The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

You’ve likely heard of blogs. There’s nothing really magical about them, but you can use a blog for your business to increase your market and talk to your customers. Here are 7 ways you can use a blog to boost your business and your brand online.

1. Search engine optimization – Well optimized blog posts can increase your standing in the search engines.
2. Social media optimization – Promote your blog through the popular social networks to increase your traffic and brand exposure.
3. Field questions about your business – A blog allows your customers and potential customers to communicate with you. You can answer their questions and build your brand.
4. Network with others in your industry – A blog is a conversation. Your market is a conversation. Why not join the two?
5. Increased search engine rankings - Not only can each individual blog post be optimized, but the more blog posts you have the more chances you have of being ranked in the search engines.
6. Close more sales – You can use your blog to close sales simply by putting links to your landing pages in high profile locations on the blog.
7. Customer service – Handle customer service issues on your blog in less time and with fewer expenses.

You no longer have to sit on the sidelines and watch while your competitors steal the market. You can use a blog to drive more business to your website and increase your search engine and social media exposure.

When it comes to optimizing your content for social media, are you including your e-mail content? That includes your e-mail newsletter, e-zine, and your special e-mail promotions. That also includes e-brochures, e-cards, or whatever else you send through e-mail.

Here are 4 ways to ensure that you make the most of your social media opportunities when optimizing your e-mail content for social sharing.

• Add social buttons – This is the most basic way to encourage sharing your e-mail content. Do all your e-mails include buttons for social sharing?
• Add links to your social media profiles – You can do this easily and without drawing undue attention to your links. Slip them in naturally and get you’ll get great responses.
• Encourage discussion – Start a discussion about a topic on Facebook or Twitter, then link to it in your e-mail. Ask your subscribers to comment and join the discussion. You’ll be surprised at how many will do just that.
• Send a separate e-mail – Instead of constantly promoting your social media profiles in your newsletter, send a separate e-mail inviting your subscribers to follow you. Tell them why they should follow you. Tell them what you are doing differently than your competition.

Social media optimization includes using your e-mail subscriber list to drive traffic to your profiles. Are you doing that effectively?

Quora has made a name for itself as a Q&A site. Relatively new to the game, it has grown quickly and is the Q&A home of many savvy and high profile people. Originally, the site had a strict no self-promotion policy. However, recently, that has changed.

There are two ways to look at this change. You can see it as an opportunity or you can see it as a problem. If you are of the glass-half-empty variety, you could see it as the spammers are taking over. But if you think in terms of the glass being half full, then you’ll want to jump on the Quora bandwagon real quick.

In April, Google started indexing Quora in its real time search feature. That’s awesome news for marketers using Quora for traffic generation. It’s already been established that Quora posts are great for SEO.

Whether you see the glass half full or half empty, the risk is there for Quora to become another content farm under Google’s Panda rules. Quora can avert that eventuality by incorporating a few simple rules into its answers policy to combat link and content spam. But will they? The debate is on.

Until this is settled, the best thing for a social media marketer to do is to get involved in Quora and reap the benefits. If you post on Quora now, you can enjoy the benefits of excellent social media positioning and search engine optimization. Rarely do online marketers get to kill both of those birds with one stone.

I’m convinced, after years of being in this business, that an Internet marketing plan is something that every business would benefit from. In most cases, a company that has an established marketing budget can get more mileage from their marketing with less outlay if they transfer some of that budget into Internet marketing. But what does an Internet marketing plan consist of?

Of course, every business is different. Therefore, every Internet marketing plan will be different. The first step is to determine the needs of your market and approach those needs with an open mind.

Once we’ve established your priorities and the needs of your market, your Internet marketing plan could consist of any of the following special tactics:

• Pay per click marketing – PPC is a pay-as-you-go marketing tactic. You buy clicks and send them to your important landing pages. It’s very effective and costs are determined by how much you are willing to pay per click.
• Search engine optimization – SEO is the long-term tactic. We’ll help you rank your web pages in Google, Bing, and other search engines in order to attract the right customers.
• Social Media Optimization – SMO is a different kind of Internet marketing. It’s about building relationships through connections off of your website.
• Custom Web Design – Your website should be a reflection of your business and your values.
• Online Video Marketing – Online videos are the 21st century equivalent to 20th century TV advertising – only better.

