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Posts Tagged ‘Google’

One of the great things about a WordPress blog is all the Plugins easily available for use.

Plugins help add features to your WordPress site that maximize flexibility and minimize heavy HTML coding. They offer custom functions and features so that each user can tailor their site to their specific needs.

Here are my top 6 favorite WordPress Plugins:

All in One SEO Pack
Automatically optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization) by allowing you to easily add keyword tags and relevant descriptions to each blog post.

Akismet
Checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen.

Google Analytics
Enables google analytics on all pages helping you understand how someone came to your site and what keywords they used to get there.

Subscribe2
Provides a comprehensive subscription management and email notification system for WordPress blogs that sends email notifications to a list of subscribers when you publish new content to your blog.

Share This
Adds links to share posts via Email, StumbleUpon, Digg, Facebook, Twitter at the end of each article you write.

Yet Another Related Post
Shows a list of the last 5 other posts you’ve written on this same topic that is related to the current entry, which introduces the reader to other relevant content on your site and keeps them engaged with your site longer.

Did you set up a Facebook Fan Page for your business recently? Great! Do you know what and how often to post in Facebook in order to make the News Feed? Are you aware that Facebook has two news feeds and that if you are not active with your fan community, you may not even be shown based on the Facebook Algorithm?

OK – that’s a lot of questions, but, I’m trying to get you thinking. Facebook is a wonderful free tool you can use to market your business online. But, just creating a fan page is not enough to achieve success in social media.

Here’s 3 things you may not know about Facebook that can hurt your online marketing:

1. There is a Facebook Algorithm!
   Facebook, like Google, has an algorithm they use in order to determine who you see in your news feed. Have you ever wondered why in your personal profile you only see about 8 of your friends posts, when you have 178 contacts? Facebook has decided for you that you will, by default, see only the “Top News”. They determine who is part of this feed based on interaction (comments, likes and shares). To see every post by everyone and every business you are connected to, you must click “Most Recent”.

   If you have a business fan page, and you are not getting comments, likes and shares, you may NOT be making it into the news feed of your fans. This means no one is seeing your marketing messages and Facebook will not be effective in getting leads, building your brand and driving sales for your business.

2. Community Engagement is Key
   The only way to ensure you are part of the “Top News” feed is to get your fans engaged with you. By posting often (I recommend 3 times per day, spread out throughout the day, or when you know your fans are online); varying the posts with video, text and URL links; asking questions people will comment on, being shared, and asking people to “like” the post, you can improve your probability of being in the valuable Top News feed.
3. Live vs. Pre-scheduling
   I love pre-scheduling! It’s a time saver and great for those who have a small staff (or just themselves) as their Facebook Community Manager, but, automated and pre-scheduled posts all the time will not help you become part of Top News. Live posts are also necessary (ie. Log into Facebook directly and post from the wall).

   Also, when someone leaves a comment, you should reply in kind – and make it personal (ie. Use their name). This goes back to the engagement piece above. When your community is responding to you, you must also be involved in the conversation. Social media is not just online marketing, it is relationship building and your “fans” are your community. Nurture these relationships, and give them a reason to seek out your posts and come back to visit your Fan page often by entertaining them, providing good content they cannot get anywhere else and coupons for your products and services.

I hope this article provides food for thought. I wish you a successful day of Facebook marketing!

YouTube is now the second largest search engine, next to Google. Four times as many small biz owners now have video on their websites as they did one year ago making video not only the present but also the future of social media marketing. If you are not taking advantage of video in your social media campaigns, you need to be.

YouTube is another great social media site that is free to use, all it takes is your time. I recommend to all my clients that they set up their own keyword rich YouTube channel and post with frequency to their Facebook page and embed video in their own blog posts.

On websites that have video, the average viewer stays 6 minutes. On websites without video, the average viewer stays 57 seconds. Video is great for engaging your prospective customer for LONGER, which can boost your conversion rate.

It’s important to not only have a professional video created, but, also to get a flip cam and create your own quick messages on the spot. Both are effective and achieve the goal of allowing your potential customer a way to learn more about you and become pre-sold on your products or services.

