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Social Media Strategy Before Tactics

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:34:04 +0000

It’s a debate that’s more common than you might think. Strategy or Tactics first when it comes to social media? Many companies approach their participation on the social web tentatively, picking a popular tool like Twitter, Facebook or for the more adventuresome, a blog. The exercise of setting up and populating a profile, friending others and seeing what happens is akin to the proverbial “throw spaghetti against wall to see if it sticks” school of marketing. There’s a time and place for tactics, for strategy and for experimentation. I think it’s perfectly reasonable for a company to test certain channels without a broad corporate wide commitment to being more social. However, that effort should be guided by smart analysis of audience, tools and with the aid of goals and measurement methodology. Without a plan, social media efforts often fail, waste time, money and detract from the brand experience. There’s plenty of room for discussion on this topic so I reached out to over 40 friends, collegues and others in my social network to get their opinion. Responses include a great mix of insights, metaphors and analogies from the likes of: Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, Katie Payne, Peter Kim, Debbie Weil, David Meerman Scott and many more social media smarties. Does social strategy need to come before tactics? (in order received): Say you want to build a house. You survey the site. You assess your needs: do you want a one-room cabin, or a sprawling mansion? How many rooms? Should any serve specialized functions? How many bathrooms are necessary? Pool? Garden? Once you’ve answered these (and more) questions, it’s time to go out and buy bricks, lumber, hammers, nails, windows and all the other stuff you need to get your house built. Not before. After all, how do you know what you’ll need if you don’t even know if you’re building a ranch house or a stone cottage? Same thing in social media. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, FourSquare, Digg, delico.us, blogs and all the rest are tools in your arsenal. A means to an end, not an end in themselves. Sure, most are “free,” but “free” comes at a cost: time, effort, ideas and commitment. This isn’t chicken-or-egg. You need strategy before tactics. How else could you possibly know what tactics to implement? Rebecca Lieb – Blog Vice President, North America Econsultancy Author, The Truth About Search Engine Optimization “What it comes down to is asking the question ‘How do you define success?’. Tactics don’t answer that question. Strategy does. Sure, you can measure tactics, but without a strategy, there’s no benchmark. You can’t confidently say your program has succeeded if you don’t have a clear snapshot of what success looks like.” Jessica Smith – JessicaNow VP Digital and Global Co-Chair WOM Fleishman-Hillard The majority of the market still suffers from “bright and shiny object syndrome.” Is it any wonder that they’re still struggling to figure out a Return On the their social media Investment? Ultimately a solution in search of a non-existent problem or a tactic in search of a strategy will only underwhelm, underdeliver and fail to deliver any real, long term and sustainable impact which is consistent with social media being activated correctly. Joseph Jaffe – Jaffe Juice Chief Interruptor Powered Author, Flip the Funnel There are so many outlets for social media that it is imperative to have a solid strategy before acting unilaterally in the space. If you make a mistake on a simple project, you only affect your company and the client. However, if you make a mistake in some social media space, it is potentially in front of thousands. There are so many different strategies you can carry out in social media, that it is imperative to have your whole team on board and in alignment. We have project planning every quarter for a day and then act on that plan the rest of the quarter. However the social media project is an ongoing discussion where we spend more time on strategy than we do acting. We are constantly revisiting what is going on with the major outlets. Brett Tabke Founder, WebmasterWorld & Pubcon With new ‘tools/tactics’ launching every 2.7 seconds, or so it seems, the social media world over flows with options. It can be overwhelming to both novice and experienced social media marketer. Strategy First helps you identify which are the best opportunities to put into play to achieve your goals. You do have goals? Oh, that’s another conversation. Toby Bloomberg Diva Marketing Blog Strategy before tactics on Social Media is equivalent to diving into a pool before looking to see if there is water let alone the depth to handle such. If you don’t spend the time, you knock out your two front teeth and be reticent to ever get in the pool again. And as we all know, this is a pool worth swimming in. Aaron Kahlow – Online Marketing Connect CEO Online Marketing Connect : Online Marketing Summit & Institute The only thing true about online marketing – and by extension, social media – is that the tools always change. Three years ago, MySpace was king. 10 years ago, Yahoo! had 67% of the search market. A “strategy” that is based on tactical execution isn’t a strategy at all, it’s a recipe for playing a constant game of catch up. The trick is to focus on how you’re going to be social, not where you’re going to do social media. Jay Baer Founder, Convince & Convert If there was an upside to last year’s down economy, it was the fact that it encouraged many big brands to dip their toes in the likes of Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. While experimentation in these social outposts was initially a good thing, doing so without an overarching strategy ultimately risked works against the brand in the long run. Imagine the chaos that might ensue if a company’s traditional distribution channels — phone, web and physical stores — didn’t align. Similar risks lurk below the surface of the social web if brands’ messaging and CRM capabilities don’t coordinate… except on the social Web, customers have an ability to tell their 200+ friends with the click of a button. Aaron Strout – Citizen Marketer 2.1 CMO Powered Social media without strategy is like cooking without a recipe. Sometimes it works but sometimes its disaster. With a recipe, at least you know what ingredients to have before you get started. Along the way it’s great to improvise to make it your own but without at least a plan, you end up wandering aimlessly. Julie Roehm Marketing Strategy Consultant How about research before strategy before tactics??? In social media you have to understand what is going on in your marketplaces and what people are saying BEFORE you jump in. It’s the old “don’t ask a social media expert if you should blog or Tweet, ask your customers first” — Once you know where the market is going, THEN you need to fit your organizational goal into the reality of the marketplace and see what kind of strategy might be effective. The last thing you need is tactics and tools. Katie Delahaye Paine – Blog CEO KDPaine & Partners, LLC The C-Suite talks strategy, not tactics. And you are going to need their support if you even want ’social’ to take root in the soul of the enterprise. You don’t need to re-invent the wheel when it comes to social strategy – borrow one if you need to. How could you go wrong with a strategy like: make listening to the voice of our community/customers central to how we make decisions as an organization. David Alston – Community Instinct VP Marketing & Community Radian6 Tactics don’t take into account the customer need. They typically center around “doing something viral” or “doing social” or “creating a community.” Good social strategy forces you to understand and realize that if you don’t solve a real customer need with your actions, you’re already forgotten. Steve Bendt – Blog Senior Marketing Manager, Social Media Microsoft Why strategy before tactics? A better question might be why do marketers shoot first and ask questions later? First, unlike other marketing tactics, the barrier for entry into social media is very low, so a lot of marketers think they can just jump in and base their strategy “later” upon a hollow number first achieved. They think this is data. There is this false perception that social media is black and white and its effectiveness is based on hard numbers. i.e. followers, subscribers and friends. That might be somewhat true but it reminds me of the early days of web analytics, when web traffic was measured on a “hit” and not much else. Sure we can measure followers, friends and subscribers but that’s merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Marketers in social media think they can measure their activity and effectiveness by looking at social media’s hard numbers, meaning they are measuring a gross aggregate number and associating it with “marketing” and effectiveness all in the same breath. A tactic first approach in social media avoids answering the questions “Why?” and “What For?” Movement for the sake of motion in social media doesn’t mean effectiveness. Marc Meyer - Direct Marketing Observations Dir.of Social Media and Search, Principal DRMG The tactics are just tools and most are easy to learn. What’s tough is the 1st step in a social strategy: adopting the social media mindset Debbie Weil – Blog Author, The Corporate Blogging Book Using social media without a strategy is like writing your message on a paper airplane and aiming it out a window. Before you start engaging with customers you need to be prepared with what your goals are. Determine who your audience is, plus where and how to reach them. Most importantly you need a plan for how you will monitor the converation, respond to feedback and funnel it back into the company so you can be continuously improving. Jennifer Cisney – 1000 Words Chief Blogger and Social Media Manager Kodak Why should social strategy come before tactics? Because you don’t ask a girl to marry you before you ask her on a date. Because Chevy doesn’t manufacture hoods before they design a car. Because you fill sandbags before a flood. While it’s tempting to sign up for Facebook, Twitter, [choose your social networking flavor of the month], just to “be there,” it’s critical to define your measurable objectives, test the waters, develop a strategy, and define evaluative criteria before jumping into the deep end of the social pool. Without solid strategy driving tactics, companies can find themselves questioning ROI, making significant missteps, or worse, annoying or offending stakeholders in both the long and short term. Greg Swan – Perfect Porridge Digital Strategy Director Weber Shandwick “Why strategy before tactics when it comes to social media?”