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Social Media Marketing – Popularity vs. Trust

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Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

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It can sometimes be a struggle to discuss with clients that it generally doesn’t matter how many followers you have within your Twitter account(s). Getting a mass of people to click on your “like” button on Facebook isn’t going to make you an instant success either. Neither of these will nail the issue of trust, either.

When it comes to doing any kind of business online where you use social media as a channel for connecting with your followers, it’s much better to have a small following of loyal fans than a massive following of people that generally don’t care about what you have to say. There is a stigma that people feel “bigger is better”. It’s more a matter of showing off for some business owners and it hurts them in the long run.

If you want to be successful in your marketing, you have to have a target audience. For the record, under no circumstance is “the world” your target audience. If you think you should be marketing to everyone, you need to quickly reevaluate your direction.

That kind of thought process is what sends business owners and marketers straight for bankruptcy. You cannot cater to everyone, and your products and services do not appeal to everyone. They appeal to a specific lot of people that are interested in those specific products and services. Therefore, it makes sense to find out who those people are and target them.

When you take that concept and apply it to your social media accounts, it makes sense to see that you do not want everyone following you. You want people following you that are interested in you and will engage you in the work you’re doing. If you have to engage a lot of randoms through social media you know what you’re doing?

You’re wasting valuable time and money marketing to people that don’t care.

Popularity doesn’t breed sales, and it certainly doesn’t breed influence and trust. Influence and trust develop through relationships, and the chances of you developing a consumer relationship with people that have no interest in being a consumer with you are slim to none.

It’s truly OK to have 100 followers on Twitter or a small community on Facebook. In many cases, it’s better. You’ll have a select group of followers that adore you and will spread your name around as opposed to a thousand followers that… well, don’t care about you or your company and have absolutely no reason to talk about you.

If you want to build a community with substance, then keep something in mind: Social media is just a medium for communication. It will always come down to your honest intent to connect with and engage your target audience. If your intentions are solid then people will realize that you honestly want to talk with, learn from and share with your audience. This will inspire people to communicate with you and overtime develop trust.

That comes from relationships – not numbers.

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Local Search Marketing Puts You on the Map

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Thursday, October 7th, 2010

The average small business cannot afford to miss the opportunities provided by local search marketing, for both website traffic and more traditional foot traffic. It creates a situation where the small business websites have a better chance of landing closer to the top of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs.) Which mean it is more likely for a visitor to click on their site, which begins the sales process and eventually leads to a conversion if all goes well. It isn’t hard to foresee that the internet might soon become the predominant future resource of all local business information.

Don’t you want to be ahead of the game, and your competitors, by starting your local search marketing campaign today?

It is a widely known fact these days that search engines are used to locate information far more frequently than phone directories. The convenience of the internet cannot be replicated in a book. The yellow pages can’t provide you with a map and driving directions to the business you want to find, but the internet can. If you aren’t using local search engine marketing yet, there is a good chance that any of your competitors who already are will snatch up any customers that go to the web looking for you.

You may think that you have no place on the internet if your products and services do not directly apply to computers or the internet, but you couldn’t be more misinformed. The fact is that you need to be where your customers are looking for you. A whole new generation of consumers has grown up using search engines to locate what they want and need, and there isn’t much chance of them returning to the old methods. The internet is the future, and if you want your small business to be a part of that future, you need to place well in the SERPs.

Visibility is the key.

In order to make your small business more visible to local searches, you must adopt a set of SEO-search engine optimization, for those who are new-techniques that specify a targeted geographical region. The campaigns can vary in execution, but the goal is the same. Your website, your blog, and any other pages related to your business appear when your product and the name of your region are typed into the search box together.

For example, let’s use a candy shop in Hoboken, New Jersey. This candy shop would benefit greatly if it had a website that was optimized for the search term: “candy store Hoboken.” However, if there were also pages that linked back the candy store’s main page that were optimized for search terms like: “candy New York” and other major cities in the Hoboken area, the candy store can stand to dominate the northern New Jersey, southern New York region.

There is no time to lose setting up your regional small business dominance. With the power of internet search engines behind you, there is quite a lot of profit waiting to be earned. Understanding that the world is changing is the first step towards adapting to it.

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Small Businesses Can’t Afford to be Shy

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Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

Managing social media can seem like a huge prospect to the average small business owner. There are rules of etiquette that are foreign to people who haven’t already devoted a large amount of time to communicating on the web before. Just leaving a comment on someone else’s blog can make or break your social media experience.

That last sentence may seem a little dramatic, but it is true.

