Social Media Marketing needs to be part of an overall marketing strategy and frankly it’s plan is different for every business. However, to ignore SMM would be a fool hardy decision. Most marketing plans today should include a well thought out Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plan, a very detailed keyword rich Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign married with a Social Media Marketing (SMM) initiative. If your business includes off-line strategies then they need to support and involve all these methods.
The following post is Mitch Joel, well I let it speak for itself….
In this interview, Mitch Joel shares some of the big ideas behind his new book, “Six Pixels of Separation”:
Digital channels shift the marketing focal point. Social media and other digital platforms now enable brands to focus on who, rather than how many people, they can put a message in front of.
Think “with” not “instead of.” Companies should not halt what they are currently doing and shift all attention to the digital world; it’s all about effectively integrating those social media channels with what you already have in place.
Don’t underestimate the “power of lazy.” We still live in a world where many people prefer to consume, rather than create, digital information.
As you probably know by now, real estate is a subject that’s near and dear to my heart — quite literally. My wife is a real estate agent. My sister is a real estate agent. My dad opened his own agency in the 1950s and still works from a home office today as he approaches a tender 80 years old. It’s not just personal, though; real estate is all about small business and I try to watch what’s happening in the industry as much as possible.
Lately, I’ve been watching Google take one baby step after another, pushing into real estate as quietly as Google can do anything. Last night, I wrote about Google’s latest step on Search Engine Land: Google Builds out a National Real Estate Search Engine. The creation of individual “place pages” for property listings is Google’s latest step toward building out what I believe will be a challenger to any web site, big or small, that offers property listings. The article has apparently earned a lot of buzz today around real estate circles, and I want to point out two posts that caught my eye:
Author Brian Boero says, rightly so if you ask me, “Sure, Trulia, Zillow and a hundred other online real estate sites do this. But this is Google, folks – a force so large that it can upend entire categories overnight.”
Despite the apparently contrary headline, I think author John Rowles and I are in agreement on what’s going on here. He makes the smart suggestion that Google could turn the Local Business Center into a Local Property Listings Center and allow the property owner and/or real estate professional to manage the listing the same way local businesses can manage their business information. Says John:
“Given that option, it’s easy to see how people, who are as distrustful of real estate agents as they have ever been in the wake of housing bubble, might migrate to a real estate information platform that is outside the industry’s control and has the added benefit of the familiar Google user experience.
When Google puts something like this out there, THEN its time to freak out if you are NAR, a local MLS, Move Inc, an IDX vendor, etc..
Until then, enjoy the borrowed time.”
Borrowed time. I think that’s a great way to put it right now.
On the role of real-time search results in the search engine industry, Google has long realized that it falls short in terms of real-time search and has been busy! In recent months Google was working on a secret project: a complete renovation of the architecture in Google’s web search.
If you want to watch the videos:
…. and
Google Caffeine: Under the Cover
Google spokesperson Matt Cutts explains that Google Caffeine changes “under the cover” event. On Google’s user interface will change nothing. Caffeine Google’s search results are largely similar. The big difference is that new content much faster will appear in the top 10 Google Caffeine. This will ultimately lead to faster, more accurate and complete information in Google’s search results.
Real-time search
“Google is certainly faster Caffeine. New content will be indexed twice as fast. Google is rolling out some new adjustments to their sandbox. Performance, speed, reliability, accuracy, Relevancy and other parameters are some features that are being improved.
Here are some questions and answers, discussed on Matt Cutts Blog:
Q: How do I check out the Caffeine update?
A: If you search on URL you can get a preview of how the search results will change over the next few weeks and months.
Q: It doesn’t look any different to me?
A: The Caffeine update isn’t about making some UI changes here or there. Currently, even power users won’t notice much of a difference at all. This update is primarily under the hood: we’re rewriting the foundation of some of our infrastructure. But some of the search results do change, so we wanted to open up a preview so that power searchers and web developers could give us feedback.
Q: Is this Caffeine Update because of Company X or Y is doing Z?
