Jetting Blogs

5 B2B Social Media Winners

Posted by BlogPostman under Blog Marketing, Pay-Per-Click

Take a moment to think about, and count, the number of B2C social media success stories that pop into your head. I’ll venture to guess that you could immediately name five to 10, if not many more. From Ford to Dell to Zappos to Best Buy , B2C social media winners – those organizations that caught on early and created a cult following of brand cheerleaders via the social web – are hard to miss. But how about the B2B social media winners? I’m guessing these weren’t as easy to name. And yet, there are just as many B2B organizations successfully conquering social media. While their stories might not be as well-known, we think these 5 B2B social media winners are doing a pretty doggone good job. Tell us if you agree. 1. American Express OPEN American Express OPEN is the company’s division dedicated to helping small business owners succeed. It has based its marketing strategy around the social web, realizing that social media has become a priority for small business owners. Since 2007, AMEX OPEN has relied on its OPEN Forum to provide business advice and insight. The social site includes a blog with frequently updated content, and a large collection of videos that users can rate and share via other social networking channels. In the site’s “Idea Hub,” forum members can network with one another and with industry experts, as well as customize topics to their specific interests. The social site has been extremely successful, increasing unique visitors 525% over the past year – from 160,000 in December 2008 to nearly 1 million in December 2009. 2. HSBC To target business entrepreneurs and provide them with an active forum to share and gain knowledge, HSBC has created The HSBC Business Network for both customers and non-customers. It’s evident that the HSBC Business Network truly thrives on its members. The site includes a network of blogs, and invites members to create their own blog to share their personal experiences with other entrepreneurs. Currently, the network is made up of 148 blogs from members. The site’s homepage is populated with content from users: the most popular recent blog post, forum post and user profile. 3. Microsoft Advertising Microsoft Advertising has been using social media as a vehicle to listen to, educate, support and market to their customers and potential customers since 2006. However, the past year has seen a distinct effort from Microsoft to reach customers through social web participation. An adCenter Community site as well as blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook presence, videos, photos and social media coverage of industry events along with proactive listening and community manager participation have been instrumental for growing the adCenter community and providing customers with an opportunity to be involved with how Microsoft does business with them. Here’s a white paper (pdf) by Mel Carson of Microsoft Advertising that documents their foray into social media as a B2B company. Great insights. 4. Archer The social media strategy for Archer Technologies, provider of risk and compliance solutions, and a 2009 Forrester Groundswell Award winner for B2B social media, revolves around two components. First, the Archer Community is an online social network that gives customers a forum to interact, share best practices and provide feedback to help drive Archer product development. The second component is the Archer Exchange (pictured above), an online marketplace that enables clients to download applications developed by other clients or by Archer. The two social sites have been successful at driving website traffic and attracting new members: The Archer Community receives 20 new members, 4,000 unique visits and 400+ downloads every week, while the Archer Exchange boasts 17,000 unique visits, 90,000 page views and 1,200 downloads. But the real benefit has been enhanced product development as a result of user feedback and sharing. Archer tells Forrester that its Archer Community directly helped form its Business Continuity Management, Mobile GRC and Data Feed Manager applications. 5. Cree LED Manufacturer Cree is embracing social media to build awareness and promote the benefits of LED technology, rather than directly sell products. At the center of its latest campaign, “ LED Revolution ,” is an interactive social website. On the site, visitors can submit their bad lighting photos (think bad 1980s office fluorescent lighting) to win LED recessed downlights. The site’s blog is posted to almost daily, and humorous videos encourage visitors to, “Break Your Fluorescent Shackles!” Cree also leverages Facebook and Twitter in a push/pull approach for the website. Hear from Ginny Skalski, Cree social media specialist — who happens to have a background in journalism and community management rather than marketing – in this video on the Social Media B2B blog. Of course, these five B2B social media winners are only part of a much longer list of companies that are successfully interacting with customers, building brand awareness and driving traffic to their websites through the social web. What are your favorite B2B social media success stories?