The strategies you use to build your reputation online dictate how successful your efforts will be. An unforgettable social media experience isn’t out of reach, but it takes the proper effort and attention to the rules.

Blog Commenting

A good comment stirs discussion and elevates the author into a place of leadership. Always begin with a greeting. Do the best you can to make sure what you write cannot be misinterpreted. Don’t rush through, and always leave your name-preferably with a link to your own site attached.

When executed gracefully, your blog comments can become a form of social media marketing. Blog commenting can be one of the best ways to draw attention to your content and online presence. You merely have to show the community your genius.

Social Media Branding

You can think of your organization’s Facebook fan page as your own branded Website. That’s what you can create for your business in this popular social media space with a dash of creativity and just a bit of preparation.

But, you’re far too busy. You have other things to do. You don’t know how to outsource it and on and on and on. If you don’t see the value in social media you’ll come up with a million reasons why you can’t make it work for your business. The value in social media has already been proven, you just have to have a little faith that you can make it work for you.

The Captain Goes Down with His Ship

Say that you give this social media stuff a try for a while and it doesn’t pan out. You may not realize that the few people who did sign up to be your fan are going to be very disappointed. It isn’t uncommon for negative word of mouth to do far more harm than no gossip at all. You have a responsibility to bow out gracefully at the very least, but staying in the game and altering your tactics a little might see better success in the future.

Putting It All Together

It may seem like a complex world to understand, but for the small business to truly expand a social network connection is starting to become a necessity. Many of the same basic practices that have helped you network and market your small business still translate to the web, that part you should already have a good handle on. If you need any more help with the rest, you can find it here.

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E-Commerce E-liminates the Need For Shelves

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Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

There is no doubt that e-commerce has forever revolutionized the way goods and services change hands. This effect has been felt most by the small business owner, who may now find themselves selling their products to people and businesses halfway across the world. The dynamic nature of the internet gives the clever marketer an all in one tool for attracting, snaring, and finally converting visitors who come looking for a little help. The trick is staying ahead of the curve when it comes to the next good idea.

The world moves faster today. In the past decade, the email marketing campaign became an obsolete archaic form of sales. Due in part to the over use and abuse (Spam, anyone?) of email advertisements, but also because there are faster ways you spread the word today: social media networks. Many of the boundaries previously existing between customer and product are virtually gone.

The Internet: Game Changer

The service provided by the salesperson has a much more dramatic effect on the process; the customers can chat online with them for the best information and live assistance. There is still real time, two way communications all without the customer changing out of their pajamas- and even better- on their schedule.

Earning money and targeting customers only became easier with the advent of Facebook and Twitter. A friendly, easy going approach in the tone of the messages is important, because the individuals that are plugged into the network are there for casual reasons. To the people companies are targeting as customers, Facebook is a party, an if someone was going around the party, yelling about how great their stuff is, you would want to talk to them would you?

Let the people become interested in you, create something worth notice, and word of mouth will do the rest. Answer the people’s questions, be a resource and expert on the subject to earn their trust. Once a reputation for service and excellence is established, there is little else to do but enjoy the inevitable success.

The New Way to Make Sales

There are more e-commerce web sites than ever before. With a greater multitude comes fiercer competition. It takes a savvy eye to create a site that is eye catching without being belligerent. Informative without being arrogant. Exciting without being hyperactive. The expectation of the average online consumer has of the quality of merchant sites has increased to a level where you need a good site more than you necessarily need just good products. You need to be perceived as a problem solver to make sales. They must be able to interact with your site effortlessly, or will become the source of their immediate problem.

Any economics student can tell you that the first purchase a customer makes is likely to be far less than hey can actually afford to spend. If and when they return, however, the next purchase is likely to be larger and larger again the next time. Repeat business is always the goal, so make sure you storefront is easy to use, appealing and informative.

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Four Social Media Marketing Tips For Small Business

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Thursday, August 19th, 2010

Social media is a great marketing tool for small businesses but it’s important to keep in mind that one size doesn’t necessarily fit all. Businesses have different needs when it comes to social media and marketing, and that’s especially true of small businesses. Some are geared toward new customer acquisition, and others focus on using social media to solve customer relationship issues and provide better service and support.

Regardless of the use, social media marketing and a small businesses presence there can work wonders on the client/customer relationship from any stand point. It’s an efficient and low-cost marketing tool for businesses looking to get results from online marketing. Here are a few tips to make social media marketing work for your small business.

Get Public

These social networking sites aren’t just for the purpose of socializing, they are a great method for getting the word out on your business, products, services etc for virtually nothing but the time it takes to interact and engage. When you build your profile, fill it with keywords that you target to help improve your visibility in the SERPs and make it far more likely that people will find you.