A: Nope. I love competition in search and want lots of it, but this change has been in the works for months. I think the best way for Google to do well in search is to continue what we’ve done for the last decade or so: focus relentlessly on pushing our search quality forward. Nobody cares more about search than Google, and I don’t think we’ll ever stop trying to improve.
Q: How do I give Google feedback?
A: If you want to give us feedback on how the search results are different, look on the search results page for a link at the bottom of the page that says “Dissatisfied? Help us improve.” Click on that link and type your feedback in the text box. Make sure to include the word caffeine somewhere in the feedback.
Conclusion #1
Business owners need to heavily promote & manage social sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook,Linkedin, and others. It also means photo sharing sites such as Picasa Web Albums & Flicker are important. It also means means blogs & local search sites such as yelp and citysearch are important….
Bottom Line folks Social Media is here to stay and your business needs to be in front of people looking for you…..
Conclusion #2
Business owners need Quality Content. Why? When you are signed into your Google account (many business owners are always signed in) Google is showing results from Social Circles in the result! How crazy is that. That means if we get all of our clients to follow us on Twitter, or all interested business owners to connect with us on Linkedin, or people follow us on YouTube.com.
THIS MEANS WHEN WE PUBLISH NEW CONTENT THEY SEE THAT CONTENT IN THE SEARCH RESULTS.
What a great way to target your target market. Google is practically telling everyone with this new addition that CONTENT is the new LINK VALUE online!
Pay Per Click Management – for your business or a not?
Although search engine optimization (SEO) is an excellent way to get free traffic to your website, it’s not all of the available traffic. Even more exposure for your website can be gained through Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. Research shows that nearly 70% of targeted visitors to a website come through free search results, the remaining 30% come through PPC campaigns. One major benefit of using PPC campaigns is that it enables you to attract the other 30% of customers that you would otherwise be missing altogether. PPC does cost money and it can cost a great deal, however, a properly managed PPC campaign can easily pay for itself. Many PPC management companies in the are experts at creating and optimising successful and economical PPC ad campaigns.
Speedy and Highly Targeted
A major advantage of a campaign is that it is highly targeted to people that are searching for what you have to offer. A professional PPC management company can easily find the right keywords and test them properly, helping make your campaign very cost-effective. Conversion rates are easily measurable if you have knowledge of proper tracking methods. You can collect data related to conversion rate, cost per sale and click-through rate (CTR), allowing you to measure the effectiveness of your ad. Another huge advantage is that all of the vital feedback from your ad testing is immediate. Ad results are available very quickly, and can be adjusted and retested in a short amount of time.
Test, Test and Test Again!
Knowledge of testing various campaigns to determine which will be most effective is vital in helping spend your marketing budget wisely. A professional PPC management company has the expertise to identify keywords for testing, determine maximum cost per click, write effective ads, create compelling copy, conduct detailed tracking, and make adjustments as needed to maximise the effectiveness of your advertising pounds. Without in-depth knowledge in all of these areas, a PPC campaign can end up costing much more money than it needs to. The profits gained from your investment in hiring professionals to manage your PPC campaigns is well worth the cost.
Track It!
The biggest pitfall encountered by inexperienced PPC managers is the lack of knowledge when it comes to tracking. It is absolutely crucial to know precisely what traffic you are receiving, where it originated from, the keywords that were used, where the user went using those keywords, and which keyword combinations get the best results. A successful campaign includes not only selecting and tracking the correct keywords, but determining proper bid prices, writing good ad copy, creating compelling landing pages, creating search engine friendly links and headings, streamlining usability, and writing those all important calls to action. Professional companies managing PPC campaigns are highly skilled in tracking every aspect of a campaign and adjusting all of the crucial items to maximise your PPC profits.
How does real time web benefit your small business? As most know about bulbwired.com, we are committed to helping small business and we do that mostly through Social Media Integration. Bing is MSN’s search and decide engine and in in experiment with Twitter to bring value to real time search. And of course you didn’t think Google was going to miss the party did you.
