Monday, November 2nd, 2009
 Seven Ways To Tap Social Shopping
By Heidi Cohen, ClickZ, Nov 2, 2009
Last year’s weak holiday results provide e-tailers with a relatively low hurdle to meet, or exceed, past performance. Doing more than just beating last year’ s performance will be hard, especially in a year of restrained shopping, when consumers are looking franticly for “free shipping and handling” offers, sales, and coupons to keep their holiday spending costs down. One strategy marketers are using to support their merchandising efforts is social shopping, because it can have a powerful impact for a relatively low cost. It should be noted that social networks influenced 37 percent of shoppers in 2009, up from 24 percent in 2008, according to e-tailing group research.
As a form of marketing interaction, social shopping continues to evolve. Social shopping has expanded from dedicated social shopping sites like Kaboodle, StyleHive, and ThisNext (where less than 10 percent of U.S. online retailers have a presence) to broader social media sites, like Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and Twitter (where consumers’ various networks connect). Savvy marketers are just following their prospects and customers based on eMarketer’s April 2009 assessment of the social networking sites used by U.S. online retailers; roughly three in five U.S. online retailers have a presence on Facebook.
Seven Ways to Exploit Social Shopping
Marketers must understand that customers use social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter to communicate with and gather information from their friends and colleagues. As a result, your presence on these sites must be integrated into the multi-directional communication when consumers want to interact with your firm. Here are seven ways to maximize social shopping results:
- Build relationships with prospects and customers. Enable consumers to reconnect with you later in the purchase process by providing a variety of options including Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds, social bookmarking, e-mail, and chat.
- Add social tools that encourage your content to travel, so as to cost effectively extend relationships and attract new prospects. Provide consumers with tools such as social booking for the major sites your target audience uses, as well as e-mail and IM where appropriate.
- Make your message consistent across platforms. This is particularly important for building your brand. In the process, ensure that it’s integrated with the rest of your marketing, both online and off, at every touch point.
- Listen to and participate in the conversation. Unlike other media environments, you can’t deliver your message on your timing. While marketers worry about negative feedback, negative comments occur roughly half as often as positive ones, according to Anderson Analytics’ “Social Network Service A&U Profiler” research. Respond to negative comments to show that you’re listening to and care about your customers.
- Ensure your Web site efficiently closes sales. Regardless of how well-received your offering is on social networks, your Web site must be able to process the sale quickly. While this sounds obvious, last year, a surprising percentage of sales were lost due to e-tailer inefficiencies. Also, consider allowing sales to be closed offline via phone or retail.
- Maintain your competitive positioning. It’s critical to be present in media environments where your direct and indirect competitors are, to ensure that you’re part of the purchase discussion and decision.
- Make attractive offers to social shoppers. Since social shopping often translates to efficient transmission of buying information for customers, offer these prospects attractive promotions where you can leverage the strength of your customers’ networks to cost-efficiently distribute them.
Measuring Social Shopping’s Impact
The inability to effectively measure the impact of social media on branding and sales can hinder its use as a marketing strategy in some organizations. Some online retailers find it difficult to move beyond the direct response mentality of tracking advertising effectiveness only through improved response and sales. Still, it’s important not to wait to implement a social shopping strategy because you don’t have the appropriate metrics. Here are some metrics to monitor to help assess the effectiveness of your social shopping tactics.
- Track your traffic — particularly your upstream traffic — from the sites that visitors use before coming to your Web site. Are social media sites accounting for more of this traffic than they have in prior periods? Does the traffic from social media sites have any special characteristics that set it apart and can play a role in your marketing? Is this traffic directly translating into sales? Also, monitor your downstream traffic that shows where visitors go after they leave your Web site. Do many of them visit social media sites? If so, which sites? Are there any special trends?
- Monitor the conversation to assess brand mentions. Analyze whether the mentions are positive or negative. Are these comments building a positive image of your firm? Make sure that someone is present on each of the major social media sites to respond to direct queries and negative comments.
- Assess your competition to determine how they’re using social shopping and the size of their presence on major social media sites. Where possible, estimate the size and impact of their efforts. Consider how their brand is being perceived versus yours, and why.
Given the recent growth of social media sites, marketers must engage with prospects and customers in the place where they’re spending their time, if they want to become part of the purchase decision process. As social media sites evolve, more tools will be developed to facilitate sales, and along with them, better tools to more directly track those sales.
Meet Heidi at Search Engine Strategies, Chicago, Dec. 7-9, 2009. She’s participating on the panel, “Social Media Marketing Checklist.”
Tags: facebook advertising, Permission Marketing, SEM tips, Social Media, Social Media Marekting
Posted in Social Media Marketing | Comments
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
In the present day world most businesses want to spread their business through out the world wide web and therefore it becomes essential to follow some SEO strategies. Most business concerns wanting to spread their business world wide are quite concerned about Search Engine Optimization. Most Internet traffic is gained through search engines therefore Search Engine Optimization is a must for all of the business concern. One who fails to do that and is unaware aware of the working methods of the search engines is going to loose business. Period. Let us think of a simple thing if we need to gather some knowledge of some product or some special subject, where shall we search for? It is obvious the search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN, or other such search engines. Whenever we supply our search criteria to these search engines we are provided a list of various websites, which provide the answer to our search query.
