Unless you are an inventor and you have a patent on an exclusive product, the chances are you will have competition and need marketing strategy tips. Other businesses are trying to take your customers, and they are active.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Developing an Internet Marketing Strategy
If you know me , you know I like looking at statistics. One statistic that just blew me away was that 80 percent of US Businesses are planning to use social media networking as a strategy to build their brand loyalty and expand their business products.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Investigating Competitors High Authority Backlinks
One tip I came across is exploring your competitors network to see what links they may have. Look for high authority back-links and create back-links to those.
Th catch here is that not all links are valuable. You want links to sites with a PR of 3 or greater. Not all links are created equal. Links with PR 3 or greater will give your site better ranking in the Search Engines rankings.
For more, click on the link
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Pingback and Linkback Strategies
Of course you know that there is a ton of stuff said about track backs and ping-backs and how to use them to generate traffic. Some Guru’s don’t think that they do much good, while others think just the opposite. However, ping-backs and track-backs could give you the edge you are looking for in generating traffic. Start with some postings in forums that are related
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Strategies for getting paid to post on forums
Most Internet marketers know that nothing happens till somebody sells something. That means you've got to get traffic to your website if you expect to make money. This is why I wrote these tips to getting paid for posting on forums article exists.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Developing High PR Backlinks
In this blog post we talk about how to develop high pr back links by posting on relevant blogs to your product. The main rule is to make sure the blog you are posting on has a high search engine page rank. This will pay off.
It would be nice if you could find a link that already has your keyword phrase in it too.
So, please take a look at the link and leave a comment.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Tips For Getting High Authority Backlinks
Most Internet Marketers know what a high authority back link is and what it is supposed to do. If you have a high authority site you know that the search engines are sending you traffic. Now there is more than one way to skin a cat here in order to get those high quality back-links.
You can buy back-links if you like. Some companies sell high quality back-links and authority back-links. I find them expensive because you can do it yourself. High PR back-links are the same. You can find them yourself .
When you are in the business I am you'll hear the term authority back-links quite a bit. Most of that conversation will be centered on how to get them, because there are four types to worry about. That means that you will have to develop a strategy to build links to address all four types a t the same time.
One of my favorite easy ways of doing this is to submit my website to a couple of the more authoritative and worthwhile directories. This is for a broad listing and then find a couple of directories in your niche. These are considered navigational authority links. Try searching for other relevant navigational pages by searching for something like links + keyword. Construct this link foundation with some local directories or city guides and you will be on your way.
One other thing you can do to develop an absolute authority link is to trade links. You can really only do this on a limited basis but this strategy will work well. I expect it to work well into the future also.
Of course, these are just suggestions and there are other ways of getting high quality back-links for your website. It depends on your niche and what else you are spending your time on.
Helping corporations get organized and setting up these links is something I can expound on for hours, so give me a comment or email about what you think should be the way to go.
There is more coming !
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Try This Backlink Strategy
Setting up blogs to get back-links. That’s the name of this game. Start a relevant blog about your niche and use a relevant name from your main site to get back-links. Efficient places to start some social media marketing blogs are wordpress.org , tumblr.com, indentica, blogger.com, livejournal and xanga. When you sign up and start posting, make sure you have a link back to your main site in your posts.
I won't bore you with the sign up details, they are all menu driven and in a pinch you can call me. One big advantage is that they will give you a social media marketing platform for your niche. Try to keep the online names the same. Become the best food guy , or the candy man or whatever it is. Then you will have back-links that are similar and will help with branding.
Lately I've had some good results from video also. Online Internet TV is a good medium to start getting familiar with. The search engines love it and and you get to talk about your niche.
So, setting up blog's for the back-links is still a lot of work . You still need to maintain them to keep the page ranks up. That means you have to create new content , make sure it's relevant to the main niche and do it regularly.
I will be updating this post with a video in the next week or so, but I welcome any questions or comments.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Tips to Using Posterous Efficiently
There are many reasons to use Posterous and all of them are good. One of my favorites is a video blog or podcasting channel. Its an easy way to create videos that are subject oriented or maybe generic . All you have to do now is tell it to push out to youtube. How great is that?
You can also collect or aggregate videos from third party sites on your smartphone.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Posting Articles to Squidoo
Squidoo is a great tool to use for getting the word out about your website because the search engines look at it as an authority site. This means the links you post will have more weight for your ranking efforts.
Squidoo is a great branding platform and its free also. This is helpful to all the newbies out there. Because you are using squidoo, you don't really need a website, but it is better if you have one.
Squidoo is an excellent way to help with your Search Engine Optimization , too. This is because it is all included in the sign up price, so you really can get by knowing very little about it. You can have as many pages as you need for your lens. This also makes you an expert in the eyes of your readers and that will cause them to remember you.
You can add videos , either your own or someones else's . Just make sure that its relevant to what you are talking about in your niche.
Here's a quick video brought to you by the 30 day challenge with some tips for signing up with Squidoo.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Tips for Superior Article Writing
There is a way to develop superior article writing skills and use it to make money.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Strategy for Getting Indexed in the Search Engines
Usually I enjoy writing articles and getting them posted to blogs and platforms such as Digg and Delicious.
This video is about automating the work that goes into Indexing .