Where we see it benefiting you business is; if your name/brand is in a conversation of Twitter, Facebook and/or all of the other Social Media outlets that are all tied together, you can then me search-able. All this creates “link juice” better known as back-links. If you don’t know what all this means trust that we do and can bring it all together for your business.
The following 2 excepts are posts on the issue, reported from the Bing blog and Goggle blog; enjoy and ask questions.
One of the most interesting things going on today on the Internet is the notion of the real time web. The idea of accessing data in real time has been an elusive goal in the world of search. Web indexes in search engines update at pretty amazing rates, given what it takes to crawl the entire web and index it for searching, but getting that to “real time” has been challenging.
The explosive popularity of Twitter is the best example of this opportunity. Twitter is producing millions of tweets every minute on every subject you can imagine. The power of those tweets as a form of data that can be surfaced in search is enormous. Innovative services like Twitter give us access to public opinion and thoughts in a way that has not before been possible. From important social and political issues to keeping friends up to date on the minute-by-minute of our daily lives, the web is getting more and more real time.
“We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort; you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.”
Google isnt the only search engine to get its hands on this valuable data, Bing was also included in the agreement and have been quick to act with Bing Twitter Search already available for US searchers. So if you’re based in the US, feel free to take Bing Twitter Search for a test drive here.
If all this is a blur and you are trying to figure out what it all means to my Small Business and you find yourself asking “Can this type of media marketing bring me an ROI? Consider 2 things;
1) To begin with, simply being on the net is not enough, you need to drive traffic to your
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test
information, But more importantly, that type of exposure seldom offers you the credibility, validation or build brand trust as being featured as a top level search result will. The most effective approach is a strategic online marketing mix. You can reach your target market and gain validation and credibility through effective online PR, and then utilize the this to leverage your message. That is the marketing strategy that you now need in order to build your business, land more customers and make more money.
2) Come and see our weekly webinar and we’ll lay it all out for you in layman’s terms and show you our commitment to helping drive more business to you!
If it feels like your online business is lagging in last year’s dust, keep in mind that it’s normal to fall behind in the race. With all this talk about Facebook, Twitter and the plethora of other Social Media Marketing tools it sure is easy to be confused if not down right overwhelmed. However, it’s absolutely possible and critical to pick up the pace of your marketing strategies and increase your chances of of bringing in new business with Internet Marketing.
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To go forward in your marketing efforts it’s not a bad idea to look behind you. What I mean by this is; what old school method no longer work in your business. Yellow page ads, print coupons, billboards, classified ads and the many other traditional means to reach your prospects are being used little to none. PERIOD! Just last week I had a backed up toilet, you all know how irritating that can be. Without even a thought I went directly to my PC and brought up Yahoo, yes I still use that for search, and I typed in “Portland, OR plumbers”. I got what I needed, it really is as simple as that folks, your prospects are no longer looking for your product or service in the “old school” ways.
Before I get into some suggestions and some things to not do let me first say this. Get professional help in this area. Think of it this way; if you were a Real Estate agent back in the pre-Internet era you wouldn’t tell the local newspaper that you can run your own classified ads, “no thanks, I have a printing press right here and can print and distribute my own ads” or you wouldn’t tell the billboard company, ” I can put that billboard over the highway myself.” So be realistic, you shouldn’t be up a 2am trying to figure out what mySQL is or html, css or where and what do I say or do in my ads. Enough said!
But where do you begin and how will you know what to do? The key to Internet marketing and the path to web success in 2010 and beyond is anticipating customer needs and making every second count for your business on a daily basis.
Here are some suggestions of what companies, large and small, should look out for now and going forward in 2010:
Blogs Will Expand in Importance and Distribution
This year will be all about how a company fights its way through a bad economy. What better way to reach your target audience than provide quality content that is easily accessible and leaves a reader wanting more. Blogs create a community within your field of interest and work to spread your brand. Don’t blog to advertise, blog to help customers by providing informative material. Remember this; Social Media is conversational.
