The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

You know a strong call to action is a very important part of your sales literature. If you don’t ask your prospect to take action, they might just sit and listen and not take any action. You have to let them know what you want them to do and when to do it.

Here are 5 dynamic ways to use a good call to action.

1. Your landing pages – Here’s an obvious one. You have a great sales page that describes your product well, includes photos and maybe even a video. But does it have a call to action? A strong call to action will increase conversions.
2. Anchor text – Does your anchor text motivate people to click or does it just provide some keyword-based bland text for SEO effect? Nothing wrong with SEO, but give it a call to action.
3. Meta descriptions – Your meta descriptions will appear in the SERPs as search snippets. Do they motivate searchers to click on your page? If they were strong calls to action they would.
4. Your Facebook posts – It’s great that you use Facebook as much as you do, but do any of your posts include a call to action? Make people click the link. Tell them to do it.
5. Your tweets – There’s not a lot of room for error on Twitter, but one way that many marketers miss opportunities is to include a link without a strong call to action.
6. Your PPC ads – Want people to click your ads? Give them a strong call to action and they will click all day long.

Take control of your online marketing with calls to action. They get people where you want them.

Internet marketing is for authors too. In fact, many successful authors use the Internet every day to promote their books and other merchandise. You can too.

One successful author recently increased his readership by several thousand fans just by following a very simple strategy for online promotion. Here it is in a nutshell:

1. The first thing Kevin W. McCarthy did was turn an existing book into a Kindle e-book.
2. Then he set the price of the e-book at free
3. Next, he sent out e-mail blasts promoting the book.
4. And he set up radio interviews and online webcasts to help promote the book
5. Finally, he promoted the book through social media

As a result of his efforts, Kevin W. McCarthy’s Kindle book became the No. 1 non-fiction book at Amazon. And all he did was promote his book in ways that successful authors everywhere do.

You can do it. And you don’t even need a previously published book. You can write your book right now and publish it yourself through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program.

By authoring your own book and promoting it through your e-mail list, website properties, and all over the web using the tools at your disposal – most of them free – you can maneuver yourself onto the best selling list at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the Apple iBook store, and other online book merchants.

The key to success as an author is to have an idea, follow through with that idea, and then promote your book once it is published. It’s never been easier to be a successful author.

It appears that large companies have given up their blogs and flocked to social media instead. The reason they’re giving up is because they say that social media is easier to manage than a blog. But is it?

I love this paragraph by Cynthia Boris:

Just remember that if you want your social media outlets to benefit you, you have to do more than just keep the lights on. You have to provide meaningful content that engages your audience. In that respect, it’s just as hard as blogging, but most people don’t see it that way.

Not only that, but …

What blogs give you that you don’t get with social media, is a chance to communicate without all the noise. On Facebook, you’re one of a dozen posts competing for instant attention. An hour later, you’re off the front page and forgotten.

What Cynthia Boris doesn’t say is that your company blog also provides you with search engine optimization benefits that Facebook and Twitter don’t offer. OK, Twitter does offer a little bit of SEO juice, but it’s nowhere near what your blog has to offer.

Every blog post you write is another chance to be seen in a search result. Your blog itself increases its SEO chutzpah with longevity. And you can build invaluable internal links with a blog. Facebook has blocked Google so your posts aren’t going to be indexed and your links back to your site won’t be seen. Twitter is in bed with Bing, not Google.

I’m not saying don’t use Facebook or Twitter. They have their place. But having a blog is one of the best SEO tools you can have. If you have trouble coming up with content, maybe you should think about hiring someone else to manage your blog.

A lot has been said of marketing toward particular segments of the population and that includes the differences between the generational segments. For instance, if you are marketing products and services toward Baby Boomers, then you would position your brand differently than if you were marketing toward Millennials (younger people between 18 and 34).

But is there any validity to this marketing argument?

I think it depends on the product and service. Obviously, some products appeal to older populations that younger people aren’t going to be interested in. An AARP membership, for instance.

But what about generic products or products that cross generational lines in terms of interest and usability?

I think the key is to outline the benefits of your product for the consumer. Maybe older people are looking for a different benefit than younger people when it comes to your product. Maybe not. The key to any marketing – even online marketing – is to sell the benefits of the product or service. The question is, How?

