Will's Internet Marketing Blog

Top 12 List to Prove You've Mastered Social Media

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 04:02:00 GMT

So 2009 is here and you think you finally grasped this whole "Web 2.0" Social Media thing. however, some of you (read as "us") have hit the brink of obsession with it. Here's how you know you'll be ready for Web 3.0 and beyond...

#12: Not only do you have a Twitter account, but you know why you'd use: Qwitter, Tweet Grid, Twollow, TwitTangle, Tweet Deck, Twitter Spy, Twitter Charts, Twitter Grader, and Ping.fm.

#11: You've had your LinkedIn Account suspended because too many people you tried connecting with clicked the "I don't know this person" button.

#10: You bribe your friends with Starbucks to comment on your Blog (if you reside in the Las Vegas area, contact me for details.)

#9: You've lost a Friend/Girlfriend/Boyfriend over your Top Friends on MySpace.

#8: You've engaged in a Blog Comment fight with another Commenter. Neither of you own the Blog...

#7: You know how to shrink a link, and why you'd do it.

#6: You tweet on your phone before rolling over to say good morning to the person lying next to you.

#5: When you tell people that you're having "Dinner with friends", you mean dinner by yourself but streaming it to friends on Qik with your phone.

#4: You cried when Pownce was shut down (RIP - December 15, 2008)

#3: You laugh at, and think people are uneducated when they ask you "Who's this Gary Vaynerchuk guy you keep talking about"?

#2: You think how jealous all the High School Girls who wouldn't date you would be if they knew how popular you are on on Facebook.

AND #1 by a Landsl... Plane crash: You survive a plane crash and one of the first things on your mind is to post about it on Twitter.

Post your own below (don't make me shell out more on Starbucks).

social media, myspace, facebook, linkedin, web 2.0

Recession-Proof Your Business with Social Media

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 05:33:00 GMT

Whether you planned for it or not, you realize that leading your company through these tough economic times falls squarely on your shoulders. Traditional advertising just isn’t bringing in the business for you like it used to. People now Fast Forward past your TV commercials, listen to music without your radio ads, don’t look at the junk mail you send, and are on the Do Not Call list.

It’s time you devised a new plan. Wouldn’t you like to be there when people are looking for answers to questions in your industry? You need to start building relationships with people that can get you business, and find people that you wouldn’t mind referring business to.

Call it what you want - Social Media, Online Networking or Web 2.0, but whatever you call it… It’s not just for teenagers and single people anymore.

Check out these Social Media stats:

More than 1 in 8 viewers make a purchase after watching a video ad online - eMarketer
Facebook has 150,000 new users sign up every single day - Time Magazine
As of October 2006, about 100,000 new Blogs were created every day -Technorati
LinkedIn has a 137% growth year over year bringing its visitors to about 8 million per month - compete.com

Social Media has it’s cost, fortunately it’s only time.

People aren’t just wasting time on Social Networking sites. They’re being productive by doing searches, asking and answering business questions, getting referrals and giving testimonials. Not on yet? Plenty of your competitors are. It’s time you got involved in the conversation or be left behind.

Case in point #1:

Zagat has been around for 29 years reviewing restaurants. Yelp, known for its restaurant reviews, has been around for less than 5 years. Yelp chose to embrace Social Networking and in that short period of time people are writing articles in the New York Times about how Yelp might be more of a factor than Zagat:

Yelp’s traffic has expanded geometrically while Zagat’s has grown only a little. This July, Yelp drew 4.76 million unique visitors, compared with Zagat’s 384,000. -Randall Stross

Starting to take this more seriously? Okay, so what do you do?

First step:

Monitor your reputation

Google your name and your company. What comes up? Scam Alert? Judgment papers against you? Ex-flame trashing you in a video? Getting yourself active in Online Networking gives you more of a chance to give Searchers relevant information about your company that you want them to see on Google’s Results page- like your LinkedIn account.

Set up a couple of Google Alerts to alert you when someone mentions you or links to your website (set up “your name”, link:www.yourwebsite.com). You’ll receive an email anytime someone mentions you or links to your business website with a link to that page. Something bad? Do damage control. Something good? Send’em a thanks for mentioning you.

