The Latest Facebook News
Facebook has been in the news a lot lately. Here are some of the biggest headlines regarding Facebook and what they are up to in these times:
- Facebook settles privacy dispute with FTC. Of course, there were no fines levied, but Facebook will have to undergo a biannual privacy audit for the next 20 years. Will that change anything? This specific ruling may not change much in the near short term, but I’d expect to see more privacy laws in place to protect online consumers and Internet users.
- Did Facebook purchase Gowalla? Neither Facebook nor Gowalla are confirming these rumors, but CNN reported it as true.
- Facebook is opening an office in New York. The office will be an engineering office and they are now accepting applications.
- Facebook Insights includes negative feedback. If you have a business page on Facebook and you want to know when someone has left negative feedback, you’ll now be able to see that in your page metrics through Facebook Insights.
- Facebook will run a mini-web series. Looking for entertainment? It’s supposed to be a documentary.
With all this talk of Facebook, if you run a business and you want to know the best practices for marketing through Facebook, talk to someone who knows how to meet your needs.
Is Article Marketing Or Social Media More Effective?
Define “more effective.”
Article marketing has been around a long time. At one time it was the preferred link building method of savvy online marketers. Then social media came along.
Social media has never really been about building links, per se. It was about making connections, but it had the side benefit of helping you build great links – if you did it right. And article marketing could lead to great connections that increased your bottom line.
So which one is more effective?
If you’re talking about sheer marketing power, I’d have to say article marketing. Only, today we do it differently.
If you write great articles and get them published on high traffic websites with a lot of authority, not only can you build great inbound links for your website, but you can also drive loads of targeted traffic to your website. The key is to target the right venues for your articles. And if you do that right, those articles will be online for years allowing you to reap the benefits of article marketing for a long time.
Social media has its benefits too. Reputation management, authority, relationships. But you have to keep your marketing in perspective. What works best for you?
Is Blogging, E-mail, Or Social Media Better?
Which is the best kind of online marketing for small businesses? Blogs? E-mail marketing? Social media?
The answer is as proverbial as the question. It depends. All three have their place and each is very effective when accompanied by the other two. That’s why we typically recommend a mixed bag of tricks.
Blog Marketing – Blogging is good for SEO, branding, and social media injection. If you use your blog effectively, you’ll gain search engine traffic, drive new traffic to your important landing pages, and develop a conversation around your brand.
E-mail Marketing – E-mail marketing is the perfect tool for keeping your audience in the loop. It can drive steady traffic to your landing pages and prepare your audience for closing the sale. Dollar for dollar, it’s the most effective marketing for most businesses.
Social Media Marketing – With social media, you can drive traffic to your website, build relationships, grow your brand, and keep your audience engaged.
Rarely is it a question of either/or. For most businesses, a combination of the above tactics is best. You can make your blog, e-mail blasts, and social media work together for the good of your business and your customers. Build your strategy around your business goals, then take action through the various tactics at your disposal.
Social Media Marketing Through Your iPhone
Smartphones have become all the rage. Both iPhones and Androids are gaining in popularity and people are using these devices in strange new ways. Businesses included.
One of the most powerful ways that iPhones and other smartphones are being utilized is through the development of apps. Apps can serve very useful functions for businesses that go through the trouble of developing them. And some of those functions are social.
For one thing, they allow you to repurpose your content. That’s always a plus. But if you can imagine your website being accessible to iPhone users who are also capable of sharing your content on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social websites, then you’re starting to get the picture. But even beyond that, iPhone apps themselves can be social media tools to reckon with.
Take your website again. Instead of simply reformatting the website for mobile consumption, why not repackage it into an app?
This can be done in a number of ways, but one way that many companies are using to make their content more palatable, interactive, and powerful is by turning it into a game. People love to have fun. The interactive nature of multi-player games that can be played through an iPhone interface will keep people connected to your business as they connect to their friends. You can’t get any more social than that.
The Legacy Of The Antisocial Business
Brian Solis wrote an article about social media that I believe offers some real insight into how large brands are being “antisocial” when it comes to using social media marketing tools. The gist of the article suggests that these companies are using traditional marketing tactics in a more interactive way, which doesn’t really inspire online prospects to pursue their products and services. Is it a good point?
I think so.
One of the most important principles for any business person (whether a sole proprietor or the CEO of a megacorporation) to understand is that everything changes. Some things change faster than others, but everything changes. Particularly markets.
So with that in mind, how has marketing changed? In the last 20 years, it has become necessary for any business that wants to grow to engage with audiences online. That means through social media as well as paid and organic search. But the key word there is “engage.”
Here’s a news flash: Pushing your message out to your followers, fans, and friends is not engagement.