Does Mobile Marketing (SMS) have any potential for my business?
Whether consumers will respond and communicate to businesses via cell phone is worth experimenting with since a large percentage of companies used text and multimedia messaging last year. It’s an effort towards new ways of reaching loyal consumers and potential customers.With the load of apps for smart phones, Google’s new phone certainly makes this method appealing to a small business to reach customers looking for products and services through mobile search. Text SMS Marketing is one of many options that could be right for your business or at least a beneficial look at what your competitors may be using.
Don’t Underestimate the Power of Social Media
This is worth repeating, Don’t underestimate the power of social media! More than ever, Internet-users find it convenient and amusing to maintain social networks and professional relationships through sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and FriendFeed. If your online business does not have an account with all, if not one, of these sites, then now is the time to make one. It’s a great way to establish new connections and provide links to your site to help reach your target audience and increase sales.
Be Open to Modification
The spirit of being an Entrepreneur is all about taking chances, predictions and implementation to improve current conditions. This kind of growth requires change. The cyber industry is evolving at an increasingly rapid pace, so your marketing strategies and web tools should evolve too. No of our daily mantras at bulbwired.com is; Plan, Do, and Review.
KYSS Chaos Goodbye
Keep Your Strategies Simple And Gain More Time To Enjoy Your Riches In Niches! You’ve likely heard of simplifying your life. From bookshelves to daytime talk shows, simplicity is a hot topic. When it comes to your business, pairing down and doing less isn’t usually the prescribed strategy for success, but it’s certainly essential to staying satisfied in your niche.
As a Entrepreneur, you lead a busy life. Backbreaking labor isn’t always enough to outdo competitors. To-do lists stack against you. Your foundation remains uncertain, squabbling over big ticket items to bail you out of a down economy. Sadly, good intentions don’t always yield top results.
To ensure lasting business success, you must embrace niche simplicity. What is niche simplicity? In essence, by doing less each day, you accomplish more. How is that possible? When you select strategies that meet multiple business needs and achieve exponential growth. That’s what niche simplicity is all about. Think of it as de-cluttering your business deals.
Niche simplicity isn’t just good practice. It’s a smart solution that lets you…
* Closely examine what works and what doesn’t.
* Identify key strategies that grow your business.
* Let go of all good intentions that aren’t working.
Niche simplicity gives you time to develop smarter strategies for success. By releasing bad-result recipes that take time away from strategies for riches in niches, you gain more energy to grow your business. Instead of doing anything and everything, you can do one or two things really well.
Just as smaller markets lead to BIG results, doing less can achieve more.
Ready? Let’s simplify. Take a deep breath. Exhale. Do this slowly a few times, and with each exhale, let go of those to-dos and don’ts. Release any preconceived notions of what you must do by tomorrow. Relax, it’s simple. Once you’re calm and cool, let’s look at how we can corral some strategies for success and-dare we say-under-do the competition. Are you ready to simplify? Here are three suggestions.
Writing fever leads to expert fervor.
By writing a tip, trick or article. Publish your good advice. This gets your name out there, educates your niche and generates media curiosity. Do this at least weekly , and you’re much closer to building your brand, boosting your credibility and being noticed by media. Your fervor becomes their fodder.
Exercises regularly to build media muscle.
Want to build media muscle, but don’t have the strength to carry on with everyone? In your boilerplate message, include your social media links that help keep you on all the time. By regularly checking-in through your social media profiles, you quickly become a media magnet, attracting the attention you can’t afford to lose.
Spread your expertise through education.
Often it’s who you know that helps you succeed, but, more times than not, it’s what you know that accelerates your expert status. To remain in pole position as the quintessential go-to guru in your niche, share your knowledge. Seek out other experts that support you and team-up to teach your niche.
Instead of looking at these strategies for success as different tools to transform your business, think about how you can do one or two of them well to achieve lasting results. By pairing strategies together, you’re building a different kind of daily formula that is… well… simplified.