Therefore if we want to purchase some product online we also do the same thing by simply typing the need on the search engine. Therefore the business concerns it become essential to gain a good ranking or if possible the top ranking on the search engines so that as soon as the question is typed for searching their page appears on the very first row of the search engine results. And this is what Search Engine Optimization opt for, to gather the largest number of traffic to the targeted webpage or website.
Now the question is how is it possible to get the top ranking through the Search Engine Optimization? This is quite a tough question to be answered. The fact is that this is the very secret of search engine optimization. Moreover in a nutshell it can only be said that this is to examine and understand the working procedure of the search engines and to act accordingly. In fact there are a lot of SEO companies who are engaged in this very respect. And that is what they are paid for. They engage several SEO experts, SEO consultants, and SEO software to examine and judge the working procedure of the search engines so that they can provide their client the desired rank on the search engine pages. But along with that it is also to be said that practically no SEO Company can guarantee the top rank for any company.
Now let us see in brief a small glance of the working process of the search engines: It is that they keep a regular eye on your site and index new topics on your site. They also measure the quality and popularity of your site by the number and types of links on the site by other websites. There are also some other perimeters depending on the site topics, quality and popularity before allotting a rank for the particular site. Therefore it can easily be seen that you need to be up-to-date all the time along with providing all the criteria for the search engine to gain the top rank. And only then you shall be able to have the maximum number of Internet traffic on your site to get the maximum profit out of your business.
Tags: Adwords, Google, SEO, SEO College, SEO tips, SEO training, Site maintence, Social Media, Social Media Marekting
Posted in SEO | Comments
If you are a work at home beginner then being an affiliate is THE most lucrative means to start making money fast. But being an affiliate and being a successful affiliate who’s making money are two different things. You’ll be surprised that 87% of affiliates don’t make more than $175 a month. Are you one of these struggling affiliate marketers? Here are 7 reasons why you could be among those who don’t make money.
1) Saturated Market
One of the most common mistakes that many affiliates make is to join an affiliate program that promotes a product that targets a highly saturated market. That means that the target market you are trying to sell to is full of others who are trying to sell the same thing. Areas such as “internet marketing” and “website traffic” are areas that relatively new affiliates should be weary of since it’s very hard to sell anything in these markets unless you’ve already made a name for yourself. Stay away from these highly saturated markets and find “niche” markets that you can easily dominate and promote to. This will greatly help you make a profit.
2) No interest in product
This is a mistake that many affiliates do without knowing it. They simply join an affiliate program because it’s “cool” or because someone else told them to. And they figure that by being an affiliate they will get the same benefits. Don’t be fooled. If you don’t have a personal interest in the product you are promoting you won’t put in the effort to actively promote it. And this will ruin your chances of success. If you like what you promote, then it shows through your websites or your written words and this positive influence is transferred to your prospective buyers as well. Make sure you join an affiliate website that promotes a product that interests you.
3) Low profitability
Many affiliates join an affiliate program simply because the payout per sale is huge. Often a single sale might pay you $99.00. And you think it’s a good product to promote. But you forget the fact that to earn $99.00 you have to sell a product that’s $299.00. Thus a single sale could be hard to make as compared to a much lower priced item. Therefore concentrate on joining an affiliate program that pays a higher percentage yet has a product price that is low or moderate. A 50% commission of a product that costs $50 is a good deal because you will be able to sell more of that product that the high priced ones.
4) No pre-selling
Many affiliates simply advertise their affiliate URL. They put their entire faith on the main affiliate website that they are sending people to. Thus your success is in someone else’s hands. Why take the risk? Why not pre-sell the idea of the product and get the prospect into a buying mood by preparing them for what they will find at the affiliate main site? A well constructed product review can be the ideal pre-sell for any product. Advertise your website that reviews the product and let the prospect visit the main site via your website. Once you “prep” them up, the sale is far more easier to make.
5) No Link cloaking
As I mentioned before, many affiliates use their affiliate URLs in advertising. This means that their affiliate Ids are plainly visible to anyone who wants to replace it with their own and thus steal a sale from you. Thus you must employ some form of link cloaking or encryption so that your affiliate links don’t get stolen or hijacked. Why chance it when you can prevent link theft?
6) No focus
A common mistake of an affiliate is to join an affiliate network and start promoting ALL of the network’s products at once. This “shot gun” affect can shoot down your profits simply due to the fact that you have no focus and thus your advertising efforts are wasted. Always pick one or two related products and maintain your focus. This way you can tune your marketing efforts without the other product cannibalizing your profits.
7) No targeted traffic
And lastly the most common mistake is to have no targeted traffic. Website traffic means nothing unless you get targeted traffic. Simply joining click exchanges or traffic exchanges will not make your affiliate checks soar. You simply MUST employ methods of FREE targeted traffic generation and keep generating traffic in this manner if you want your profits to increase as well.
There you have it. If you can avoid those 7 mistakes, then you will become a Super Affiliate that finally earns the kind of money you’ve always dreamed of.