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Google Analytics for Your Wordpress site
Here's some tips for working with the Google GUI in their Analytics program
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Finding a Website or Blog Platform
This will answer some questions about what platform to use for your social media marketing
Sunday, October 2, 2011
A Strategy for Developing Superior Writing Skills
This is Ed Dales idea about how we should be developing our writing skills.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Develop Superior Writing Skills
Here's a great strategy to help you develop the skills for online content writing
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Tips For Your Facebook Fan Page
There are a lot of businesses out there today that could use a boost from the Internet to help keep the lights on. One of the easiest ways is to use the Facebook platform to keep in touch with your current tribe by starting a Fan page . You will also be able to pick up new prospects.
One of the advantages here is that prospects will be able to locate you and your products. Facebook Fan pages will help your page rank and should help to point prospects to your page. Facebook has an internal search engine that will help prospects to find you also.
Being in touch with current clients as well as new prospects is more crucial to your social media campaigns that ever. That’s because this is the basis of social media. Staying in touch that is. Doing this well can mean lots of good things will be happening in your business.
Look at the Facebook page as an extension to your online and offline marketing efforts,. All of the things you currently do like email, coupon advertising etc. can be tied together for more efficiency in your social media campaigns .
You can promote your brand as well as build a brand here and right now , the Facebook platform is wide open for this. You will need to post relevant and useful information that will influence prospects to become fans and clients. Taking care of your brand includes registering pages for your brands and intellectual property. This will help to stop others from doing it and possibly stealing your business.
Following these social media strategies can increase your sales . And that really is the point , isn’t it? It's all about connecting and communicating in order to drive some business your way. Use the Facebook places function and the new F-commerce function to drive sales also.
When you add all of this up, its really an offer you cant refuse. It's a great bargain and set up is free if you do it yourself. The biggest investment is one of time to keep the page fresh and active and to learn how this whole thing works. More and more companies are hiring trained social media consultants to help and get the show on the road. Ask me about how to do this.
If you are in business you know that you simply have to keep up with the competition. That’s because the competition is already there and is taking your clients. Remember that Facebook has over 500 million users. A lot of them are interested in your product.
Getting feedback about your products and services is easy on Facebook. You can find out what your customers think about your customer service. The Insights tool will provide detailed information about who is visiting your page and what they are looking at when they get there.
This is a great way to promote your business inexpensively and to help with your social media campaigns. If you don’t have a page yet, its time to look into it.
If you have questions or comments , let me know.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Google Strategies Review
Some marketers think that Google has had a lot of luck in their business. I tend to think that it is more probably the result of hard work on Google’s part . For instance , the new Sparks program allows you to input things you are interested in and then it will show web pages that have that content. Something similar to Stumbleupon. It seems to me that it will take a bit of working with the program to get it right, though.
Watching your incoming stream of those that are following you is a nice feature because it allows you to see what they are posting and you may want to follow them.
You can share your videos and pictures with office workers and friends by putting them in a circle. It will help you to share certain updates with certain people. It should help to organize too. Circles will also allow you to see only content you want to see. So that means that you can select which posts to look at. On other platforms there is no way to separate them.
Some platforms seem to be lacking in their privacy structure and they opt in users automatically. Changing these settings is sometimes difficult and hard to find. The approach Google Plus has is to make it easy to choose to make content public or not.
One of the features I like the best is the Hangout feature. Hangouts are a fairly new addition to social media networking. It works like this, you start a hangout and up to 10 friends can drop by for a chat. It may become useful to politicians, although at this time, they may be getting a lot of negativity. Using the Google plus Social Media Platform may be good for customers service issues for companies , also.
Using the tool as a bookmarking platform for articles to read later or maybe create a circle to bookmark interesting pages.
Some of the Social Media Networking platforms out there feel that everyone is thrilled to share all their details with all of their so-called friends . I'm not in favor of this only because there are predators that will use your information for other things. With Google plus you control who see's what. This will allow you to keep information and interests separate.
This platform will also allow you another opportunity to start out fresh with Social Media Networking. Maybe you would like to leave some of your old friends behind. You can just not add them to your Google plus circles. In all likelihood , they will never realize they’ve been left out. And I' sure you will miss all of those game invites that other platforms have.
My response rate from the people I have invited to Google plus has been rather mediocre. I think it results from the feeling of , oh, another Social media thing?
So, I will keep up the work and report in another time on this.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Some Social Media Legalese
The rumor mill has it that one of the new social networks is so large that it could be the third largest country in the world. That means it could have the third largest problems in the world too. This will bring to mind that there are some legal problems with social media. So included with your plan for covering your social networking strategies, include this in it.
Many social networking tribes use the main social network platforms for a variety of reasons. One of the most common here is to network with friends and acquaintances for business purposes. Updating your status many times a week helps to keep you in the mind of tribes that you may want to do business with.
The law in this area is changing constantly and we hope for the better. It is wise to be aware of these few issues .
Tribes that are using Social networking have to obey the law s regarding copyright infringement and trademark laws. There are no special rights granted here. These are sometimes referred to as Intellectual Property.
Along the same lines , Social Network sites do not confer immunity from defamation laws. Be careful of any flaming or derogatory comments that you make when talking about someone else.
Be aware that a lot of the information you provide to the network is available publicly. Things such as the name of your main employer or photographs that may put you in a compromising position. The problem here is that if you later want to claim that it is private, you may find it difficult.