… …because the payoff of a strategic approach to social marketing is effectiveness. As this chart shows, marketers in the strategic phase of social marketing maturity are much more likely to report that their social media programs are “very effective” at achieving objectives than are their counterparts in the tactically-oriented trial phase. Sergio Balegno Research Director MarketingSherpa I call Social Media w/ out tactics Zombie Media : Social Media w/ No Brains . Any marketing needs strategy before tactics not just social media. You use marketing tactics to drive a business outcome. If you’re expected to measure contribution to the business you need a strategy. If you haven’t defined that outcome (Goals) or how you’ll achieve that outcome (Strategy) then how do you expect to measure the result of your marketing? Developing strategy doesn’t have to be a complicated exercise. It can be simple and fluid. Tac Anderson – New Comm Biz Social Media Director Waggener Edstrom You simply can’t tell if you’re doing well or not if you don’t know what you’re trying to do. You don’t need social media for social media’s sake, you need it for business’ sake. Laura Fitton CEO/Founder oneforty.com & Pistachio Consulting Author, Twitter for Dummies If you’ve ever had an ounce of question as to where and how to start social networking (on or offline), I’d ask you what does your data say? Jumping into a social environment and starting to engage is like crashing a wedding reception and trying to network with everyone there. You might make some friends (and enemies) along the way, but are you really engaging with an audience that 1) is useful for you to engage with and 2) wants to engage with you? Most companies will put up a giant megaphone to the internet and “listen” to the conversations, spending time finding out where people are talking about the things they care about first – for 6 months and longer. This allows you to determine where people are talking about the things you care about (your brand assets and relevant topics), what they are saying, who’s saying it, and how they feel about it. With that type of insight, you can more effectively determine a social networking strategy, engaging targeted networks and people with a specific message or goal. Laura Lippay - Lip Service Founder, Online Visibility Ex-Yahoo Marketing Director & Ringling performer “Social-media strategy” is over-rated if not a downright oxymoron. The goal is to do more business. Social-media is a means to that end. Maybe you’ll use it to establish warm and fuzzy communal feelings. Maybe you’ll sell excess inventory. Don’t focus on some kind of high-level strategy because no one really knows how to use social media yet. Focus on tactics: Get more followers, make them happy, promote your stuff to them every once in a while. That’s all you need to know about strategy right now. Guy Kawasaki – Blog – Alltop Social Media Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures Author, Reality Check & 8 Other Books The most important aspect of strategy is to focus on your buyers and not your own ego. Only then can you create the tactics that reach people in an authentic way and that they are eager to consume. David Meerman Scott – Web Ink Now Author, World Wide Rave and The New Rules of Marketing & PR Why social strategy should come before tactics: “You might feel comfortable leaving for vacation and just driving until you get tired of driving, but would you do that with your business? Without a strategy, goals, objectives and measures for success, you’re just going for a ride.” Jason Falls Founder, Social Media Explorer Would you pick up a phone and randomly dial 10-digits? Unless you’re prank calling, probably not. (Darn you, caller ID). The phone is a tool for communication, just like social media is a tool. Before making a phone call, sending a tweet or launching a blog, strategy is essential. It will guide the decisions you make, the platforms you use and how you interact. Sarah Evans Founder, Sevans Strategy Strategy before tactics means, essentially, think before you talk. In other words, in any social-media effort for marketing or other business purposes, it’s important to do a gut check. What is your corporate culture? Who are you? This leads to other key questions: What do you want to say? What do you seek to accomplish using social media? what are the ground rules, the map to follow? This doesn’t have to be a 500-page manual or anything, but do look before you leap. Julio Ojeda-Zapata – Your Tech Weblog Technology writer and columnist at St. Paul Pioneer Press Author, Twitter Means Business Having a social strategy before jumping into tactics is imperative for long-term success. Short term tactics are okay for brands who are just testing the waters, but having a strategy will a help a brand think more holistically about becoming a social business rather than a business who can sometimes be social. Having a strategy will force brands (or small business) to think about culture change from within the organization which is required to transform into a social business. It will also help brands determine how to effectively integrate social into everything a brand does in their communications arsenal (web, PR, outdoor, retail, customer support, channel, B2B). Michael Brito – Britopian VP Social Media Edelman Digital The most succinct argument would be to quote Louis Carol’s Cheshire cat: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” You really need to know why you want to use social media and which tools are best suited to meeting that objective. A good start is to know where, on social media, your customers hang out and what you can give them by joining their activities. This depends on which objectives you have in mind. It can be sales, lead generation, support, feedback, new ideas. So many things can be achieved in social media. If you know what your goals are they will shape the tactic. Conversely, if all you want to do is get your feet wet, then I would advise you to get yourself a wading pool. Shel Israel – Global Neighborhoods Author of Twitterville and Co-Author of Naked Conversations Putting strategy ahead of tactics is a must for just about anything, but especially social media marketing. The problem seems to be so much confusion around what the word strategy actually means — a strategy is not a timeline or a goal, even though these elements are often included in what people refer to as a strategy document. The actual strategy piece is the spirit with which you approach others and engage with them. Engagement is not a strategy, but a high level tactic. HOW you plan to engage is strategic. Strategy also doesn’t ask about ROI, but about how you plan to win. Proponents of social media often “get” the strategy piece in an intuitive way, but that means they don’t always empathize well with those who don’t. The result is poorly articulated strategies centered around a single trendy tactic. Initiatives like this may be easy to launch, but they’re typically not very successful. Shannon Paul – Very Official Blog Community and Social Media Manager PEAK6 Online Strategy needs to drive tactics, as companies first need to know where they’re going before they figure out how to get there. A lot of roads can get a brand from point A to B, but a good strategy will help selection of the optimal route, as well as how to respond if setbacks are encountered along the way. I can see where some people might recommend tactics first when it comes to social technologies – the space moves quickly and new opportunities emerge weekly. This actually reinforces the need to have a good strategy in place to evaluate and experiment with possibilities within frameworks that drive towards business goals. Peter Kim – Being Peter Kim Managing Director, North America Dachis Group It’s a bit like baking a cake. Tactics are the ingredients that deliver the strategy. Decide on what kind of cake you want to bake first and why. If you dive straight into the ingredients and get the balance wrong, you could end up with a very bad taste in your mouth. Mel Carson – UK Internet Marketing Blog Community Manager Microsoft Advertising Why do you put social media strategy before tactics? There is the standard cliche about making sure that you have blueprints before you build your house, but here’s a bit of a different take. As you achieve some initial success, you’ll soon have other business units asking “How did you do that?” and “How can we be part of that?” If you don’t have an agreed upon strategy things can get messy rather quickly. Having a strategy developed before tactics helps you manage the growth of your program. Also, working with different business units to develop a strategy in advance of tactics also helps with buy-in and keeps internal political battles and communication breakdowns from derailing your efforts. Josh Hallett – Hyku Blog Director, Voce Connect Voce Communications In practical terms, you want to know where you’re going so you can get there. Every resource you expend in business needs to be justified. Everything worth doing needs to be measured. Social media is no different. It may be a great way to share useful content in places where your customers spend time to generate interest for further actions. And it can provide powerful business intelligence back, straight from the people who buy your products and services. However, to capitalize on all of that, your process needs to tie all your activities together — the information sharing, the intelligence gathering, the communications, content creation, and anything else that happens in between. All activities aligned with and in support of the business. Without a strategy and goals, you won’t know how you’re going to measure results and won’t be able to answer the “so what” question. For example, we have 2,000 followers on Twitter. So what? Are they in our base or just robots? Why are we on Twitter? What are we going to tweet? And so on. Today many