About the Author
Khemal Dole owns and operateshttp://www.PaychecksDirect.com, a completely FREEservice that teaches many beginners and evenexperts how to work at home. Sign up for his FREE 14 day Work At Home Beginner’s Course and learn how real people make money from the internet.
Article source: http://www.contentdragon.com/content/business/small-business/7-reasons-why-87%25-of-affiliate-marketers-don-t-make-money/
Tags: Adwords, Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate networks, dofollow, Email marketing, keyword research, SEO tips, Social Media
Posted in Search Marketing | Comments
There are many ways to market your business on the Internet, and using search engine optimized articles has to be one of the “keeper” strategies for getting pre-qualified ‘natural’ search engine traffic to your web site.
Now, I’m sure you’ve heard all this before, “people search the Internet looking to information (aka articles) on how to solve a particular problem”. People just don’t search the web to buy your ’stuff’!
If you truly understand this search “path” then you understand the meat and potatoes of how the web works, it’s an information resource for people.
To completely understand the above concept ‘follow the money’. Search engines need content to be able to rank web sites, so that they continually get searchers BACK to their engines. The more searchers they have searching for relevant content on a search engine means more revenue for that search engine (e.g. the success of Google adsense).
This is why blogs and RSS have become the “buzz”. Blogs and RSS make the content (copy, words) “fluid”… meaning that the content changes often. This means that the search engine bots love these technologies, visit more often, and then rank the content well (if the blog articles are keyword optimized).
To see how this works go to any news site. News sites have a volume of ever-changing content. For example CNN gets spidered (visited) by the Googlebot something like 28,0000 times a day.
Why? Because of CNN’s ever changing content, and I guess the ‘bots’ are ‘lazy’? They go to where the good, and changing content is more often.
The SEO aspect of article writing.
Think of SEO as “filing”. What I mean by this is that good search engine optimization strategies help the search engine to “file” your content appropriately. Good keyword analysis gives you the information to enable the search engine bot with the ‘right’ filing.
There are no smoke and mirror tactics here. Your Mother was right when she told you that ‘telling the truth is always better in the long run’. This principle especially applies to good SEO practice.
Now, how do we take this concept of “fluid”, search engine optimized content and turn it into a Links IN bonanza for your own web site (thus sending your rankings through the roof over time, so to speak)?
These are the core principles…
1. Ensure that the link for your article is on a web page hosted on a unique IP address.
2. Ensure that the link for your article is on a web page that has a unique, wholly independent set of backlinks.
3. Ensure that the link is on a web page that is at least loosely relevant to the topic of your own web site.
You see, it’s not just a matter of having your articles on just any article directory. Your articles need to be in a category (and preferably a specialist directory) that is within “theme’. In other words you would never post your article on ‘looking after your cattle dog” on a directory that was focused on Financial Management.
In addition to placing your articles on article directories one can also run your articles on press release service sites, and of course there are RSS strategies (but that’s a whole other story, and another article).
About the Author
Kenneth Doyle Is A Writer And Internet Marketing Consultant,Find Out About His [Keyword Optimized] Article Writing And Submission Service Gets Thousands Of Prospects To Read YOUR Web Site Offers, Here… *Keyword Optimized Article Writing Submission Service*
Article source: http://www.contentdragon.com/content/business/internet-marketing/the-power-of-article-marketing-with-seo/
Tags: Article Marketing, link building, SEO, SEO tips, SEO training, Social Media, Social Media Marekting, Twitter
Posted in SEO | Comments
Does anyone else find it surprising that so many site owners are reluctant to provide outgoing links on their website. Somehow they have come to believe that providing relevant outgoing links from their site can be harmful to their results in the search engines.
When you send your visitors to a relevant resource, this is not a bad thing. This is a good thing.
Relevant sites does NOT mean competitive sites.
Definitions of Relevant on the Web:
Having a bearing on or connection with the subject at issue; “the scientist corresponds with colleagues in order to learn about matters relevant to her own research” wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
Evidence or information that has enough value to prove something significant to a case.http://www.attorneykennugent.com/library/r.html
If you write an article and would like to provide evidence of what you are saying, you should provide your resources within the article. Those MUST be credible resources. For example, if I write an article about website credibility, the site I point to in order to back up what I am saying must be an EXPERT on the topic, such as the Stanford Guidelines for Website Credibility. This method (used properly) gives your pages MORE value, not less. It also adds to the relevance of your page to the topic.
Incoming and outgoing links are not just about making pages filled with links. It is something that can be blended into your website in multiple ways, as it pertains to the specific page.
Think about the common interests of your target visitors and you will have no trouble deciding if a link is relevant to your site.
J Walker from GNC Web Creations
http://www.gnc-web-creations.com/
Tags: Adwords, dofollow, dofollow blogs, Google, Google site map, keyword research, link building, MSN, On page, On Page optimization, On Site, pay per click, PPC, SEM tips, SEO, SEO tips, SEO training, Site maintence, Social Media, Social Media Marekting, Tips, tweetdeck, Twitter, Yahoo Search Marketing
Posted in Search Marketing | Comments
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The Future of the Social Web