Once the buzz starts, stick to daily interaction to keep the buzz going on social networks and microblogs in order to keep the pulse pounding along strong.

Create A Community

Business and marketing savvy people often talk about building communities, often to the point that it’s being a little overused and overdone – yet at the same time it’s still unappreciated. When you create a custom branded community you’re able to zero in on a target audience with extreme effectiveness because the people that are involved in your community are all interested in what you’re about and the market in which you do business.

These networks and communities work because businesses are able to form longer, deeper relationships with their customers. In return, customers provide more feedback and support to the business, improving and giving opportunities for growth.

Take the Good with the Bad

With all that good feedback coming in, there’s bound to be some negative return, and managing that negative influx of info is essential for protecting your brand and reinforcing your reputation. Take the time to monitor your reputation across a variety of social networks as part of your social media marketing.

While you may not think a certain network is relevant to your business, your business might be relevant to some of the people participating in those networks. Just because you aren’t there, doesn’t mean that they aren’t talking about either. Those conversations will continue whether you’re there or not. Just remember to react favorably to negative conversations and reviews about your company and those within your company should never take it personally. Communicate the commitment you have to rectifying the problem because you never know if that angry customer has uncovered a problem that you really need to address.

There’s Always a Catch

For most businesses, social media marketing is indispensable but it’s important to remember that this is a compliment to your other marketing efforts – it is not a replacement tool. It should not be viewed as the end-all of marketing. Combine social media marketing with other important marketing components such as article marketing, blog marketing, PPC and Ad management, CPV, etc to make sure that you’re hitting your target audience from as many angles as possible.

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Domination With Small Business SEO

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Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

Optimization is a big deal on the web right now, and a lot of people are pushing for SEO techniques to be used in an effort to dominate their market. Not just the big companies and organizations, but the little guys – small businesses trying to dominate their local market. It’s no wonder when you consider that the web is like real estate when it comes to small business SEO. There are only so many key words to go around.

Imagine if you live in an area like Detroit, and you’re trying to sell tires. You might be targeting a phrase like “buy tires Detroit, MI”. There are probably a few other tire dealers in the Detroit area that want a piece of the optimization circuit and as time goes on the number of competition is going to grow.

Not in the sense that more businesses will pop up, but that the actual optimization competition will ignite and blossom. That competition is always there, it’s just a matter of whether or not those other companies are doing something about their presence online. If they aren’t now, they will be soon. And since only 1 website can have the number 1 spot in Google for any given keyword, that makes it pretty valuable from a real estate stand point.

Whether or not you take that number 1 spot comes down to how well you’re optimizing and marketing yourself online. Putting up a lot of spammy articles and cheap site pages laced with keywords might work for a little while, but it will serve you no good from a consumer stand point. People won’t find any value in your content and they’ll move on. What good is a first place spot in the search engine result pages when your small business SEO strategy sends people away?

You’ll gain more traction and far more leads & conversions by properly optimizing your site with good, solid content that people find informative. If your content can answer a question, solve a problem or fill a need then you’re on the right track.

Serving the customer with quality content is only a part of the equation though. You need to give your site everything you can (from a white hat small business SEO perspective of course) to make sure it gets picked up by the search engines as being relevant. Not just relevant to your niche either, but relevant to the keywords you want to rank for.

It’s good to have your keyword in the base URL for your domain, but if not that’s OK. Make sure that it’s included in page titles, in the meta description and certainly within the content. Google doesn’t put much weight on the Meta keywords tag anymore but figure that the title and description of a page are what appears in the SERPs, and that keywords listed in those get highlighted in bold – Google sees them. As long as your meta matches the actual content you’ll get a thumbs up for relevancy.

If you’ve got a blog, make sure that you’re using the keywords in placed where it counts the most. The base domain (again, if possible) the category that the blog is posted in, as well as the title of the blog post. Each blog post is a page by itself, so the URL for a blog post could potentially have up to 3 references to a targeted key phrase and its themed keywords if you’re structuring strategically.

From a small business SEO standpoint, you can quickly dominate your competition if you’re planning appropriately and posting content that not only resonates with users but also kicks the competition right to the wayside.

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Sell Products To People Who Don’t Want Them…yet

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Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

How’s your marketing been lately? Are you doing well both online and offline? Here’s a way that you can improve your lead generation and conversion with your potential customers that’s guaranteed to work.

Give them what they want before they actually need it.