Engagement means that you interact, and to interact with your audience you need a human face. Simply tweeting links to your corporate content under an account that bears your company name is not engagement. I offer you these 5 qualities that describe what a truly engaged social media personality has to offer:
- An engaging social media strategy is personable. That means it not only tries to interact with followers, but it involves a human trying to get to know its followers.
- It is not self-centered. In other words, you don’t just link to your own content, but you link to other content as well.
- The strategy seeks to be a resource of helpfulness. That is to say, the content you link to should hold value in your followers’ eyes, not merely your own.
- The personality behind the account is consistent. You cannot build trust among your followers if you are not there every day. Turning it on and off again will drive people away.
- You must be reliable. Your social media content must be so valuable to your fans and followers that they come to rely on it.
I’d consider these the five pillars of social media engagement. Do them well and you won’t be antisocial. Do them poorly and you most assuredly will be.
Is Social Media A Sham?
Is social media a sham? Are social media marketers bad for your business? Veteran journalist and social media consultant Peter Shankman would have you believe they are. Don’t hire them, he says.
Enter Rand Fishkin, to the rescue.
It’s important to note what the purpose of social media is. Peter Shankman has it almost right. He says it’s to make you money. Well, that’s why you went into business, right?
In actuality, social media marketing is the same as any other marketing. It’s to position your company as the place to go for your particular core business. In other words, to position you as an expert. You hope that makes you money.
Admittedly, many “social media experts” are lousy salesmen. Many of them are ineffective in their approach to marketing through social media. They may understand the tools, but they don’t understand the methods well enough to close the sale. Or maybe they think their job is simply to drive traffic to your website and leave the sales to you.
Whatever the case, you are the expert in your business. You don’t have time to plan and execute social media campaigns. That’s why you hire someone else to do it for you.
There’s nothing wrong with being an expert – even a “social media expert.” If you can prove your expertise with results, then you deserve the business that comes your way. On that, Peter Shankman is wrong.
Custom Search Engine Marketing
There is nothing about marketing online that is as much a lie as the idea that you can purchase off-the-shelf search engine marketing plans that anyone can use. Yet, many online marketers will try to sell you one of these solutions with no thought about the type of business you are running. Call it “online marketing in a box.” It doesn’t work.
The only truly effective way to go about search engine marketing is to create a custom plan. What works for one website or business may not work for another.
For instance, not everyone needs video marketing. Some Web businesses, however, couldn’t do without it. And that’s just one example.
Is social media marketing right for you? Maybe. But even if it is, the social media marketing plan you finalize for your business will look very different than the plan for another business. That’s because you have a different product, a different clientele, and therefore require a different strategy. Your social media marketing strategy should be tailored to your business.
Every search engine marketing plan rises and falls on its own merits. Just like every website and every business. You cannot take a generic online marketing plan and make it fit your unique business.
Custom search engine marketing is the strategic implementation of a plan based on careful study and market research. Don’t buy into the hype of off-the-shelf marketing products in a box.
PPC Or Social Media: Which Is Better?
Over the years, many Internet marketers have compared search engine optimization with pay per click advertising and offered their opinions on which is better. It’s not an apples to apples comparison, but at least the fruit are in the same family. Both rely upon keyword research and use search engine marketing principles. But what about a comparison between PPC and social media? How would that fare?
While the comparison between PPC and SEO is more akin to a comparison between a lemon and a lime, the comparison between PPC and social media optimization is like a comparison between a raison and a tomato. Both may be fruit, but they have very little in common.
Social media, for instance, does not require keywords in order to be effective; PPC does. That’s not to say that a social media campaign cannot incorporate keywords. If social media is keyword-based, it can influence your search engine rankings. The jury is still out on whether PPC influences such rankings.
Another difference between social media marketing and PPC is that social media is about building relationships. PPC is about driving traffic. Period.
You can develop a relationship on social media and lead your prospect to a sale right there on Facebook or Twitter without ever getting them to your website. With PPC, your goal is to get them to your website or landing page. Period.
PPC is better for short term results. Social media is a marathon. Can short term results happen? Yes, but if you don’t get short term results in PPC, you’ve failed. Not so in social media.
Both social media and PPC can be effective, but the threshold for success on PPC is much higher. You can expect lesser results on social media and still be effective. Plus, it’s easier to measure results with pay-per-click marketing.
Would I discourage you from using either channel? No. I think you should use both deliberately. But understand their differences before you do.
7 Online Marketing Strategies You Can’t Ignore
Ask anyone who has been around for 40 years or longer and you’ll find that the ways of marketing a business have changed. What worked in 1960 was different than what worked in 1980 and what worked in 1980 isn’t what worked in 2000. Even the marketing strategies used today aren’t the same as what worked in 2000.