Plus, video can help you make that all important PERSONAL connection with your prospective clients and in this day and age of social media, building relationships is what it’s all about.

Visit my friend at http://jilladdison.com to learn more and get a top quality, professional video created at a reasonable price.

Contact me today for a FREE Social Media Marketing Report!

• Do you know how to use Social Media to get new customers?
• Are you looking for better and easier ways to market your business online?
• Were you aware that Facebook, Twitter and a Blog can help your business be found in Google search when you use your “keywords”?
• Did you know that Social Media is new newest way to network online?

Don’t miss your opportunity to get new customers and get the word out about your business, products, services or fund raising efforts using social media.

If you are in business you need to be using online marketing. If you are not yet using social media marketing or you have created social media accounts in Twitter and Facebook and are saying to yourself… “Now What?”, please email me to receive my FREE Social Media Marketing Report: “Top 5 Reasons Businesses Should Use Social Media Marketing”.

“I don’t have time”… “I don’t know how”…

If you know you need to start using social media but “don’t have time” or “don’t know how” to use these tools, I am here to help with training, consulting or implementation of your social media marketing campaign. I have over 15 years of experience in corporate Direct Marketing and I am trained in social media. I am dedicated to helping businesses add social media marketing to their traditional marketing plan for increased results.

Call or email me today for your FREE report.

And, if you don’t have time to read my free report, call me for a free 1/2 hour consultation via phone or in person (if you live in San Diego, CA) and I’ll tell you why your business MUST be using social media marketing!

Contact Joann Whetstine
Social Media Marketing Consultant
#858-212-8185

joann@howdoimarketmybiz.com

http://www.HowDoIMarketMyBiz.com

twitter.com/howdoimarketbiz
facebook.com/howdoimarketmybiz
linkedin.com/in/joannwhetstine

The Social Media Success Summit #SMSS10 continues to deliver powerful information on how you can utilize social media marketing in your business.

“8 Steps to Creating a Winning Social Media Strategy”
@JayBaer wants us to remember that tools change, so, start with a strong strategic plan for your social media efforts. Make sure you have a team at your office to support it. Decide who your audience is and don’t forget to listen to them. The best way to break through is make the company human. Tell stories or your customer’s stories (remember Jared from Subway?). Get beyond the features and benefits and make people feel your passion.

“How Mobile Marketing Can Improve Social Media”
@kimdushinkski wants you to know that even if you don’t think you are mobile, if you are sending email and someone checks it from their phone you are! You should even consider having a web page to your main site that is optimized for mobile so people can easily see how to contact you on their 2 inch phone screen. If you are ready to dip your toe into the mobile marketing waters, both Twitter and Facebook offer SMS test message feeds your fans and followers can subscribe to.

“The Future of Social Media”
@steverubel says that trends develop slowly but are timeless. Remember that people need to hear your message 3 to 5 times from 3 to 5 different sources for it to sink in. Tap into free tools online and become a data junkie to figure out what unmet needs are on the rise that you can provide the solution for and create content that will be passed around. All roads to content lead through Google, so, make friends with Google Insights. You could rise to the top of a search category if you are digitally visible in enough places. Klout.com is a great place to find out “who the world is listening to”.

Wednesday May 5th was the first full day of webinars for the Social Media Success Summit 2010 #SMSS10. Here’s a quick recap of some the great social media marketing takeaways from the three webinars:

Optimizing Your Facebook Fan Page
@MariSmith gave a great class on “Optimizing Your Facebook Fan Page”. What I loved the most was seeing all the great examples of Facebook welcome pages. Did you know that your Facebook Fan page does not have to be just your wall of posts? You can have fans land on any page you like and if you have access to a great graphic designer, make use of Faceboook Markup Language (the FBML app) and create something that meets your business objectives like one of these:

1. This one makes you click “like” button to see it interact with you: facebook.com/CarrotCreative
2. This one uses video to engage you: facebook.com/stevespangler
3. This one lands you right on a product page to purchase and has the “like” widget next to each item: facebook.com/threadless
4. More video and a great example for a company that is not product oriented: facebook.com/EZINEARTICLES

The main goal of your Fan page should be to create a call to action. What do you want someone to do when they visit you? Become a fan? (or, now, show they “like” you?) Collect their email address? Order product? Use your Fan page to meet your business objectives. Plus, you can split test welcome pages, as each one has a unique URL. See which one works best for you!

