “you” and other words that make the searcher feel valued
Your PPC ad should have a personal effect to it. Make sure yours are not impersonal and detached.
How A Squeeze Page Can Help Grow Your Opt-In List
If you are trying to grow an e-mail opt-in list then you’ll want to take advantage of one strategy that many successful online marketers have used over and over again. It’s called a squeeze page.
A squeeze page is a single web page that is written for one purpose and one purpose only – to solicit a visitor’s e-mail address to be used for marketing purposes. It is often a short, well-written page with a strong call to action. However, lately, many online marketers have been getting more creative with their squeeze pages, including videos, audio, multimedia presentations and even second and third pages.
Search engines have taken a hard stance on squeeze pages in the last couple of years and have considered them spam if not filled with the right amount of content. That’s why many marketers have started adding additional pages to their squeeze pages.
Squeeze pages are useful for building opt-in lists, but you have to have a successful and proven strategy. You can drive traffic to your squeeze pages through PPC, social media, organic search, directories and any other acceptable online marketing vehicle. Try using squeeze pages and see what kind of results you get.
A Sly Way To Spy On Your Competition Through Facebook
Facebook has reached the level of ubiquity that the rest of us covet. Because of that, it is likely that you’ll find your competitors hanging out there, lurking and even interacting with your customers. You could be among them, spying on them as they do so. But you have to do it discreetly.
First, Facebook doesn’t allow business accounts so it is likely that your competition isn’t out there promoting themselves by writing on people’s walls. At least, not as a corporation.
They likely have a fan page (as should you). And you can become a fan of the page, but that’s an obvious CI strategy, isn’t it? Let’s do something less obvious.
Try to find out the names of top people in your competition’s companies. They likely have personal Facebook accounts. One way to do that is to look at the list of followers of the company’s fan page. If you can figure out who the first couple of followers were then they are likely employees. Follow them.
But, let’s back up. Your Facebook account should be in your own name. Better yet, find someone in your company who isn’t a high profile employee (in other words, their names don’t appear on press releases and prospectuses). Get them to follow your competitors. They’ll blend in much more easily.
Now isn’t that sly? It’s also good competitive intelligence.
Is Web Design Different From Web Development?
Is there a difference between web design and web development? Actually, there is. But sadly, most small business owners don’t really know what it is.
Web Design is about one thing – making your website appealing and attractive to your target market.
Web Development, on the other hand, is about making your website functional and helping your visitors find more easily the information they are looking for. There are a variety of strategies for accomplishing that task.
While web design is concerned about elements such as logo design, sidebar widths, header and footer appearance and photo/video presentations, web development is more concerned with elements such as navigation menu protocols, conversion funnels and usability studies. Of course, copywriting and SEO are also very important.
I won’t say that one is more important than the other, but it does help to know the difference. Your web development team should include a good web designer. But it shouldn’t consist only of a web designer. At any rate, if you are setting up a website that you hope will make you money then you should think about web design within the framework of your web development strategy – not the other way around.
Is Viral Marketing A Planned Event?
Every day almost you hear about a successful viral marketing campaign. Many times they just happen. They’re not planned. And sometimes it isn’t even something that is marketed. It’s just a video or an article that becomes popular for some reason. It’s like serendipity.
But can you plan a viral marketing campaign? Are those things plannable?
Well, every marketer would like to think so. And, in truth, yes, you can plan a viral marketing campaign. But planning something and seeing it through to completion are two different things. Sometimes the plan just doesn’t work out.
So what’s it take to make a viral marketing plan work? It takes more than a plan. I guarantee you that.
However, it starts with a plan. If you don’t plan for the viral marketing campaign – and I mean every detail down to where you intend to submit your content and who your target audience is – then you might as well plan for it to fail. You can’t leave it to happenstance. Or serendipity.
That said, don’t expect your viral marketing campaign to succeed just because you planned it. You have to also monitor your efforts, and your results.
When you’re ready to build a viral marketing campaign and see it through to completion, find a viral marketing expert to guide you through the maze.
Are Rich Snippets Worth The Effort?
Rich snippets – the idea sounds great in principle. Enter data using a special code that the search engines recognize and have that data added to your pages listing in the search results. Ratings, prices, telephone numbers, opening hours; it all sounds great – in principle.
Judging from many of the responses on Google’s Knol page on the subject (unanswered questions at that), you would have to wonder if they were worth the effort. I think it is for a number of reasons, namely:
- It’s the way of the future. While Google isn’t using them extensively as yet, the time will come when this data is used across the board. Including them now means your pages are prepared and you wont have to go back through your pages to update them later.