When it comes to developing an Internet marketing plan, the strategies you use depend on your market, your business, and your goals. Talk to someone who has designed a custom Internet marketing plan more than a few times.

What is click degradation? This is a situation where you slowly lose visitors the more pages they have to click through. If you have 100 visitors arriving on your site, you may have 15%-20% click through to other pages on your site – let’s use 20% – that is 20 visitors clicking through to a second page. If 20% of those click through to another page, that is 4 visitors on page three.

As you can see, your click degradation rate here is around 80%. In many cases, this is much higher. Of course, we tend to think of the reverse of this and call it a click-through rate or conversion. In the above example we would refer to a click-through rate of 20% and congratulate ourselves on doing so well.

Before you do congratulate yourself, what if page three in the above example was your sales or money page? If you have the online average of a 5%-10% conversion rate, then, at 10%, you would need more than 250 visitors on your front page to get one sale. That is click degradation. How do you minimize this? Easy – reduce the number of clicks to get to your money page.

In the above example, if you could eliminate the second page, you would have 20 visitors moving to your sales page and, at 10% conversion, you would have two sales. That is two sales from 100 visitors compared to one sale from 250 visitors. Of course, in a perfect world, you would have your potential customers landing on your money page and that is why we optimize pages for both search and social.

We’re not in a perfect world and pages other than our money page do rank in search results. Furthermore, they do deliver traffic to your website – don’t waste that traffic through click degradation. Use strong call to action signals and buttons, then send them directly to your sales pages.

When it comes to succeeding online, there are more than one way to skin the proverbial cat. In fact, you should never rely on just one way. The best Web marketing is a multi-tiered approach that focuses on the best methods and strategies for the current time.

When planning your Web marketing strategy, try to incorporate these 5 proven strategies that work today and likely will work next year and the year after too.

1. Search engine optimization – After all these years, search engine optimization is still at the top of the Web strategies that are proven and work. In fact, it works just as well today as it did ten years ago – if you know what you are doing.
2. Competitive intelligence – Gathering information about the competition and your niche is an important starting point for any Web strategy. But it’s more than just a starting point. You should collect information on an ongoing basis.
3. Pay per click marketing – Click prices are a lot higher now than they used to be. But pay per click marketing is still a good Web strategy to employ. It’s effective, results can come quickly and conversions are high if you are capable of managing a campaign that draws in traffic.
4. Social media optimization – Social media is here to stay. From Facebook to Twitter and LinkedIn to Flickr, there are opportunities to engage with your audience in powerful ways.
5. Video marketing - Video marketing is still in its infancy. The right video can go viral in a heartbeat and if you are effective in uploading the right video at the right websites then this Web marketing strategy can pay off big time.

Internet marketing has changed over the years, but it hasn’t changed that much. From SEO to video marketing, these Web strategies should be a part of every Internet marketing campaign.

Chris Crum at WebProNews suggested that Facebook replace it Notes tab with a Blog tab. It’s not a bad idea.

Facebook users would gain an immediate benefit if Facebook offered blogging. No. 1, the built in Facebook user base would be incredible. This is now the second most visited site online, right behind Google. Facebook could compete head on with Google’s Blogger and actually do well.

Not only would users of Facebook benefit with that feature, but Facebook itself would benefit as it would see an immediate increase in user-generated content, improve its search engine friendliness and more people would stay on the website longer. But would a Facebook blog improve social media optimization (SMO)?

I believe it would improve search engine optimization for anyone who had a Facebook blog. I also believe it would improve SMO in a number of ways.

1. First and foremost, Facebook users would likely connect more through a blog
2. A blog could be brandable just like a Facebook page
3. With thousands of Facebook blogs pumping out content on a regular basis, Facebook would likely see more Twitter traffic
4. Widgetized blogs would likely lead to more video sharing on Facebook

I don’t really see any negatives in the prospect of adding a Facebook blog. Do you?