It’s true. You’ll have amazing success building leads with people that don’t even need you. They have absolutely no use for your service but they’re your best customers. Well, at least they don’t need you right now. But they will.

All you have to do is not sell them anything.

It’s confusing, right? Don’t sell them something they don’t need and they’re your best customer – how does that work?

First, you can’t just randomly select people to target. The old rules of establishing a buyer persona and understanding the market you’re in have to come before anything else. If you don’t have that buyer persona then you have no idea who you’re not marketing your unnecessary services to.

Once you’ve got that profile down though, you’re ready to start working your magic. Now, it’s true that you can have a lot of success if you’re marketing to people who more than likely need your services right now. You get the message right, and people that are looking for your content right that second are likely to buy into your product or service. The real challenge comes in attracting people that don’t need you.

You need to get a relevant, non-sales message out to people who aren’t even looking for your product or service, and that’s not exactly easy. Thankfully, you don’t need to change your tactics outside of your traditional content marketing. As long as you’re building solid content that is educational, entertaining and informative – to the point that it provides excellent value – you’ll eventually draw those people in.

Most people have a certain sense of style that encompasses all of their typical likes and dislikes, it’s how we’re wired. That means that we carry the same interests on a regular basis, and we just cycle through what’s important or relevant at the moment based on our needs. If you can generate content that catches the eye and brings someone in based on interests, then you’ve got a successful hook and a good chance for a lead. The goal is to create content that targets people who currently need you as well as people who have you “on the dark side of the moon” as far as need and relevancy are concerned.

Take for example a chiropractor who wants to target people who’ve been in an accident. He wants patients to come see him in his practice as soon as they’ve had an accident. He could market directly to those people but he could find more success in generating future leads by marketing to people who haven’t been in accident yet. He creates pamphlets such as “what to do after an accident” that customers can keep in their glove box. He creates similar content on his blog and submits the same type of content to article directories. He’s effectively targeting people both categories – people who haven’t had an accident yet (but likely will) and those who recently have.

If you want to have the most success with your marketing, keep in mind that you could very well have more than one buyer persona that is a branch of your target audience. It’s extremely easy to sub-target and run multiple campaigns in effort to get the most out of your marketing runs.

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5 Benefits of Establishing Deep Links On Your Site

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Thursday, August 5th, 2010

Some business owners trying to establish a strong brand message through their website tend to target the primary page and top level pages of their site to get the message across about who they are and the services they offer; mission statement, about us page, etc. Because of their focus on upper level pages they tend to frown on deep links. These are links to pages that are “deep” within a site, anywhere other than top level pages.

Some object because they simply don’t like users bypassing those entry pages where they have their primary message, others believe that users may not discover that they’re on another website and may perceive their own deep page to be a page belonging to another site. Of course they make the sale/conversion if there is one, but the branding and recognition is lost.

The truth is, these deep links are great for your site and shouldn’t be shunned. Here are a few benefits gained from deep links.

Improved Rank in the Search Engines

If you’re serious about getting your site optimized like everyone else racing to dominate their markets than you know the power of inbound links and how they can boost your rank. The more links you have from authority sites passing traffic your way the higher your site will appear in the SERPs.

Those ranks can improve even more if you have links coming in to a variety of pages instead of just your primary pages. This occurs because the search engines deduce that your overall content is worthwhile. This also gives the hint that your links are organic, as many paid link building services tend to target only the homepage.

Boosting Site Traffic

If a deep link can boost your position in the search engine result pages (SERPs) then they can certainly bring your site a lot more traffic. The better your rank in the SERPs, the easier it is for people to discover your site and click through to your content.

Keep in mind also that those who find your site through a deep link are likely to return because of the great content – as opposed to dodging generic home pages. Deep links are more targeted and usually give people more of what they’re looking for.

Deep Links Give More Range for Keywords

If you’re only targeting links to your home page or a few primary pages you’re limited in the number of keywords you can target – likely only 2 per page. If you’ve got a range of deep links being established then you can start promoting each of those pages as a landing page. Is pretty clear that the content is good if people are linking to it. Optimize those pages and start promoting.

Keeping Old Content Alive

You can use a blog to link to older blog posts and deep pages to keep that content alive, receiving regular traffic to maintain relevancy. You can also post summaries of the week and month (or quarter) depending on the market your in. New readers may really appreciate the old links.

Improve and Learn About Your Site

Without the deeper links, users may never really go beyond the homepage of your site. That doesn’t really mean you’re lacking good content, it just means people can’t easily get to your deep content. Outside links that point to deeper pages provide a number of bridges that let people quickly access that content.