- They are being used now. While there is no guarantee that your rich snippet will appear your search results, many are. The only saying “you have to be in it to win it” comes to mind. If you don’t include rich snippets, you wont see them in your search listings.
When it comes to winning a click from a user, the more relevant information you can have displayed in the search results the better. If your competitors are showing rich snippet information and you are not, there is a good chance they will win the clicks – that’s not good for your business.
17 Million Reasons To Follow Competitors On Twitter
That title may sound a little far fetched and, compared to Facebook, 17 million US Twitter users isn’t a lot. But then, it really does depend on what those 17 million users are actually doing. Edison Research has releases an interesting three year study on Twitter usage and the numbers are looking good for marketers.
When it comes to awareness, 87% of Americans are aware of Twitter (88% for Facebook) so the brand is out there. We all know that Twitter is growing at a fairly fast rate, but how valuable is it for your business? To begin with, two-thirds of Twitter users access the site using their mobile phone. This often means they are accessing information while they are out and about – that’s a great time to hit them with special offers if you have a bricks and mortar business.
Other interesting stats include:
- 42 percent use Twitter to learn about products/services;
- 41 percent user Twitter to provide opinions about products and services;
- 31 percent use Twitter to ask for opinions about products and services;
- 28 percent use Twitter to look for discounts or sales;
- 21 percent use Twitter to purchase products/services; and
- 19 percent use Twitter to seek customer support.
That data suggests that Twitter users are more open to receiving product information than perhaps those on Facebook. It also means that Twitter could be a valuable tool for keeping an eye open your competition. With 31% of users looking for opinions on products and services, you want your brand or business being recommended, not your opposition. If it isn’t, you do at least have an indication of what online marketing areas need a boost.
Twitter is small compared to Facebook, but it is still a valuable resource when it comes to marketing and getting your brand out there. It is also a great resource for spying on the competition. Can you afford to ignore it?
Can Twitter Be Used For Reputation Management?
We’ve discussed online reputation management a few times on this blog. But we haven’t really made a huge connection between Twitter and reputation management. Is there a connection? Can Twitter be used as a reputation management tool?
As a matter of fact, it can. And it really should be. I wouldn’t leave it out.
Consider these facts about Twitter:
- It’s a great way to connect with hundreds or thousands of people simultaneously
- Attracting followers on Twitter means that people are in interested in YOU, in what YOU have to say and how YOU say it
- Twitter messages are now being indexed in real time by all the major search engines
- Twitter is great for driving new traffic to your blog or website
- If not already taken, your name as a Twitter profile could end up being a top 10 result on Google (that’s great reputation management)
Reputation management is a multi-channel proposition. Make Twitter one of your channels. It is one of the best online reputation management tools to show up in years.
Why Keyword Density Is Not Important
Veteran SEO Stephan Spencer wrote a blog post for Search Engine Land that has sparked a bit of controversy. In this blog post he wrote:
Ok, no one says “da bomb” anymore, but you get the drift. Monitoring keyword density values is pure folly.
A commenter took issue and wrote:
Folly? Hardly. If you’re trying to rank for a keyword, you want to make sure you use it a few times on a page. That’s just common sense. Of course, you don’t want to overuse a keyword, or it might come across as spammy. Any smart SEO pays attention to KW density.
The logic here is a bit spurious. There are two true statements followed by a non-sequitur. Yes, you must use your keyword enough times on a web page for it to matter. And, yes, if you overuse it then you might be tagged as a spammer and your web page de-listed, or diminished in rankings. But that doesn’t mean that keyword density is something you should be counting.
Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz says:
The formula for keyword density – a percentage of the total number of words on the page that are the target phrase – is indeed folly. IR scientists discredited this methodology for relevance decades ago. Early search engines and information retrieval systems already leveraged TF*IDF as a far more accurate and valuable methodology.
The Wikipedia link was added by me.
Back to keyword density. It’s not important. I’d say there are three keyword factors that are much more important than density:
- Keyword Placement
- Semantic Language Relevance
- Anchor Text
This is not necessarily in order of importance.
What I mean by placement is the location within your web page of your keywords. The Title tag is very important. It’s the most important place for your keyword. First paragraph and last paragraph are also important. H tags are disputed, but I’d say they are somewhat important. I’ll stop there.
