When it comes to Social Media Marketing, nothing is more powerful than posting links in major social venues for every blog post — especially as Google and other companies dial in “social signals” in their ranking formulas. One great WordPress plugin for this, features the big five social venues — Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and StumbleUpon — you can see it in use at the top of this post.

School yourself to click the buttons, along with your core staff and associates for every post you publish — this is the real secret.

1) To get started, join important groups at LinkedIN relating to your industry and participate in discussions there. You want groups that not only contain colleagues, but more importantly prospects who may be interested in your products and services.

2) Find online groups where your clients might hang out and maintain a presence there. At LinkedIn, you might try Property Management Professionals, as a Realtor, for example. With over 7400 members, you will learn more about serving their concerns, and could find leads in your geographic area.

Above is an example of the Social Bookmarking icons that appear at top of posts. Click each one regularly, and post your link to a Social Venue

3) When you click the LinkedIn icon under a post, you will have the opportunity to post it directly to a group you’ve joined at LinkedIn (right).

4) You take similar steps with each of the other buttons that connect you to the networks.  LinkedIn goes pretty fast once you are set up with groups you can engage.  StumbleUpon, not as well known as the others, takes about the same amount of time and authoritative websites like Mashable have reported great traffic results using it.  Then of course, you want to always post to Twitter, Facebook, and the new Google+.  School yourself to click the buttons, along with your core staff and associates for every post you publish — this is the real secret.

Above, you can see how I posted direct to Google+ from this blog — every Content Marketer should have a Google+ account.  Top three reasons:  Google is ranking G+ posts higher than other networks, G+ Brand pages will soon merge with map business pages, and… it’s expected to reach 400 million users in 2012.

Always be Authentic

5) Monitor the buzz about your company, and participate live at Social Media sites – authentic presence leads to real connections and leads. People buy from those they feel they know. So, don’t rely only on redistributed content and links. Make yourself known as a real person with whom prospects would like to do business. I recommend and use HootSuite to efficiently manage  Social Media accounts and will provide training and consulting for same upon request. Your bottom line is new customers for best ROI on your Social Media advertising spend.

BONUS TIP:  Give some serious thought to using a good CRM — Customer Relationship Manager — to nurture the leads you gather. Good ones factor in social media so you can learn what your prospect is buzzing about. We like BatchBook.com for smaller businesses, and SalesForce.com for larger companies. Make sure you cut down on entry typing by embedding a contact form on your website to send leads directly into your customer relationship management tool.

Summary: As the beat quickens in the world of B2B SEO Tactics, we find new technologies like Apple’s SIRI voice search (“Find Local Plumber”, etc.), and PPC and Social Media become more important to SEO, knowing where to focus your SEO efforts is becoming essential.  I’ll cover some new trends, and give you some practical tips and tactics.  We include two SEO strategy videos, a WordPress how-to video covering SEO and other Content Marketing Tactics.

1) Apple’s SIRI Search Requires More Than a Website for SEO

Apple’s new voice activated SIRI search on iPhone (and soon the iPad) doesn’t much care if you have a website.  It counts, but you also have to have a lot of local citations in place for google reviews, at yelp, the BBB, and the local chamber — just about any relevant local business review site, so that SIRI thinks you are worthy (relevant).  This is mostly for B2B (“Find local plumber”, etc.), but for some B2B professionals too (“Find CPA”, “Find Law Firm”, etc.).

SEO Tactics for Content Marketers (local B2C):  Make sure you have a well presented Google “places for business“, and you are actively soliciting positive reviews (have a netbook or tablet on place for customers to write reviews).  Also… get on Yelp, and FourSquare when appropriate.

2) Smart PPC advertising with SEO equals a strong synergy for success…

PPC — Pay Per Click ads are becoming more essential alongside your SEO efforts.  Here are three reasons why:

1. You can learn some key insights for phrases that not only engage people… but for which they then visit your site and complete a desired business goal, like filling out a lead
2. Google recently reported that because of privacy concerns, it is going to stop showing key word referral data for visitors to your sites from logged in users for organic search, but not for PPC campaigns
3. When you are running an A/B test at your site to increase results, say you are checking which of two headlines on a contact page causes more visitors to send the firm, you can use PPC to send enough visitors quickly to that page to complete the test, and also make sure they are qualified visitors, more likely to be interested in your specific services and projects than random visitors.