You can achieve more with less.
You can serve your niche better without hundreds of half-done projects. And you can out last your competitors by doing less, and doing that more effectively and efficiently than they do.
Keep your strategies simple, and you just might get rich in your niche. One thing I would like to share with you in closing is; in the book Good to Great by Jim Collins, and I am paraphrasing here, ask yourself this one question, “What is the one thing that you can do better than any other company?” This one question was the genesis of the bulbwired.com story. Find one thing and do it greatly!
Advertising Local Online Tips to Effectively Getting Your Local Business Advertised Correctly
Getting targeted advertising is crucial and can be a serious money saver. Advertising local online is not that difficult if you use the proper tools and techniques. For example, you need local leads if you are an accountant that has a local office. You then should not waste your money on general online advertising that attracts people that live out of state. You have no benefit when you get a visitor to your site that lives in China. These two examples are why you need to have a geo targeted advertising solution.
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I live in metro Portland, OR so there is several larger known local websites that I can use to advertise locally. One of the most popular local online advertisers is Craigslist.com. To be exact it’s http://portland.craigslist.org. Many businesses post their ads in the appropriate section. A good tip is to put your business phone number in the advertising post. Not that you get more phone calls, but it makes your advertising more believable. You can use this method to attract many leads online in your local area. Just a fair warning for you is to ensure you keep up with their rules. Craigslist has very strict rules to protect their users. Failure to adhere the rules can quickly get you banned from ever posting your local online advertisement.
Kudzu.com is another very popular website for advertising local online. Post your business listing in the appropriate category. As a bonus for good companies your customers can give you a rating score. Also notably give you a good testimonial if you deserve it. Kudzu’s search engine can provide very good targeted results. For example, you can good several results for plumbers with in 25 miles of zip code 30339. Additionally, you can sort by the ratings and review the comments given by users. Another fair warning is that you need to be aware that there is a potential for a bad review that can affect your business. Just understand that you can rebuttal them and I suggest you do. But potential customers know that no business is perfect. You just need to ensure that you have many positive reviews then the negative ones.
CitySearch.com is another great resource to advertising local online. It’s very similar concept to Kudzu.com. Just like kudzu it’ll provide all the reviews and scores from your customers. Word of mouth advertising and having a loyal base of customers is critical in having a successful business online. My suggestion is to ask your customer to give you a favorable rating at citysearch. Normally your customers are not very good with the internet. Take advantage of this and ask them to rate you right on the spot. I always have my laptop around me connected online. After my work is completed I ask them to give me rating. This way they won’t forget.
It isn’t so simple advertising local online by using Google, Yahoo or MSN (Bing) search engine advertising. You can purchase keywords that are specifically from seekers that live in the geographical area you choose. It’s setup where you can choose the country, state, and even the city location of the information seeker. It is a very good way to advertise locally. This can pin point your potential visitors to your site.
Whether you have been purposefully ignoring local search, or simply are not aware of it’s potential impact to your overall marketing strategy — you may want to reconsider your position. Local search marketing can really pay off for “bricks-and-mortar” businesses. It can provide excellent opportunity for garnering both foot traffic and website traffic.
Even as early as 2005, an article in MIT Technology Review, April 2005, “E-Commerce Gets Smarter” reported that for every one dollar U.S. consumers spend online, they spend another five or six dollars on offline purchases that are directly influenced by online research.
Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates, says — “We think search is a very viable advertising segment that produces great results and great leads for advertisers. But it has to be managed properly.” It also provides a way to claim more space in the local search engine results pages, thus increasing your chances of getting that valuable consumer click-through to your business profiles and listings. Ultimately, these click-throughs result in sales and increased profits.
As a example, if a local user searches for “pain-free dentistry” and a dental practice has it optimized correctly, there is a very good chance that it will appear prominently in the local search listings. Ideally, a local user will acquire dental related information from the main website of the close proximity dental practice, and thus be influenced to seek out their services. The goal is to shorten the consumer’s path from searching/researching to making a purchase.