7 Answers to News SEO Questions You Should Know

Posted by BlogPostman under Pay-Per-Click

Recently I was invited to give a basics webinar on optimizing news content  for search.  The intersection of search and PR/communications are obviously something quite familiar and while I’ve done several such presentations with our client PRWeb , I had not done one with Search Engine Watch before. The outcome exceeded all expectations thanks to the excellent promotions by PRWeb and SEW plus Mike Grehan’s smooth handling of moderator duties amidst technical difficulties. Over 7,000 people registered, there were over 400 questions and 650 Tweets using the #prweb hash tag during the webinar. The way it goes with many webinars when you’re invited by an organization to participate, is that the topic and title/description are determined beforehand. The speaker adapts themselves to that.  This presentation content focused on optimizing writing for the web with a particular emphasis on optimizing content common to public relations. As promised, I’ve sorted the bulk of the questions out and will present several here along with my responses. I hope they are useful. If I’m not currently optimizing my site and I have a limited budget, where do I start? The first thing any marketing activity needs to start with include setting goals, understanding your audience and the market. The lowest cost method of outsourcing that kind of activity where search engine optimization is concerned, would be to hire a consultant or agency to do an audit. An SEO audit represents the initial evaluation and research along with recommendations to be implemented by the client. Typically this involves: competitive research, keyword research, web site code/template evaluation, content optimization recommendations, link building research and recommendations, tips on content creation/promotion/repurposing and to varying degrees, social media recommendations. Web analytics, monitoring and ranking tools are also often recommended. An audit does not take the place of consulting since it’s an evaluation and recommendation, not implementation and guidance on an ongoing basis. It is however, a cost effective start. Here are a few resources: Top 3 Tactics To Improve Search Engine Rankings Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide Do’s and Don’ts of On-Page SEO for Public Relations 5 Online Marketing Resolutions for 2010 Should your newsroom blog be placed under the site’s domain, or maintained separately under the blog software’s domain to allow for incoming links to your main site that are coming from a different site? There are two parts to the answer for this question. First, the reference to “blog software’s domain” sounds as though the blog is hosted with a third party service such as blogger.com or typepad.com. Example:  yourblog.blogspot.com or yourblog.typepad.com My advice is to avoid using third party hosting services for your blog. If you’re too invested in such a service or have other reasons for using them and cannot use something like WordPress installed on the server where your web site is hosted, then use domain aliasing options so that your blog URL is part of your company domain name or a domain name that you own. Example:  yourblog.com or yourblog.companydomainname.com. This puts you in a position of more control since the blog content lives under a domain name you own vs a domain like blogspot.com, which is owned by Google. While links from your blog/newsroom hosted on a blogspot.com to your company web site do count as inbound links, there’s not as much value from many links to your site from one other site vs many links to your site from many other relevant web sites. Which leads us to the second part answer to where the newsroom should be hosted. My preference is to host the newsroom either as a sub-domain or a sub-directory of the main company web address. Example:   newsroom.redcross.org or in the case of TopRank, it’s  toprankmarketing.com/newsroom/ The links that you attract from other relevant web sites to your newsroom pages will build PageRank back to the rest of your web site. This is more true with the subdirectory than the subdomain. Also, keeping your newsroom address as part of your company web site address is useful for branding and user experience. Some advice on subdomains and subdirectories from Matt Cutts of Google and here’s a good post discussing the SEO pros/cons. Should you post press releases on your own website (before distribution)? How do search engines deal with the duplicate content issue in this case? If you’re a publicly traded company, publishing financial announcements need to happen on the wires first, or at least at the same time as publishing the press release on your own web site.  For other companies not constrained by such requirements, posting a release to your own site first is fine. As for dealing with duplicate content when your press release is published on your own site as well as on the wire service, it’s a pretty common situation. In fact, it’s often a goal for companies that distribute their releases through a newswire service to get as many other sites to copy and republish the release as possible. If the release is properly optimized, each time another web site with a unique domain name publishes a copy, it creates a link back to whatever web page on your corporate site you’re trying to draw attention to.  This sends more traffic and can affect the search ranking of the destination page. A long standing problem with situations where the same content is hosted on different domain names has been debated and worried about by many, many webmasters. Search engines like Google don’t like to show multiple copies of the same content in the same search results. It’s not a good user experience. Therefore, when duplicate copies of the same content are detected, Google likes to pick a canonical version and only show that one. Duplication with press releases is quite common because of distribution on wire services and to influence search engines to rank a certain version of your press release, there are a few steps you can take. One piece of advice many webmasters try to follow is to publish the release on your own site so Google crawls it there first.  