companies are working on optimizing social media, moving away from tactical approaches and working on the business alignment part. Tomorrow, we will hopefully see the ultimate strategy, which is that to optimize the business for social. Valeria Maltoni , ABC Brand Strategist Conversation Agent I have a very short answer when someone asks me why strategy should come before tactics. Having your strategy in place, with your objectives set, usually means not having to go back and fix everything that you rushed to develop in your communications program. You must know the “why” part first, before you build anything, and use a listening strategy to determine early on what tactics will actually be successful with the people you want to reach. The strategy first approach saves time and doesn’t waste valuable resources. Deirdre Breakenridge – Juicy Bits Blog President, Executive Director of Communications Mango! Creative Juice Co-Author, Putting the Public Back in Public Relations & PR 2.0 Strategy is the path one intends to take to reach a certain goal. Using only tactics in social media is like picking up the phone and dialing random people before you’ve even decided if the call is for a sale or customer service. The tools are there to serve the goal, and certain tools improve certain strategies. Starting the other way around is just asking for pain. Chris Brogan – Blog President, New Marketing Labs Co-Author, Trust Agents The primary reasons businesses flounder with their social media integration is a) not clearly identifying their target market and which social sites these prospects visit most, b) lack of clear, measurable objectives and c) lack of a solid strategy to achieve such objectives. Thing is, there’s so much peer and media pressure to “get on Facebook (and, now, get Facebook on your site!), get on Twitter, work on your blog, make videos.” But, for what purpose? What are you trying to achieve? By starting with the technology tactics piece first, you could be completely missing the mark and, in fact, might not even be building a presence where your target audience lives! Carving out time to architect a solid social strategy is vital for success in today’s uber noisy online world. Mari Smith Social Media Speaker & Trainer Author, Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day Strategy starts with understanding what unique values we bring. It requires an overarching mission and understanding of the climate, systems, current conditions, and the character and culture of the people involved. Strategy is a practical plan to analyze and advance a position over time through understanding human nature and making good decision. Tactics or campaigns are the methods for executing a strategy. Social media strategy has to come first. Without a strategic mission — to build a community to strengthen a brand — social tactics at best gather momentum then end without building something larger that people (the social) can believe in and belong to. Tactics may gather followers and fans, but strategy keeps them coming back and bringing their friends. Liz Strauss – Successful Blog Social Web Strategiest & Founder of SOBCon Tactics are fun, strategy is boring. Focusing on tactics, in social media as in business generally, in sport and other areas of human activity, appeals to people who like to get things done, action-oriented people. They say things like “ready, fire, aim!”. We need to have a bit of that in our approach, or we’ll never get anything done. But if we ignore strategy we have no way of managing the process intelligently, no way of measuring how we are going, no way of adjusting when circumstances change. Implementing a social media focused regime in business, going on Twitter, setting up a Facebook page, starting a blog, all without doing the hard yards on strategy, would be like trying to build a home without a blueprint: could be interesting, could get you on prime time television, but might not be livable. Two quotes from Sun Tzu, The Art of War: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” “All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.” Des Walsh – Blog Social Business Mentor Director The Webarts Company Strategy before tactics isn’t only relevant to social media it’s relevant for all aspects of business. Strategy should always be the backbone of anything you do. There’s no point in creating a presence on various social channels unless you have a very clear understanding of the business challenges you are looking to solve and an understanding of how you are going to solve them. Only then you can start to think about the tactics. What happened to Nestle recently is a great example of what happens when you put tactics ahead of strategy; it’s irresponsible, not accountable, and quite frankly stupid. Any company that puts tactics ahead of strategy will fail, and rightfully so. Jacob Morgan – Blog Principal of Chess Media Group Author of Twittfaced One of the biggest mistakes many people jumping into social media make is to focus on the tactical application of various social media platforms before creating their strategy. It is easy to get off track in social media, after all SM conversations vary dramatically day to day. By setting your goals and strategies before you start your outreaches, you ensure everything you do online includes your company branding, ensures your messages are delivered and can be easily tracked and measured. My rule of thumb? Determine your goals, write your strategies, create your program, measure and revise your strategies based on customer/consumer feedback. Serena Ehrlich – StartupArmy Blog EVP of Social Media, StartupArmy Corp Sec – Social Media Club I think strategy should come first because your goals for social media usage are more important than the tools. You pick the strategy/goals, then that tells you which tools will help you best execute that strategy. The alternative is to pick the tactics first, then you have to pick your strategy based on the chosen tools. That’s obviously a recipe for disaster. Mack Collier – The Viral Garden Social Media Consultant It drives me a little nuts when organizations jump on the “shiny new toy of the day” bandwagon without much forethought. Often this happens because someone influential within the organization has seen a competitor doing it, or because it’s getting “buzz” and they think that buzz will automatically rub off on them. On the other hand, I’ve also seen organizations resisting social technologies because of fear, ignorance or internal turf wars (who will “own” social?), regardless of how much these might help them achieve their strategic goals. You nailed it when you said companies need to “develop a strategic approach based on customer research and goals.” I don’t think you can keep your finger on the pulse of your customer and adjust your tactics successfully unless you’re working in the context of an overall strategy, one that is research-based and has goals and measurable objectives. Shonali Burke – Waxing UnLyrical Founder, Shonali Burke Consulting There are so many different tactics you can use, and some of them even conflict with each other. If you ignore the big picture goals and strategy, then in the best case you wasted time and money, in the worst case you moved your company backwards. Mike Volpe – Blog Vice President Inbound Marketing HubSpot I have to smile about this request since I meet brand marketers on a daily basis who want to start their efforts in social media by creating a facebook fan page, or worse, already have taken this into their own hands prior to thinking through best practices, resources and ongoing engagement…let alone strategy, KPIs, etc…! I’ve put this to a stop via corporate governance/guidelines, but am still playing the role of an educator. I’m also seeing venues vary by brand depending upon the existing discussion. Developing a social strategy is a complex process that stems from business goals and objectives; it involves embedding listening (both mining and monitoring) into the organizational culture. Tactics are the easy part that follow. Amy M. Lamparske Global Social Media Leader 3M Consumer & Office Brands In today’s world of digital marketing, things are moving at an intense speed – so quickly, in fact, that today’s platform du jour may be tomorrow’s digital refuse. Remember Friendster, Jaiku and Splashcast? Perhaps you do. Or not. They are sites that faded from relevance, got acquired or shut down completely. Or maybe you’re more conversant with the white label social platform Ning, which recently announced that it’s ending its free service. Think of the implications if you’ve built a number of online communities that depend on the site. If you’re putting tactics in front of strategy, then you’re probably out there building profiles and pages on social networks that could just as easily succumb to the same fate. In other words, you’re busy chasing trends instead of focusing on what’s core to your brand and building a sound strategy that will outlast every technology upheaval. For the leaders out there, instead of building your plan on the back of everyone else’s success, maybe you should focus a little more on building your own. Scott Monty – Blog Global Digital Communications Ford Motor Company Thank you to everyone that participated in this post. It’s a testament to the power of social connections and social technology. My request went out on Friday and it simply amazes me that so many, arguably very busy, people responded the same day and some over the weekend. What are your practical observations and opinions about social media strategy and tactics? Why do so many companies approach social web participation based on tools and metrics like friends/fans/followers versus establishing listening programs to analyze their market, influencers and develop a plan to reach and engage them? It might be a lack of trustworthy information, it might be that social technologies are so new to senior executives. We’d love to hear your perspective. As a postscript, a good number of the responses I received were shortened for this post. We are putting together a downloadable compilation of everyone’s Social Strategy Before Tactics response in full. It will be posted in the next week or so. Details will be tweeted from @toprank and @leeodden. © Online Marketing Blog , 2010. | Social Media Strategy Before Tactics | 10 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