Social media optimization (SMO) has come into its own. Not only do most webmasters today try to learn everything they can about search engine optimization and the methods the pros use to get ranked for their most important keywords, but they are also learning everything they can about social media optimization. Some webmasters actually spend more time on the latter than on the former.

The best SMO in the world is also the simplest. You don’t even have to leave your website. The goal is to get your site visitors to do the work for you.

If you’ve visited many websites at all then you’ve likely seen the share buttons. They come in various sizes, shapes and colors. Some say “share”, some say “bookmark this” and some use another phrase. But there is almost always an icon, a chicklet, and a link that allows your site visitors to easily share your content on their favorite social sites. And some even allow your visitors to e-mail your content to their friends.

The key is to learn your audience. Are they heavy Digg users or Stumblers? Are they Twitterers? Do you use e-mail more frequently?

If you learn the online social habits of your visitors and provide them an easy way to share content in their preferred content and at their preferred online haunts then you’ve got a big piece of the social media puzzle solved. The rest, as they say, gravy.

Chris Crum of WebProNews interviewed Matt Bailey, who said that you can run a successful business online without Twitter. Really? I thought Twitter was all that and a bag of chips.

Actually, he’s right. You CAN run a successful business online without Twitter. In fact, everyone did before 2005.

When it comes to social media, there’s a new brand of hype. What happens is, the online equivalent of the jet set (the early adopters) do some experimenting. When one of them finds a workable formula for a new social tool they start to tell their friends. Their friends do an experiment and confirm the report. They tell their friends. Before you know it, the news steam rolls and the spammers start moving in. Hype builds more hype.

But the reality is, you can do without the hype. What I mean, don’t get sucked into it. You should start the hype, not follow it.

Hype is really another word for viral marketing. It works. When you are the subject of the hype you’ll know it works. When you are the one being dragged around by the hype, all you can think about is, “Man, this sucks.”

Well, let’s not get dramatic. Social media optimization is not about following the hype. It’s about creating it. And you can run a successful business without Twitter. Of course, you can run a successful business with it too.

WebProNews visited with some search and social industry professionals in Chicago and came away with a list of 10 discussions in Internet marketing that are relevant for today and the future. Six of those 10 discussions are relevant to social media in at least a small way, but most of them hit the social media relevance factor directly and head on. Here are the 6 discussions on social media you should pay attention to if not get involved in:

1. Ranking In Real-Time Search – Real-time search has become synonymous with Twitter, and partly Facebook. You can’t argue that this doesn’t have some serious social media marketing connection. Plus, it’s interesting.
2. The Future Of Online PR – Online PR used to be about getting found in the search engines. Now it’s about getting found. Anywhere and everywhere. More than likely, if you use online PR in the future then you’ll be doing it through at least one social media outlet.
3. Lessons from Political Social Media – President Obama wasn’t the first to make social media relevant for politics. That was Ron Paul. But the nation’s chief executive did do the most in making it relevant for the rest of us.
4. Small Businesses And Social Media – Any discussion of social media must involve small business and the ways that average business owners can benefit. This discussion is a must.
5. Moving Beyond Google – What’s beyond Google? A lot of things. Like Facebook, Twitter, and the loads of other social media websites out there ready for you to leverage for your business.
6. Optimizing for Mixed Media Search Results – Mixed media optimization involves search, social, video, and viral marketing. Your arsenal of online marketing tools is as varied as your imagination. This is one of the best discussions you’ll ever witness.

That’s six out of 10 and they’re all related to social media in some way. The other four discussions are about search and PPC and they’re just as interesting. Get involved in these discussions now. Or learn more about social media optimization.

The Web has increasingly grown more complicated since its inception and search engine optimization along with it. The next wave of search will undoubtedly be social media search and the result will end up being a more complicated social media optimization process.

Currently, it’s not so difficult but neither was SEO when it was first conceived. Now, however, talk to any Internet marketer and you are sure to get a list of do’s and don’ts that would make a bug go cross-eyed.

In the wake of Google’s and Bing’s near simultaneous and recent announcement that there is an agreement with Twitter to incorporate real-time search into both search engines’ universal search results as well as Google’s announcement that social search is just around the corner, it is likely that the next big playground of competition will be in social media optimization.