Semantic language relevance is a reference to the use of synonyms within a web page document. If you are writing about fighter planes and you mention Tomcats, Messerschmitts and Skytrains then those words will do more to rank your web page for the term “fighter planes” than using the phrase “fighter planes” with a density of 5% throughout your web page document. Don’t buy the keyword density hype.
Finally, anchor text is undisputed as a major search ranking factor. Use your keyword in your internal anchor text. It’s much more important than keyword density.
I’ll have to agree with Stephan Spencer on this one. Search engine optimization is denigrated with talk of keyword densities.
Pay Per Click Is The Bedrock Of Web Marketing
A lot can be said of organic SEO and I’ll have to admit, you can’t really run a Web business without it. The lion’s share of Web traffic, even today, comes from organic SEO. It’s a necessary component to Web success.
However, PPC is the bedrock of Web marketing. Not SEO.
Why do I say that? Because pay per click marketing is a pay now-buy now model. When you operate a successful pay per click marketing campaign you know you are getting good traffic. You know it from the results. You paid for the traffic, but you paid for traffic that responds and it happens quickly. With SEO, you could wait for months to see your results. With PPC, it’s instantaneous.
Well, almost.
Rarely will you find great PPC keywords by running an organic SEO campaign. If you did, it would take months to figure it out. But webmasters do use PPC to find new keywords for their organic SEO campaigns all the time.
Another reason I can say that PPC is the bedrock of Web marketing is because it can also be used as a basis for determining website valuation. Cost per click is an important metric that domainers use to value Web properties they are interested in. They know that if a website can command a high cost per click on a pay per click campaign then it is in a competitive niche. Niches garner that kind of competition in only one way – there’s money to be made. It’s a profitable niche.
So when you think about how you want to conduct your next marketing campaign online. Think about combining your SEO and PPC efforts. That’s how you should be doing it anyway.
13 Timeless Internet Marketing Strategies That Still Work (And Likely Always Will)
Internet marketing is a science, and an art, that has come of age. There are timeless strategies and tactics that will likely always work. There are those, of course, that are just plain silly or that haven’t been proven. The following 13 Internet marketing strategies are strategies that have been used over and over again by countless thousands of marketers online and that still work and will probably always work:
- Search engine optimization – SEO is the most basic of Internet marketing tactics. There is a reason is still works.
- Pay per click marketing – PPC can usually deliver more immediate results than SEO, but I’d rank it as a very close second to SEO in terms of must-use strategies.
- Blogging – It took a while for blogging to catch on en masse, but now that it has you can add this to your Internet marketing arsenal.
- E-mail marketing – Before there was PPC or blogging, there was e-mail marketing. This timeless strategy has proven itself so many times that it’s not even questionable any more.
- Link building - Link building is usually considered an SEO tactic, but there’s more to link building than simply increasing your search engine optimization benefits. That’s only part of the equation. The other part is finding where the traffic is.
- Guest authoring – Be a guest author on someone else’s website or blog.
- Video marketing – This one is late to the party, but it sure has made a big splash. I think video marketing is the new article marketing.
- Article marketing – Article marketing isn’t as effective as it used to be, but it’s still good.
- Build niche-specific microsites – After you’ve tested your keywords on you main website by building single web pages around them, take your best ones and create a new site around those keywords.
- Directory submissions – Believe it or not, people still do go through online directories. There are some good directories and some bad ones. Stick to the prominent ones that are general in nature and those within your niche. Don’t pay for an upgraded listing unless the directory is well trafficked by people in your niche.
- Forums – Forums are well trafficked and a good forum can send you loads of traffic to your website. This is still one of the best ways to market a Web business.
- Social Networking – Social networking has taken off like a rocket. Sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are great ways to meet people, make connections and promote your website.
- Social bookmarking – Submit your best links to the most popular social bookmarking sites and watch your traffic soar.
Try these 13 Internet marketing strategies. If I’ve left any out, share them here with our readers. What ways do you use to market your products and services online?
3 Tools For Spying On The Competition – For Free
Competitive intelligence, if done correctly (and legally), can give you an edge on your competition that will make it more difficult for them to stay on top. But you’ve got to have actionable intelligence and accurate intelligence. The following three free tools are great resources that you can use to spy on your competition and maintain a competitive edge.
- Google Alerts – This is perhaps the best free competitive intelligence tool on the Internet. Simply add the keywords you want to track (the competition’s brand name, company name, names of executive officers and top keywords) and you’ll get e-mail alerts every time those words are mentioned in online content that has been indexed by Google.
- SEOQuake – SEOQuake is an SEO toolbar that you can download for free and use on your competition. Just visit their website and you’ll know all their important keywords, their PageRank, Alexa ranking, traffic counts and backlink counts. Anything that is important to know about your competition is well within your grasp.