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Social Media Strategy Before Tactics

Secret Keys And Techniques In Mastering The Art Of Google Adwords

BlogPostman — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 19:28:15 +0000

Nowadays more than ever, online advertising has seen the highest amount of traffic. There are literally hundreds of thousands of marketers and people advertising their products and other company products online. What separates one ad from another? Is it the more money you spend per click or per impression making your ad appear more often driving in more traffic? Could there be a secret key ingredient that allows you to show your ad more often, on the top of the pages, and for nearly the same price? I’m here today to tell you my friends there is. Google has recently changed there policy on how they critique your ad and its relevance to your capture page. Nearly 50,000 people have been banned from Google ad words for several reasons based upon their ad words in relation to their keywords, false advertising and promises, and unmatched domain names to their websites. It is prevalent that you listen to what I have to teach you that will allow you to master Google ad words at an expert level. The simple yet very affected techniques that I’m going to share with you have been taught to me from a past Google employee whose main objective was to critique ad words and keywords. Whenever you are making an ad for a particular website you want to include the website title in your keywords. Your actual keyword density should be 2% of your total words on your capture page. So if your capture page has 200 words, your main keyword should be present 4 to 5 times on your capture page. Marketers are always testing ads and capture pages to find which converts the best. I would highly recommend writing 2 ads per keyword. Each ad should contain tightly targeted ad groups. It is also important when creating ads you make one ad target search networks and the other target content networks. Search networks are all the sponsor ads that appear on the right side of the page when you Google a specific keyword. Content networks are found on people’s personal sites and not on Google’s search results. Keep in mind that content networks’ scan for themes in ad groups not individual keywords. The best way to test whether your ads are interrelated to your keywords is by looking at the quality score of your keyword. The quality score is calculated every time your keyword matches a search query. How your quality score is calculated can determine the positioning of your ad. The higher your quality score, the lower your costs and the better ad position. Quality scores are scored with a number 1 to 10, 10 being the very best. One of the easiest ways to increase your quality score is to simply use your keywords on your landing page. Your keyword needs to be prominently displayed on the page SEO, the title of your page should be one of the keywords, and on the meta. Meta is the actual title of the page, located on the very top of your browser. Always use multiple landing pages for your paid search campaign. A common mistake many marketers use one landing page for all their keywords which in the end leads to lower conversion rates and higher cost per click. Lastly, here are a few tips on an optimal landing page that they must all include for better quality scores. Include back-links to your landing page. It is important to have a link somewhere on your page that resorts back to your original page. For example, if you have written an article on a specific site, have your back-link take the customer to that article which would contain your URL that leads back to your landing page. Include a privacy page, an about us page, contact us, sitemap, terms and conditions, and even a blog if possible. Relevance between keyword and ad, keyword and landing page, and ad to landing page all play an important role in determining your quality score. Did you know you can save up to 30% in cost per click by having a quality score of 8 out of 10 or higher? Yes, you can be rewarded for impressing Google. With that said please use this knowledge to better your quality score, increase the positioning of your ads, and decrease your cost per click. “It’s not what you learn but what you remember that makes you wise.” - About the Author: To be apart of an organization that helps its members achieve wealth, develop high levels of emotional well-being, and much, much more visit http://www.accomplishedentrepreneurs.com Email: josh.accomplishedentrepreneurs@gmail.com Article Source

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Secret Keys And Techniques In Mastering The Art Of Google Adwords

Customize Your Items With Promotional Products

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 12:43:42 +0000

In a promotional industry , there are thousands of products to choose from where you can customize it using a logo or imprint. From apparels, office supplies, health care products, electronics, etc., business clients can choose to one of these products based on his or her preference. Small business owners can enjoy choosing the most affordable product so that they also have something to give away to their clients or customer. For example, they can choose the most affordable pen customized it with an imprint or logo making their business information at first hand. This is a very simple thing to do since pens do not need to be expensive, as long as the message on it can be seen and readable, and should also create awareness and curiosity to potential customers. Business clients normally use their logo and submit it to their promotional consultant so that they can get the artwork through electronic form for their approval. The colors must be an exact match as stated by clients. This artwork has to be approved by business clients before going into production. Sending the artwork to clients is just only a part of a process to ensure the accuracy of the information, so that it will not create any problem to business clients in the future. I would suggest you talk to a more experienced promotional products consultant because usually they advice any promotional ideas, and should go to any imprint methods appropriate for a chosen promotional products. They also know what is best to be customized and can advice which product can be excellent to work for your logo. They can also go from a supplier that can be trusted in terms of these promotional items so that in the future in will not create any hassle for their customer. Since there are more than 600,000 promotional gifts available, products can be chosen wisely to work for your logo or imprints. Several imprint methods are based on a product selected eligible for the type of imprint to choose from. For example, shirts can be imprinted in different methods. It can be silk screened, embroidered, four color process, and based on the type of shirts that client has chosen. Normally, embroidery method is used on polo shirts. Tees best work for a silkscreen method. On pens, depending on the type of pens, they usually use silkscreen or laser-engraved. In the advertising specialty, what promotional items set apart from any kinds of advertising is that, promotional giveaways use the five senses that people can see, hear, smell, taste or touch. It lasts long than the usual advertising method and these items can be passed from person to person making the business information at first hand. Small business owners can enjoy its benefits because promotional products are very affordable. They should only be creative and useful, and these giveaways create an impact or even a good image to your company. Promotional products work when used correctly and as long as it should be given to a right person, and these promotional items are not just only an ordinary giveaway to be handed out to anyone. At least, it should have a purpose. - About the Author: Julius Arevalo is a promotional products consultant with a five years experience in the promotional products industry. For more information, please visit the website address at http://saybasic.com . Article Source

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DoubleDutch: Foursquare for the Enterprise