However, if there are more links to another version of the same release hosted elsewhere, the other copy might be perceived as deserving to rank in search results instead. For more tips on how to deal with duplicate content in a press release situation, watch this video interview with Adam Lasnik of Google that I took at SES London. Adam offers advice on making sure copies of your content attribute the source and all link back to the original to provide Google information about what version is canonical. Is it useful to submit Press Releases to Social Media sites in addition to submitting to PRWeb.com? Deciding what to share on social media sites should take into account what types of content members of the social community are best responding to.  Press Releases are often formal marketing communications, not exactly conversational. As you understand the community you’re trying to reach with the press release, you should know whether it’s appropriate to share a press release with them in a social media setting. The big mistake many marketers and PR professionals make is to register with a variety of social network, news and bookmarking sites and then self submit, vote and rate their own press releases without having ever participated in the community.  With no network paying attention to what you’re sharing, few will ever notice the press release. If you do have a network on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg and others, then you will know first hand whether it would be acceptable to the community to share content in a press release format. Outside of social media news release, your best bet to take advantage of social media distribution of a press release would be to make it easy for the press release to be saved, shared and submitted by interested readers. You can do this with widgets or plugins offered by ShareThis and similar services. Many wire services already support those features as well.   Additionally, you should monitor pickups of the release on the social web. If you see someone submit or share a release you’ve sent out on a social media site, reach out and thank them, answer any questions and show interest. That can generate interest from others in the community.  One tip I recommend is to write a blog post version of the press release and share that content with social media communities. Then include a link to the full press release within the blog post for people that want more information. What you should not do is treat social media sites as a place to dump press release content thinking it will get a lot of exposure because there are many members of the community.  Here are some additional newsroom SEO tactics . What is a good Social Media approach for a company which generates little in the way of genuinely newsworthy material? Companies that say they have nothing “newsworthy” to publish are more common than you might think. There may be deeper issues to deal with than a social media strategy if there’s nothing new, innovative or unique to talk about.  A good social media marketing program cannot fix a broken business. A business exists to make money fulfilling unmet customer needs. A perspective to consider would be to take the focus off the company and put it on the customer. Use social web participation as a way to better listen with and connect with customers to find opportunities to serve them better. Develop relationships with influentials and encourage feedback. Innovation can certainly come from a customer base as can the spread of a great idea. Focus on connecting with customers and helping customers connect with each other in a social context and there may be more newsworthy material than you ever expected. Here are a few useful resources on Social Media and PR: Improve Public Relations with SEO & Social Media Why Use Social Media For Public Relations 3 Steps for Effectively Using Social Media For PR There are so many shady SEO people and firms – how do you pick a good one? There are no more “shady” SEO people than there are “shady” clients. Professionals that provide effective SEO consulting are reputable, experienced and in my experience, probably more talented than most traditional marketers you’ve ever worked with.  People doing shady things in the name of SEO are NOT professionals and the absence of that word, professionals, in the question is the problem. Picking a good consultant or agency means doing homework. Know your market, set goals, understand your competition in search and start asking for referrals from others who have hired SEO companies. Word of mouth is powerful both for companies that need to hire good SEOs and for good SEOs to attract business. Our agency, TopRankMarketing.com for example, has relied mostly on word of mouth to attract new business since 2001. We also get a lot of new business from search itself (practice what you preach) and from networking on and offline. Here are a few resources on hiring a SEO and one on “shady” SEO: How to Hire a SEO Firm – According to Google 5 Tips on Hiring and Getting the Most Value from SEO Consultants Dear Fox News: SEO Is Not Search Engine Scamming (Unless You’re Scamming Yourself) Part of the issue is demand.  Take the next question for example: “Can you use article spinning software to publish Press Releases? Or is there an Press Release spinning software to create many press releases based on one press release? Other words, is there a difference between article marketing and press releases?” Article spinning software for press releases? Demand for shortcuts, silver bullets and “we want everything now” helps create the shady side of SEO as opportunists take advantage.  Automatically generating garbage pages in press release format will help NO ONE. That’s it for this round of questions. I’ll post another round next week. Thank you to PRWeb and Search Engine Watch for having me participate on the webinar. What are your questions about optimizing news content? If you’d like even more in-depth information about SEO and Public Relations , AND you happen to live in the Louisville, Kentucky area, be sure to check out the event Social Media Club Louisville is having next Tuesday night, Feb 16th.