Further proof is presented in a study by The Kelsey Group and ConStat, 74% of U.S. households now use the Internet when shopping locally for products and services. This huge trend can no longer be ignored. Even more evidence of this growing trend in local search is presented by The Kelsey Group’s Annual Forecast, which shows that local advertising is shrinking. Going from $155.3 billion in 2008 to a forecasted $144.4 billion in 2013. This means that nearly $11 billion that would normally have been spent on traditional local media (newspapers, Yellow Pages, direct mail coupons, etc.) will shift to local search, social networks, mobile and similar digital media spends.
Bulbwired.com has years of experience in local online search marketing and can manage all aspects of your local online advertising. Call 866.376.7772.
It may or may not surprise you that more searches for businesses occur online than through the Yellow Pages. Many businesses have already abandoned the Yellow Pages for being expensive and not yielding results. There are increasing numbers of people who say, If you’re not on the Internet, I’m not interested. Look for this to continue to increase at an exponential rate.
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Marketing yourself is a public service. This means letting people know how you can be of service to them. Your Internet presence allows people looking for someone to help them solve whatever problem they are in. If you have no internet presence, many people will not find you and determine if you may be of service to them. Marketing is making your presence known. It is NOT a hard sell, trying to ram anything down anyone’s throat. Advertising is presenting yourself mostly to people who aren’t interested in what you have to offer. This is why most print advertising does not yield clients. Internet advertising is presenting yourself at a time when your prospect is searching for what it is you have.
Google your name and business zip code. Do you find yourself on the first page of the results? You may already be listed in sites of which you are unaware. Next, Google your specialties (one at a time) and your business zip code. If you have a number of listings, especially for your specialties, Congratulations. Even if you already have a steady stream of referrals, an Internet presence will only strengthen your position.
An Internet presence can be started (or expanded) for a lot less than you think. Getting yourself on free and paid listing sites. Generally, start with the free listing. One client found their free getfaves.com listing showing on the first page of Google search within one week. Begin with seeing if your professional organization has listings. These are often free.
Find the listing sites for Google business. This will also get you listed on Google maps, which show at the top of Google searches. Also do this for Yahoo and Bing business. Find other business listing sites by Googling free business listing sites, etc.
Create a website
A website is probably the single most important thing that you can do to expand your marketing efforts. It will greatly increase your presence and legitimacy beyond having your profile listed in different places. One can quickly create a simple site. You will want to present information that will speak to those clients you would most like to see. This will attract your Ideal client much more than if you describe yourself as a caring person who provides a safe place, etc. Conventional wisdom is that your content is 80% about the client and 20% about yourself.
Don’t wait until you have a perfect site planned. Better to get a functional site up, asap. Websites are dynamic entities. You will want to refine, probably add, and sometimes delete what you began with. How you write gives others a sense of who and what you are. Be sure to include a head shot photo of yourself with a big smile.
Begin with your DSL provider and see what they offer. Google free websites. Look for templates that you like, flexibility, expandability, etc. Many of the free sites will also let you expand your site, more, for a monthly fee. Most options will cost between $5 and $10 a month.
Create a blog
Some will start a blog, rather than a website. Generally, a website is more versatile and should be your first priority. A blog will probably serve you best, the more specific it is, i.e., focuses on a niche, etc. Two popular sites to start a blog are blogspot.com and wordpress.com. If you do a blog, aim to write at least twice a month.
Social media
The use of social media is exploding and will continue to grow. It is a way of connecting with friends and colleagues, as well as others finding us. Businesses are increasingly finding ways to market via social media.
One of the most popular websites is YouTube.com. While it is primarily used for entertainment, more and more it is used for education and marketing. An example is the video on our main page, Social Media for your Business. These videos can also be put on your website(s), as we did. Video has largely been underutilized by businesses.
Facebook.com has become another of the most popular websites. Some use it to keep in touch with friends and others use it for marketing. Use it for on or the other. If you want to use it for both purposes, use a personal email account for a Profile and a business email for a business Page.
