| |
January 27th, 2012
Social media is certainly dominating people’s minds when it comes to online marketing to consumers, but are they the best places to network with other business owners? There is an interesting article on The Next Web highlighting the demise of local social media due to the dominance of Facebook. Whilst there is a lot of hype surrounding Twitter, it fills the number two position in only two countries, the U.S. and the U.K, admittedly big markets. LinkedIn is the second choice in many other countries, yet it is not really designed for consumer marketing.
LinkedIn has become a powerful force when it comes to networking and business-to-business marketing. Professionals appreciate the tighter security surrounding who can link to you, and who is able to see your complete profile. This means you can concentrate on those who interest you, or who are in the same niche as yourself. Where Facebook is all about gaining as many followers as possible, LinkedIn is more about connecting on a professional basis – the heart of networking for small business.
Whilst LinkedIn does offer an opportunity to network with others from all over the world, it’s not the only opportunity. In fact, more traditional methods often have a much more lasting effect. It’s interesting to look at the online marketing industry as an example. Whilst day-to-day contact is maintained through social media channels, online marketing professionals take advantage of every opportunity to meet in person. International online marketing events draw crowds from around the world, all looking to network face to face, all looking to ‘humanize’ their online networking activities.
For small businesses, social media channels such as LinkedIn offer a great opportunity to connect with similar-minded business people. However, if you get the opportunity to meet in person, grab it. Chambers of Commerce, trade associations and state or national conferences are all important areas to develop a network. While you may think that you can’t spare the time, the connections you make could well save you a lot of time.
Tags: business-to-business marketing, social media marketing
Posted in Networking for Small Business | 1 Comment »
January 26th, 2012
Google has become mean concerning web sites and display advertising. If the advertising on your web page pushes the content down below the fold, then your site may receive a ding in the search rankings.
Why do I say “mean?” One poorly designed page could affect your whole site, not just that one page. If you’ve recently suffered a serious drop in search rankings, check your pages for advertising, have you overdone it?
There is a logic to Google’s approach. Google wants to present searchers with the best content. If a web page has more ads than content, and if a user has to scroll down below the fold to find that content, then, in Google’s humble opinion, that page is not quality. Furthermore, if that page is not quality, then neither are any of the other pages on that site. What isn’t clear is whether or not your own display advertising has the same effect – logically, it would since the emphasis now is content and having it readily available to users.
If you do have a lot of advertising on your pages, there are a number of approaches you can take. These include:
- reducing the number of ads,
- redesigning your web page so that content appears above the fold,
- using sidebars for display advertising,
- ensuring ads are relevant to the pages’ content.
Google is not anti-advertising. In fact, Google does encourage website owners to include Adsense ad units on their sites although they do suggest you follow their guidelines when it comes to quantity and placement. The rules related to SEO are constantly changing and so it always pays to stay on top of the latest news.
Tags: advertising, content, Display Advertising, SEO
Posted in Display Advertising | 3 Comments »
January 25th, 2012
Search engine optimization (or SEO) is often made out to be some strange and scary beast that only professionals dare go near. In reality, SEO is a tame beast. In fact, it’s a beast that you have a lot of control over. Sure, once you get past the basics, SEO can be time consuming, and perhaps even frustrating at times, but in reality, it’s still a simple concept.
For a web site to rank well, it’s necessary to understand what goes into the ranking process. SEO is the process of optimizing your pages (and web site) to gain the best position possible in search rankings. And that process is, as I have mentioned, fairly simple – there are only three steps:
- Discovery – search engines need to find your content, however, I wouldn’t leave it to their efforts alone. Search engines need help and that help comes initially in the form of sitemaps that are submitted. You can expedite this process by creating a Google Webmaster Tools account – there you can submit your sitemaps encouraging the search engine to visit and crawl through your website.
- Indexing – the second step in the SEO process is to have your pages indexed. You could submit a sitemap with 100 pages, and still find that a search engine has only indexed half the pages. External links to your pages can help as can social media mentions. It also helps if your web pages are easy to find, and easy to crawl. Pages that are deep within a website often fail to get indexed. Search engines will often only travel three or four links deep into a website. Your web pages should be easy for a search engine to read – that means ensuring your content is as close to the top as possible (of the root index file), and that Java and Flash are limited and SEO friendly as well.
- Ranking - the hardest step in the process is ranking. This is where a page is compared to other pages and ranked for search terms. You can increase a page’s ranking by building inbound links and by gaining social media mentions. This is one area where website owners make life harder for themselves. The real key to ranking well is to create content that others find useful, that others will reference on their sites (inbound) links, and that people will discuss on social media sites (social media mentions).