So much is said about identity theft today and a lot of it is true. Social networks ask for a lot of information when you sign up and this information can be stolen. I tell most of my clients to use a PO box for this pupose. Just in case there is someone out there looking for you. Let's just say that your favorite I-Phone gets misplaced.
This might give someone the opportunity to hack into one of your social network accounts and steal your information. Your personal information could be used to open accounts in your name and buy stuff that you may have to pay for.
Not only that, but personal information can be used against you in a court of law. Does that sound familiar? Just think about how this information may be seen down the road.
Some of these things may seem like common sense, they did to me.
Then I was reminded of the family that went to Florida for a week and told all their social media networking friends about it. When they got home , the furniture was gone.
I would like to hear from my many fans about experiences with this. Go ahead and shoot me an email , or better yet, make a comment on my blog.
Until next time.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Your Social Scanning Activities
Can I regale you with all of the benefits of Smart phones? You’ve probably heard it all by now. You stay connected to all your social media networks by using the Internet. All the time. You keep in touch because the email is close to you. In addition to all this, you can stay more organized than you have ever been and there are more and more services out there to help you do just that.
Most , if not all , of the new services actually need to mature a bit and experiment with the model a bit more, in my humble opinion. For the immediate future , you may want to watch developments here.
In the past it's been said that smart phone owners have the world at their fingertips . This may sound a bit pompous, but the inertia of the of the mobile phone business is gaining momentum. To my view , its because of the many different applications that are available. One of them that has caught my eye is mobile scanning technology. In some circles its known as social scanning. These are applications that allow comparison shopping using bar codes.
This means that you , as a Smart phone owner, can get to your machine, load an application and a code and get access to all the relevant information about that code. This activity is really the application of bar code scanning and social media to create a paradigm of social scanning.
To the big search engines, this means there is a way to track offline scanning behavior. Location services track the data and so now QR code details are being given away to retailers with popular Place Pages. This is because you now have a connection that you can touch to the digital world.
An added benefit here is that you will be able to aggregate all of your membership group details, punch cards etc. into an easy to access digital format . You'll be able to scan stuff such as credit and debit cards too. There are backup programs to keep your digital data safe also.
Some may think that these scans aren't really social in nature, but because they can double as verifiable place check-ins, they also share the same properties.
It is also possible to leverage Mobile Technology in order to create brand awareness and product loyalty. This can be done using location platforms and apps that are creating the new ;loyalty platform. Whoever does this the best will stand out. Its just a matter of learning to use a few programs.
Social Capital is an important concept too. This is what drives all social phenomenons to go viral on the internet. This makes it something to focus on. It has been called the currency of social media.
As social scanning and other as yet to be found applications show up, we will be learning more and more.
Let me in on any discussions you might have about this and we'll go from there.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Formidable Cross Channel Marketing
To increase effectiveness with your digital marketing campaigns , you must use cross channel marketing as a strategy. This means that you will be combining your social media strategies with your mobile text message marketing , for instance.
One strategy is using data from customer reports to identify trends that you can add to your market research. At this point, remember not to treat the data irresponsible. Or from a economic point of view. Try to engage your tribe by listening to them and getting good representative data.
Another approach to this is sharing apps on cell phones that promote social gaming activities .This helps to create an engaging atmosphere for the tribe to take part in and share and take action . There are apps that will help you create a custom app for your niche. You can foster competition among groups of friends or tribes that will lead to sharing and dialog. This will help to reinforce your brand to the tribe.
Creating effective mobile strategies starts with the realization that most retailers will have to refine their strategies. This means putting to use other channels such as social media and mobile messaging, because this will allow your tribe to use their smart phones to access and shop. Also, you can keep using your conventional form s of marketing a and public relations activities.
It seems to me that you should remember the old adage, content is king. If you remember this , you will increase your branding strength and allow for quick sale opportunities. Multichannel marketing is still in its infancy and so doesn’t really fit into a model yet. The model is still developing. Leveraging the channels at the same time is what its all about. Some experts think that retaining the human voice is and important part of this also because it will help you make the jump successfully.
Remember this if nothing else, you can't hide anywhere now. It's a digital world and that means you have to take advantage of it because your competition is.
Because of this your brand is out there for the tribe to yay or nay. One way to be sure the tribe is engaging is to make sure you are respectful of the human paradigm. Accentuate it . Make sure you retain that human touch feeling to your tribe by making sure that each touch is unique and distinctive. It shouldn’t sound canned to the tribe or anyone else. It needs to have a connection to the person and the company through some value oriented texts.
When all is said and done, without the human touch feeling , your audience wont follow you.
There are other platforms such as B to B or web analysis and many more that can be utilized for cross channel marketing to your tribe, but here we are concentrating using social media in conjunction with mobile messaging.
If the tribe is interested, maybe we can get more specific with the different social media platforms and how they are unique in this area.
Do you have a platform or strategy or tip you would like to opine about?
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Should You Look Into Bing Search Engine Optimization?
Why optimize for Bing? Especially when Google gets most of the traffic anyway? There are quite a few reasons, as it turns out. The Yahoo merger with Bing being the main one for Bing organic search optimization.. Here's a link for more info. Bing Search Engine Optimization It seems to me that the answer to this question is fairly obvious. And the answer is. we need all the help we can get.
Some of the parameters that Bing likes are similar to other search engines, strangely enough. For instance, it seems to be very important that your page title contains the key words that are relevant to the contents of your page. Also, try to make sure that your content has the same keywords as the title of the article. This will help to get your page to the top of the search engine for your keyword.