Biznik.com is a business site, primarily for entrepreneurs. It is a way to network, especially with other businesses.
Twitter.com is a source that you can announce publishing a paper, changes to your website, good books and articles, workshops that you might offer, etc. Many offer free things like recordings, articles, etc. It is another way to network with other professionals. It’s popularity is exploding.
Like most things, the more you invest in being involved with social media, the more you will benefit. If you are active, you can minimally expect some increase in website/blog traffic. This may or may not equate to client referrals.
Writing articles
Another way to develop a presence is to write self-help and other articles. A very popular site to submit articles is ezinearticles.com. You can also submit to some of the listing and social media sites. When you write, distribute your writings in as many ways as you can. Post them on your website and blog. Have copies in your office waiting room. Fax copies, as is relevant with other fax communications.
Outside of the content, writings give others at least a glimpse of yourself. This is an opportunity to get to know, like, and trust you. The more that happens, the more people will come to you to help them achieve solutions.
Put your website address and contact information on everything
Make sure your address is on your business cards, stationary, fax sheets, etc. Just the fact that you have a website adds to your credibility, regardless if the receiver has the interest in checking it out. Create a signature file at the bottom of your email accounts. Minimally, include your web address, blog, etc. under your name, business address, business phone. Consider putting other information there, such as free offers, signing up for your news letter, etc. If you are going to start a group, give a talk, etc., consider including that information, while it is relevant, i.e., remove that information after it occurred.
In conclusion, you can’t do all of these things in a single day. However, you can complete Some of these things Today. Keep reasonable expectations. When you do these things, it isn’t likely that you will have 10 people call you in the first week. You will find that new clients will increasingly say, I found you on the Internet. Marketing is a dynamic process. Generally, our efforts are cumulative.
This is not the end of marketing. You will probably want to expand into other low cost strategies, including purchasing a domain name for your website, using one or several paid listing services, etc. Continue to educate yourself about marketing and new avenues. Good luck and good marketing.
Bulbwired.com does all this and more as a done for you package, come and register for one out our information packed Webinars to see how we can help your business.
Social media until recently has been a non-tested market for the most part. We will probably look back in a few as 3-5 years and term this era as the “wild West” in Social Media Marketing (SEM). We are all working in uncharted waters where everything we read and hear about social media sites and their effectiveness changes week to week. The role most social media sites are taking as the web grows is a hold position for now in real time search and immediate access of information!
Recently a major hole has been seen in Google’s technology, social media sites like Digg, Reddit and Twitter have seemed to patch; real time search. The design of Google’s index isn’t designed for immediate delivery of information when news breaks. The following article was an eye opener, from SEOmoz about the course of action on the web on one of the largest stories of the year:
Google didn’t index this for a whole 3 hrs and 17 minutes; this being after it was widely available to the web through social media. The effect was so dramatic that Google actually considered it to be spam upon first analysis.
The problem currently for Google is; it basically operates with 2 types of content it needs to display.
1. The slow web
The slow web is what populates most of what we see in Google and filters in information somewhat slowly. Most cases it is estimated that this index is refreshed at a slower rate and new content is added or subtracted based on the basis of importance and originality usually as assessed by incoming links. Don’t expect this to fulfill the needs of real time search addicts and the “instant gratification” seekers.
2. The fast web
Thefast web is more for things like blog search and is designed to handle much faster display of information and populates new information very rapidly. Look at your own search, try “Internet Marketing” and you can see how Google displays more recent information placed in its index.
Notice links coming up here from sites anywhere from 24 minutes to 1 day ago when selecting “recent results” in the search engine. Note that this is significantly different than the “regular results” for the term “Internet Marketing”.
So what does this mean for you and why do I now care about social media?
What this incident shows is that sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg and Reddit are not going anywhere but rather search engines will have to find methods to either replicate this type of service OR cater to them. In situations like this how will Google model this information and become the landing page for all things search. Will Twitter content be in Google? Will Digg stories populate Google News? Will Google crawl sites like Digg to find the hot content and then list that?
