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Setting and Measuring Goals for Business Blogging

Posted by under Blog Marketing, Pay-Per-Click

As companies that realize the value of online marketing understand the need to publish engaging content, one of the most common considerations is a company blog.  Blog software is fundamentally one of the easiest content management software systems to install and use. Of course the software isn’t magic. The content and ability to reach and engage with customers is a big part of what makes a business blog successful. For those companies that are thinking of starting a blog or reinvesting resources into a company blogging effort that has gone stale, some of the most important questions to ask are:  Have you identified specific goals for the blog? How will you measure success? In sports you can’t score if there isn’t a goal and it’s no different with business blogging.  There are a variety of reasons why publishing ongoing communications that allow readers to interact adds value to a business. Add to that the distribution via RSS that extends the reach of your message and  it’s easy to see why so many companies start blogging. The failure for many business blogs is centered around not making a connection between business goals, blog specific objectives and most importantly, how meeting customer needs leads to the first two. Here are three key questions to consider as you design your plan for business blogging success: Why start a business blog? What end goals or outcomes can you reasonably expect? There are many good reasons to start a blog. But are those reasons good enough to start and stay blogging for the long haul? Our survey on blogging and SEO showed 90% citing blogging as important, significantly important or a primary SEO tactic. 94% of bloggers reported seeing measurable SEO benefits from blogging within 12 months. Initiate and foster customer engagement Improve coverage by media and bloggers Improve search engine visibility Increase mentions on other blogs, social networking, news, bookmarking and media sites Build thought leadership Provide an informative communication channel Recognize employees, clients, marketing partners and especially brand evangelists How will you know your blogging efforts are successful according to those goals? How are you measuring blogging success? We ran a poll last year with our readers that ranked their most important measures of blogging success. Here is the distribution: Engagement: comments, links 36% Improved brand recognition 31% Build thought leadership 31% Search engine rankings 31% Better communicate with customers 30% Traffic to the blog 27% Coverage by media and other blogs 18% Traffic to the corporate web site 16% Sales leads 16% Industry Recognition 13% Sell products 2% Improved customer satisfaction 11% Page views 9% Time on Site 6% Ad revenue on the blog 5% What tools are you using to measure blog performance? Goals for business and the blog are great but it’s essential to have the right tools in place for analytics. One of the biggest mistakes is to rely on things like Google Alerts. Web analytics (Google Analytics, Woopra, Clicky, etc) Feedburner Social media monitoring tools Link analysis tools Comment tracking tools Clipping services Forum conversation tracking tools It’s fundamental, this notion of setting goals, understanding outcomes and the tools needed to measure. But you know the saying, “Common sense is the least common thing on Earth.”  Companies can achieve great return on investment with the right plan and leadership in a blogging effort. The key is to do the baseline work to build a foundation upon which it can grow and succeed.  Stay the course and leverage both listening and engagement tools to guide content. Develop networks and distribution channels to grow readership and reach. Take the time to really understand the impact of data provided by reporting tools and create reports for executives that highlight business goals. What are some of the challenges you’ve faced with setting, measuring and reaching business goals through corporate blogging? Have you started a business blog only to shut it down? Have your company blogging efforts been successful beyond expectations? © Online Marketing Blog , 2010. | Setting and Measuring Goals for Business Blogging | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

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Setting and Measuring Goals for Business Blogging

Discover The Ways In Which Google Adwords Will Greatly Increase Visitors To Your Website