Reference article: Integrating SEO & PPC: 3 Areas to Explore

3) What’s the true value of SEO work? (ranking #1 isn’t it)…

Is a first page organic search return valuable?  Yes.  But less so now that Google places maps on top of local search results (placing well on maps is more important in that case), and with other changes afoot.  So, how do you determine the true value of your SEO work?  Well, “long-tail” searching is more in play these days than ever, since other search modifications are causing prospects to type three to five words in their searches.  Look at the graph below:

You can get as far with less popular phrases (right side of graph) that convert well because visitors are qualified.

If you are chasing after the top single keywords for your business, you are in the green part of the chart at left, and spending a lot of green cold cash.  That’s where all the competition is, and that’s why it can take months to make an impact.  But look at the yellow area, and note it represents about the same about of area.  SEO translation:  when you go after a number of longer phrases by focusing on them in your business blog posts, you can do as well (and sometimes better) than becoming anal about popular terms.  Why?  You will spend less time and effort on them, but will still attract an equal amount of perhaps even more qualified traffic over time (keep on publishing). Read this article on “long tail links”.

SEO Tactics for Content Marketers – Tip:  You should also set up a custom Analytics reports that shows how well each blog post you write focused on a long-tail phrase persuades visitors to complete a desired outcome goal, like downloading a white paper.

4) FOCUS:  Let Yoast Coach You for WordPress SEO Tactics…

So how do you get ranked for those “long tail” key phrases?  Does SEO copywriting make your eyes cross, your head hurt, and frazzle both hemispheres of your brain?  No worries.  I just taught a “WordPress 201″ workshop at the Center for New Media in Langley, WA (lovely place on Whidbey Island — be sure to check into the excellent 2nd Annual Content Marketing Retreat coming up in January).  As I recommended to the students, you should take advantage of the excellent WordPress plugin for SEO by Yoast:

Above (click to enlarge), the Yoast plugin makes recommendations and coaches me on the "focus keyword" for this article -- showing green for good practice items, and red where improvement is needed. Note the "Page Analysis" and "Advanced" tabs too. I have used several WordPress SEO plugins and this is by far the best.

And here’s a tutorial video that explains more about using the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin:

5) How do you know where to focus your SEO efforts?

Still not sure where to focus?  Google makes some very helpful videos… here’s a short one that explains their concept of “relevance” and “importance” when it comes to ranking your posts and pages:

6) Learn to identify “Actionable” Analytics

One of the reasons we do custom Analytics reports for clients is because there is so much data, charts and reports in your Analytics that you can literally lose several hours and not have a clue about what it means and what to do. The key is to identify metrics which give you clues for direct actions you can take right now. Some excellent examples are bounce rate, number of pages viewed (engagement), top content, keywords/phrases used to reach your site, referring sites… and a key performance indicator (KPI) for your ROI is what content persuaded visitors to perform a desired business goal, like filling out a lead form. Want to dive even deeper? Watch this excellent video by Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz — another great NorthWest guru:

Contact us for a quote when you need focused SEO for Content Marketing and custom Actionable Analytics reports.

Google+ has grown explosively, faster than either Twitter or FaceBook in their early days, and now has close to 100 million users with the network now open for all.  Even the Dalai Lama is aboard (see below).  Think for just a moment about the ramifications for B2B marketers. Prior to Google+, Google was simply a disassociated group of properties and locations — Gmail, Picassa, YouTube, etc.  But now we have the social binding — the circle(s) that bind them all together –  and this spells opportunity for savvy MarCom professionals. So here are five Content Marketing tactics using G+:

• Sharing of Circles
• Creative Hang-outs
• Lead with G+, auto-post to FB and Twitter
• Curated Content
• Authentic Presence

1. Sharing of Circles Content Marketing Tactic

Google has enabled the sharing of circles — lists of contacts with whom you in turn share content.  Recall that circles are the way you target only certain folks to receive your post content on Google+.  To share one, you choose a circle, click on share and it gets posted to those you choose. Other people can then click “Add Circle” in the post it creates.  I have shared some of my favorite Content Marketing Thought Leaders in this post (just click to add).

Share circles wisely with colleagues, friends, prospects and clients. Click this image to go add this circle of Content Marketing Thought Leaders.