SEO is the sum of those three activities and you will never succeed if you skimp on one area. You can have the best content in the world, however, if a search engine can’t find it, or finds it impossible to read when it does find it, then it won’t rank. Likewise, poor content will not receive the external support that is so vital to rank a page highly.
In a nutshell, build your site, tell the search engines where your content is, and make sure it easy to find and easy to read and that the content is worthy of ranking. Get that right and you have created a great SEO platform to build on.
Tags: search engine optimization, SEO, sitemaps
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 3 Comments »
January 24th, 2012
What’s the one problem that every small business owners faces when it come to social media marketing? Time. There are just not enough hours in the day to manage a business, often work in the business, manage traditional marketing problems, and then manage a wide range of social media interactions. Having a Facebook page is becoming a must and for many businesses, a Twitter account as well. Google’s +1 will become a go-to place and for professionals; a profile on LinkedIn is also a big help. What’s really required is a comprehensive way to bring all four of those social media sites together, and that’s where Nimble comes to your rescue.
We’re currently putting Nimble through its paces, however, first impressions are positive. Nimble will solve some of your social media time problems since you can bring in your contacts from those four sites and review all of your interactions with those contacts. Having it all on the one page can reduce the time spent on social media by at least 50%, if not more.
Nimble is possibly one of the easiest yet comprehensive online CRM programs available. They seem to have thought of everything, even email and calendars. Personal users get one free account that comes with all the basics. Businesses can opt to pay $15 month to have multiple users and access to advanced features. There is plenty of help available including videos, which make it a lot easier to visually gain an insight into all the features.
The last word should be left to Nimble – they describe themselves as the all-in-one place where you can :
Unify all your contacts, calendars, conversations from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google. Monitor the most popular social networks from one screen, engage prospects, and build deeper relationships.
If time is your problem when attempting social media marketing, give Nimble a try; you may just find that you have plenty of time left for the other important areas of your business.
Tags: marketing, Nimble, social media marketing
Posted in Social Media | 4 Comments »
January 23rd, 2012
QR (quick response) codes are everywhere now. You’ll see them on billboards, the sides of buses and trains, and even on television. They are not placed in these areas for practical purposes; they are being used as part of a consumer education/branding campaign by marketers, particularly the big national brands. QR codes are really best suited to areas – as a download to a smart phone in the form of deal or coupon, and in print media. Large corporations have the jump on small businesses in this area, however, you can fight back. Large corporations can place these codes on national publications such as newspapers and magazines. The cost to advertise in these publications is often prohibitive for small businesses – you can get around it.
To begin with, let’s look at QR codes. They are used in a similar way to a bar code. A smart phone can scan the code and either store it for later use – for example, to claim a discount or deal – or they can be used as a link to a particular web page on the Internet. For small businesses, your opportunity lies not in national advertising, but in your own printed matter. This includes letters, business cards, invoices, brochures or flyers, and in local media such as local newspapers. You can even have QR codes in your offline storefronts.
The key to successfully using a QR is to have the right destination in place. Smart marketers are linking to their Facebook or Twitter pages suggesting users ‘follow’ them in order to receive news and special offers. A well written intro on these pages can result in a lot of new friends on these social media sites.
Big businesses have taken on QR codes very quickly. They can see the benefits that they can bring to their business, and since the costs involved are fairly minimal, easily justified. For small businesses, you may need to update your technology, however, the long term costs and benefits are proving to be very sound and producing good conversion rates.
Tags: QR codes, social media marketing
Posted in Branding | 3 Comments »
January 22nd, 2012
There is one trend in society that smart marketers are starting to use to their advantage. That trend? The prominent use of cell phone cameras.
The camera in a cell phone today is far superior to some of the best digital cameras of five years ago. The use of these cameras is so dominant that, on most days, there’s a news story on one of the TV networks that includes a story with pictures provided by a local using their cell phone. In fact, you can often see video footage of an event that was taken via cell phone. So how are marketers using this to advantage?
High end fashion brand Marc Jacobs recently asked followers to share their favorite family moments by using pictures taken through a cell phone. They then featured those photos through a collage on their website for all to see. General Electric went a step further with a contest that involved photos uploaded to Instagram, then shared to Facebook for voting. That was a novel way to connect two social media platforms for marketing purposes.
Instagram has proven to be a popular photo sharing website, and the use of cell phones whereby users can take a snapshot then instantly upload that shot from their phone to Instagram is proving to be a hit. One popular coffee outlet regularly publishes photos of customers (with their permission of course) sitting down and enjoying a cup of their favourite brew.
Photos and the instant sharing of photos may well be one of the major activities by users over the next twelve months. Smart marketers may be able to take advantage of this increased activity by incorporating the photos taken by customers into their various online activities. People love to show off, so if you advertise a campaign that encourages those traits, you may be able to build and further develop your brand.