BlogPostman — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:25:25 +0000

The buzz on geolocation marketing is hot. Recently Lawrence Coburn released the beta version of DoubleDutch, a platform for creating your own geolocation check-in app, ala Foursquare. I connected with Lawrence to ask more questions about DoubleDutch and to get tips for marketers that want to incorporate geolocation and review services into their online marketing. First, can you share a bit about yourself and your company RateItAll? We spoke on a panel several years ago at Pubcon and I remember that you have a great story about how your company started and really exploded with media attention. Sure, RateItAll is a story of endurance. I ran it out of a coffee shop for years (along with a number of other niche sites). By 2007 it had started to grow to a point that I couldn’t handle it by myself. It was making decent money, but I was struggling to keep the servers up. Mathew Spolin, our CTO joined us in 2008 and we were able to go out get a little funding for it. We now have a team of seven based in San Francisco’s Mission District. Congratulations on launching your new project, the iPhone App: DoubleDutch. I appreciate getting a pre pre alpha view of it and now you’re really added some great features – especially the ability to white label it. What prompted you to create DoubleDutch and how is it different than Foursquare and Gowalla? Lee, you were actually one of the first people to see DoubleDutch in the wild. We’re really excited about it – it has been called “Foursquare for the Enterprise” and “Ning for Mobile Social Networks.” We’re OK with both of those descriptions. We had been eying location based services for a long time. I was an obsessive user of Dodgeball (the SMS precursor to Foursquare). By the time 2009 SXSW rolled around, Mathew and I were determined to do something with location. We approached Foursquare to team up on a reviews + check-ins combo, but weren’t able to get their attention. So we set out to build the thing ourselves, leveraging RateItAll’s massive database of geo tagged data. Over the years we had signed a number of geo data partnerships, giving us a big advantage in entering the location fray. Our goal was to put together a collection of mobile, social components that could be remixed and customized by white label partners. In addition to the check-in functionality, some of our features include game dynamics (leaderboards, achievement stickers, and “Rockstardom,”), ratings and reviews, photo uploads, Facebook / Twitter integration, and many more. This app was in development for more than 6 months and we’re quite happy with how it turned out. Our big difference from Foursquare and Gowalla is in our emphasis on reviews. We think there is an endemic relationship between a social check-in and a review of a local business. Just as Amazon has been able to leverage sales data to convert more reviews than anyone else, we think that check-ins are the first step towards posting a review. We also believe strongly in the concept of “The community IS the social graph.” What I mean by this is that on public networks like Foursquare or Gowalla, you need to recreate your social graph for the apps to get any value from the service. Not so on a private network like DoubleDutch. You can imagine an app white labeled for a conference like Pubcon, in which every attendee could see the check in activity of other attendees. Think about what a boon this would be for networking – no more just heading to the lobby bar and hoping for the best. And because everyone was there for Pubcon, no friending would be required. Are widgets still sexy ? Of course! Just not as sexy as geo at the moment. In fact, I’m not posting much on Sexy Widget any more. I started a blog called Location Meme a few months ago with a friend. The folks at The Next Web took notice, and invited me to be an editor at that network’s Location blog , and that’s where I’m doing most of my writing now. Back to DoubleDutch. Not only is this a (another) geolocation iPhone app, but you’re offering companies or organizations the opportunity white label the DoubleDutch platform to create their own location-based iPhone app. Who is your target and how do you see them using it? What are your plans to make it competitive with the other apps out there that are already well entrenched? Our three target verticals right now are Conferences, Hotels, and Universities. We think that almost any community that is tied to a location could benefit from a location and knowledge sharing service, but we needed to narrow the universe down a bit. Conferences and Hotels are interesting because they typically are communities of people who are converging on a new city looking for recommendations and interaction. DoubleDutch helps on both counts. Universities are interesting because of their tie to a specific geography, and the demographic. You can check out some sample use cases on DoubleDutch.me. How does the Double Dutch app tie in to your main business, RateItAll? Great question. We are seeing signs that DoubleDutch has the potential to become our main business, with RateItAll taking a supporting role. RateItAll provides a tremendous foundation for the service, with its massive amount of geo tagged data, and its 4M+ reviews. Our server infrastructure is key as well as it allows us offer SLAs to our clients. Also, all check in, ratings, reviews, and photo activity is aggregated on RateItAll.com, making DoubleDutch another content collection channel. You were at SXSW, who won the geolocation prize there? Gowalla or Foursquare? I guess that’s a loaded question. What did they do right? Did you see any big mistakes? I think geolocation won the geolocation prize. Both those services got a big boost, but I think the whole space benefited from all the attention. At DoubleDutch, we are huge fanboys / fangirls of both services and wish them only the best. If you believe that Enterprise trails Consumer by two years (which we do), the faster that those services blaze the trail, the faster that DoubleDutch will grow. Please share 3-4 best practices and tips for companies that want to use geolocation based mobile apps to market their businesses? I think it really depends what kind of business you are. If you are a local business, you don’t really have to do much other than ensure that your address info is up to date on the mobile services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, and of course, RateItAll. If you are a bit more savvy / experimental, you can try offering discounts / giveaways to Foursquare Mayors, and try and incentivize your customers to check-in and push to Twitter / FB. If you are a big brand, perhaps it makes sense to try and cut a deal with Foursquare or Gowalla to sponsor some Badges. Lots of companies are cutting these sorts of deals, and it’s a good way to drop your brand into the experience of those apps in the context of the location game. But if you are a big community, it might make sense to use a service like DoubleDutch to create a more pervasive connection with your customers / members / employees and extend your community out into the real world. Social check in apps are not only fun, but they can be productive. We’re talking to companies with some pretty innovative ideas for putting geo to work – for example, a real estate company wants to put this app in the hands of their agents to encourage more property visits, and help those agents capture photos and thoughts about each property. We have been amazed at how creative some of these companies are. What about tips for marketing within the consumer reviews marketplace overall? How important is it for companies to be active, whether it’s editorially, through advertising or offline promotion with services like Yelp, Epinions or even RateItAll? I strongly recommend that businesses be active on the big review properties. Being active does not mean being confrontational and bullying – it means engaging thoughtfully with customers, even the insane and / or angry ones. If you suspect cheating, don’t call out the customer – go to the host site. Most of these services allow commenting and messaging – on RateItAll, which is the 9th biggest review site, we see a number of big brands on the site every day making use of the free tools like commenting and messaging to engage their customers. Some of those folks pay us for access to a few more tools, but you don’t need to have a budget engage your customers. One question I like to ask smart and busy entrepreneurs like yourself is: How do you stay current with technology and marketing? Do you have favorite events, books, blogs, networks or some kind of crystal RateItAll ball to keep you on top of what’s important for the future of your business? I read and write as much as I possibly can. Writing makes me smarter about a topic, because I don’t want to come off as a moron. It takes a lot of research to write a post. Sexy Widget was born out of my desire to get smart about widgets, and my role as Editor at the Next Web was born out my desire to get smart about geo. In terms of reading, I hit Techmeme and Hacker News all the time, and also get a lot of good links from Twitter. My two favorite blogs are AVC and CDixon.org . Living in San Francisco, I have access to a number of technology meetup type events – I try and hit a couple per month. There’s nothing better than talking to entrepreneurs, because for them, predicting the next big wave is life or death. I tend to listen to folks running companies more than I listen to journalists. Thanks Lawrence. You can download the Double Dutch app here. RWW did a great overview with screenshots here. Lawrence Coburn is the founder and CEO of RateItAll and co-founder of the white label geolocation app, DoubleDutch . In his spare time, he is an editor of The Next Web’s Location blog . Lawrence is also a mentor at Ventures.io , a San Francisco based technology incubator. © Online Marketing Blog , 2010. | DoubleDutch: Foursquare for the Enterprise | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

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Writing Ppc Ads That Get Most Click

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 09:36:59 +0000

I always research keywords first, and then write ppc ads thats the actual ad. If you find yourself setting up your AdWords Campaign before you have had time to write ads or do keyword research, then just create a bogus ad, and pause your Ad Group, so you can move on to the next step. You can return later to revise your writing ppc ads. In the keyword research, you grouped keywords into relevant groups. You’ll want to write ads for each of these groups of keywords. Then when you bid on keywords, you will specifically use those keywords in the ppc ad copy so that your ads correspond to the keywords in their respective Ad Group. Match your ad copy as closely as possible to the keywords in each family of keywords that are contained in individual Ad Groups.This will give your ads a higher relevancy score which will result in a lower cost per click. Google has some basic AdWords guidelines to consider while writing your ad. Your headline must be less than 25 characters (including spaces). You are given an additional 2 lines for text. Each line is limited to 35 characters (again including spaces). As you can see, you have a fairly limited space in which to entice your customers. Use it wisely! This is not the time to sell your product. This is the time to attract your customers, spark their interests and get the clicks. Your first eye catcher will be your headline. After your customer has clicked though your ad, the merchant site will list all the important features of their product or service. Get to know these features and ask yourself “How do these benefit the customer?” When writing ppc ads, don’t just think like an affiliate, but also think like a customer. Consider what brought the customers to your ad and what benefits they can gain from your product or service. Utilizing your keywords in your ad copy is one simple method to call attention to your customer’s interests and needs. If the customer reached your ad by typing in Tiffany Lamps then Tiffany Lamps in your ad will surely catch her eye. the more you load your ad with keywords from the ad group, the higher the relevancy score. Knowing that you are going to include keywords in your ad copy, begin writing your ad in sentence and/or paragraph form. State what it is your customer should know. Then reduce it and refine it. Get FREE 5-Day Course Gives You The Skinny On Google AdWords Via E-mail From Perry Marshall – About the Author: BILL ACHOLA WRIGHT writes Business Reviews programs to help online users to purchase the right program and to be full time and part time successful entrepreneur.Currently he is in the Internet marketing industry,where by he have developed the TOP BUSINESS MONEY MAKING PROGRAMS. Article Source