Case in point #2:

There are 2 excellent online web conferencing applications I found. I posed the question to my Twitfriends: “Which is better A or B?” Funny thing is that both A and B were monitoring their online reputations at Twitter Search and saw I was Twittering about them. They started to follow my Tweets (Twitter updates) and said if I had any questions about their service to just ask. Wow, talk about pro-active. I followed them back and through interacting directly with them and seeing their posts, I understood that their applications had different strengths and realize I have a use for both. I now feel like I have friends in the business and I won’t even consider others.

Second Step:

Social Media is a lot like networking offline, like your local Chamber of Commerce or BNI group. You’ll realize that it’s easier to get and give business with people you know on a personal level.

You’re goal should be to become the “Go-To” person in your industry for people in your networks.

Start by getting an account on LinkedIn. This is the MySpace for business Professionals. List all of your contact info, past work experience, website, services offered, blog etc. Start answering questions, joining groups that apply to your community and once again, get involved in the conversation.
Open up a free Twitter account and try to use your own photo. Search for people talking about topics relevant to you and your business at Twitter Search and start the following and replying to people needing advice. Don’t just post things business related. You wouldn’t open up a conversation with someone on the street and start telling them about your services without establishing some kind of credibility.
Start a Blog. Blog about your industry, your business and a bit about yourself. Be the resource for your industry.

When you have a captive audience, tell people on LinkedIn and Twitter and all the other Social Networking services you joined that you posted a new Blog or added a new service. Invite them to ask you questions in the comments section and make sure you answer them!

I have certain people in the offline world that are my “Go-To” people for certain industries. I now have my “Go-To” people in my online world too. And they’re a lot easier to get a hold of… I know where they hang out.

Technorati Tags:social media, twitter, linkedin

Search Results with Google Search Wiki

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 22:06:00 GMT

Notice anything different when you do a Google Search? If you're logged in to Google, check you're search results page after doing a search and you'll see what I mean.

You'll see that you can adjust the rankings on the search results page by clicking the light gray buttons on the right of each individual result. Move'em up, down, off the page, or comment on them.

This is called Google Search Wiki. The goal of Google Search Wiki is to make your future searches more relevant to what you're searching for. Understand that the Search Engine's goal is to give the Searcher relevant results based on their search terms.

Your adjustments will only affect your future results (not other people's searches). You're seeing how search will evolve - it will be based on your individual "Intent".

This will be more widely adopted by search engines in the near future. If you search for "Insurance" and you've ranked a lot of your previous search results based on being in the Insurance industry, your results may be geared towards industry resources. If you're not in the industry, you may get more results based on shopping for insurance. Like I said in another Blog entry... One more way the Internet is giving "Power to the People".

Search Engine Optimization is a constantly moving target. Competition, Search Engines improving their algorithms, and soon, users improving their own search results page make Search Engine Optimization a full time job! Isn't it time you outsourced your SEO?

Amay, from Google describes Google Search Wiki:

Technorati Tags:google wiki, search engine optimization, seo

Are your visitors Bouncing?

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 02:49:00 GMT

Problem: You're very involved in Internet Marketing for your website and you're getting lots of visitors, but no one's staying! Even worse, they're leaving after the first page. This frustration is called The Dreaded "Bounce Rate".

Avinash Kaushik, The Analytics Evangelist for Google, describes Bounce Rate as "I came, I puked, I left".

Everyone needs instant gratification these days. Visitors spend about 25 seconds on your Home Page. Get this: They don't spend that 25 seconds reading. They spend it looking for the next place to click. If they don't see their next destination right in front of their face... they're gone.

Let's try to analyze what's happening.

First thing is first. Do you have some kind of Analytics software installed on your site? It doesn't matter which one you use, however you have NO EXCUSE not to have any! - Google Analytics is free.

Some of the things to look at that might help you lower your Bounce rate:

Where is your traffic coming from? Email Marketing? Search Engines? Someone complaining about your site on their Blog? A social bookmarking site like Digg or StumbleUpon?
What Keywords are your visitors finding you with? If you're selling antique rugs and people are finding you with "How to clean a smelly rug", then you'll know why people aren't staying. If you're running an AdWords campaign and this is your problem, you'll need to learn and use negative keywords (a conversation for another day).
What are the Top Landing Pages? If visitors are going to your site just to read your latest Blog entry, then you might understand why they're bouncing. If you want them to explore further, you'll need to do something to your Blog pages to get them to further explore your services. If they're hitting your Home Page and leaving, you might want to make your key services prominent somewhere so they can see it without scrolling no matter what their screen size.