2. Creative Hang-outs Content Marketing Tactic

Just this past week, the Dalai Lama held a Google+ hang-out with Desmond Tutu. Tutu can be heard remarking “it’s so clear” about the video from half a world away.  Note that the embedded video, I am posting here, was recorded during the live session, which was viewable even then by thousands.  Thousands can view live hang-outs (displaying up to 10 participants).  Thousands more can view later via YouTube.  You can even schedule a Hang-out with key prospects and clients to watch a video you’ve posted on You-tube, using the newly built in “Watch with Your Friends” hangout link. Remember how Google+ is stitching all formerly separate Google entities together?  This should have you moving quickly to take advantage of MarCom opportunities — c’mon if two old men can do it… so can you:

3. Lead with G+ Content Marketing Tactic

It’s tough to have an authentic presence in all social venues when you’re a busy MarCom worker.  But now there’s a new browser app that works with the three best browsers — FireFox, Chrome, and Safari:  SGPlus.me

(click to enlarge) - Install on the three best browsers, then you can click at top of browser window to display options shown.

• You can share helpful sites and information from three different browsers direct –no need to cut and paste across venues
• The application also automatically gave me a short URL name – sgplus.me/webfadds
• FB and Twitter is free, but integration with Linked in requires a “Business” subscription for $9 mo., but I am happy to support these guys.

After your install, you will see clickable icons to auto-post your comments over to FB and Twitter.

Looking for still easier integration? Hootsuite plans to incorporate it with its one stop dashboard soon, and WebFadds will support that for our clients.

4. Curated Content Content Marketing Tactic

Marketing Communication professionals usually complain about two things:  lack of time, and how to make sure content gets seen in all the noise.  This tactic nicely dovetails to address both points.  You lead with Google+, then use their “Data Liberation” option (under the gear icon at top right of your screen) to download what you’ve been writing in your G+ “stream”.

(click to enlarge) Using Google settings, you can "liberate" your Google+ stream (at bottom above), and download it for curation use on your business blog.

You will see a download file on your computer which you may open and then select posts from your stream which will then open in a browser window.

(click to enlarge) After I downloaded my Google+ Stream, I was able to click on any of the posts from the stream and they open in a browser window. You can copy and paste them into your blog.

I suggest that rather than a verbatim reposting, you will now have the opportunity to rework the posts from your Google+ stream — edit them into a new presentation incorporating some new ideas. Part of the strategy for this tactic involves first planning what you will “cover” on G+.  If you’re in Real Estate, or at a Law Firm — the topics are pretty clear, though I always recommend you inform your choice by learning what phrases with high search volume show up for your industry.  Choose topics your prospects will enjoy with a goal of engaging with them in comments.  Then, every week find the best posts and re-purpose them via this curation tactic.

5. Authentic Presence… Connection Marketing Tactic (should be a Content Marketing Tactic)

Too often, “Content Markers” and SEO professionals ignore a couple of things — sometimes because they are too busy, and sometimes because it’s simply outside their focus.  One item is authentic presence in social venues…

Tom Fishburne offers up great cartoons for your blogs, presentations and marketing communications -- see his site and note purchase/licensing options*

While the cartoon above makes the point of how traditional PR and MarCom people don’t get it yet (it’s a conversation, people — not a content firing range), I’ve found that even more experienced Content Marketers are missing the point too.  Authentic presence means you hang out “live” in real-time at a chosen social marketing venue.  This is so prospects can get to know you and make a key “emotional handshake” leading to sales for your company.  Be authentic (not a content “bot”) and available.  Track this work with analytics to prove ROI (contact WebFadds and we will help you create a custom Analytics report for this).

* Cartoon from TomFishburn.com used per usage copyright instructions at the site.

Note from WebFadds Chief  Scott Frangos (see:  ScottLinkedIN.com | ScottGooglePlus.info):  I began my career as a writer and editor and did a couple of stints in PR before gravitating to advertising-marketing-web development.  Now, we continue to see a lot of clients who need help creating consistent, well targeted, and professionally published content crafted to increase visibility, SEO, and to lead site visitors to desired business outcome goals.  In a nutshell — content marketing.  So, I’m happy to announce that we now offer three services for professional content creation…

Three Content Marketing Options from WebFadds.com

1. General Blog Posting:  We’ll interview your Marketing Communication group to understand the thrust of your messages and the profile of your target prospects.  Then, we’ll research recent search volume related to your industry to determine topics with you.  After that, we’ll create a minimum of two blog posts per week, crafted to engage website visitors.  We will review and track this campaign with engagement Analytics and custom reporting tied to business outcome goals like leads gathering, and downloading of white-papers which we will determine together.  We’ll tie this in with your Social Media marketing, itself growing in importance for good SEO results.  Generally, this level of content creation runs between $45 – $60 per post.
2. Expert Level Blog Posts:  For this level of content publishing, we will engage proven writers for your industry, plus add expert editing with an editor that will interview you, your prospects, and research the market further in order to produce longer and more insightful articles.  We will review and track this campaign with engagement Analytics and custom reporting tied to business outcome goals like leads gathering, and downloading of white-papers which we will determine together.  We’ll tie this in with your Social Media marketing, itself growing in importance for good SEO results.  Generally, this level of content creation runs between $79 – $120 per post.
3. Multi-Media, “Power of Story” Presentations:  People are moved by stories.  And you need every “emotional handshake” you can get for your business, so we will work with you to create multi-media presentations including video, animation, and flash-like (except we’ll use technology that IS viewable on millions of iPads and iPhones) moving images to get your story across and engage your prospects and customers with your story crafted to result in trackable business outcome goals for maximum ROI on this effort.