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The A To Z Of Wholesale Affiliate Programs, Every Term Explained

BlogPostman — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:36:11 +0000

Have you started to look online for ways to make money from home? Would you like to supplement your regular income, or perhaps even break away from the shackles of a 9-5 job completely? Then there’s a good chance you’ve come across the concept of being an affiliate before. Affiliates are essentially salespeople who get paid for sending somebody to a site/getting somebody to take an action on another website. This traffic can be generated from your own site or by taking part on forums and other portals. It’s a new type of business which has helped some people do very well for themselves Unfortunately, as with any new field it brings its own jargon with it. So lets take a look at this jargon and explain it in easy-to understand English. Affiliate As mentioned before, an affiliate is a person that puts links on the internet to direct traffic to particular websites. The affiliate then gets paid a comission when the customer buys something/completes an action. They can also be known as an Associate or Publisher) Affiliate Program Where a merchant (see below) allows affiliates, partners or associates to promote their products or services and pays the affiliate, partner or associate part of the money they make off sales. &nbspThis is done by the affiliate using an affiliate link (more about this later) to keep track of who they send to a site and allows the merchant to work out who to pay commissions to. This can also be known as an partner or associate program. Merchant This is a company that sell products or services and uses affiliates to generate traffic and sales. Affiliate Directory A site or company that keeps a database of different types of affiliate programs that affiliates can join. Affiliate directories are not organized as thoroughly as affiliate networks and once signing up for one affiliate program you are not automatically signed up for others. Affiliate Network This is a site or organization &nbspthat not only allows merchants to list their affiliate program/s there but also manages it so affiliates can take part in one or more programs easily. All the sales from multiple affiliate programs in an affiliate network are pooled into one affiliate network box. &nbspThis is usually paid every month. URL The ‘address’ of a website. It is what people type into their browser when they want to go to a particular site. Affiliate Link This is a special type of URL with a code unique to a particular affiliate (say awebsite.com/&M=18925) This code will stay on all links that a site visitor goes to, and when a purchase is made, will tell the merchant to pay a commission to the afilliate (aka associate/publisher) Banner Programs / advertisements This is a program/link generation system where the affiliate links are behind a merchant banner on the affiliate’s site. These banners tend to be graphical advertisement and are usually sized 468 pixels wide by 60 pixels tall. Those using this type of affiliate link usually get a commission for every 1000 impressions, per sale, or per click-through. PopUps Advertisements or websites which open up in a new browser window. They normally popup when your visitor is on the site. Popunder & Exits A Popunder ad displays behind your site so no one notices that it is there until they leave. Exit ads appear once a visitor leaves your site. Lead Another name for a site visitor/potential visitor that can generate money for affiliates. Referrals The technical name for what the affiliate gets paid for. &nbspThe referral, or Referral link, is the link from the affiliate that points the customer to the merchant site. Pay Per Click (PPC) A system where the affiliate (or web agent) gets paid every time the visitor clicks on referral/affiliate link and goes to the target site. The most famous example of this is Google Adwords? Which is itself used by affiliates as a lead-generation tool. Pay Per Lead / Action This is when an associate/affiliate gets paid commissions for each visitor that follows a referral link and then completes surveys, downloads or signs up for a membership. Pay Per Impression (CPM) Earning its acronym for cost per thousand (M is the in the abbreviation is the Roman numeral for one thousand) Pay per impressions means a system where the affiliate makes money every 1000 times the page the banner is on gets viewed. Affiliates normally get paid per 1000 impressions/page views. Pay Per Sale A program where the affiliate gets paid a commission when the visitor/lead you have referred buys a product or service from the merchant. Raw Visit A raw visit is counted every time a page is viewed. Unique Visit A Unique visit is counted every time a site is viewed every 24 hrs. Text Links Text links are links that either describes a merchant’s product, service or their site. When the link is clicked on it will take you to the merchants site. This is one of the more commonly-used ways of &nbspmarketing for affiliates who do not have their own site as it is the easiest to do. 2 Tier Commission With a 2 tier commission an affiliate won’t only get commissions from sales they generate but sales their own affiliate generates. How do they work? Well, if you refer a visitor to a merchants site, they become an affiliate and he / she then makes a sale with an affiliate link then you yourself will also get a commission. Direct Referrals People that you refer directly to an affiliate program. Indirect Referrals People that are referred to an affiliate program by your direct referrals (see 2 tier commission). Net 60/30 Net means accumulated profits in the world of business so net + number just means a system where you are paid after a defined period. Net 60 programs pay after a period of 60 days net 30 programs are paid after 30 days. There you have it, now you have all the tools at your disposal to start learning more about the world of affiliate programs. Join the electronics affiliate program program with the high payouts visit the wholesale affiliate program leader Chinavasion.com today. – About the Author: Rose Li is the PR Manager for Chinavasion , China’s premier dropshipper for wholesale consumer electronics Article Source