If you have different market segments that seek different benefits for the same product, then it might be prudent to target them separately the same way that marketers in the TV and print advertising age have done. In that case, you might build two separate websites and focus optimizing them for the right keywords for each market. Then use the right social media sites to drive traffic and make connections based on the market.

Market segmentation is nothing new. Online, however, it might take on a different flavor. Think about it in terms of benefit for each segment and you can’t go wrong.

What will Internet marketing look like in 2032, twenty years from now? Care to take a guess?

If you look at the history of Internet marketing from the beginning of the World Wide Web until now, it’s very interesting how we have progressed to the point that we have.

• 1990 – Birth of the World Wide Web including browsers and hypertext, online bulletin boards are very popular communication channels
• 1993 – Excite, the world’s first search engine, was created
• 1994 – AltaVista was created and later would become the world’s first major search engine; Yahoo! became the first powerhouse Web directory
• 1995 – GeoCities launched, becomes the first successful online community; webrings begin to rise in popularity
• 1997 – SixDegrees is the first official social network
• 1998 – Google was born, the first search engine to analyze back links
• 1999 – Overture became the first company to offer pay per click advertising; Blogger.com launches
• 2000 – Google enters PPC market with Google AdWords
• 2003 – Google AdSense program starts, increasing Google’s hold on the PPC market; LinkedIn and MySpace both launch
• 2004 – Facebook is created
• 2005 – YouTube launches; Google introduces personalized search
• 2006 – MicroSoft LiveSearc started; Twitter launches
• 2007 – Mobile marketing starts to pick up
• 2008 – Facebook becomes most popular social network
• 2009 – LiveSearch rebrands, becomes Bing; Google rolls out personalized search for logged out users
• 2010 – Local search becomes more important
• 2011 – Google+ launches, Google proclaims it is the future of the search engine’s search and social product

This is a very sketchy history of Internet marketing, but it can shed some light on the direction that online marketing is going. More personal, more local, more social, more mobile, and incorporating more video and visual results. So what will all of that look like in 2032?

Truthfully, it’s anybody’s guess, but if I had to hazard a guess I would say that all of these components of search will be more integrated and more sophisticated. Are you preparing your company to make the most of your opportunities in each of these online marketing channels?

The best viral marketing sometimes just happens. Such was the case recently when hundreds of thousands of people shared a photo of a smiling man within minutes. The man has since come to be called The Ridiculously Photogenic Man.

Which is, uhm, a bit ridiculous.

But of course, it took off and soon after news and talk shows on TV were discussing him. Talk about going viral. It doesn’t get any more viral than that.

And the thing is, the man whose image went viral didn’t even know about it until after it happened. Not only was it not planned, but he didn’t even have knowledge of it. Still, he reaped the rewards of 15 minutes of fame and the Cooper River Bridge Run got some notoriety from it as well.

So here’s the eternal question. How can social media marketers learn to go viral using this meme as an example. What can we learn from it?

1. No. 1, I think it’s important to point out that promoting someone else first can go a long way. The John Ritter Foundation for Aortic Health is a good cause. They didn’t plan this or have anything to do with it, but they certainly can reap the benefits from a viral meme that spun out of control.
2. Step back and let it run. Don’t force it. Let others take the ball and run.
3. Just put it out there. You never know what will happen if you put a little drop into the stream. That’s a metaphor for “just do it.”

Viral marketing doesn’t always have to be planned. Sometimes the best way to get a little attention is to be spontaneous.

Are you a CEO? Do you have direct access to the CEO at your company? If so, then you should do everything you can to convince him or her to open up a Twitter account and start tweeting.

According to the latest survey, 77% of consumers and 82% of employees trust a company more when its CEO tweets.

Tweeting puts your CEO on the front line of customer service rather than hiding behind a desk on top of a 700-foot ivory tower. That spells “inaccessible,” and in an age of expected accessibility it is the cardinal sin. Your entire company will benefit if your CEO isn’t afraid to get his social media hands dirty.

That doesn’t mean he should just jump in without getting a primer first. Certainly, you should have your PR or marketing consultant discuss the pros and cons of Twitter and develop a social media strategy.