Pay Per Click Landing Page Tips

Posted by under Pay-Per-Click

A lot of business websites have poorly-optimized pages that are supposed to sell or entice people. As much as there are lots of businesses doing pay-per-click, there is also a disturbing level of landing page quality until now. The measurement of quality is how well your landing page performs in terms of conversion – how many sales or a leads do you generate through your page? To help you avoid making the same mistakes, here are eight tips on landing page optimization. 1. Use Main Keyword or Search Term in your Title tag or Heading Make the reader feel that they are in the correct page. To put the main keyword or search term used to land on your page gives them the idea that they are not being misled. This also encourages them to read more. 2. Quick Page Loading Time Don’t waste your paid clicks on bounce rates. Prevent people from getting out of your page because your landing page loads like a turtle. Avoid putting too much graphics or videos that are not engaging or necessary to your purpose. In a matter of 2 to 3 seconds, the landing page must be ready for the visitor. 3. Focus on your main offer Be faithful to your initial offer shown in your ad. Focus your page around a single call to action, such as a free eBook or demo. Avoid the temptation to include extraneous company information, or other offers that can distract your readers. 4. Let Your Visitors Know What To Expect after your landing page You should let your visitors know what’s going to happen after they leave your page. Inform them early whether they will be led to a check-out page, or if they are going to receive an email. Tell them exactly and specifically what will happen. An example would be “Click here to go to our secure check out page where you can enter your shipping details.” 5. Display Trust and Security Brand, trust and security icons as well as testimonials deliver confidence messages that can have a tremendous impact on conversion. Despite the fact that we are about 10 years into the commercial web, users on even the largest sites and brands in the world are influenced by these messages and images. People are still sceptical so go for the Verisign and eTrust logo. 6. Make Your Content Simple and Easy to Scan People don’t read landing pages, they scan them. Write in bullets, if you can. Be sure your copy sells your offer when someone scans just the first three words of each bullet or paragraph. Write your keywords in bold. Use simple words – they must be easy to understand. 7. Place High Value on Whitespace Since users do not read all the text on a web page, they keep only certain elements that they use to make a decision if the page is relevant to their goal or not. Clean use of space allows users to scan and absorb key messages easily. 8. Use Call To Action Make sure you are telling your visitors exactly what to do and/or what their options are. Make instructions clear and simple as if you were telling a 4th grader how to do it. Never rely on your visitors to figure things out on their own. Call to action buttons must be prominent – ideal if you put it on the upper fold of the page set on the left – eye movement goes like the letter ‘Z’. Also have your call to action links placed repeatedly on strategic places on your pay per click landing page. Acidgreen is one of the leaders in the web design and development of contemporary web sites and online business solutions. We specialise in creating websites that convert visitors into leads. Our PPC Packages are based on our experience accumulated over the years ranging from packages for small businesses through to major corporations. Website: http://www.acidgreen.com.au/pay_per_click_advertising.html Article Source

See the rest here:
Pay Per Click Landing Page Tips