If controlling the Web for your brand or niche is important then you need stay ahead of the curve with things like social media. If you are the first in sites like Twitter for your niche you already have an advantage. You want to succeed in Twitter or sites like it you need to be in there and conversing with others. Build your network and others will follow you.
Google will no doubt evolve and evolve quickly, maybe it’ their Wave product, we’ll see! These “recent results” can handle suffice for the time being, however, a modification in usability needs to be considered to highlight “the fast web” results if Google wants to compete with sites like Twitter to provide this “instant gratification” need.
Google is not flawed as, Google is safe by design. Twitter is somewhat reckless with information that is not screened. If Google is using sites like this to find information you, as an Internet Marketer need to be there. Just like Digg I can imagine that Google will use Twitter popular terms to find directions to populate their results.
We live, we learn, we evolve. Stay ahead of the curve. Immediate Gratification will rule!
It’s great to have so many wonderful tools to build sturdy marketing campaigns and evaluate the results, but they should never detract our attention on our end-user, the customer. Here is a bit of advice that was common knowledge before the internet, but is often forgotten now: Know your target market.
It sounds like obvious advice, but many online marketers fail to grasp this principle. They’re too often consumed with mass amounts of data produced from keyword generators and analytics. Business owners often fail in getting down to the level of their customers. I’m talking about asking questions of your target market. (Selecting your target market is a huge task in itself. I’ll cover that in a later post).
A great place to learn about your target market is in your own immediate and extended family. Is any member of your family in your target market? Below is an interesting and fun test that you can do to improve your SEO and capture the interest in your target market. In effect it is a way to create a simple focus group from your family. Jennifer Laycock from Search Engine Guide introduced the Mom Test to improve conversion and usability for website users. For help in explanation, I’ll pretend we’re running a website, selling shoes to women in the baby boomer generation. One obvious market audience member in my family would be mom. For this specific example, I’m naming my test after mom as well.
My “MOM” Search Test
First, I would sit Mom down at the computer and invite her to look for some shoes that she’d like to buy. Here is the key to the test: be quiet and watch closely to see what she does:
• What search engine does she use?
• What keywords does she use to search?
• How does she navigate the SERP (Search engine result page)? Does she simply choose the #1 result?
• How quickly does she bounce back to the SERP?
• What other searches does she perform?
• Does she click on any of the paid-search ads?
• I’d then ask her to check out her favorite social site for a few minutes (yes, mom does have a Facebook account). Does she click on any of the ads there? What groups is she apart of?
Of course, because this is only one person, you can’t generalize your entire marketing strategy from this test alone. However, the point of this test is to help you find some interesting information that you never realized about your target market. It may spark some ideas that you would want to further research. It can even confirm that you are on the right path.
For this example test, I’d personally, find a few more moms and repeat the test if possible. I’d then go to my keyword tools and analytics reports to make better SEO predictions.
So next time you start keyword research, first try a test like this. You will receive insights that will make your keyword research and other SEO efforts much more valuable and knowledge-based.
Mitch Joel’s big ideas behind “Six Pixels of Separation”
Last night, I wrote about Google’s latest step on Search Engine Land: 
targeted visitors to a website come through free search results, the remaining 30% come through PPC campaigns. One major benefit of using PPC campaigns is that it enables you to attract the other 30% of customers that you would otherwise be missing altogether. PPC does cost money and it can cost a great deal, however, a properly managed PPC campaign can easily pay for itself. Many PPC management companies in the are experts at creating and optimising successful and economical PPC ad campaigns.
Social media until recently has been a non-tested market for the most part. We will probably look back in a few as 3-5 years and term this era as the “wild West” in Social Media Marketing (SEM). We are all working in uncharted waters where everything we read and hear about social media sites and their effectiveness changes week to week. The role most social media sites are taking as the web grows is a hold position for now in real time search and immediate access of information!