I wouldn’t stop at Twitter either. Try out Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn as well. All of your top executives should have a social media presence.

It’s hard to ignore social media in today’s world. It’s so expected that if you ignore it you will be relegating your company to the trash heaps of history. And there are enough companies heading in that direction without yours joining them. The best part about social media is that you don’t have to spend all day working it. You can have a viable plan with just 15-30 minutes a day.

If you’re a CEO, work out your social media plan now.

When filling out your social media profiles, should you use keywords? I don’t see why not. In fact, I would encourage you to do some keyword research prior to writing your profiles and using the most popular and profitable keywords within your profile.

I’m not talking about spamming here. I’m not talking about excessive use of your keywords or inappropriate use of them either. I am talking about effective marketing.

Your social media profile on most of the social networks are crawlable and likely will be indexed in Google. So why not use your keywords? If those keywords are important to you in search, then they should be important to you in your social media profile.

For instance, let’s say you are filling out a LinkedIn profile and are the creative director in a theatre. What keywords would you use to describe what you do? Here are a few:

• Creative director
• Theatre
• Entertainment
• Media

If a particular job description entails the use of a specific keyword, then you want that keyword used in your social media profiles. You want to use it on any social media where you network with other professionals. So, if you use Twitter and LinkedIn for professional social networking but not Facebook, then you don’t need to worry about using your keywords for Facebook – but you do for the other two networks. If you decide that you want to use Facebook for professional networking, then use your keywords on Facebook.

Social networking is not an exact science. But it does impact search in some ways. Use your keywords.

Recent news shows that Twitter – chirp chirp – has acquired Posterous. So now for the obvious question, so what?

The move has many speculators suggesting that Twitter will eventually shut down Posterous. After all, Twitter’s own message hints that the reason they made the purchase was to gain access to the engineers working on the Posterous platform:

Posterous engineers, product managers and others will join our teams working on several key initiatives that will make Twitter even better.

If that’s the case, then don’t be surprised if you do see your Posterous account suddenly in jeopardy. But Twitter is trying to be sensitive to your needs:

Posterous Spaces will remain up and running without disruption. We’ll give users ample notice if we make any changes to the service. For users who would like to back up their content or move to another service, we’ll share clear instructions for doing so in the coming weeks.

It think it would be wise to take them up on their offer and back up your content. There’s the possibility that Twitter will allow Posterous to continue, but I doubt it. These types of acquisitions generally lead to closures, and it’s understandable why. They are a drain on resources and an expense, not to mention a distraction from the purchasing company’s primary mission. So, the business philosophy is to cut the fat.

Should you ditch Posterous right now? No, I wouldn’t say that. You should adopt a “wait and see” approach. Keep posting as before, but be prepared to take your content elsewhere should Twitter decide to close the service.

In social media and Web marketing, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

What is the most popular social media website for business-to-business marketing? If you guessed Twitter, then you’d be right. But which social media site actually delivers more leads? According to Mediabistro, that would be LinkedIn.

Big surprise?

The sad part is most small businesses aren’t using any kind of social media measurement tool, so how would they know where the majority of their leads are coming from? Twitter might be more popular, and easier to use. But it isn’t more lucrative. The ROI is actually coming from the social media site that specializes in B2B networking.

But LinkedIn doesn’t just beat Twitter for lead generation. It beats ALL social media websites. Even blogging.

While most small businesses are using social media and have a strategy for it, most of them also don’t use any kind of social media metrics. That brings to mind an age-old question: If you aren’t measuring it, how can you change it?

Businesses who do business with other businesses need to figure out how to measure their social media marketing campaigns. And it helps if you use the social networks that your target audience is using. If you are targeting consumers, that might be Facebook or Twitter. If you are targeting other businesses, it is more than likely LinkedIn.

One thing is for sure – we live in a social media age. But don’t just do it because your competition is doing it. Doing it because it is right for your business.