Tags: cell phones, Social Media
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 12 Comments »
January 20th, 2012
Have you taken a moment to check out Google’s latest offering to the general public? Is has the simple but apt title of “Good to Know” and has been well packaged with both text and graphics on the opening screen. It is, to a certain extent, a repackaging of content that Google has published over the years. It’s generally related to Internet and data security for users, and the tips are well worth reading. The whole concept is an excellent piece of public relations bordering on a public service announcement. I won’t go into the actual information published by Google, I’m sure there are many others who will – what interests me more is the concept, and whether or not it could be replicated on other websites – and I think it can.
Most websites, whether it’s parenting, photography or pets, for example, publish advice. The ‘Good to Know’ concept is a great way to bring all of that information together, and you don’t need just one ‘Good to Know’ article or page. Most websites could break their content into sections; for example, we could have a ‘Good to Know’ series that covered SEO, social media marketing, branding – I could go on, however, I think you get the idea.
By publishing pages that link to this information, you are helping your readers find information quickly and helping to link related content for SEO purposes. This kind of content, especially if you can utilize graphics in a similar way to Google, is also easy to promote through social media. It’s certainly a novel way to present content to your visitors and certainly worth considering for your own websites – it could also be a great PR tool for your business.
Tags: SEO, social media marketing
Posted in PR for Small Business | 2 Comments »
January 19th, 2012
There is an interesting infographic that Dan Zarrella has published that reveals the days that his content receives the most social interaction. What is interesting is that different social media react on different days – for example, Saturday and Sunday are more fruitful for Facebook whilst Friday is the best day for re-tweets. He concludes that, on some days, there is less clutter so his content has less to compete with. From a business perspective, he may be right. From a social perspective, Friday through Sunday are often the busiest days for socializing, and that includes online.
It does raise an important question. Do you know when you receive the most attention through social media, either on an hourly or daily basis? Some marketers insist on publishing at certain times of the day because they receive more attention then than at other times. It is well known that some days are quieter than others as well.
The next question relates to the value of this knowledge. Is it worth measuring? Two years ago I may have said maybe not; today, interaction with social media is becoming such an important SEO metric that website owners do need to grab every ‘plus 1′, ‘like’ or ‘retweet’ they can get their hands on. If publishing at certain times on certain days delivers more of these ‘votes’, then that knowledge could give you the edge you need over your competitors. It becomes even more useful if you can see that some days are less important than others. You can either not publish on those days, or publish content that, while useful for your customers, is designed more for SEO purposes.
Small business owners have a lot to do in today’s online world. Analytics can often be useful for measuring what is and isn’t working, even in social media marketing. This helps a business owner concentrate on what is working whilst dropping or rethinking what isn’t working. When it comes to social interaction, knowing when you receive the most attention can help you fine tune your own activities.
Tags: SEO, social media marketing
Posted in Tracking & Analytics | 6 Comments »
January 18th, 2012
Gone are the days where a website that was five or more years old with a thousand or more pages could count on ‘age’ as a positive factor in the search results. In some cases, those old pages could be having a negative effect on your search rankings. Search engine users have long bemoaned the fact that search results were often outdated and not relevant to what they were looking for. Sure, you could tweak the results to find the most recent content related to your search term, but that takes extra work, and modern users want the best results first time every time.
Google is now taking positive steps to promote fresh content over old content. I won’t go into the technicalities here – you can read an excellent article by Justin Briggs on this topic here. It’s not rocket science to work out that fresh data is often more preferable to stale data, even if the fresh data is only rehashing what is in the stale data. As website owner, you need to determine whether or not your content is starting to fall into that stale category. If it is, there are a number of options available to you.
The first option is to ignore the stale content while adding new content on a regular basis. Hopefully the new content fits the ‘freshness’ test and helps to prop up your website. A second option takes the process one step further – you create new content based on your very old content. The key is to make it relevant to today including links out to some of the latest information available. Your third option is to update your old content using current data and links to current discussions or information.
For most business owners, time is the biggest issue. Do you have time to work through your old content to bring it up-to-date? You will also need to consider relevance - is the content written five years ago still relevant to today’s user? If it is, then another option exists; that’s to gain some social media activity around the content and to build fresh links. If the search engines can see that your old content is still relevant to today’s users and that these users are still referencing it in social media and linking to it on their websites or blogs, then rather than being classified as stale, it maintains importance and age once again becomes a positive factor, not a negative. Is your website looking a little stale?
Tags: fresh content, search rankings, stale content
Posted in Business Writing | 3 Comments »
|
|
|
|
| |
|