Contact Us Today… The bottom line is that Google and other search engines are stepping up how they reward consistent publishing of relevant content, and doing so using proven communication principles along with professional publishing and editing tied social media and with trackable goals is the key in this fast evolving online marketplace.

Below is an official Press Release about the two WordPress workshops (hands-on) I’ll be teaching along with Russell Sparkman next Month at the Langley Center for New Media on Whidbey Island — about 45 minutes NorthWest of Seattle, WA, in the scenic Puget Sound.  This will be a great way to hone your WordPress skills and to relax in a very scenic location — click pics to enlarge them.  Looking forward to seeing you there.

WordPress 201 – Beyond the Basics, Hands on Training Workshops Offered at Langley Center for New Media

Media Contact:  Sherry Jennings – sherryj@whidbey.com

Entrepreneurs, bloggers, and new media students have an opportunity to take their WordPress skills to the next level at their choice of two WordPress 201 workshops available in October on either the 20th or the 21st.

This workshop is for those with some basic familiarity with WordPress, but want to take their skills beyond the basics to understand the stand-alone version of WordPress, related plugins, tactics that address SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and integration with Social Media platforms.

Center Director, Russell Sparkman, explained that the 201 level course comes both in direct response to their beginner WordPress clinic, and the growing popularity of WordPress as a blogging and business website platform.  ”This is a hands-on workshop with a low student to teacher ratio to insure a high degree of learning and knowledge retention,” Sparkman said.  Both workshops are limited to 12 participants. Sparkman has an extensive digital media background dating back to 1992, when he was one of the first photographers in the States to embrace digital photography. He has been a multimedia producer, consultant and trainer since 1999.

Sparkman will co-teach the workshop with Scott Frangos (see ScottLinkedIn.com), a career Advertising and Marketing professional with a specialty in Content Management Website development in WordPress, optimized for SEO and business outcome goals like lead gathering. He has taught Publishing, Photoshop, Programming (for the Web), and WebMaster college level courses in the Portland, Oregon area for over 20 years.

• Learn More/Register for 10/20 Session: http://www.langleynewmedia.com/programs/marketing-pr/workshops/wordpress-201-102011/
• Learn More/Register for 10/21 Session:  http://www.langleynewmedia.com/programs/marketing-pr/workshops/wordpress-201-10-21/
• About LCNM:  The Langley Center for New Media is located in Langley, Washington, on Whidbey Island, just one hour north of Seattle. The Center offers a year-around schedule of workshops and events, including an annual Retreat focused on Content Marketing in January, and more workshops and clinics throughout the year on WordPress, Publishing and Marketing with New Media.

Neither a Committee, nor the "Boss" should design a website

When it comes to decisions on how to design a website, we usually work in a team involving one or two MarCom people from our client staff, a designer, a content marketing strategist, and programmer developers.  But who makes the final design calls?  From experience, I will tell you about two disasters when it comes to design decisions, and then who should design your website.

The Wrong Way to Design Your Website

1. By Committee –  we once had a a law firm client insist on making all design decisions during a round table discussion of people trained… in the Law.  As you can imagine, they made very poor decisions this way based on what they thought might work.  We did finish the job, but you can imagine if we hired the same law firm to represent us in court, then insisted that all legal decisions come from a committee of designers and developers, what probably would happen.
2. Your Company “Boss” Decides -  rarely does any boss have the skills and experience needed to make good decisions for both design, and user interface optimization, two related but separate disciplines.   Odd then, how often they think they do.  Even odder — they hire a team that designs and develops 15-30 websites a year, plus brings career design, usability, advertising and marketing experience to the table, then wish to over-rule the experts they hired at every step.  Luckily this does not happen often, but it does make you wonder why they hired professionals in the first place.

How to Design a Website — for Best ROI Success

I’ll give you two simple rules here that will pay off in business goal results (like leads), assuming you’ve set trackable business outcome goals for your sites.