If you don’t have a ghostwriter on your team, then you should probably consider one. A ghostwriter – especially if you don’t have the writing skills yourself – can take your business to all new heights. The tasks that one good ghostwriter can handle are legion. Here’s a short list just off the top of my head:

• Write your daily blog posts. This is important. Having a daily blog is a vital part of any online business.
• Manage your social media campaigns. You’ve got to promote those blog posts somehow. Your ghostwriter will be instrumental in pushing them out to the popular social media sites.
• Write your SEO content. Make sure your ghostwriter is well-versed in SEO tactics. A good copywriter with a working knowledge of SEO is worth his weight in gold.
• Produce your weekly newsletter. You should have an electronic newsletter to help you build relationships with your clientele. A good ghostwriter can help you with that too.
• Write your PPC ads. A writer should be able to write ads with a strong call to action. If you run PPC campaigns, you need a good ghostwriter.
• Article marketing. This includes writing and submitting articles to directories as well as writing guest blog posts on occasion.
• Link building. Since your ghostwriter knows SEO and can write articles, have him manage your link building campaigns.

There really is no limit to what a good ghostwriter can do for your business. If you are serious about marketing your company online, a ghostwriter can be a lot of help.

We’ve said all along that small businesses – in particular, local small businesses – should make their best use of search and social. If you can incorporate a strong search engine optimization campaign and a social media campaign, then you should do it.

As you manage your two campaigns, there are three pieces of information that you should ensure you incorporate into both campaigns:

• Your business phone number
• Your business address
• Hours of operation

Why Your Phone Number Is Important To Search

According to the latest social search study, the information most often sought by local searchers is a business phone number. The second most sought after information is a business address. And the third most searched for information are hours of operation.

In fact, these three little bits of information far outweigh everything else people search for online. So you should be sure to include them on your website in a prominent location. If possible, get them into the search engines.

But don’t just stop there. More and more, people are using social networks to search for local businesses. And 91% of the people who do are using Facebook to do it. What’s that tell you?

It tells me that you should have a Facebook page and your phone number, business address, and hours of operation should be displayed prominently on it.

Why People Do Business With You

Here’s the kicker. 72% of survey respondents said they are more likely to do business with someone if a friend or colleague recommends them. If you are a business-to-consumer operation, then Facebook is your friend. Build a brand page, share it with your friends and fans (and customers) and watch them share it with theirs. A recommendation online goes a long way.

Make it easy for people to find you and they will find you. Whether in the search engines or the social networks, being found is the first step to getting business.

One topic that doesn’t get discussed a lot among Internet marketers is time management. Whether the marketer is a search engine optimizer, a social media marketing professional, a PPC expert, a video marketer, a hybrid of these, or something else entirely, Internet marketing professionals tend to talk about the concepts of their specialty, but not time management.

Today I’m going to discuss some time management principles that you can implement as you go about managing your marketing activities online.

The first principle I’d like to discuss is the principle of like activities. These are activities that you perform daily that can be fit into a tidy little group.

For instance, your social media management activities. If you have a Twitter account, a Facebook account, and a LinkedIn account and you have a tendency to check in with each service every day, make a point to check in on each service at the same time every day. Also, limit yourself to no more than 15 or 20 minutes for each service. This way, you can easily manage your activities and you don’t get caught in the “I’m here all day” syndrome.

Use the same principle for each of your other marketing activities. Pick a time of the day that you write your articles and do it the same time each day. The same goes for blogging.

Of course, we all know that things pop up during the day that take us away from our scheduled activities. You can easily get overrun with events. What should you do if a phone call takes you away from your planned activities and gets you sidetracked? How do you get back on track?

The important thing is to remain diligent. That two hour “must take” phone call took you away from several important activities. You still need to get those things done. Take time out to perform those activities you missed on account of the “wrench” in your schedule, but truncate the time you spend on them. Instead of 20 minutes, only spend 10 minutes in each social media site. Instead of spending one hour blogging as you normally would, take thirty minutes to kick out a quick blog post and get on with other business.

With these time management tips you should be able to manage your Internet marketing activities much more effectively.

One of the biggest hurdles to get over for new content creators is the development of ideas. Sure, you can keep it going for a while, but what happens when you’ve run through your list of keywords a dozen times and you begin to repeat yourself? What do you do?

Why not ask your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn followers?

Your social media followers are likely some of your most avid blog readers and most frequent website visitors. Why not ask for their feedback on what to write about next?

It doesn’t have to be a big to-do. You just want some ideas for content. So ask your followers to visit your blog and tell you what they want you to write about. There are several ways you can approach this.