10 Steps to Optimize Your Content Marketing Strategy

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 15:38:07 +0000

SES New York kicked off with an excellent keynote presentation by David Meerman Scott (interview) followed by a panel on Digital Asset Optimization including Mark Knowles, Chris Boggs and myself. Richard Zwicky moderated. The rising importance of optimizing one’s digital assets came out of Google and other search engines’ decision to start including information and file types from other sources that their main search index. Some queries trigger search results that go beyond web pages, MS Office docs and PDF files to include images, blog posts, news, video thumbnails, books and others. While many SEOs were responding to the changed landscape of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) and optimizing for other file types, many others were already optimizing holistically under the premise of, “ What can be searched on can be optimized “. Most companies are not wired to create the variety of content that can achieve top visibility on search engines. In most cases, search engine optimization efforts are focused on content and digital assets that are currently in place. Being able to get more marketing impact out of existing content is as much a driver of digital asset optimization as it is a part of a holistic strategy that matches up with the opportunities presented by an ever changing search results page. In the DAO session I presented a historical perspective on DAO based on when we started writing about it in 2007 and the changed search landscape we face with personal, real-time, social and mobile search. I also discussed TopRank’s 10 Steps DAO Content Strategy: Search & Social Media Keyword Research Anticipating demand via search is traditionally handled by keyword research tools such Google’s tools, Bing or services like Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery. As advertising and media placements can drive search, so can social conversations. Social media monitoring tools can help marketers conduct social keyword research as a compliment to search based keyword research. Find out what key language and key topics are being discussed on the social web and you’ll have invaluable insight into content idea that provide value for social media marketing and search engine optimization. Analyze Search Results Landscape The output of Universal and real-time search results are not persistent. For example, a search for a particular phrase one day might yield news and image results and on another day display only web pages. It’s useful to monitor the search results landscape for keyword phrases that you’re after. Understanding the mix of data sources besides the main search engine index can help with the allocation of optimization resources. If News and real-time results are most common, it may make more sense to focus on content promotion there vs images or video. Define Buyer Personas & Buying Cycle Understanding the needs of your customer is marketing 101. Search marketers are becoming more sophisticated in their understanding of customer profiles and developing personas to represent who you’re trying to attract via search is an important step in a content strategy. Knowing what kind of content and what type of digital asset your customers will best respond to can improve effectivness at driving traffic from the search visibilyt you’ve achieved through SEO. The buying cycle is another dimension that warrants attention to make sure you’re creating, promoting and optimizing content that is relevant to where your customers are in their search/research process. Broad concepts usually represent early stages of research versus more specific phrases which often indicate a buyer is closer to purchase. Inventory Existing Content & Assets With a more holistic SEO effort, especially one that will incorporate digital assets, it’s important to have a baseline understanding of what you have to work with. Taking inventory of your content and digital assets is something we’ve been recommending for over 3 years and it’s an essential first step. Having an understanding of current content and digital assets can also uncover content that is ripe for re-purposing. A common example is video that can be deconstructed into multiple, short form videos, single images, transcribed into text or splitting the audio off into a podcast. Develop editorial plan for new content Understanding your search and social media keywords, buyer personas and the assets you have to work with will help identify what new content you’ll need to create. Adopting the perspective of a publisher, not just a marketer, will help resource allocation, planning and goals/measurement for content creation. For example, rather than just sending out a press release and publishing a blog post with a new product announcement, a company might, based on search/social keyword research and an understanding of their buyer personas, decide to create a resource page for journalists that includes links to relevant resources, standard press release, images, PowerPoint, video, past media coverage, executive interviews, audio snippets, demo and appropriate media relations contact info. It would be made easy to bookmark or share this resource page as well. The assets being linked to from the resource page would be hosted either on the corporate site, optimized of course, or hosted on 3rd party media sharing sites such as Flicrk, YouTube, SlideShare, DocStoc, PRWeb and others. This provides a richer experience as well as numerous options for interaction. It also offers multiple, potential entry points into the resource page via search, since the optimized digital assets can rank in search results on their own and link to the destination content on the corporate web site. Map Keywords to Content & Digital Assets The functional process of implementing search/social keyword research is to map those concepts to the content and assets you have. This helps manage the initial keyword optimization process. Mapping keywords to the editorial plan is also a useful guide for the future creation and optimization of content. Not only are web pages, images, video and other assets optimized for search, but optimized for customers. Operationalize Content & Digital Media Creation with SEO SEO and digital asset optimization are not one-time events. Keyword demand will change and of course, new content and media will be published. To ensure keyword optimization of new content, it’s important to incorporate SEO with established content creation and promotion processes. That might be updating the corporate styleguide with SEO and keyword usage rules or it might mean making programming changes to the web site’s content management system to prompt content creators with keyword cues when adding text or other media. Develop Off Page DAO Assets The beauty of social content is of course, that it’s social! Sharing should be easy and encouraged. Hosting some digital assets on social media sharing sites such as those mentioned above (Flickr, YouTube, Slideshare, DocStoc) can introduce your optimized content to new audiences and attract both traffic and links. More relevant links mean better search engine visibility and web site visitors. Promote/Syndicate via Distribution Channels How will anyone know you have excellent content and digital assets if you don’t promote? Dedicate a fixed and persistent effort to developing social networks where your customers and influentials spend their time on the social web. Do the same with social media sharing web sites so that when you post a new video on YouTube for example, your network there can be notified. Developing distribution channels for content will significantly improve reach and the likelihood of your content being passed on, shared and made socially popular. Email newsletters, RSS, Ping.fm and TwitterFeed services are good examples of content distribution services that help promote content efficiently. Ongoing Measurement with Web, Social and Search Analytics Search marketing professionals are well aware of the value from web and search analytics that measure search visibility performance as well as web site interactions and conversions. The importance of social media monitoring and analytics is also essential for a DAO Content strategy. On the front end, social media monitoring tools can help you identify conversations and influentials that are meaningful to the topics and customers your marketing efforts are trying to reach. Social keyword research can in part, be accomplished by some social media monitoring tools. Those same tools are essential for measuring the social impact of your digital asset and social media optimization efforts. A simple cycle would be one where you’ve identified new keyword topics beginning to buzz on the social web and taking that cue to create content. Promote that content through your social networks and use social media monitoring to track the effects of your content contributions to the larger conversation on the topic. Use web analytics to measure any increase in search based traffic based on the growing popularity and awareness of the topic based in part, on your contributions and social interactions. With an Optimized Content Strategy, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that by following these 10 steps, a significant impact can be achieved in overall authority for the topics and keyword concepts focused on as well as the ability to attract new business, media coverage and employees. The bad news is that it’s not easy. Making the commitment to serving customers with content and media on an ongoing basis, indefinitely without the initial ability to forecast ROI will make many companies say, “Great idea and it makes sense, but not for us.” However, those companies that make the effort to really understand and implement these fundamental concepts are making an investment with a payoff that is very long term and with momentum, very signifcant. Some companies will be able to “come out of nowhere” and dominate their category by following these 10 guidelines for an optimized content marketing strategy. Live blogging coverage of the Digital Asset Optimization session at SES New York was provided by: SEM Geek Outspoken Media Search Engine Roundtable AimClear And this article on Holistic SEO with Digital Asset Optimization was recently posted on ClickZ

SESNY: 5 Tips To Optimize Press Releases For Search

BlogPostman — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 11:58:48 +0000

TopRank Online Marketing has been working with PRWeb providing SEO consulting services starting in 2008. PRWeb was founded in 1997 to help small businesses and communications professionals leverage the web to share their news directly with the public. As part of this process PRWeb lead the way for the “direct-to-consumer” press release, enabling companies to communicate their news directly to customers, prospects, analysts and the media. During the past decade, PRWeb has reshaped the traditional press release and changed how companies large and small distribute news. Innovations of PRWeb over the years include: Search engine optimization (SEO) for press releases to increase the visibility of news in search engines like Google and Yahoo! Social bookmarking tools like trackbacks and bookmark links to take advantage of the explosion in social networking Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to increase the distribution potential of news and built the industry’s largest RSS network Allowing customers to include podcasts along with their news to increase the impact of their news release The “Feature Video” allowing customers to leverage the video content from popular sites like YouTube to bring their news to life Meg Walker, Director of Online Marketing for PRWeb lead a session discussing how to optimize press releases to gain the strongest visibility in both search engines and media. 1. Meet audience demand Prior to drafting a release, you need to understand what your audience is demanding. Meeting audience demand is integral to accomplishing your press release visibility objectives. There are many times you don’t realize there may be a hook in to reach your target, and understanding audience demand allows you to tap into it. The steps to meet audience demand include: Knowing your audience – what is it potential prospects and media are interested in? In what tone should they be spoken to? Do they appreciate a certain angle over another? Understanding is key and should drive the strategy behind the release. Be relevant – more than just understanding your audience, give them content that is both relevant and timely. By doing this, you’ll create the highest propensity your news gets picked up, shared and passed on. Satisfy customer demand – to know what the demand is, first research popular trends in search engines and stay on the pulse of your industry. By creating content that is related to hot topics you can create far more visibility for your releases. Staying up to date, informed and on the pulse of your customers is vital to connect with them through press releases. 2. Stay focused By keeping your keywords and topics focused, your release can rank better in search engines and resonate more with media. As you are writing releases, remember you are writing about one topic per release . By segmenting the message or trying to say too much at once, you dilute your key points and take a risk prospects and media will walk away without taking next steps or remembering the point. Keep it simple, focused and impactful. 3. Use images for search Images can increase the click through rate on releases in both regular and news search by 15 – 25%. It’s a simple step, but can’t be stressed enough. Additionally, using images creates more traction in media – journalists and bloggers both love images as it helps them tell their story. At PRWeb, we have seen releases that used 3 images generate more than 50 articles. We also find that many people are discovering images via image search, which then draws them back not only to the release, but to the customer web sites. Because PRWeb hosts press releases forever, your images can continue to receive both organic and image search traffic indefinitely. 4. Use videos to engage visitors By using video in news releases, we have seen up to a 500% increase in time on pages. As the web shifts to a rich media experience, bloggers, media and end users are becoming more accustomed to video. In the future, it may be common that video is included with releases. But since today it is not as frequently used, it’s a chance to make your news stand out. 5. Optimize your release Anchor text links – use 3 One to homepage – direct visitors directly to your company website. One to product page – send media and consumers directly to the product they are reading about. One to blog post – this presents an opportunity to speak to readers in a less formal fashion. With social web users and digital influencers continually expecting social content, a press release presents a great opportunity to spark interest in your social content. Alt-tag – an alt tag helps your images get discovered in search engines – all release images should be tagged appropriately. URL Keyword – top keywords can be used as part of the URL string, so be sure and include those during the release selection process. PRWeb allows you to customize this. Description Tag – add a keyword rich and compelling description tag (on PRWeb, that will become the meta tag). Title of release – the title of the release will become the title tag of the page, which is a vital element of your on-page optimization. If you have a target phrase, ensure your phrase leads the title of release. You can learn more about PRWeb at their website or follow them on Twitter . © Online Marketing Blog , 2010. | SESNY: 5 Tips To Optimize Press Releases For Search | 9 comments | http://toprankweb2.mn2.visi.com