There's plenty more on the referred page, so I'll just pick a few things here that you can do.
Because Bing seems to be growing and developing, more Corporations should be looking at Bing as a way to stay in touch with their tribes. So this means they need to improve their site ranking with Bing.
Bing is now around about the 3rd largest search engine and that means they are taking a larger slice of the pie. It would do well to watch this one. Bing search engine optimization will become more important in the future.
As most search engines do, Bing seems to like a domain name that has a few years under it's belt. Since your ranking is higher you will get more organic traffic from Bing. More chances for the cash register to ring.
Lucky for me, Bing likes pages with about three hundred and fifty to five hundred words or so. Right in my sweet spot. And of course remember this, Bing seems to give more weight to the contents and title being relevant than other search engines do.
W3C Protocols are observed with Bing, so make sure that your HTML codes are accurate. If you need to validate there is a W3C validation service.
Creating a link to a page outside of your website will not result in a ranking penalty like some of the other search engines. It may still be best to limit the amount of external links though. Using no follow tags will alow you to have external links and not be penalized in some cases.
So after all of this , it turns out that content is still king. Just like th other search engines. Can you imagine that? This fact really hasn't changed much and probably won't. Quality content that catches your eye because it is unique helps you to energize your relationship with your tribe. The search engines also like to see quality articles that help them to decide if it is relevant or not. As usual, the more relevant it is, the higher your ranking.
Specific articles that avoid being to generic are the way to go. Accentuate a particular keyword and make sure that you show the relvancy.
This information holds true for most of the search engine optimization rules you have already encountered, but I would enjoy having some feedback. Let me know what you think.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Using Your Computer to Send SMS Messages
There will be over ten trillion text messages sent by 2013 . The statistics say that over 90 percent of them will get read. On the other hand there are 110 billion messages on social networks that may or may not get read . Both use text messages sent from your computer. Which statistic do you like?
Both formats use the social networking paradigm , but its seems that short message service , or SMS Text Message marketing is working out better for business. This is because targeted text messaging is a very efficient and effective method for mobile marketing. It keeps you in contact with your tribe and your family. And its very cost effective. This protocol turns out to be very effective for internet marketers, also.
Some organizations use it to advertise alerts to the tribe about possible emergency’s and situations that may go Charlie Sheen on them. Sending important information isn't just limited to your tribe either, you want to keep in touch with important customers too. Don't forget your suppliers. You can have a keyword for each. Then you know the right person is getting the right message.
One of my favorite ways to keep up with my clients is to promote networking meetings and events to my network tribe. Birthday and anniversary greetings. The list is endless. This works well for sales managers that want to stay in touch with outside sales departments.
There is always help available to manage a mobile text messaging campaign also. So don’t think you're on your own. And remember , you can send the messages from you're computer, so don’t worry if your thumbs are too big.
Text Message Marketing may not be as social in some ways , but it gets results and has several advantages over other formats. SMS doesn't take so long to send a message as an email or a phone call and you can do bulk sending. You can be on your phone and send a message.
Be aware that when you send a message , it sits on a server until the receiving phone is turned on. In the past , this was known as a “store and forward service”. This means the tribe member's phone doesn’t have to be turned on to send the message. The message waits until the phone is turned on and recipient is in range. Very effective.
Mobile Text Marketing is considered to be very spam free because of the opt – in feature, especially if you compare it to email. Your SMS text marketing message is much more likely to be delivered than an email.
I'm pretty sure most businesses are aware that SMS can send bulk messages and not just one on one messages. This is a broadcasting service ,but there is no spam because the clients are opt in . Corporations use this function to contact tribes , or employees. Some online services use it to disseminate news or some other type of information to tribes.
I tell my clients that it is important to deliver your message to a targeted audience. So I like to set up clients that already have a phone list. But we have a department that works hand in hand with a new client to get them in touch with their tribe.
If you get your list together , we will go over it and I'll show you the fastest way to upload it so you can start sending SMS messages to your tribe.
Let's sit down and have a discussion about this article . I would love to receive some comments from my readers, so fire away!
Sunday, April 10, 2011
SMS Text Message Marketing
It seems like everywhere you go now, people are texting on their phones to send a message to their tribes or clients. Texting uses a protocol called Short Message Service or SMS. This procall also is robust enough to support the generation of new applications . An excellent application for business is Text Message Marketing.
SMS Mobile Text Message Marketing can be a very helpful path to helping you cut some of your costs in various areas and helping to save money too. Thats because you are able to generate direct messages about your specials and the deals targeted at your tribes interests.
An important caveat here is your texting plan with your cellular provider. You really should have a plan that allows unlimited text messages per month. If not , the service could prove to be costly. If you have teens , unlimited texting will pay for itself.
Getting your list of subscribers together is the first step. Talk to your current customers here about opting in to your service to keep them updated about special deals and promotions. This because when you send a bulk text message, your tribe will be instantly notified of your current promo. This is already very targeted because they are already using the product. Some may not be willing to sign up unless there is a clear benefit to them.
Most businesses find this to be very easy and a great way to keep in touch with the tribe. One thing to keep in mind here is that you have a limited amount of characters that you can use. Thats right, you only have about 160 characters to get your message out to the tribe.
Free online texting is very effective, but being clear and concise can be a challenge when you are developing a SMS texting campaign. Remember to keep in mind the target and think about what the best way to communicate your message to the tribe.