Here are 7 online marketing strategies that work today and that will likely work ten years from now.
- Search engine optimization – Build a website and make sure each web page is optimized for search engine traffic.
- Pay per click marketing – Spend your money on clicks for a speedy response to your message and watch your income rise.
- Social media marketing – Use social bookmarking and social networking to connect off of your website, then drive that traffic to your web pages.
- Video marketing – Online video marketing has arrived in full force. Engage with your audience on YouTube and other video marketing websites.
- Start a blog – Write to your blog every day. The search engines love the fresh daily content.
- Article marketing – Write articles and distribute them online to websites within your niche. You’ll build your reputation and build links to your website.
- Claim your local business listing – Each major search engine has a local business listing associated with their Maps feature. Claim your listing if you are a local business.
There is no substitute for these 7 online marketing strategies. You can do more, but I wouldn’t dare do less.
The Benefits Of Social Media Marketing
A new report from Social Media Examiner details who is engaged in social media marketing, why, how they use it, and what benefits they are deriving by using it. It appears that small businesses and sole proprietors are making the most use of social media marketing and reaping the rewards in a big way.
The top benefits of social media marketing, as reported by those who are using it, are (in order of most beneficial):
- More exposure for the business (88%)
- Increased traffic to the website or subscribers (72%)
- Improved search engine rankings (62%)
- New business partnerships (56%)
- Qualified lead generation (51%)
- Reduction in overall marketing expenses (49%)
- Higher number of closed sales (43%)
It’s difficult to argue with these results. If you are the type of person who looks only at the number of sales generated, you might look at this list and see a glass half empty. But look at the number again – 43%. That’s almost half the small businesses using social media getting increased sales. But look at the rest of the numbers.
Even if you don’t see more sales, increased exposure for your business is certainly a benefit. More traffic and higher search engine rankings are benefits you shouldn’t ignore. If you’re getting those and not getting more sales, then you might need to tweak your landing pages.
Social media isn’t going anywhere, and small business owners who employ it effectively are getting huge benefits. We think you can too.
Have You Caught On To These 4 IM Trends?
Some trends come and go. Some stick around. I think the following 4 Internet marketing trends may be keepers. At least for a little while. Have you discovered these trends yet?
- Blog Marketing – Blog marketing has been around for a long time now, but it took a little dip after Google killed inbound links. Nevertheless, it seems to be making a comeback, particularly for businesses that want to use it for marketing and branding purposes.
- Mobile Search – Mobile search is a trend that is sure to stick around. People not only read blogs and news with their mobile phones, but they update their social media accounts and make purchases.
- Local Search – All kinds of businesses are discovering local search. And unlike traditional SEO, you can be very powerful and effective on the local level within just a few weeks.
- Social Media Marketing – Facebook and Twitter are all the rage right now. You’d think they are passing phases, but they’re not. If you are running a business, social media is a must in today’s fast-paced marketplace.
Now is the time to hop on board these Internet marketing trends. Don’t just ride the waves until they hit the beach. Make them a part of your daily routine.
Is Social Media Marketing Getting Harder?
Social Times says it is. And it’s easy to see how they’ve arrived at that conclusion.
Social media like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have been going through heavy growth phases in the last few years. At some point, that growth is going to slow down. Social Times is saying that could be this year.
By slowing down, they don’t mean that growth will go negative. Rather, the social media sites will continue to grow, but at a much slower rate.
What’s that mean, exactly? It means that the social media users who are on those sites will be more savvy and sophisticated than the users of the past five years. As such, they will be more discerning users and less likely to click a link out of curiosity. You’ll have to work harder to get that click and to make the sale.
When it comes to social media marketing, there are several components that are necessary to run a successful and engaging campaign. Here’s what you have to think about:
- Competitive Intelligence – Who is your competition and what are they up to?
- Market Research – Who is your target market, when are they online, which social media sites do they use, and when do they use those sites?
- Strategic Planning – Which social media sites are a best fit for you, what times of day should you be posting, and what messages should you be promoting?
Gone are the days when you can just log in and start tweeting. You need a social media marketing plan and your plan should begin with research.
Bing’s Farmville Experiment
We’ve reached a new level of social media euphoria. A story about Bing’s successful Farmville campaign is giving marketers something to think about. Maybe you should think about it too.
According to Bing, Farmville now has more visitors than Twitter. If that’s true, then Farmville could be the next big marketing arena. Or, let’s rephrase it, any of Zyng’a Facebook applications.
So what did Bing do? Essentially, they promised to give Farmville users farm cash if they became a fan of Bing on Facebook. A really simple thing, really. But it worked. Thousands of people responded. Many of them wrote about it on their own blogs. And now, Bing has 400,000 new fans. Voila!