So what are good Bounce Rate #'s? Simply put - Better numbers than the previous ones. Hmm. Maybe I'll coin that.

Start checking your Analytics on a regular basis and contact me for questions.

Social Media Power

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 01:31:00 GMT

Obviously, the Internet is constantly evolving. The difference now is that the Internet is no longer a one way conversation. You don't need to have a business website to have a voice online anymore. Like Chuck D. said, "Power to the People!"

As users, we can now get what we want, when we want it.

Check out these stats:

More than 1 in 8 viewers make a purchase after watching a video ad online - eMarketer
Facebook has 150,000 new users sign up every single day - Time Magazine
As of October 2006, about 100,000 new Blogs were created every day -Technorati
In January 2008 alone, nearly 79 million users watched over 3 billion videos on YouTube -CNN

Hubspot calls the old way of marketing Interruption Marketing - where sales people interrupt whatever you're doing. It just doesn't work anymore. Case in point:

TV commercials - I have a DVR
Radio commercials - I have Sirius (Howard!)
Telemarketers - Do Not Call list, you bet I'm on it.

Today, we have the ability to follow what we want, when we want. We have RSS feeds of our favorite Blogs, our favorite professional connections on LinkedIn, our friends on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

When I hear a salesperson say "If I could show you a way to [insert their company's service] would you get started today?" Are they serious? If I hear that, even if they're selling World Peace with Hostess Cupcakes, they won't get my business.

I choose to do business with people I've connected with. People that aren't scared to give me some useful information from their line of work like Blogs, Q&A's or Email newsletters. Their confidence that I'll come back is actually what brings me back.

How do you get involved in Social Media Networking as a business?

Use sites like Facebook or LinkedIn (see Guy Kawasaki's 10 Ways to Use LinkedIn). Become part of the community helping people, by answering their questions and giving advice. Be their Go-To-Person in your profession. Upload some interesting and informative company videos to YouTube.

Do all of this and you're credibility will skyrocket.

Website Traffic Using Online Press Releases

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:47:00 GMT

I was speaking with a friend that was working hard to get targeted traffic to his website. The issue was that his site was a portal off of his company. In other words, his site is a template off his main company's site in which he only has access to change certain things... About Me, Contact info, etc. That makes it very tough to get useful information for Search Engines to find useful to their searchers (which is how Search Engines want to work!)

He wanted to get some targeted traffic, so I recomended writing a Press Release to get distributed all over the Internet. Any business can write up a Press Release. Maybe on their new website, new location, a charity event, new services offered, community outreach programs, etc.

Using Inbound Marketing, which is where people get what they want, when they want makes it easier to get prospects coming to you. It's a lot easier than Interuption Marketing- cold calls, TV commercials, radio commercials, etc. Check out this great short video that explains how Press Releases work "In Plain English" -by Common Craft for PRWeb.

Here's a list of PR websites- some are Free, some have a cost.

PRWeb
WebWire
eWorldWire
BusinessWire
Free-Press-Release
InternetNewsBureau
MarketWire
PRNewsWire
PressReleaseNetwork

If you find any other good ones, leave them below!

Google Chrome Review

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 21:26:00 GMT

Google jumps into the fierce browser wars with Chrome. My first impressions...

More...

Keep Your Website Visitors Longer pt 2

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 23:40:00 GMT

So now people are going to your site. However from your Analytics (Site stats) you're seeing that people are leaving after the 1st page (Bounce rate). Or, they're spending mere seconds on your site instead of the hours that you'd like. Here are some more tips to keep them on your site longer.

How well do your pictures relate to the page on which they exist? Are they clear or grainy? A nice picture will serve a couple of functions. It'll break up a page full of text and it'll give the visitor a hint whether the page has the info they're looking for.
Do your links look like links (colored AND/OR underlined) and are they well defined? People don't read web pages, they scan them for the info they're looking for. Their eyes go to links so make sure they contain the most important keyword of the page they're sending your visitors to. (#7: See Jakob Nielsen's Top Ten Guidelines for Homepage Usability.
Don't use your industry jargon. Don't put "Muscle Hypertrophy" on a Personal Training website, when you can put "Muscle Gain" and mean more to so many more people.
The most important thing for keeping people on your site... Have good content!!

Here's a question to ask yourself: Would one of your clients continually go to your website?