For any business, but especially those who have websites with a lot of content, deep links can bring in a lot of traffic to the most relevant portions of your site quickly. You’ll see a reduction in bounce rates, an increase in conversions, faster turn around on transactions and clear indication on which pages do well and which pages need work to improve links and conversion.

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Shaking Off Marketing Tunnel Vision

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Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

When you’re a small business trying to break into social media marketing, it’s extremely easy to end up with tunnel vision. You focus specifically on just one network (maybe two) and throw all your efforts into the channel. Some businesses even do this without performing the appropriate research so they may not even be engaging the right network – their customers might be somewhere else.

That tunnel vision can happen in other places as well. Small business owners have a tendency to settle into a comfort zone when they’re trying to market their business. They may find something that seems to work reasonably well and stick to it without venturing into other areas. Sometimes the comfort zone they’re in doesn’t even perform that well but it “fits” their business and their preferences.

When you focus too much in your marketing efforts, whether its online or offline, you miss a lot of opportunity to improve the position of your business. Many individual owners push off online marketing because they already have their attention split between various forms of offline marketing like direct mail, community outreach, etc. Whether it’s the cost or the time required, they haven’t done much of anything to promote their business online.

Those that do sometimes fall back into that tunnel vision issue, where they lock onto a specific form of online marketing and won’t branch out.

As a business owner, it’s important to realize that not all of your customers can be reached in the same way. It’s like the methods of learning; some people learn by doing, others by seeing, and some by hearing. There are also plenty that can be reached through a combination of all of those. Your customers are the same way.

You may need to reach some through direct mail, others through various content marketing channels. A selection of your customers will respond the most to social media outreach and yet some may only jump at email offers. It’s important to do the appropriate research as part of your content marketing strategy to establish the buyer persona. You need to understand which methods work best, and which are ineffective. It will always be more than 1 method, and it’s never all methods. You need to develop a strategy that appropriately ranks your methods for marketing, prioritizing which will receive the most attention and which the least based on how your customers respond.

When you base your content marketing and consumer outreach on hard data, you’ll see that the narrow focus and tunnel vision is only hurting you. Broadening your perspective will bring you far more success and a notable increase in conversion.

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Consumers Are Demanding More – Can You Give it?

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Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

One thing that people are demanding when they look into dealing with a brand is originality. So much of the traditional media and advertising gimmicks have been overdone that consumers are becoming immune to typical marketing methods. They want something new and fresh.

Social media has given many brands the opportunity to do just that and to continue to hold a unique slant in the market – where they can be different from their competitors. While the channels are new, it’s still a little difficult to remain unique and prove that your product/service is worthy.

When you’re trying to figure out a unique angle, ask yourself the right questions to make sure that you can grab the attention of your customers. Like:

Can I travel the length of the country with my product?

That’s exactly what craftsman has done. Instead of talking about how great their products are, like everyone else tends to do, they’re showing the people just how great they are. This is what the people demand. They demand that you prove yourself in the gladiatorial arena of business – show them that your product can stand up against the others.

Craftsman is proving the power behind their brand and the strength of tools and garden tractors by sending Lucas Van Engen, a New York Bartender, 3,300 miles across the United States. He started his journey in Santa Monica, CA on May 14 and will finish the trip up in New York on August 24^th. The best part about the marketing campaign is that they are drawing social media into the mix. Van Engen is broadcasting his efforts through a variety of channels such as a blog, Facebook fan page and various web videos.

This is the kind of “show of force” that consumers want to see – but not just through television or print ads. They want proof through videos. They want blog posts and Twitter or Facebook updates that they can follow. That kind of material makes people feel like they’re right there with the company, enjoying the challenge.

What have you done, and what do you plan to do, to step up to the challenge that consumers are calling for through social media? Will you be pushing your presence in an effort to prove that you are indeed valuable hand and fist over your competition?

Every business, especially small businesses, have an opportunity to take hold of social media through blogs and online video to prove their worth. Competition is minimal in the online market, but as time goes by it will continue to be difficult for businesses (Especially small ones) to find ways they can be unique and come out on top within the online proving grounds.

What have you got to say for yourself and your product, that your competition hasn’t said already?

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Local Search Marketing Puts You on the Map

E-Commerce E-liminates the Need For Shelves

Domination With Small Business SEO

Sell Products To People Who Don’t Want Them…yet

5 Benefits of Establishing Deep Links On Your Site

Improved Rank in the Search Engines

Boosting Site Traffic

Deep Links Give More Range for Keywords

Keeping Old Content Alive

Improve and Learn About Your Site

Consumers Are Demanding More – Can You Give it?

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