5 Ways to Measure Social Media
@JasonFalls spoke about “5 Ways to Measure Social Media”.
I liked these 3 points regarding how to measure social media success (besides just strictly sales and google analytics):

1. Community: Fiskars has a great example of how they created a “community” of ambassadors for their product at: http://www.fiskateers.com/ Always good to keep people singing your praises!
2. Customer Service: You can measure effectiveness of social media if your customers are using it to get answers so you get less contacts to customer service, or your call center. Plus, the more ways a customer can contact you = happy customers. Compare survey results for more concrete results.
3. R&D: Use social media to help you come up with new or improved product/service ideas. No cost way to generate market research. Ie.) Dell “Idea Storm” http://www.ideastorm.com/ has received 13,000 comments. 415 ideas were used and many were revenue generating. Also, Joffrey’s Coffee http://www.joffreys.com/ reached out to bloggers and said “what coffee flavor do you like?” and created a new one based on their input called “coffee 2.0” which was then in turn blogged by them out to their followers.

Creating Ravings Fans with Social Media
And, finally, @Ramon_Deleon the Chicago Dominos Pizza owner who uses social media to WOW his customers daily talked about “Creating Ravings Fans with Social Media”:
Ramon has a huge audience of college kids on twitter and Facebook and as these kids move into corporate life, he keeps in touch with them regularly. He’s built a strong brand for himself and really keeps customers engaged in his social media spaces. I like these tips he shared:

1. Think about how you can help the customer and give them positive reasons to talk about you.
2. Promote them so they will tweet about you and share.

For example, he prints up a flyer that he puts on his pizza boxes with his favorite customers twitter handles on it, it has big impact. This is a case of doing someone a favor before they ask, so, you are on their good side when you need something. He also volunteers at many events in Chicago and always has a big Dominos sign along to get lots of photos taken to share in Facebook. He’s also great at quick videos to thank customers and even apologize for errors if needed. All these techniques using social media keep him top of mind to the customer and when someone thinks of pizza in Chicago, they think of him first.

Business Women's Mega Mixer

Thursday night I was honored and excited to have been one of the over 400 women to attend the Business Women’s Mega Mixer in Downtown San Diego, CA. It was a great in person networking event to celebrate Women’s History month. I was even more excited to see an old boss and colleague, who I admire and respect as a powerful San Diego Business Women and leader, Barbara Bry, as the keynote speaker.

It was a great opportunity for professional women’s organizations and female owned businesses to network and make important business connections. I was able to meet about 50 women while I was there, and everyone I talked to said their business either had a social media presence, were just starting one, or really knew they needed it and was so glad I mentioned it to them because they were finally going to get on board! (It was the latter told me they would tuck my business card in a special spot that evening so it wouldn’t get lost because they knew they needed to call me.)

Social media is not the wave of the future, it is here now. Social media marketing is a must for any business. In addition to having a strong web site filled with your keywords optimized for SEO and a way to collect leads, every business needs a blog, Twitter and Facebook site. People are searching for your business online daily, and you can be much more easily found and virally recommended if you are participating in the social media spaces. The percentage of people using the yellow pages to find something is slim to none. People will ask a friend or Google it! Either way, with social media, your business can win.

So, how did Social Media help me learn about this great event? I was making connections in LinkedIn one day when I came across the Ladies Who Launch group, which as a woman business owner, really resonated with me. I joined their email list and it was their email newsletter that advertised the Business Women’s Mega Mixer.

Making connections and networking online in Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn is powerful. Joining a actual in-person networking group is also a great way to reach out and make connections. Remember, every time someone sees your brand whether it’s through email, an online visit to read an article on your blog, direct mail, radio, TV or print, every “eyeball” helps to build your brand and keeps you top of mind. Social media is just one piece of your marketing strategy, but, a very important piece that in today’s world cannot be overlooked.