1. Respect Design/Usability experts — These professionals know how to direct eye flow on a page, set the tone for corporate identity, develop clear and easy navigation, and produce persuasive content that will increase your desired business outcome goals on your site.  Period.
2. Your Customers/Prospects themselves trump the experts, the professionals, the committee, and gasp… the boss.  If the prospects are shown to download a white paper more often in an A/B test because the button was green, but everyone on the internal team likes the blue button… which are you going to choose?  It’s that simple.

Customer feedback on what works and doesn’t, through a number of different testing methods, must trump the “faith based” (I believe this will work) HIPPO (Highest Paid Person in the Organization) every time.

And since we’re on the web, there are lots of efficient and cost-effective ways to get key feedback from real users — in one word, always be testing. You can even do this before the coders start to build your site with both heatmap results and written answers to your UI questions (check out FiveSecondTest.com). Then, during launch a carefully designed A/B, or Multivariate test almost always pays off to increase ROI (see: WhichTestWon.com)

These test results should trump your Boss, your Designer, your Web Developer… and even your own opinion (I am consistently surprised at results, even after a long career in advertising, marketing and publishing).

Three Final Website Design Tips:

• Always tie your design into trackable business outcome goals at your site (contact us to help you develop some custom analytics reports to help you do this)
• There is no “best practice” to be derived by reviewing other tests because your mix of goals, offers, value propositions, and prospect personae’s are different
• The “design” is not finished when you reach first implementation… in fact, it is never finished. Via testing both B2B and B2C companies continually improve their results by testing color, type, placment, image, and message variables on a regular basis.

And in case you’re still wondering what to do when the boss or the committee asks for an unreasonable change at your website, tell them you will test their idea, and let the customers decide.

Live in Cleveland at the excellent Content Marketing World 2011 Conference one of the most important questions you can ask is how fascinating is your Content? This is another way of asking does your blog engage visitors, or are they bouncing?

The "GodFather of Conent Marketing," Joe Pulizzi takes the stage at Content Marketing World 2011 in Cleveland

Ok. You don’t want your Content to suck. How do you make sure of it? Keynote speaker, Sally Hogshead, author of Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation, has some great ideas for that. She related the story of a ride at Disneyland which offered an Orange ticket for the dangerous version, and a Green ticket for the other version. If you choose the Orange ticket, you get a sickness bag and other cautions. People tweeted, messaged, and sent pics for that version. After Hogshead rode that dangerous Orange version of the ride, she went back and rode the Green version. It was the same exact ride. Same content.

I had a friend once who was quite good at sales and with people skills. If you asked him a question, he could have simply answered it by giving a couple of examples. But instead, my friend would clap his hands together and then separate them with both index fingers held straight up. “Two reason, Mr. Frangos,” he would say, perfectly timed with his fingers. Captivating.

Does your Content do that? The answer comes when you get to the bottom of what you are in business to do online. Publishing? Sure… but the point is you are also in… entertainment.

Here are five more key Content Marketing take-aways from the conference, which I look forward to attending next year:

1. To analyze how your content is performing (from a Keynote discussion with Brian Clark of CopyBlogger.com, and Michael Stelzner of SocialMediaExaminer.com): take a look at Page Views, Comments, and Retweets (in more than one venue, with emphasis on Google+ as an up and comer), then… follow your intuition — it’s a science and an art!
2. To drive results — work backwards from a desired action at your site(s), like getting leads, and set up your content to lead people in that direction.
3. Blog vs. White Paper?  Ardith Albee, author of eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale, (recommended) has this advice when you are considering what format for a release of important content:  “It’s not about the format… it’s about the content.”  I think she is spot on, though it does bear some consideration how a White Paper might be seen as more “portable” in terms of getting people to email it around in a viral fashion.
4. Deploy “Momentum Accelerators“:  Also from Ardith Albee, another gem — think about ways to build momentum with your content including follow on offers, and “conversational take-aways”, where you imagine a prospect in a corporation walking out of his/her office and going down the hall to another decision maker to share with some excitement an insight and solution tip they learned at your site.
5. Deliver the Truth:  Finally, one of my favorite lines from the show came from comedian, writer, director, actor and producer, Kevin Smith (recall his character, “Silent Bob” from the “Clerks” series of films).  Smith left us with this thought during the closing Keynote:  “If you want to really stand out in this world… you have to be honest.”  He said he has a little prayer before he goes on stage where he asks, “God, let me be honest.”  How honest is your content?