At the present time SMS group texting is still in it's infancy among businesses and tribes. It will prove to be a long term solution to keeping old customers and getting new ones over time, though. Like everything else, keep the list updated for the long term and make your promotions unique and attention getting.
This a good way to get started with SMS Text Message marketing as long as you keep these ideas in your frame of reference. You will be able to keep and attiaan new tribes and grow your business or tribe base.
Some other ideas that Your Expert Webman has come up with include sending out new games and free apps that are targeted to your business to the tribe. Tribes love to use their cell phones for these things and it will build brand awareness of your product.
You could run a poll to get your tribe to create new marketing promos and deals for your business too. Make your tribe a partner in the business. You could message the tribe the times and dates for your webinars , for instance. Menus, Real Estate listings and the list goes on.
The tribe will be able to confirm attendance or ask buying questions right on the phone in real time.
These are some of the ideas I have to get you started and I would love to have a dialogue with you about what would work the best for your tribe and your business. Ask me questions and lets get the show on the road!
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Social Media Bookmarking Expertise
One of the best ways to influence your tribe to try your products is through social bookmarking. The rule here is to get your links on sites that will promote them and organize them. This will help to create another stream of income for you by the increased targeted traffic it will generate.
Your use of SEO will also generate targeted viral traffic so that you will have traffic targeted to your content. Your content will attract the kind of user that will buy your product because they read the content. Readers that aren’t interested in your product just wont read the content.
You want your story to be one of those that “buzzes” with the tribe you want to attract. Social Bookmarking and Networking sites are being observed daily and there are lots of tales about stories that make their way around the word in record time. Some call it instant buzz. Its kind of like instant karma, though. The more buzz you have the more tribal response you'll get.
The links back to your site from the sites you are being promoted on are important too. Prt of your rank on some of the search engines is calculated on how many links and back links you have. Reciprocal links are always better. Because more links gives more opportunities for your tribe to click on, you will get more traffic.
Another advantage is the free advertising that results. Social Bookmarking was only intended as a way to organize originally, but it does the job of advertising admirably. AS the amount of your use increases , there are going to be more people that will pay more attention to what you are doing. It could be thought of as online word of mouth advertising.
There is also the branding that results from social media bookmarking. Let's face it, there are over eight billion websites out there, so know one really knows who you are. So you need to stay on top of it by using social media to get the word out. Using social media gets your branding information out to the people who are interested. Especially if it is targeted correctly.
As more and different technologies come online , maybe we will be able to use other mediums. Smell-o-vision comes to mind here. But it's probably still a ways off right now.
If you have any suggestions about how we could make this process more efficient for all of us, I would like to discuss it here, if possible.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Do You Need to Calculate ROI?
A Return on Investment calculator seems to be a subject that most tribes have little experience with. Usually the results come from an ROI formula that someone had invented. I think most follow the ROI=NetPfrofit over sales times sales over investment algorithm. That might be a little difficult to get your head around though
Return on Investment is important because these statistics are used to make conclusions about whether your current marketing efforts are working or not. This way we can determine if its time to take profits for the tribe.
Before you can get to this point there must be a management detail in place. This plan should discuss what the goal of the marketing plan is. What tribes do you wish to talk to? This is your objective viewpoint. You need to have a strategy to help you accomplish the goal and objective.
What tactics will you use? How will you measure things like ROI? Is there a budget for all this and what is it? Costs and tactics are related subjects and you'll observe that your measurement system does not help with calculating ROI. But when it comes to calculating all costs must be budgeted.
The raw data , when calculated for ROI, is actually a percentage. Usually this is expressed as a dollar figure though. The ROI confusion often results when we assume that the marketing sections of the equation sum up to 0 . This is not true.
Some authors state that the first portion of the equation is actually figuring the profit percentage of sales. Which can be influenced by some marketing considerations such as sales volume and advertising.
It is suggested here that corporations work with their accounting teams to really get a determination on what net profit is. Not that you aren’t already, ay? So the accounting team should have total access to the size of the marketing investment in order to be accurate with their determination of the ROI.
At this point you can go into the other products if there are any to perform the same operation.
If the company is a non-profit, this does not mean it has no ROI. Most likely it will need to do more with less and less in the coming years and a penny saved is a penny earned here. Outsourcing projects like marketing will make it more important for enablers to provide more financial information in order to make the calculation more accurate. As social media marketing becomes more widely used this will become more true. By the way, non-profits can be sensitive about words like sales. Try to use a term like support or donation.
The big question may be , should PR and branding require ROI? Just for the sake of standardizing the Field? Does it make sense to calculate ROI on these projects?
This is an argument I would like to discuss here. Let me know what you think.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Advertising Your Social Media News
Your Expert Webman is pleased to announce that this article is going to be written like a standard press release about Social Media News to demonstrate the many ways that a press release could work for your organization.
Social Media Websites and Blogs have matured alongside improvements and refinements that the major search engines have incorporated into their formulas. What this means is that if your company wants to issue a press release, then you will need to have someone that understands the Search Engine Optimization rules. You will then be able to take full advantage of a press release.
You need to take into account what platforms you would like to share the information on and with what tribes , also. The circulation should contain the things that will be needed to share a story in a way that shows what your original intent was .