Not only will the search engines themselves be competing for marketers’ attentions, but marketers will be competing for an audience’s attention.

There is no doubt that Twitter and Facebook will be at the center of the social media optimization wars. But what other networks will be there? My guess is any network of any size at all will eventually be incorporated into any social search model at the search engines. If you have not already started charting your course for social media optimization then now is the time.

Social media optimization, or SMO, is about more than connecting with others on a social level. Sure, that’s important, but it isn’t the whole story. What SMO is really all about is getting the attention of people you would like to do business with. Strategy is very important.

At the heart of every effective social media campaign is an honest portrayal of who you are and what you have to offer potential prospects. Remember, you are engaged in “pull” marketing, not “push” marketing. That is, you are are drawing people toward you, not pushing your product on them. Television is push, social media is pull.

Pull marketing is much more subtle that push marketing. Therefore, social media optimization is about subtlety. The idea is to capture people’s attention. How do you do that? Here are a few tips that might help you:

1. Speak their language – If you’re talking to teenagers, use colloquial lingo that they’ll understand. If speaking to professionals then try using their business talk. Be sure to speak the language of your prospects.
2. Find out what they want – Don’t just jump out and start selling people stuff. Find out what your target audience is interested in. Offer them that.
3. Show up at the right place – Nothing is as ineffective as marketing through the wrong channel. If your prospective client is more likely to be at LinkedIn then you should be there; if they are more likely to be at Facebook then you should be there.
4. Yes, SEO still works – Just because it’s social media doesn’t mean that SEO won’t work. Social sites are websites. All the same SEO rules apply. They may require a little different implementation, but SMO and SEO do go together.
5. Get your prospect’s attention – In social media you have to lay it on the table. You can’t just hint at something and expect every reader to get it. Make a big splash, but do it appropriately. You are vying against a lot of competition so make sure you attract the attention you deserve.

Social media optimization is about connecting. Do it appropriately, but connect with the right audience at the right place at the right time. That’s true SMO.

One of the factors that Google considers when computing search rankings is traffic – quantity as well as quality. Indeed, quality is perhaps more important than quantity. Sure, a site that gets 100,000 visitors per day may be seen as better than one that gets 10,000 visits per day, but just because you get a lot of visitors doesn’t mean that those visitors value your site. It’s easy to game traffic counts.

Another aspect of traffic comparison is whether or not visitors return to your website. If you have a low percentage of visitors who are return visitors to your website then you may suffer from some quality marks that are hurting you in your rankings. But that’ s not all.

Other aspects of quality traffic include traffic source, time on site, time on page, and bounce rates. I think traffic source is important and will likely become more important and when I say traffic source I’m talking about specific websites and their authority. If you get high quality traffic from a website that is deemed authoritative in the eyes of Google then that counts in your favor. It is conceivable that 10,000 visitors per day where 80% of that traffic comes from high quality, authoritative sites like Google, Facebook, and Twitter versus 100,000 low quality visitors from low quality directories and such could give you more search mojo. Remember, quality counts. And I think Google is getting as sophisticated at judging quality traffic as they are at judging quality links.

The takeaway here is to seek quality traffic from high quality, authoritative social media sites, not rinky-dink startups with no reputation.

Can social media optimization (SMO) be a fitting substitute for search engine optimization (SEO)? To answer this question it helps to have a working understanding of both SEO and SMO. Let’s examine:

• SEO – The purpose for SEO is to attract visitors to your website based on search engine queries such that you answer their questions simply by delivering quality content that meets their needs.
• SMO – Social media optimization is the social counterpart to SEO. It doesn’t replace it, but compliments it. SMO allows you to attract new visitors by appealing to your audience’s social needs while grabbing their attention with valid SEO techniques.

It’s important to note that the best SMO relies on sound SEO. Your social media efforts will be enhanced if you start with SEO as the basis of your website building block and use it as your foundation. Let SMO rest on the foundation, not vice versa.