Can you do it too? Maybe not on that scale, but I see no reason why any small business can’t wage a similar campaign through Farmville, Cityville, or any of the other thousands of Web applications out there in Internet game land. Think about all the places you can go: Yahoo, Apples’s iPod Touch, Fubar if you’re into online dating, Facebook, MMORPG.com, or just search for online multiplayer games.
What Bing did isn’t really new, but it does break new ground in social media marketing and online game playing. Now it’s your turn. How are you going to reach your customers in this new social media world?
Do You Ever Stop And Listen To The Noise Around You?
Some people call it Internet noise, others call it information. There is always a lot of noise that occurs around the subject of Internet marketing. This last week we have seen stories related to Google and what the search giant has done to several major businesses for breaching Google policies. There has also been a lot of noise about Google’s changes to its algorithm designed to affect content farmers.
Do you ever stop and listen? Trying to operate a business and run a website can be hard work. Trying to keep up with all the changes that are going on in the online world can also be difficult. If you were to listen to all the noise, the chances are you would become confused and lost in what you should and shouldn’t be doing.
As a business, it’s often a good idea to appoint yourself a silent mentor or two. I say silent because these mentors don’t even know they are mentoring you – and in the true sense, they aren’t. Who should you choose and how should you approach things? First, find bloggers who are respected leaders in the field of SEO, social media marketing, and Internet marketing. Take the time to visit their sites on a daily basis, or simply subscribe to their content.
By following the regular posts, you can stay up to date with what is happening in those important areas. Over time, you will find that you are learning a lot about SEO, social media marketing, and Internet marketing, and that your current knowledge in these areas is up to date. If you apply processes that these respected experts discuss, then your website’s presence will improve – and with it your business. Don’t listen to the noise, find some clarity and listen to that instead.
Don’t Bait Then Pitch Your Visitors
Baiting, then pitching, is the act of promising one thing then delivering on something else, generally in the form of a hard sell (the pitch). I have nothing against baiting in general – that’s what marketing is often all about. However, you do need to deliver on what you promise – if you want to sell, you do it with subtlety. Internet marketing is one area where baiting then pitching is rife, and most users strongly detest the practice.
Email marketing and social media marketing are two of the major problem areas when it comes to baiting then pitching. As a customer, there’s nothing more annoying than receiving a newsletter that offers some advice on how to use a product if I click through to the website only to find that the advice is the sale of the latest version of that product. Yet it happens all the time, and business owners then wonder why their newsletter subscriptions are dropping off.
Social media marketing is no different. There are many instances where businesses have sent tweets or Facebook messages that makes an offer to attract visitors. Many of these offers do deliver – however, there are just as many that not only don’t deliver, they push the sell strategy.
Getting traffic to a website can be a difficult task. The last thing you should be doing is scaring them away again, especially if you are leaving a sour taste in their mouths. Failing to deliver is a business sin when it comes to Internet marketing. Deliver on your promises, and the subtle use of selling tactics will deliver results. Baiting your visitors then pitching to them is one of the fastest ways to scare off visitors.
Now You Can Add Your Personal Touch To Facebook Pages
One of the problems with Facebook Pages has been the lack of personal interaction. You could interact, but it was always as the administrator and this tended to depersonalize any relationships. Facebook Pages have gone through another mini-evolution, and one of the changes introduced is the ability to switch between your admin role and yourself.
No one wants to discuss anything with an admin. Once you, or one of your staff members, start to interact using their real identity, conversations take on a degree of realism – suddenly there is a real person there. Facebook have taken this facility a step further and now allow you to Like and post comments on other Facebook Pages. This will become an important feature for those businesses that have more than one Page, or who want to connect their visitors with services related to their business.
Included in the changes to Facebook Pages are a new layout and the random display of images. The latter is a negative in some ways given the creative use of images in the past.
For users looking to build a brand, and who wish to interact with their visitors, the ability to switch from admin to yourself is by far the biggest change – and for the positive. By putting a face to comments on your Facebook Page, you are increasing your credibility while at the same time creating a human connection. Everyone knows that the admin is a human, but by using the term ‘admin ‘the perception is of someone unknown, someone not willing to show their face. You can now prove to the world that there is a real person interacting on your Facebook Page.
There’s Still A Lot Of Life In Email Marketing
While most online businesses are stressing over SEO, social media marketing, and perhaps even pay per click campaigns, email marketing rolls along delivering a steady flow of targeted traffic. Email marketing suffers from an image problem in some sectors. First, it is viewed as being too hard. Secondly, it is viewed as being below the old-fashioned junk mail that still floods our snail mail boxes.