One thing you don’t want to do is talk about a lot of things in the message. Stick to the main message . Make sure your keywords are clear and targeted for the tribe you want to reach. This way it will have the ring of truth to your readers. This is usually a way to make the tribe grateful in addition. By using targeted keywords , your release should get a good ranking in the online world.
Make your release the right size so that you give the most information and not be too long. Remember , you only have ten seconds. The size of the article should be around 550 words or so, which translates to a page or so. Search engines like this also.
Links in your anchor text comes highly recommended. Usually about 2 links per 5 to 6 hundred words or so will be ideal. Using anchor text to phrases like,” for more information”, is sometimes frowned upon, according to my research. You should use your most important keyword in your headline and your lead sentence. It will focus the search engines on it.
When you are describing your product, use language that will help you connect with the tribe you want.
Don't forget to use your targeted keywords here so that the search engines will be able to find it, too. Try to get your release on Social Media Websites and Social Media Blogs.
In your headline , it always helps to use the keyword phrase that is most important to your message. Also, you will be repeating it in the content . If you keep the headline to 75 characters or so, your readers wont lose interest. Try to keep subheads to less than two lines.
Make sure the news is of interest to the tribe and make sure they can share it through Social Media Websites, Social Media Blogs and other platforms. Social Media News platforms can help here too.
You know its true that a picture is worth a thousand words. So share your images with the tribe so they can share it with their tribes. While you are at it, upload videos, wave files,links to your relevant websites and more of your releases. This will help to pique the interest of the tribe and attract more attention for your product.
These few suggestions are what seems to me to be pretty basic means to getting the word out via press release. But as you know, there are plenty of other ways to do it. A press release is just another tool for you to use. Make sure you use it correctly.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Using Social Media Platforms for Data Mining Activities
One of the advantages of social media for marketers is that searching the information that is available can aid Marketing efforts by supplying current patterns of purchasing and making decisions about buying behavior. An example of this would be a Social Media Company that sells Alternate Energy Solar Panels. They would be able to introduce their products to consumers that have a history of purchasing Alternative Energy Devices. Data Mining , as this activity is called, can help with predicting which products a tribe may be interested in. With a little bit of luck marketers can surprise their customers and make the customer happy.
One problem with this is that personal privacy is at risk. With the Internet being so cheap and easy to access, privacy concerns have increased . Some tribes won't shop on the internet because of this. They are afraid of someone getting a hold of information in an unethical way and using that information against them.
This is the reason I think that Social Media Artists are constantly being ushered to the PR agency's. Even as social media is rapidly evolving in the Corporate arena, it is still thought of as another form of :push: marketing. Social Media Marketing, as we all know, is more influential marketing than push marketing.
The marketers job is to try and establish a relationship with current and prospective customers , and Social media is the way to do it. Reviewing the data we have is a way for the customer to voice his opinion about what he wants by using the social networks.
There is so much customer data available from the online tribes that is so very dense with information that if you were a Merchant, you would know all about your customers needs and concerns. You also have the information to give that customer what he wants in the future. And you are getting the information on a continuing and consistent basis.
Now all of that data has to be changed into useful information. This is because social media data is different from the transactional data that most systems use. Therefore, it is stored in different formats. Fortunately , it can be converted by using another technology.
This process is a way of managing important business data on an ongoing schedule, maintaining the status quo and creating the records needed. This way the data is validated . So we know it is correct, consistent and complete. This format has been used for 11 or more years. Its a great format for integrating disparate databases for a more complete view of their tribes. It is equally effective in integrating social media data into existing CRM systems, and filtering that data for relevance.
For instance, we now can achieve important process furtherance with improvements in the bottom-line significance. This means that it is possible to obtain behavioral data that will allow them to more appropriately target tribes for better social marketing optimization. Building that one to one relationship with tribes is going to be easier because of the availability of information on personal data and interests. This will enable targeting to the next level.
Usually the process of finding clients on social sites is a slow, arduous process, for most companies. It's time intensive and expensive too. On some platforms, a business can obtain the information of anyone who clicks their like button, for instance. With the right activity, game or article, a company can get a lot of likes.
Because of the availability of this new technology, the process is more encompassing and is a lot quicker. For instance, there is a matching technology that can take a name and check to see which john smith it is. It will also allow a company to identify a tribe on the basis of one or two pieces of information.
I could talk about this for quite a while as there is so much to digest. But time and space limit me. So, I will close with a question. How are you using Data Mining Technology to help your business be more successful?
I would love to be able to get some answers to this.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Social Media Website Tips
What is your whole technology activity – In other words , what things do you like to do to generate website traffic for your product? Lets take social media advertising as an example.
You need to have a social media website with a social media blog. This way you will be able to talk about your product to your tribe and influence more readership. One strategy in the past has been to link to other tribes blogs or other relevant blogs. This way you may be helping other social media websites to gain recognition and they may link to you. You will gain more influence because the links can increase far above where you thought they might go. These links that you gain can increase inbound links to your site and your tribes.
An added advantage is that most sites allow linking to your other platforms and social media blogs. Go for it, link your Facebook and Twitter account to your blog site and link the blog to your RSS feed and then find more places to link to . Search engines love those links. Especially if they are reciprocal. This is the simple version but I think you and the tribe get the idea.
Social Media Blogs are popping up everywhere and this leads to the assumption that more tribes and individuals are getting into the internet world. It turns out that there may be a learning curve to figuring out how to do all this stuff.