John Battelle is a brilliant man. He recently wrote a two-part blog post where he challenged search engines on two fronts:

I see two paths toward that goal: one is creating applications on top of “ten blue links” which help me organize and aggregate the knowledge I process while pursuing a search query, and the second is making my searches social, so I can share the process of learning and learn from those who have shared – not unlike Vannevar Bush’s “Memex” concept.

I’m not quite sure what he has in mind on that first point. It could be anything from the ability to make notes, which Google currently allows, to saving an individual search result to be included in subsequent search queries so that ongoing topical searches can be conducted – as opposed to strict keyword searches as they are done now. I can actually see some value in that type of aggregation.

But John Battelle goes further to suggest that search engines should be more social in nature. That would put a completely different spin on the nature of search. To actually include humans – other humans not associated with the search engine – in one’s search process combined with the other elements of search as we know them today and what they could be ten years from now, that would revolutionize search in ways that have not been done as of yet. The problem is, we’re a long way from there right now. Will we ever get there?

Can search engine optimization – the practice of influencing search results using keyword placement, link building, and other tactics – and social media optimization – the practice of writing content that appeals to the denizens of social networks and designed to get them to share it with their friends – ever meld into one product? Should they? What do you think?

Optimizing for social media traffic is a bit different than optimizing for search engines. But there are similarities. When you optimize your landing page for search engines, keywords are extremely important. After all, people will find your site by those keywords. But with social media, while keywords are important, they aren’t the most important thing. Social media users look for something different.

First and foremost, they want a unique experience. Keywords are good for ensuring those social media pages achieve better rankings in the search engines, but what happens if someone finds your content in Digg or StumbleUpon and arrives there from a search engine? You still want them to go to your website and that will take a different approach than merely sprinkling your content with keywords.

Your headline is very important. It should attract attention. More than that, it must get the click. Social media users have two things to go on in deciding whether or not to read your content: The headline and the description, or summary. The headline, more than anything, will determine whether or not they read your content.

What should a headline do? Three things:

1. Arouse curiosity
2. Tell the reader what to expect from the content
3. Use your primary keyword

Understand that Nos. 1 and 2 and more important than No. 3 when it comes to social media optimization. Yes, you want your keyword there for the search engines, but human readers care about the content. It must answer their most pressing questions or make them believe that your content will answer those questions. Get them to click. That’s the goal. And if you achieve that then you’ve done your job.

Social media optimization is a fancy word Internet marketers use to describe the best practices of marketing a business through various social media channels. Some of those channels might include:

• Blogging
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Digg
• Delicious
• StumbleUpon
• BlogCatalog
• Twitter
• YouTube

That’s just to name a few. There are countless other social bookmarking and social networking sites out there to participate in as well.

Social media optimization involves a few principles that, if followed, will help you reach the right target audience for your message and drive traffic to your website. What are the principles? Glad you asked. These are the principles that we recommend for the best social media optimization practices:

• Create unique content
• Engage your audience through a blog
• Provide a way for your readers to bookmark or share your content
• Distribute your content through RSS, aggregation, and various channels of social media
• Participate in other people’s channel marketing initiatives as well (ie interact)
• Be genuine, not fake
• Use SEO

The idea behind social media is to be conversational. You can do that without being pushy or overbearing. You can also do it and still ask for the sale. Before you jump into a social media campaign, take time to study what social media is, who is using it, and how they are doing it.

Awhile back, I posted my thoughts on the hot topic in the Internet marketing world for that week, namely Twitter. Although I jumped the gun with assumptions about the course this fad would take, I maintain my general position on the matter. I came across a post containing a bunch of reasons to use Twitter, and this sparked my motivation to post yet again about the topic. I must state that the following is only my opinion, based on my experience in the Social Media Optimization world.

While I don’t intend to mention all of the reasons along with my opinion of each, there are a few I’ve chosen which, I believe, the writer is directing toward businesses, rather than individuals. As I failed to make clear in my previous post about Twitter, my opinion was concerning the use of Twitter for business Internet marketing efforts, not those of one person or a small group of people.

Competitive – to track what competitors are doing and thinking (watch their tweets, who they’re conversing with, and so forth). Gain insights!