Customer & Influencer Research in Social Media

BlogPostman — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:05:49 +0000

“If you don’t eat your meat you can’t have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat!” Pink Floyd, The Wall. That quote from Another Brick in the Wall reminds me of the cart horse situation with social media marketing: If you don’t know your customers you can’t engage them. How can you ever hope to engage your customers if you don’t understand who they are? There are so many questions from marketers and agencies alike about how best to grow businesses through online channels. Questions are particularly popular when it comes to best practices for social tools. “Always do this” and “always do that” is what most marketers have been bombarded with for as long as there have been conferences to attend and email newsletters to subscribe to. Inevitably, many of the most pressing questions about social media come down to understanding who you’re trying to reach. For example, some common questions I hear a lot at conferences: Q: Should we blog or focus on Twitter? Is Facebook or LinkedIn a better fit? Foursquare or Gowalla? (Or other shiny object) A: Find where your customers spend their time and spend your time there too. Q: What type of social content should we create? How often? Where? A: Study your customers as they create, consume and share content. Then you’ll know the what, how, when and where. They why has to come from your organization. Q: What is the most overrated social media site? A: The one your customers aren’t using. So much time is spent on tactics without a good understanding of goals, audience and how to measure success with social media programs. As we discuss Roadmapping social participation with companies, audience research is one of the key areas of importance. As I mention above, how can you reach and engage customers if you don’t understand them? Let’s say you’ve used a social media monitoring tool like SM2 to identify who is talking about your brand and topics of importance to your prospects and customers. Within this analysis, you’ve noticed that there’s alot of activity on Twitter. A logical next step might be to further investigate influential Twitter users. If a paid tool like Radian6 or SM2 don’t fit your budget you can try free tools Trackur or Social Mention to gain some insight into content types, commentary and sharing/publishing platforms. Other tools you might use to identify influentials on Twitter include directories like wefollow. Under the tag, “ SEO ” you can see that Matt Cutts is the most influential. Since reaching out directly to a popular person on Twitter, especially a Google employee, might not be prudent, it can be helpful to learn more about that individual and who they are influenced by as well as who they influence. Using the site Klout, you can see a Twitter influence score (78 is pretty high) and other information including predictions on who is most influenced by Matt and more interestingly, who may be an influencer of Matt Cutts. There are other tools that show communities surrounding an individual such as Top Twitter Friends. As for understanding what kind of content someone likes on Twitter, you can look at retweets and @ responses. You can also look at what kind of content and what user tweets get favorited most,. Favstar is a tool that does just that. In this example, Favstar shows which Tweets Matt Cutts has favorited . The types of content and users can be noted for guidance with future outreach. I mentioned free social media monitoring tools above including Social Mention. Below is a screengrab that shows how much information you can get from Social Mention with options to download into Excel friendly formats. Other Twitter user analysis tools worth looking at include Twitter Analyzer and Twitalyzer . The basic tools I’ve shared here are just that, basic. They’re good for poking around and getting familiar with discovery of social content and influencers. However, it would take a more robust tool set (which is what Agencies and larger companies do) to scale monitoring over many topics, influencers and conversations. Other customer social media research tactics include: Survey your existing customers for social preferences and behaviors Review web analytics for social media sources and behaviors Tap into Compete, Quantcast, Alexa information on specific social sites Leverage profile information provided by advertising staff on social sites themselves In combination with directly observed and experienced customer behaviors and preferences, general site data can compliment understanding of customer social content needs. What are some tactics and tools you’ve found useful for researching customers on the social web?

OMS10 B2B Marketing Case Study: Marketo

BlogPostman — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:08:37 +0000

Our agency TopRank Marketing has been working with Marketo providing SEO, content and blog marketing consulting services for about 2 years. I finally had the opportunity to meet Marketing VP Jon Miller in person today prior to his presentation at Online Marketing Summit: Marketo’s Secret Sauce for Demand Generation. Marketo is one of the fastest growing software companies in the U.S. and this session is a case study for how Marketo has achieved that rate of growth. Marketo launched their main product about 2 years ago. In 2 years, they’ve signed up 400 customers at a value of about $30,000 per year in recurring revenue. The current run rate is over $12 million which is pretty impressive for a 3 year old company. Marketo revenue cycle benchmarks show that Marketo spends about 50% more than comparable companies on Marketing but less on sales. Their customer acquisition cost are much less than other software companies. Marketo has a very efficient marketing and sales effort. How is that so? They use their own product and have made smart investments in their marketing efforts. Rather than a sales cycle, Marketo focuses on the revenue cycle that starts from awareness to becoming a customer. Awareness > All Names > Engaged > Prospect Qualified > Lead > Sales Lead > Opportunity > Customer Marketo keeps their landing page forms very simple. They then actual manually check the company web site and decides if that inquiry is a worthwhile prospect. Since they’re marketing automation company, adding a manual process may seem contradictory but such activity helps sales people evaluate companies a lot more effectively. Contacts are then nurtured and scored. If they score above a certain level, they become a “lead”. Awareness – Investments in awareness and brand have paid off in a very big way for Marketo. They’v found it to be very effective to focus on content and thought leadership through tips, best practices and ideas that are available without registering. Marketo’s blog is their single most effective marketing tactic. They’ve actually diverted marketing investment away from other activities and focused instead on blogging. Woot! TopRank gets a shoutout as Marketo’s SEO agency. PPC is the top converting tactic and their best leads are coming in from inbound: search and word of mouth. Once a prospect is generated, sales follow-ups are personalized and very soft touch. What is Lead Nurturing? The art of maintaining permission to stay in front of your buyers as they educate themselves. The key to lead nurturing is relevance. Types of Lead Nurturing: Stay in touch, Incomin lead processing, Accelerators, Lead lifecycle. If you get a new prospect, about 1/4 are sales ready. Putting lead nurturing in place resulted in 50% more qualified sales leads at 33% of the cost. Content mapping . Make sure content is relevant to where buyers are in the buying cycle. Think big, start small and move quickly. It doesn’t have to be your content either. You can package other content with your observations surrounding it. Companies with sales people that spend the time to qualify leads ultimately generate more revenue. Lead scoring rules focus on behaviors: Latent and Active. Latent means people engaging with content. Active means showing interest intent such as Googling Marketo’s brand name as well as downloading reviews, visit web site 2x in one week. There’s a certain threshold that’s met to initiate follow up. There’s a huge drop off for leads that are not responded to with 5 minutes or less. Inbound leads are segmented: target companies, enterprise companies, other. Also segmented by latent or active. Response time is based upon meeting scoring criteria. Inbound calls, contact us forms, and qualified free trial requests get “Active” follow up. ie speedy follow up. At the end of the 21 day lead nurturing period, a final email is sent giving options for recipient to self score themselves in terms of interest in Marketo. No lead left behind: There’s an automated process that reminds sales teams to follow up. This dropped unresponded leads from 33% to 5%. Lessons learned: Focus on the entire revenue cycle, not just generating new leads. Do not understimate the value of creating content! Build trust and reduce risk vie thought leadership and social media. Leverage analytics. You can learn more about Marketo on their blog and on Twitter .