These are both misconceptions that need clarifying. Let’s take the second point first. Today’s email marketing campaigns are as much controlled by the receiver as it is the sender. If you run your email campaigns correctly, then the only email addresses you have are those who have opted in – and they always have the opportunity to opt out again whenever they want. As to junk mail, that depends on you. You can choose to send junk, or you can choose to send newsletters that receivers will read and find useful.
Is email marketing too hard? Hard is probably too strong a word. There are several services available that will handle the grunt work for you. That is, collecting and storing the email addresses. You just need to make a form available to your visitors, and they will do the rest.
You actual marketing emails are up to you. They can be very simple and very plain emails inviting your recipients to come back to your website, perhaps offering discounts or special offers. You can also make your newsletters quite professional by hiring a specialist in this field.
Email marketing is neither hard nor junk mail. A recent report has highlighted how successful promotional emails are in relation to search and social media marketing. If you haven’t tried before, I suggest you do a little research.
Internet Marketing Needs Up-To-Date Information
Here’s a question for you to consider. If you were in an industry that was closely related to real estate, where would you concentrate your internet marketing campaigns? Which search engine would you focus on? It’s not a trick question, but it is a question that relates to how closely you watch the changes in search engine activity.
A little while ago Google announced that it was dropping out of real estate search. Their excuse was that the Google API was being dropped from use so real estate agents would no longer be able to list properties. Back in July, Zillow and Yahoo! announced a special partnership that would see Zillow real estate listings automatically available through Yahoo!s real estate search. This now makes Yahoo! the biggest single real estate listing site online.
If you are in an industry closely related to real estate – for example, mortgages, insurance, title searches, home inspections, appraisals, and so on – then it would make sense to concentrate some of your paid search efforts on Yahoo!. Time will tell if Yahoo! Real Estate becomes the most used real estate search portal online, but with so many listings, there is a good chance it will.
That’s real estate. The point I make here is that current information, especially news related to search engines and social media sites, is vital if you are to be effective online. You do need to filter your information admittedly. I mean, if you are in no way connected with real estate, then you would say ‘so what’ to much of what I have written. However, tomorrow, it may just be your niche that’s affected – are you going to be on top of the story and ready to take advantage? Your internet marketing efforts are only as good as the information you base them on.
Does Social Media Interaction Add Credibility To Content?
Late last week Bill Hartzer wrote a post that discussed what he calls social validation and it’s importance to SEO. His rationale is that if content gets mentioned on social sites, for example, re-tweeted on Twitter or ‘liked’ on Facebook, then search engines will sit up and take more notice of that content. To quote from the post:
….the search engines (Bing and Google) are looking for social validation. They see your new URL and index it, but will rank it higher in the search results if they can find some reason to: and one of those reasons includes social validation.
There is little doubt that search engines are taking more notice of what is happening through social media. While this is important, it is also important to understand the wider implications of successfully promoting your content through social media. The more often your content is referred to through social media, the more likely it is to be referred to in other areas such as blogs and web pages. The result is an increase in the number of inbound links.
So this then begs a question – do pages that perform well after receiving a lot of mentions in social media do so because of that interaction, or is it because of the sudden increase in mentions throughout the web, the sudden increase in links? Many people would argue both, and they are probably right.
What is important to note is that creating content that is well written and well received will rise to the top of search results quite quickly, if those factors all come together. What is more important is to find ‘friends’ or ‘followers’ who are themselves well respected, especially by the search engines. Other users will follow their recommendations, meaning more traffic, more inbound links, and perhaps a few extra brownie points from the search engines. The lesson is simple – build credibility in your content by have those respected acknowledge it’s value.
Anatomy Of A Modern Business Website
If you were to lift a website from ten years ago and dump it into today’s internet world, it wouldn’t cut it. Business websites of today can be complicated beasts, or at least, they may seem that way. However, a closer inspection will reveal that their anatomy is actually quite simple.
Today’s business website needs to address several factors. Get the design and mix right, and your website will be the least of your worries. So what factors does a modern website need?
Optimized for search – it goes without saying that search is still the number one source of traffic for most websites – this includes both organic, paid, and local search.
Optimized for social – optimizing for social involves a few simple modifications to a standard website. Social buttons are the first factor to consider. Allowing comments or user feedback should also be considered.
Optimized for the user - uncluttered pages, clear call-to-action triggers, easy to follow navigation, and the ability to communicate with you, the business owner, are all important user functions.
Optimized for the Internet – today’s websites need to be slick, fast, easy to follow, and fairly straightforward. Shopping baskets and checkouts need to be smooth processes that are not complicated by over form filling or confusing processes. Today’s website needs to be streamlined in the way it processes users and their data.
Optimized for information – what is the Internet all about? Information and communication. We have communication covered so all that is left is information, and for a website, that boils down to content. Relevant, unique, up-to-date, easy to read, and of value to users – content is what drives websites and its content that attracts visitors.