This is a good idea, but why use Twitter? While the idea behind competitive intelligence is to learn secrets, many companies may overlook that which is out in the open. A lot of companies utilize Twitter to market special deals, new products, and more. This is valuable information that may not be available through more conventional CI practices – information that may help other companies figure out how to market their products.

Employee Tracking – See where your employees are, and even what they’re doing. eg. If you’re a service company with contractors on the road, some have used Twitter to reveal where all their contractors are around a city, which indicates how close they are to their next service call.

Most companies that require this kind of information to operate will likely have a method of tracking already. Whether it’s a “push-to-talk” cellular service or a computer system networked into handheld devices which employees carry on them at all times, there are plenty of ways that businesses track their employees, and other things, which can carry far more responsibility than Twitter can. However, some businesses may find it beneficial to utilize Twitter for simple tasks, such as those mentioned above. It all depends on the company and how they run their business.

Branding – To build awareness, trust, and possibly loyalty. If a company Twitters good information routinely, and isn’t overly self-promotional, the profile will gather followers. The profile is then associated with quality industry news and integrity. Frequency and quality of posts then breed familiarity, and eventually trust.

While the effort put into regular Twitter posts would may be more effectively spent on blogging, there is an advantage to the micro-blogging that Twitter offers. In many cases, posting to Twitter to a loyal following makes it easier, not just for the business to get the information out there, but for all of those potential customers to find it. Utilizing Twitter broadcasts and feeds on company websites, blogs, and other SM profiles make it easy to put that information in sight of thousands, instantly. However, any company planning to use the Twitter service to reach users should be careful of how often they post, and what they post about. The key here is regular, consistant information. Like anything in the social media realm, offers go a long way, and good information is priceless when compared to the mundane onslaught of Twitterers posting about what they ate for breakfast.

Reputation Management – to learn about issues and problems people are having with your company, so that they can be corrected. I’m a firm advocate that every problem is an opportunity, when viewed from the right perspective.

Again, the effort put into reputation management would likely be better spent on other means, but a company large enough to have a lot of Twitter users bashing it’s good name might do well to solve the problem before it leaves Twitter. However, the last thing a company needs for its reputation is one who supposedly represents the company arguing with a group of Twitterers about whether or not they were correct in their opinion about said company. Opinions are out there, and always will be – while a company cannot correct every false one, they can make efforts to put the right one in as many places on the Internet as possible - and Twitter is one large group of people to which it makes sense to get the word out.

Twitter is a valuable tool for friends, families and aquaintences to utilize in order to keep in touch and up to date, as well as it can be for businesses. We should never forget that there are plenty of opportunities elsewhere that have been proven to be effective, but where appropriate, Twitter can be used effectively. Just don’t push those boundries too far, or Twitter may eventually suffer the same fate as SM sites before it’s time. The target audience for your business marketing efforts on Twitter is made up of users, not other companies, so if companies abuse the Twitter service like many have been abused before, users are likely to switch to the next big micro-blogging site, and leave the companies to re-tweet themselves.

As the writer of the aforementioned article states: “…the key is in showing restraint in the initial months so that one does not ‘burn out’ on the experience.”

There’s no doubt, the Social Media is alive and well. Everyone from the independent musician to the corporate giants utilize the Social Media to accomplish otherwise difficult or impossible marketing strategies, and it looks like this aspect of the Internet marketing world is here to stay, at least for awhile.

When engaging in a campaign that targets and utilizes the Social Media, it is important not to jump the gun. As quickly as a brand or name can be rocketed to the top, it can be crushed before it ever gets a foot out the door. For this reason, preparation can be the difference between success and defeat. In the same regard, it’s not just about what you do or how you do it, but what order you decide to accomplish each leg of the journey to Social Media Marketing success. Here are some tips:

• Cover Your Bases- A lot of people have the tendency to jump into every Social Media site they can find and try to make friends, send messages, join groups, etc. The problem with this approach is that the best impression should be your first impression. If you plan to have any lasting standing with the people you encounter on these sites, you need to have something to offer. Depending on your niche, it may be handy advice, a free download, or maybe even a how-to guide. It really comes down to the people who would be interested in you or your business, and what they can get from the connection. Take the time to set up your own site, populate it with rich, valueable content, and make sure your best foot is forward. You wouldn’t show to a wedding wearing half of your tux or dress – don’t show up to the Social Media party unprepared!
• Choose your Friends Wisely – There are a lot of tools available online that one can utilize to track what people are saying about them. Sites like Twitter are a lot easier to track, when they’re all about the talk, but you will never know what is being said before it is said, posted and set in “stone”. Blogs are a large part of the Social media, and everyone has one these days. If you upset the wrong person, they can ruin you, easily. After that, you may have a world of Reputation Management in front of you, but it’s better not to let it get to that point. Be courteous on the sites you join, and be responsive to those who are interested in what you do or have to offer. It’s important to filter out users that it wont benefit you to interact with, and it’s equally important to keep up the communication with those that will.
• You Have To Earn Trust- Every business starts somewhere, and generally, an up-and-coming business, large or small, earns their reputation and much of their clientele from word of mouth, but more specifically, from providing good service and/or products. Likewise, your “image” on the web will have a lot to do with you. If you want your name to be recognized and associated with good opinions, interact in kind. In time, users will stumble on your name and know it because their friend told them about you, or because they saw it on another site. Whatever the case, the best way to brand is by doing what you do, not necessarily better than anyone else, just better than most people would expect. This leaves quite the impression and can make a Social Media effort much easier. SMO is not meant to replace all other forms of advertising, branding and customer relations – it is simply a catalyst for more leads, exposure and ultimately, sales.
• Put In The Time- It may be a no brain-er, but what you get out of your Social Media campaign is what goes in, and time is no exception. For many, time is a luxury, one which that many cannot afford to dedicate enough of to a self-propelled SMO campaign. For a lot of businesses, hiring an Internet Marketing Firm is the way to go, since not only will this save the business the time that goes into it, but these are trained professionals that have experience and knowledge to get the job done right.

Search Engine Marketing may not be a science, but it can be viewed as the sum of it’s contributors, and their effect on your online marketing success. Too often, people view all of the separate Internet Marketing efforts in their own light, and fail to bring all factors into one whole focus. When it comes to maximizing your ROI, it may be tricky to determine whether a paid search campaign would benefit over a one geared towards natural search, or whether it would be better to analyze the competition than it would be to focus on expanding your own network. Whatever the case may be, the answer will likely be to test all the water.

It’s no secret that a Pay Per Click campaign can have an effect on of of natural search, and such an effect might benefit or hurt the other, but more than likely, your business will see better oportunities when its Internet Marketing efforts branch out.

The Social Media offers a network of users, and therefore potential customers or clients, that have already presented information about themselves and their interests that traditional advertisors would pay big money for. Targeting users on the Internet is easier than ever – which only means that more people are doing it – and it is therefore that much more important to expand efforts into all online marketing areas.

However, this does necessarily mean it will do you much good to pick 3 of these areas and run with them. Marketing your business online is as much about prior knowledge as it is about gathered information, which means that slow and steady will often win the race.

Let’s compare two businesses like the tortoise and the hare.

The first business wraps its efforts around a search and content driven PPC campaign, a natural search effort, the Social Media spectrum, and safeguards itself with reputation management, all the while gathering information about it’s top competitors. After a few months, they will see which effort is paying off the most, and focus primarily on that. However, they can utilize the others to support their main campaign, and during this time, they can see how various strategies affect eachother, and optimize accordingly. Additionally, their presence in the Social Media has established a brand for them, so when users see their ads, or their name in natural search results, they are more likely to visit their site.

The second business decides to pour its budget into a PPC campaign, and gathers information about their competitors. Seeing how their competition bids has given them the advantage to take that number one spot on sponsored search results, but they lack the online presence. Their click-through rate on ads is decent, but once on the site, users will generally decide to check out the other results before making a decision. Their bounce rate is high and visitor loyalty is rather low, since more than often, users will find the first business and recognize their name.

This model is just one scenario, but it illustrates the need to exapand efforts. The tortoise and the hare is a well-known story for a good reason – there is truth to the concept of taking one’s time, thinking things through, and making informed decisions.