- The Competition’s Blogs – Have you subscribed to your competition’s blogs? Why not? Let them tell you in their own words what is important to know about them. There’s no better way to keep tabs on what the competition is up to that to read their own marketing materials.
These three free competitive intelligence tools should not be overlooked. Add them to your spying arsenal today.
What Are APIs Good For?
API stands for Application Programming Interface. It’s a developer tool that allows website developers to make websites that interact with other sites in special ways. Many of the top websites online allow website developers to use APIs to give their websites special characteristics and features. Some of the sites that use APIs are:
- Yahoo
- Bing
- Digg
- Delicious
- eBay
- Feedburner
- Flickr
- YouTube
And that’s a small list. There are thousands of other websites online that offer APIs to developers for use on their websites.
There are two ways that you can use an API for your website design and development. The first way is to take an API from a company with features that you’d like to add to your website and incorporate those features into your site using the API. For instance, you can take the Twitter API and create a feature on your site to allow content to automatically post on Twitter when you create it, or to allow your site visitors to comment on your site and automatically post their comments to Twitter.
Another way to use APIs is to create one for your site so that others who want to add unique features of the site you designed can incorporate those into their sites. This benefits you because other website owners will be sending you traffic from their websites.
When it comes to web design, you are no longer relegated to a simple HTML site with no interactivity. APIs can make your site more Web 2.0 and interactive.
Is Facebook Good For Viral Marketing?
With all the talk about Facebook growing into the biggest website online and developing into a good social media marketing vehicle for businesses (but only if you get a Facebook fan page), you’d think it’s the best thing since green tea. Maybe it is. But will make your marketing campaign go viral?
Let’s just lay one thing out on the table right now. Any social website could make your marketing campaign go viral, but not if you don’t have the right stuff. So what’s the right stuff?
Your content has to have mass appeal. If you serve a very niche market and your content appeals to that niche market well, but not so well to any other market then your content won’t go viral. Even on Facebook. Simply being on the most trafficked website online is not enough to make your content go viral.
Another thing you need is to get your content in front of the right people. Simply sharing your content with ten friends hoping they will push your content to the top of the viral chain isn’t going to cut it. You need to get your content in front of the Facebook movers and shakers. Until you do that, it won’t go viral.
That’s not to say that you should spam the people with the most friends. But you might send them a private message asking if they’ll take a look at your content and share it if they like it.
Viral marketing is about making the right friends in the right places and sharing the right stuff. You can do that on Facebook or anywhere there might be people who will really dig what you have to offer.
Your Two-Pronged Facebook Strategy
As a business, you can’t have a Facebook profile. In fact, many businesses have been banned from Facebook or had their profiles deleted because they tried marketing themselves through Facebook’s profile channels. That’s not good.
What you can do is, and should do, is start a Facebook fan page. But before you do that you should start a Facebook profile.
If that sounds contradictory, forgive me. It’s not intended to. What I mean is you should start a Facebook profile for your personal name. Then you can become a fan of your own Facebook fan page for your business. This is your two-pronged Facebook approach.
Your Facebook fan page for your business can be jazzed up a bit with videos, audio, widgets, photos and other cool features. You can promote it through your personal Facebook profile and through other channels as well – even Twitter and social bookmarking. Instead of risking your profile being deleted as a spam tool, start your own Facebook fan page. It’s the way to go.
How E-books Could Become An SEO Tool
Google is starting a new service called Google Editions where it will publish and sell e-books. Consider this:
Anyway, Jessica E. Vascellaro and Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg reported afterward that Google will try to establish deals with publishers, and then, “Google says its new service . . . will allow users to buy digital copies of books they discover through its book-search service.” Which should put Google into competition with Amazon and Apple.
If Google is going to compete with Amazon then it will have to do so on equal terms. That means it will have to offer previews and sample chapters for free in order to sell books. Publishers will do everything they can to ensure that their books are found in the search engines and through social media outlets. What ways could they do that?
Well, one obvious way is through SEO content. Imagine a book introduction being written with the search engine algorithms in mind, anticipating its use as the free preview. I think this is something that Google could actually promote and condone in order to court publishers at co-marketers in its digital e-book sales outlet.
What about you? Do you think this scenario is feasible?
SEM Is About Benefits, Not Profits
Search engine marketing has as many definitions as there are marketers, and most of them are right. But what hardly gets talked about among search engine marketers is that SEM is more than just selling your stuff for a profit. You’ve got to do more than attract audiences with keywords. You are selling benefits.