There are so many social media websites and social media blogs out there that handle social media advertising and all kinds of other stuff that it is usually better to stick with just one or two. Sit down and figure out the social media sites that are going to be the most useful for you and your tribe and stick with those . If you can handle 10 social media sites, that’s great, but no more that 5 is a good thing too. Just remember to keep your sites updated and keep your clients and prospects informed.
One thing that your blog should be doing is brand building. Start talking about whats so great about your product and give some visuals. You can customize pages so they fit within guidelines that you set.
I like to have the same logo on all of my invoices business cards and website. This way when a customer lands on your website they will know where they are. Do your own promotional stuff here.
Takeaways, giveaways and coupons will all keep your customers coming back to your site.
The first word in Social media Marketing is Social . Why would you not get to know your customers and their products and needs? Find out about their likes and dislikes and get their opinions . Allow discourse and posting to your blog . Make yourself significant and take part in the action to.
One tip here, don't try to sell using social media. It has a strong tendency to not work. Social media is not push marketing. We are trying to talk about our products in a conversational way. The word will get around and bring us clients. We are trying to be in the loop and to find new friends . Don't update every day because it may begin to look spammy to your recipients .
Here I've set down some expectations that you may have for your social media business. Well, this is the simple version . In other words, there's a lot more to it than this. So check out some articles on this subject and let me know if you have a comment or question. See you next time.
Director of social media for YourExpertWebman at www.yourexpertwebman.com
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Tips for Compelling Social Media Campaigns
It's been said in the past that if you give a man a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. I don’t know how true that really is, but it's still nothing more that a tool. You need tools to build a business or a house.
Campaigns and other projects involving social media may be a great tool for your company. But you have to be trained to use it well. An advantage here is that Social media influences your potential customers. However, they also have the opportunity to post bad product reviews. You definitely don’t want them to denigrate your product or even tell their acquaintances not to visit your place. On the other hand though, potential clients can list what they want and tell you what they like. I believe this could result in in your sales and profits going up quickly. This is absolutely a large amount of power to put in the hands of an inexperienced tribe.
One of the reasons for this is that social media campaigns are built on developing and influencing relationships. Many businesses try to use Social Media as a format for making sales noises to their tribe. This is probably a misstep because it may be viewed as just a cheap shot to get a sale or be totally ignored altogether. No matter what you do here, you are wasting the company's time and resources. Your time would be better spent by developing professional relationships and trying to connect with the tribe.
A possible thing you can do to connect in this area is to post an affirming congratulations to a client for getting a project , and its a great way to build a relationship. You get to mention your product and services at the same time this way, while making a personal connection. With a little luck, your clients will begin to ask questions like, “how did they get that project” And we all know the answer too that , right? Its through the excellent work of the consultant. They could also ask, “why is the event being organized for the restaurant?”. It could have been and online contest that brought them all together. Or it could be a monthly promo. By doing it this way , you get some subliminal promos while building your relationship with the tribe.
I addition to this, it's very important to grow and maintain a professional relationship with the tribe and format ideas of how a professional posting should look. You will need to move the tribe into this from a social standpoint too.
Its essential to have an active presence in social media projects because of the influence factor and the amount of exposure the company will receive. You will have two way communication between the company and your tribe. You will be able to develop a poll if you like about a recurring subject or question. This will stimulate conversation and keep you in the tribe's mind.
It seems to me that it is advantageous to have a local element to the campaign. A local tribe following is the best way to start. Then you can branch out to state or region, before going nationally. Network and construct relationships with other companies in your region and within your sphere of influence.
This will help to create a small network or base to operate from. It will also bring more attention to your products and services. More attention could include things like promotional events or other mutually beneficial opportunities for networking.
So to sum it all up, make sure you are using social media optimization properly for your product or service and for your tribe. I think a major problem here is that most of the popular social media platforms are free. So after reading this, you will all run out and sign up for social media accounts to promote your product or service. Just remember that social media for business is not the same as social media for individuals. The way to be successful here is to have a professional consultant advising you and helping you avoid mistakes with your tribe.
Your Expert Webman provides SEO Services and Social Media Marketing Consulting for businesses.
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Sunday, January 30, 2011
Business to Business Social Media
Recently, Business to Business social media has taken on an increasingly important role. Because of this ,it has generated lots of events and quite an assortment of groups are popping up all over the place to to meet the increasing demand. More businesses are looking for ways to generate awareness of what they do and how to do it better.
There are so many events available out there that it will be impossible to list them all here. Many of them serve the digital professional and many of them are more broad in focus. I have put together some of the groups that I find to be the most effective.
This is a list of conferences , meetings and other organizations that are excellent starting points for social media marketers and social media strategists. You are welcome to make your own comments here also.
In addition, online media conferences are available . There are so many of these that you can be busy for quite some time.
Let's start off with Social media week. It usually happens in February and September and is hosted by social media groups and digital experts in a lot of cities around the world. Most of the time it is spread out so that the conferences are in different places. So watch for this in your city .
In March there is SXSw in Austin. You can find the best in film, music and interactive media here. There is a trade show and presentations as well as networking events. They are all centered around start up technologies that may provide you with a new audience.
Visit San Francisco to meet with industry leaders , as well as global executives for web 2.0 . You will be amazed at the conversation around the latest trends on the web.
The Blogwell conference presents , in their words, “eight great case studies on the best social media programs at large corporations.” There are some great Blogwell events that have taken place in Philadelphia, Chicago and Seattle.