Posted by BlogPostman under Pay-Per-Click

Getting the Best Results by Using Google AdWords as Part of Your Marketing Campaign Among the paid advertising options available, perhaps the most outstanding service is Google AdWords, which has earned its reputation as a market player that can give you broader scope, super-charged performance, and immediate results. While Internet options like banner ads and ads on social networking sites exist, Google AdWords is much more effective. The major advantage AdWords has over other advertising options are the massive reach and specific ways Google generates traffic to your site that will make a huge difference. I am going to tell you in this article about the advantages provided by Google AdWords when you use it for your promotional campaign. If you are on a budget, AdWords has a built-in tool that will monitor and restrict your account based upon how much you want to spend on each ad campaign. You can even set the amount of money you want to spend up to a specific daily maximum. After your daily budget has been used up, your advertisement will stop showing up, and you will not be charged any additional money. Of course the most obvious benefit that comes from using AdWords is the immediate increase in traffic that you will see, and the quality that comes with using targeted traffic. From the moment your account is launched and your ad goes live, you will begin to see new visitors arrive at your site from AdWords. In addition to setting a daily budget, you also have the flexibility to determine how much you want each click to be worth. Let’s say that you set your daily budget to $50.00. Once the quantity of clicks that you’ve set reaches this cost, your impressions stop appearing and will begin again during the next 24-hour cycle. The bid that you make for your keywords will determine the rank of your ad in the lists, and if your bid is too low compared to what other advertisers are paying, Google will notify you. This is how you have the chance to increase your bid amount and beat your competition for that particular keyword any time you want. As an illustration, pretend you are selling high-end accessories. People who are not looking for these kind of accessories will not click on your advertisement, which will save you money. You also have the option of pausing or stopping your ad campaign whenever you want. You don’t have to make a big deal out of ending your ad campaign by setting up specific dates. All you have to do is log in to your Google AdWords profile and manually delete the campaign. Promoting products isn’t the only way to make money through advertisement online, but it is definitely the quickest way you’re going to start earning an income. Besides the fact that AdWords works fast, it is extremely focused and that give it a greater chance of sales conversions. To put is simply, if you need a good way to get the right traffic to your site in a hurry AdWords is the service you need. Just be sure you do some research into Adwords so that you fully understand how it works before you get started, then you’ll be far less likely to see losses. – About the Author: Roddy Jones reviews systems and software to help you succeed in your online business. Visit my website to find out how you can use Google Adwords to provide you with a marketing edge. Here’s the link: http://www.zenmarketingsoftware.com/internet-marketing/google-adwords-providing-you-with-the-marketing-edge Article Source

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Discover The Ways In Which Google Adwords Will Greatly Increase Visitors To Your Website

5 Tips To Optimize Press Releases For Search From PRWeb – SESNY

Posted by BlogPostman under Pay-Per-Click

TopRank Online Marketing has been working with PRWeb providing SEO consulting services for nearly one year. 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 .

SESNY: 5 Tips To Optimize Press Releases For Search

Posted by BlogPostman under Pay-Per-Click

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

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SESNY: 5 Tips To Optimize Press Releases For Search