• Make it fun – Write a blog post saying the best suggestion for a blog post will get a free copy of your e-book. Give a deadline and then share your blog post on your social networks.
• Up the stakes – Ask your followers to give you their ideas and if you use the idea, then you’ll give away your e-book or multimedia presentation to each person whose idea you use.
• Ask for guest bloggers – Open up the floor for others to post their content on your blog or website.
• Interview a reader – Pick one of your most avid readers and interview them. Post the interview on your blog and make one of your questions about you. Ask “why do you like reading my blog?” or “what kind of content should we write about here?”

Readers love to give you their feedback, so give them plenty of opportunities for doing so.

Leave it to Marketing Pilgrim. On one day they’re asking if Facebook Stores are a failed experiment. And the next day they’re announcing Timelines for Brands.

Here’s the question: Do you think Timelines for Brands will change anything?

Many a company has tried to sell through Facebook. Personally, I think it works better for smaller companies and solopreneurs, who can maneuver easily as individuals on Facebook and sell without actually marketing. But that’s just me. Nevertheless, Facebook does have something to offer for brands.

One of the new products, and it hasn’t actually rolled out yet, is Timelines for Brands. These won’t be just like your personal timeline, but they will be a little more eye appealing than the current Facebook page layout. That’s a good thing, right?

People who visit your brand’s timeline will be able to see at a glance the various features of your Facebook marketing offerings. They’ll be able to see your contests, coupons, featured items, and other timeline features at a glance. But will that matter?

I’m not one to pronounce an Internet marketing strategy dead just because no one has figured out how to profit from it yet. How long did it take for companies and brands to take to social media to begin with? How about video marketing? And mobile marketing?

There is a lot of opportunity in Facebook if you can figure out how to leverage your efforts. Hard selling doesn’t work. People go there to hang out, not buy stuff. Still, that doesn’t mean they won’t whip out their wallet for the right item.

I’m guessing Stacy Green coined the acronym P.O.E.M. I Googled it and got no results. She published her post introducing the acronym just four hours ago.

So what does it mean?

P.O.E.M. is an acronym that stands for Paid, Owned, Earned Media. We’re talking about content here.

I think it’s a useful acronym, especially for businesses that are accustomed to developing public relations campaigns for print and offline media. You can take this acronym and use it for offline, or digital media.

• Paid – This refers to pay per click advertising, in-text paid links, banner advertising, and other forms of online media that you pay for. Do you have a plan for paid media? Can you measure your results?
• Owned – Owned media of course is a reference to media you create in-house. It includes your website, videos that you create, articles you publish off-site, blog posts, and any other type of media that you have the copyright to. You own that media.
• Earned Media – In the old days of offline marketing, earned media meant sending a press release to a news editor somewhere and hoping he found your story worthy of journalistic mention. Today, you don’t necessarily need professional journalists and editors, though they can help. Earned media includes interviews with bloggers, social media shares by celebrity networkers, and virtually any digital move that involves other people in an online format – forums, videos, blogs, social networks, etc. If it goes viral, that’s the ultimate earned media.

A good marketing strategy involves all three of these types of media. Plan it, implement it, and measure it. Follow a useful strategy and your online marketing efforts stand a much better chance of succeeding.

Online marketers differ as to what constitutes good marketing and whether or not specific types of messages are spam. When it comes to social media marketing, the lines get blurrier and grayer. The lines are blurred even more by the differences in policies at the various social media websites that people use.

One of the most important questions any marketer will have to answer about his or her marketing efforts online is, What makes a good social media marketing campaign?

Indeed, what?

Here are a few ideas I’ll let you chew on.

• Your campaign is cross-platform. What I mean by this is you don’t limit your social media marketing to one service. Post to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn. You might even try a few specialty media services. But don’t post to just one.
• Modify your messages across the platforms. Just because you are posting to multiple social media services doesn’t mean you should post the same message. Get to know your audience and tailor the message to your audience.
• Develop a long-term social media vision. Don’t think in the short term. Know what you want your social media marketing strategy to do for you in the long run, and play to that.
• Assign your social media marketing to one person. Make one person your social media manager and let her run the program. Too many fingers in the pie will spoil the berries.