Don't forget BlogWorld. Blogging and Internet TV Gurus will be attending this one . Participants are welcome to learn about new strategies, tools and technologies they will need to make their presence known on the web.
Its a fact that While you can learn a lot from attending conferences, you will need to do more in the way of learning and training for your niche. That’s because the low frequency of these once or twice a year events can only take you so far as a practicing social media strategist. Supplementing them with monthly or weekly networking meetings will come in handy.
Look for technology networking and blogging events on the web that are being held on a regular basis . Preferably not far away from where you are. Real Entrepreneurs will look into starting their own groups.
There's always the option of traveling to New York or San Francisco too.
Some may be looking to make an even bigger commitment in the way of social media training though.
If networking and conferences and meetings don't seem to be enough to keep you busy, joining a social media club or another organization may be a great choice.
Relevant comments and suggestions will be welcomed .
Sunday, January 23, 2011
What is Social Media?
When I talk to tribes about their social media optimization needs , the question always seems to arise, what is social media. Since the technology is changing and evolving and this makes it an arousing and exciting field, I'll try to shed some light on the subject.
In the beginning, Social media services originated as strictly a personal tool that tribes used to interact with friends and family. Later on Social media services were adapted to business projects in order to take advantage of a popular new communication platform in order to reach out to prospects and customers. They used it to influence their clientele for example, by informing them of sales and offering them special deals.
To make a long story short, Social Media includes any tool or service that uses digital media to facilitate production and exchange of information and action using telecommunication technology. In this context, private versus work-related use and factors such as the demographics, gender and age of users influences how social media is used for a specific niche.
To be more detailed , Social Media turns consumers of content into producers of content relatively quickly and easily, without having to be technologically savvy. This means that in part social media can shift communication from a broadcast model of tribes to tribes or individuals. in most platforms, Social media means interaction with the tribe. For instance answering questions or replying to an email, exchange of opinions, information, feelings and emotions that hopefully result in better understanding with the tribe's members. The demographics of the tribe and their niche influence how these processes occur.
Interactions can be between tribes , content creators, readers, colleagues, friends and sometimes strangers that may result in action being taken by one or more of the tribes.
The final result of all of this tribal interaction is that social media services take time to do and engage with. There's a lot of opportunity here as well as the risk of wasting time. An example of this , as expected by readers of the platform you're using, is to be authentic and personable. This means you have to write thoughtful answers yourself to blogs and articles.
In addition, when you are a member of a group or tribe on one of the platforms means that social media monitoring is a factor. This means you have to take part in the discussion and comment on on other tribes posts since this is part of the exchange. Lots of social media activities are aimed at being members of many groups, but this makes it hard to spend the time to contribute. In fact, we are not even sure if they have the time to read what group members post.
What all this comes down to is that less is probably better. Tribes should join fewer groups , but stay more active and more visible and interact with more substance. The number of friends you have online is really limited to about 150. This limit is called the Dunbar number and theoretically is the number of actual cognitive friends you can handle.
Some of the platforms have recently reported that even though you may have thousands of friends online , in reality, you can only interact with about five to ten percent of them. So you may ask, can you really have 2000 friends?
I welcome comments to this article as the social media services arena is still changing and we like to roll with the punches , so to speak.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Important Steps to Picking a Social Media Consultant
Picking a Social Media Consultant could turn out too be one of the most important decisions you could make for your tribe. That's because the World Wide Web attracts and is full of social media activities . Major Industry players are on top of the platforms as are small businesses and start ups. Most are trying to use it to increase their influence in their chosen niches..
Becoming familiar with the wide variation in platforms is a job in itself, so if you are not familiar with them, you might be able to use some help from someone with experience in this area. So the question becomes , Where do you find social media specialists with the right expertise for you?
There are a few things to look for that will tip you off.
A social media consultant should have some sort of social media strategy that can be discerned. They should be experts in using using their chosen social media strategy to drive and attract new buyers to the clients niche. Being adept at offering their social media methodologies too you will help show their expertise. Look to see if they are practicing the same things they are talking about.
There should also be some obvious signs in the specialist's social media blogging skills. Look at a sampling of the blog entries made for other clients , for instance. If there are relevant quality entries there, he just might be an expert. Consistency and relevance are important here as entries may at first seem to be clear and concise , but be aware of articles that look like they were generated by spin. Specialists very rarely will use spin in their articles.
You might look at a few testimonials about your consultant and some comments from other readers. Happy clients will generally show their gratitude for superior service and this will tip you off that you have found a good expert.
There are so many applications that are available for social media today and applications that are under development making this niche very exciting to many different tribes. There are new technologies being formed around social media applications daily. There are applications that allow your friends to know what businesses you are in for instance. Many social media platforms are gearing up for mobile access and this has the potential to really change the social media blogging landscape.
Diverse applications are in development and are developed now that will use your actual location to find the closest mens or ladies room, a new eatery or even letting you know who has a sale going on for a product you need.
Having a well defined social media strategy and a relevant social media blog influencing the niche you would like to be in is the way to get started in this diverse area of online marketing. Remember to be adaptable and don't get locked into a single platform in case that platform changes into something that won't work for you. You don’t have to be 100% internally focused. Link to other blogs, videos, and news articles. Re-tweet what others have to say as long as it is relevant to what you are saying.
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