Sure you’ve heard about social media marketing. Sites like Facebook and Twitter are in the press daily. Companies are blogging about their products and services but you’re wondering if it’s the right thing for your business. Here’s 5 reasons why you should add social media to your marketing mix:

1. Branding
   Social media can help you build your brand. Every time you tweet, write a blog or post a status update, you are keeping your company top of mind to your followers, fans and subscribers.
2. Get New Customers
   When you use keywords in your copy on all your social media platforms, you are improving your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and have a better likelihood of coming up in natural search.
3. Find Business Leads
   Wondering how to build your business? You can find people in Twitter that are in your business niche and connect with them about joint venture partnerships.
4. Find Others to Promote You
   Writers and bloggers are all over the internet. Conduct a Google Blog Search to find top sites with great page rank and a mass of followers and ask them if they will write about your product or service (and link back to you on your keywords.)
5. It’s Free to Do!
   And, the best thing about social media marketing is that it’s FREE! Writing blogs, creating and managing Twitter accounts and Facebook Fan pages for your business costs nothing but your time. But, the business impact can be incredible!

So, get online and build a social marketing presence for your business. Just a few focused, strategic minutes a day will get you hooked. You’ll be glad you did. And, if you start a blog, Twitter or Facebook account for your business and then say to yourself, “now what?” I can help.

This is the first in a series of blogs I’m calling, “Search Engine Marketing 101” or How To Get Your Business Found Online. Today, my specific topic regarding getting yourself found online is about Keywords and their power to help you come up in natural search results. Think of you own activity. When you want to find something, you Google it, right? And, that word, or series of words, you are type into the search box is called “Keywords”.

If you don’t know what keywords your customer is using to find you, you are in trouble. Keywords are of the utmost importance in all your marketing efforts. They need to be everywhere, including the following places:

• Your Web Site for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Tagged in Images on Your Web Site
• Your Blog
• The Titles of your Blogs
• Your Social Media Posts in Facebook
• Your Tweets in Twitter
• Your Headlines on Your YouTube Videos
• Your Summary Section on LinkedIn
• Your Online Press Releases

Keywords can be just one word, or a series of two to even eight words. When they get that long we call that the “long tail”. Think about how you search for something…. When you want to buy shoes, what do you type into the search box? “Running shoes”, “Supreme comfort jogging shoes”, “Nike cross training shoes”, “Brand name athletic shoes at a discount”… and the list can go on and on.

You need to conduct research and know exactly what keywords your customers are using to find you, and in a variety of short and long tailed combinations. Once you have this, it is imperative that you use them in all your online marketing efforts. Knowing what your keywords are and using them often and everywhere will improve your natural search results.

Print is dead. Ok, it’s not really, but, it sure feels like it. How many people do you know who still use the printed Yellow Pages to find a business? I sure don’t. Those are dusty doorstops at my house. I don’t even know why I keep them. They should just go right into the recycle bin the minute they get left on my doorstep. I find everything I ever need online! All the time. I love the internet. And, if for some strange reason I can’t find the answer to my question in Google search results, (oh, yes, I’m loyal to Google!), I ask a friend to refer. Instead of picking up the phone, I text, email or post questions in LinkedIn or Facebook to my friends and business colleagues. And, that’s what social media marketing is all about: networking, building relationships and referring online.

Think about how you’ve purchased something recently. Something specific that you weren’t sure a store in town would have, or maybe it was here in town, but you didn’t know what store would carry it. Did you search for it online first? It’s very easy to search and even buy online, instead of driving all around town not knowing whether you will find the item you wanted or not. I did this a few times recently with local bookstore. I was feeling guilty that I would always just go to Amazon.com to buy the book, CD or DVD I wanted. So, I thought, no, this time I’m going to shop in town. And, you know what, twice I was disappointed because they didn’t have the item I wanted in stock or even in their computer system so they could order it and I could drive back and pick it up later. Online is easier. Online is convenient. Those who shop online enjoy the fact that the product comes right to their home, no fuss, no muss.

There are 70 million people conducting daily online searches on the internet. These people are searching for products, services and solutions to problems. The question I pose to you, is, if your customer searches for your products or services, can they find you?