5 Ways to Electrify Your Social Network

Posted by BlogPostman under Pay-Per-Click

A typical situation for many marketers when it comes to social networks is this: Setup LinkedIn profile, check. Corporate LinkedIn page, check.  Facebook profile, check. Facebook Fan Page, check. Twitter account, check. Corporate blog, check. Check check check! But where’s the buzz? Where are the fans, friends, followers, comments, links, traffic, search engine rankings? Where’s the customer engagement? And the most pressing question of all: What is all this social web participation doing for our company and our customers? Showing up to the game doesn’t mean there will be an audience. This is as true with the social web as it is offline.  The problem that marketers have with attracting interested customers and growing their social networks often stems from approaching social participation tactically and without a plan.  Testing and experimentation is great, but if what you’re doing is something that has a cost and is to be accounted for, then you’d better have a plan and objectives.  How can you score without a goal? Here are 5 tips to help business marketers energize and electrify social network development: 1. Decide to start You must start by deciding what business objectives you intend on meeting as a result of social network involvement. Once you’ve clearly identified objectives, then you can create a strategy that outlines which tactics make the most sense to reach and engage your audience. Common objectives for companies to develop online social networks include: Create connections with those interested in the type of solutions you offer so you can better meet customer needs Build out a channel of distribution for promoting content Connect with existing customers, create a place for them to connect with each other Initiate discussions around product for new ideas, enhancements, focus group Extend reach to influentials in your market for publicity Tap into active user base for content Facilitate conversations about your products & services to aid in new customer acquisition and/or upgrades Create a communication channel that reaches employees for internal PR Build up the personal networks of executives for thought leadership with journalists, analysts and key bloggers 2. Know your customer If marketers spend their time on the social networks dujour without really knowing where their customers are spending time, then of course there will be a disconnect between experience and expectations. Picking friends, at least initially, on social networks should be very intentional, not random. Understanding customer preferences towards information discovery, consumption and sharing along with which web sites they prefer is essential if a marketer wants to connect in a meaningful way. 3. Be real, be useful There are a lot of buzzwords like “transparency” and “openness” that describe the need for marketers to be “genuine”. Oops that’s another.  To be real is being honesty in your intentions.  I’ve seem highly respected marketers make absolutely idiotic statements about transparency, taking it to the extreme.  Ignorance is bliss I suppose, but there’s not much money in it. The core principles of understanding the needs of your customers and then finding a way to meet those needs in such a way that is helpful and that at the same time leads to product sales, need not be elusive.  Approaching a social network blatantly announcing that you’re a marketer and that you will be marketing so buy some product dammit, isn’t being transparent. It’s being stupid. Identifying yourself as a representative of a brand, product or service and communicating your intentions both in words and helpful actions is what I mean by “be real, be useful”.  Those good deeds create trust and relationships.  They create word of mouth and a certain gravity of popularity for your brand with your own identity as the proxy.  Fans, friends and followers “happen” because the word gets out that your brand promise is meaningful and being followed through on. Developing relationships can be hard work. People already know this through the relationships they have in daily life. Yet  it’s very common for corporate marketers to initiate online social networking efforts only to become disillusioned at the lack of immediate sales results.  It’s important that social web participation for a company become a part of what the company is, long term. Not an “add on” marketing tactic. 4. Recognize and reward When developing an active social network, participants will demonstrate certain behaviors that are more desirable than others.  For example, standing up for the brand when a troll appears or mashing up content in a creative way.  They say people will work for a living but die for recognition. This is a key concept for electrifying your social networking efforts.  First, understand what behaviors you want to reward. Participate and identify those behaviors that will influence the kinds of outcomes you’re looking for. Recognition can be active and passive. Active recognition is to reach out and recognize specific behaviors publicly and/or privately.  Passive recognition is built into the social CRM system you’re using or the platform within which customers participate. An example would be points based systems that provide rewards or more access based on accumulating points for completing certain behaviors such as comments, ratings, contributed content, etc.  The key to “Recognize and Reward” is for the recognition to be deserved, genuine, relevant and consistent. 5. Monitor, measure, feedback loop All the good intentions in the world won’t result in relationship and business growth from social networks unless there’s management of content and curation of interactions with the outcomes from participation. It can be as simple as noticing “5 of this” or “10 of that” tips blog posts yield 200% greater engagement scores (comments, retweets, inlinks, etc) than posts that focus on a single, general topic. Web analytics along with social media monitoring and a CRM component can facilitate the feedback loop to know whether customers are responding in the ways that you’d hoped.  Simply focusing on fans/followers, comments or sales can leave out some of the essential pieces of why some efforts fail and others succeed. Social media monitoring tools are essential for upfront research, ongoing monitoring and after-action results measurement. In the end, the steps to take for growing a social network for business must be rooted in an understanding of the customers and their needs combined with whatever it is you decide you’ll provide to meet those needs. Being useful by itself doesn’t turn an active network into achieved business goals. Provide opportunities for interested members of your social network to opt-in to a more commercial relationship when they’re ready.  That could be as simple as moving from a Facebook Fan to a Webinar participant or Email Newsletter subscriber. In some cases it might mean becoming a buyer of products/services. If your business has successfully developed it’s social network presence, what have been some of the roadblocks you’ve overcome? What insights can you share on best connecting with networks and growing your business as a result?