Social media marketing is not an exact science. It’s a people business. Your marketing should be focused on delivering content that people want. Otherwise, you’re just spitting into the wind.

Social video marketing is a new term that is beginning to catch some momentum. But what does it mean? Is it just about slapping a video up on YouTube and going about your business?

In a word, no. There’s much more to it than that.

The keyword here is “social.” Video marketing involves high quality video production and then uploading your videos to the right video sharing websites and/or posting it to your website or blog. But social video marketing takes that a step further.

Google gets it. Its new social media service, Google+, makes video sharing very easy. There are two ways to share on Google+. You can click the YouTube slider on the top right of your screen and search for a video by keyword, then click to share that video. Or, you can click the video icon in your post box and record a video live to post it in your stream for your followers to see.

Of course, you can also share videos on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. But social video marketing is as much about the social marketing as it is about the video marketing.

You should be commenting on other people’s videos. And you should be sharing other people’s videos. Don’t forget that YouTube is as much a social network as it is a video sharing site. So use it for networking. That means befriending people with like interests, liking their videos, embedding their videos, sharing their videos with your friends and followers, etc.

Take video marketing to the next level. Make it social video marketing.

Two days ago Facebook files papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission to make an initial public offering (IPO). That means the company is committing itself to making its profit and loss statements public for the rest of its life. But will that change the way the world networks?

Likely not.

Facebook has already become the 800 million pound gorilla (it has 800 active million users worldwide). It will likely grow and the money it collects from its IPO will likely help it reach some strategic goals, but the core aspect of its product will likely not change much if at all.

Maybe it will get better and maybe it will get worse, but change? Let’s see …

• Facebook offers personal profiles to anyone willing to sign up for an account and provide certain specific private information to the company based on its user’s term of service.
• Companies can set up a brand page and promote themselves to users through that page.
• Developers can build apps that interact with Facebook and allow users to engage with marketers, businesses, and savvy development agents.
• Facebook also offers paid advertising models for businesses wanting to reach new prospects.
• You can interact with Facebook through you desktop computer, laptop, smart phone, or tablet.

What else could Facebook offer? What else likely to be offered as a result of the private company becoming public?

Of course, new technologies could lead to Facebook expanding its offerings to its consumer base, but that would happen anyways. The company already has made billions of dollars so the money it collects from the IPO will not likely give it much more financial clout that it already has. So why go public?

It is likely that investors and shareholders realize that certain information is going to end up public anyway so why not be the first to make the disclosure? It’s a good political move for Facebook to go public, but don’t count on the IPO changing the service in any drastic way. Social networking will continue as it has for the last five years.

McDonald’s decided to spend its money buying a hashtag on the popular social media website Twitter.

First, I’d like to know how you can buy a hashtag, but that’s an aside. The real issue is what happened after McDonald’s changed its hashtag from #MeetTheFarmers to #McDStories.

The original hashtag was meant to introduce McDonald’s Twitter followers to the company’s promotion of fresh produce. It worked well. Then, in a flash of brilliance that turned out to be not so brilliant, the company’s social media manager decided to open the door to the universe by expanding its Twitter promotion. Enter #McDStories.

Who doesn’t have a positive McDonald’s story, right? Indeed. And who doesn’t have a negative one. Duh.

You can probably guess what happened next. Followers started using the new hashtag to relate their own McDonald’s stories – chipped molars, regurgitation, food poisoning …. The list goes on.

I think the big lesson here is not how to respond to negative reactions on Twitter or some other social media site. Rather, the real lesson is how to prevent it from happening in the first place. This all could have been prevented had McDonald’s not insisted on opening the door to the universe. All they had to do was keep running the promotion that was working.

When things are going well, don’t change them. Rule #1. Rule #2 is, always ask what might go wrong.

Had McDonald’s social media manager lived by those two rules we wouldn’t be talking about them right now. That second question is particularly important. In social media – and on the World Wide Web in general – once something starts spiraling out of control, it’s hard to get a handle on it. If it’s out there, it’s out there. So put some thought into your moves before you make them. Ask, what can go wrong with this? If the answer is something too big to control or too embarrassing to let go on, don’t make your move. Do something else, or nothing at all.