No one cares about your product. No one cares about your company. No one cares about you. They want to know what you can do for them.
The question is, how can you do that with search engine marketing?
First, the two arms of SEM:
- Pay per click advertising
- Search engine optimization (organic search)
So how do you sell benefits through these two primary channels?
With PPC you’ve got to sell your benefits to get a click. Your goal is to get people to your landing page and then sell the benefits of your product there.
With organic search marketing, you use your landing page optimization to get rank your web page, build links to it, drive traffic to it and sell your benefits to your visitors to close the sale.
Search engine marketing really follows the principles of traditional marketing – sell the benefits. You just do it with modern technology.
One Google Tool That Is Perfect For Reputation Management
No reputation management campaign is complete without Google, particularly Google Profiles.
So what is Google Profiles? In a word, it’s your hub on the Google index. Whenever someone Google’s your name they’ll be presented with your profile at the bottom of the search results for your name – along with the profiles of anyone who shares your name. So why is it such a great tool? It isn’t just because it shows up on the SERP for your personal name.
There’s more to Google Profiles than simply listing your name and showing your latest passport photo. You can also include the links to all the places online where you can be found. You can link to your Facebook profile, YouTube channel, your Twitter feed, all of your websites and any place else online where you are likely to be found. If it’s important and it’s about you then you can link to it. That’s what makes Google Profiles such a great reputation management tool.
If you aren’t using Google Profiles right now for reputation management then I highly recommend that you do.
Will ‘Likes’ Boost Your Reputation?
A lot has been said recently about Facebook, its privacy policy and its attempt to re-brand the social graph with Like buttons on everyone’s website. It’s an ingenious idea, really. But how can you turn that into a reputation management tool for your brand?
First, realize that nothing works if you don’t use it. Secondly, if you understand that rising in popularity on the social networks is a game of give and take then you’re off on the right foot. It isn’t so much about the marketing as it is about the social and the media. The idea is to build relationships. When you do that with a focus on what is good for others will also be good for you then others will like you – er, I mean, ‘Like’ you.
The Facebook Like button has the potential to be the most popular reputation management tool to date. You simply place it on your website’s pages and let your visitors do the Liking. If they truly like what they see then they’ll help you promote it.
Here’s how that works in your favor (besides the obvious polishing of the ego): Those Likes will appear in each user’s public settings on their Facebook pages. Their visitors will see you and that could translate into more visitors for your website. As you gain more Likes, you’ll gain more prominence within Facebook. That, in turn, will push you up further into the search engine rankings – that is, your profile or fan page will move up in the rankings. That will also lead to more traffic and, potentially, more Likes. The Like button could actually be a viral reputation management tool, the likes of which has never been seen before.
Of course, as I said, if you don’t use it then it won’t work.
How Many Websites Do You Need For Reputation Management?
It’s almost common knowledge now that Google will only rank a couple of pages per domain for the same keyword. That means if you want to dominate the search results pages for a keyword then you’ve got to have more than one domain. But how many is enough?
For reputation management purposes, you’ve got to think a little bit deeper than keywords and SERPs. What you want are search results positions. But not necessarily the top 10.
Your reputation is your name. And your company name. So you aren’t concerned about generic keyword rankings when thinking about reputation management. You are thinking about your name and brand. And, remember, you want search results positions. Not websites.
Sure, websites can help you achieve rankings. But you can only have one domain name with yourname.com. After that, it’s a matter of variation and it would just look silly to have a string of domain names that used variations of your name and that basically repurposed all the same old information about you that no one else wants to read. So let’s get creative.
First and foremost, you do want one domain name that includes your name in it. It doesn’t have to be much. A few pages. Maybe a blog that you write to once in a while. Make this your reputation hub. Include a CV, some educational and professional history, maybe even some personal information. It’s a place for people who want to know a little bit about you to come to for information. If it is for your company then make it a company reputation hub.
After your own domain name and website, start utilizing the various social media sites. Stick with the big ones and be active in them. But don’t overestimate how much time you can spend working them. With just one hour a day you can be active in the top 5:
- YouTube
- Your industry’s top social network
If you’re active enough on these sites and you make your real name (or brand) your profile username then you will likely rank pretty high for your reputation management term on each site. That’s 5 good positions right there.
There are plenty of other reputation management strategies to add to this basic structure, but the key is to manage your reputation across the entire web and not just in the search engines or on your own sites. Make everything you do count for something.