Does that sound too simplistic? Perhaps you are trying to over complicate what should be a straight out process. The hardest task in building a website to satisfy everything on that list is the seamless integration of each component. If your web design team can get that right, you website is ready to do business.
Internet Marketing – Loose Lips Sink Ships (and Businesses Too)
They say that loose lips sink ships; at least, they did back in WWII. Those words still ring true today, except the ships are businesses. It’s the loose lips that haven’t changed. Internet marketing covers a wide range of activities including search and social. It’s amazing how one loose word in the wrong place can come back to bite you down the track.
Badmouthing someone, either while engaged in a social media conversation, via a blog’s comments, or even privately through e-mail, never actually gets you anywhere, no matter how angry they have made you. Being able to control your emotions and respond courteously yet with authority with help you to maintain (if not build) your reputation while still allowing you to promote your product or service.
Humans are a fickle lot. We read a comment and we instantly take it personally. Often, it’s not true. If a comment is true, you need to be able to depersonalize it, and to put it into perspective. Why has that person made that comment? Rather than responding with angry outbursts yourself, remain professional.
Internet marketing is all about promoting your business, your products, and your brand. Reputation management is all about protecting your business, product, or brand. Between the two, there is no room at all for personal feelings, in particular, personal grudges. If someone bad mouths you, your business, product, or brand, take it as a potential marketing or reputation-building opportunity.
Loose lips will sink businesses. Leave your emotions at home and put on a professional face that is ready to handle everything that the online world is prepared to throw at you.
If ROI Is Important, Then Why Is Your Marketing Strategy Wrong?
There has always been a sad truth about marketers – they care little for ROI. This has always been the realm of managers, particularly finance managers. Their mantra is always – ‘how much will it cost and what sort of return will we get’? When it comes to marketers, they are always interested in how far and how well they have delivered their message.
Is there a meeting place? There should be. There is one startling fact that business managers and marketers should always have at the back of their minds – it is easier to sell to existing customers than it is to acquire new customers. So my question to you is simple – what are you doing with your existing customers?
For many businesses, a customer comes to their website, buys, and disappears, often never to be seen again. Online marketing has one special difference to offline marketing, a website is not in your face everyday. Offline, your store front is there. People walk past it everyday. A website is different. If your customer has not bookmarked your website, and can’t quite remember the URL, they will visit whichever website catches their eye the next time they want to purchase.
So I ask again. What are you doing with your existing customers? Are you capturing their email addresses for email marketing? Are you inviting them to follow you on any of the social media sites? If you are not maintaining contact with your existing customers, then perhaps your internet marketing strategy needs a review. Existing customers can be pure gold so if ROI is important to you, make sure you get the maximum return from every one of them.
SEO Is Only One Link In The Internet Marketing Chain
SEO is not Internet marketing. In fact, SEO is just one link in what is an ever growing chain of Internet marketing options. There are some online businesses that are quite profitable, yet they have not done any ounce of search engine optimization, they have the other links to be profitable. So what are those other ‘links’ in the chain? Here are a handful of marketing options that should keep you occupied for a while.
Pay-per-click advertising. There are many businesses that prefer the targeted traffic that comes from PPC advertising. It can be easy to measure your ROI, and you have complete control of your spending.
Social Media Marketing. There are some niches that are more suited to social media marketing than others. Some businesses can survive by attracting customers through social media rather than search.
Email Marketing. Newsletters have long been a popular channel for marketers. Email marketing has proven to be highly successful for some online businesses, particularly those that are catalog-based.
Offline Marketing. Large corporations still use traditional offline marketing strategies. Online businesses are now finding that some of these channels are well suited for promoting their online businesses.
Blogs. Blogs are certainly not dead. In fact, blogs are becoming a favorite place for many that are researching products and brands before making decisions on where to spend their money. Blogs are also an excellent way for your online business to connect with the social side of the web.
Businesses, both online and offline, that can harness all of those links in the Internet marketing chain are going from strength to strength. That doesn’t mean you need to utilize all of them, but if you can determine which of those options are best suited to your niche, you can focus your attention on building your presence and building your business – to success.
Marketing To Your Websites Traffic Metrics
Do you understand your website’s traffic metrics? Most websites have particular days of the week, and even hours of the day, when they are at their busiest. A quick look at your website’s stats will tell you which days of the week (and which hours of the day) are most popular. The question is, can you modify your marketing to either take advantage of traffic peaks, or better yet, to drive traffic during the quieter times?
Offline businesses have been doing it for centuries. Making special offers available early in the week when customer traffic is low. Some businesses have even been accused of raising prices during peak periods – gas for our cars is a good example. What about your website – can you do the same?
Many businesses care only about right now. You need to understand your target market first. If you are selling products that are aimed at moms, then you will see a distinct peak at certain times of the day, depending of course on your product. Tweeting a super special at other times of the day may increase your traffic marginally, but if moms just aren’t available then, that special offer will be lost. More importantly, you may upset some customers since they weren’t physically able to take up your offer.
Knowing your traffic highs and lows and knowing your target market’s online habits are important metrics that you may be able to use to better target your marketing. If you use pay-per-click advertising, then you can ensure your ads are only running when your customers are online.
When it comes to blog traffic, publishing blogs shortly before your traffic peak ensures your readers are receiving the very latest. Publish after your traffic peak and regular readers are seeing your content 20-24 hours after publication – that is not ideal if you are looking to start conversations. On topical matters, you could be seen to be publishing stale news.
Understand your traffic metrics and use them to help boost your internet marketing programs.
Measuring Social Media Success
If there is one complaint that is often heard regarding social media marketing it is the lack of analytics and the inability for business to measure return on investment. This perception is not really true – you can measure the success or failure of a social media marketing campaign. I would go further and suggest that you can measure and compare different campaigns to determine which is the more effective.
The hardest part of any form of measurement is the collection of data. This is not as hard as it may seem. Your first step is to determine what data is important. You can measure any of the following social media outcomes to determine success or failure.
Social media views – You are able to measure how many people have viewed your page on Facebook, and how many times your video has been viewed in most of the video sites. You can also measure how many people are reading your blog.
Subscribers, followers and fans – You can measure the growth in subscriber numbers for your blog or newsletter, Twitter followers, and Facebook fans.
Social media sharing – How many times are your Tweets retweeted, your pages liked, or your blog pages Stumbled? Sharing is reported to be a factor used by search engines to determine authority.
Traffic – Your own web analytics should be able to tell you how much traffic is flowing from social media websites to your pages. This will tell you if your social media marketing campaign is being effective.
Conversions – The ultimate statistic is being able to measure how many conversions you are achieving that can be directly attributed to your social media marketing activity. Using tracking codes on your links can help you to measure this.
Return on investment does not have to be a monetary return. If you decide you need to achieve a certain number of subscribers to make newsletter marketing viable, then the success of any social media campaign will be measured by the final number of subscribers achieved. The monetary return will come at a later date and will depend on how many sales can be attributed to your newsletter.
What is important is that you can measure various components of a social media marketing campaign.
Smart SEO Concentrates On The Probables
Are you chasing the impossible? When it comes to search engine optimization, many website owners are. They spend a lot of time, effort, and money chasing that number one ranking in the search results. Smart SEO is all about assessing your position and comparing it to your competition, then acting on what you can realistically achieve – the probables rather than chasing the improbables.
The number one ranking in search results is not a fixed rank. If you have Google’s Webmaster Tools tracking your website, you will find that your search rankings change, and frequently too. Search results now also take into account factors that are beyond the reach of search engine optimization – these factors include a user’s history. This means that, in some searches you are actually number one – or number twenty-one. You have no control.
If your analysis of your current positions suggests it would be hard work, time consuming, and perhaps costly to chase a higher search rank, then it’s time to change your strategy. You need to work on other factors such as your meta description, your landing pages, and perhaps even your social media marketing.
Your meta description may help you stand out from the crowd and so draw more clicks – even though you are only number two or three in the search results. Spending time on developing a good landing page may see you convert a higher rate of visitors – which would you prefer, more visitors or more sales? Social media marketing, of course, uses another channel to attract visitors.
Don’t chase the improbables – it can be a frustrating experience. Take a realistic approach and tackle what is achievable in the current environment. You’ll save time, money, and your sanity.
Getting The Balance Right In Search Engine Marketing
Despite popular opinion, search engine marketing is not purely about paid search. Rather, it is marketing through the search engines using both paid and organic search. One of the difficulties with organic search is determining your return on investment (ROI). That doesn’t mean it should be ignored.
Where businesses need to focus, especially new businesses, is on the balance between investing in paid and organic search. It is easy to determine the ROI when it comes to paid search. For this reason, you can target hundreds, sometimes thousands, of keywords. This, together with targeting features, means you can advertise your business to a much wider market.
Organic search can be slow. However, that can work in a new business’s favor. While paid search brings in the bulk of a website’s traffic, organic search can slowly build in the background, especially if you only target a precise set of keywords. As your organic traffic grows, you can start to diversify your keyword list; in the meantime, paid search is still delivering traffic. The overall effect is a slow but steady growth in the business.
A mistake that many new businesses make is to throw 70% or more of their marketing budget at organic search and leave the crumbs for paid search, social media marketing, and perhaps other forms of advertising such as banners. Often, the balance should be reversed with paid search receiving the bulk of your marketing budget while organic search is left to slowly develop.
Every niche is different, of course, and some niches respond well to social media marketing rather than search. A little research and a lot of testing is the best approach. With search engine marketing, achieving a good balance between your paid and organic efforts can result in a profitable business from day one – and a business that will continue to grow over time.
Why Is SEO Still Important?
With all the talk about social media marketing being the new king of traffic delivery, you would think it was the only method. In the cold hard light of day, most businesses still rely on search traffic, and they will for years to come. Social media marketing and search engine optimization complement each other, they certainly don’t work against each other.
There is an easy way to look as this issue – why chase only half the traffic when you can gain traffic from both channels? The number of people using search engines to find information is still growing, even if it is only slowly. More importantly, when you look at the volume of search undertaken each day, if you were to receive .001% of that traffic, it would most likely crash your servers – that’s a lot of traffic and a lot of search queries being run.
So, why is SEO still important? Search engines are still supplying traffic for free. The only cost to you is the time effort that you or a consultant put into optimizing your pages to rank as highly as possible in those search results. Do it well and your web site will receive significant traffic from the search results.
In many cases, SEO serves one further purpose, a purpose that many don’t consider. A good SEO program will ensure that your web site is put together in a very slick, tidy and well-managed fashion. Whether your traffic is coming from the search engines or social media, that tidy and slick web site will gain instant approval from visitors. Without the housekeeping that SEO demands, web sites would run out of control, will start to look untidy, and will most likely frustrate users who can’t find what they are looking for.
Search engine optimization helps your web pages to rank highly in search results. It also helps you to stay in control of your web site. Both are important if you want to be successful.
How To Successfully Start A Social Media Marketing Campaign
It is interesting to read some advice columns when it comes to social media marketing. Their first piece of advice often runs along the lines of creating a great profile, developing landing pages that will convert traffic, and general tips on how to interact with others. That advice is good advice – however, a successful social media campaign starts well before any of that.
While planning is crucial to the success of any business campaign, what is equally important in social media marketing is having very clearly defined objectives – and the smaller those objectives are, the easier it is to plan and the easier they are to plan. These objectives could be as simple as being able to interact with five new followers each day – in fact, your objective may be to collect five new followers each day.
Once you have a clearly defined set of objectives, you can then plan how you intend to achieve them. Those plans of course will then include details such as putting together a profile, landing page, or even the design of pages such as your Twitter profile or a Facebook Fan Page – if you intend on having them.
In most cases, the general approach has been to create a profile, and to then accumulate as many followers as possible, irrespective of the quality of those followers. Once a business has accumulated a good number of followers, the question has been, ‘okay, now what do I do with them’. In other words, the planning starts well after the event. In the majority of cases, that approach is doomed to fail, often due to the poor quality of the followers.
By planning, you will know why people are following you, and if you know the why, the how in marketing becomes so much easier. Do your planning from the start, not down the track – that’s the most effective way to start a social media marketing campaign.
Businesses Turning To Internet Marketing To Cut Costs
Big business turned to IT decades ago. They had the money to buy huge mainframes and to pay for the dedicated staff to manage them. What those mainframes could do in an hour often took dozens of workers to do in several hours. Small business has toyed with IT, some with a great deal of success, others with not so much success. It seems that small businesses are once again looking at IT as a means to cut operating costs. It’s interesting to note that Internet marketing is one of those driving forces.
According to SmallBusinessNewz:
nearly 36% of small businesses are investing in improved email marketing campaigns, 28% are looking at Google Adwords and 21% are looking at Facebook advertising.
They also report that 30% of small businesses are investing in “virtualization, business intelligence and collaboration“. Business intelligence (or competitive intelligence) has been a primary motivator for many medium to large businesses where dedicated staff research competitors across the broad spectrum of the Internet – especially social media.
One of the driving forces into the future will be the introduction of smarter software that will deliver better analytics of social media activity. We are already seeing better analytics coming out of Facebook, other social media sites will not be far behind. One of the best indicators of how successful Internet Marketing is becoming is the fact that traditional marketing sources, print, television, and radio, are now crying poor and bemoaning drops in sales, viewers, and listeners.
Today, you can create a highly successful video ad for far less than the cost of a television ad. Where television charges tens of thousands of dollars for some 30 second ad spots, you can publish and promote a video of any length, almost for free, across the Internet. You may not get the same audience, but when you can produce 20 or 30 videos for the same cost as one television ad – savings are fairly obvious.
We are only touching the surface when it comes to cost cutting. Cloud computing is yet to make a huge impact yet the potential for savings could be huge for small businesses. Internet marketing is just one dimension, but its success will drive ventures into more cost cutting activities using IT and the Internet. The ride is going to be interesting.