This week, we’ll cover a couple of important new Google announcements that affect your marketing tactics, plus take a look at 3 surprising rules for Inbound Marketers, including the proposition that Facebook Likes may not be that important — I’ll tell you why.  Note I’m using this week’s new media marketing flavor, “Inbound Marketing” to stress the difference between “old-school” push marketing (ie. direct mail), and emphasize the importance of engaging in online conversations, then nurturing leads and making sales.

NEWS OF THE WEEK::::::::::::::::

Two items of note for Marketing Communication Professionals:  The coming of Google+ Pages for your Business, and a Google algorithm upgrade that values recency much more.  I know, it’s becoming a Google driven world, but just follow two rules here to stay on top:

• Learn how to make your business “brand” page on Google+  – Mashable Article (Contact me for Social Media Coaching)
• Some are calling the new ranking algorythm upgrade, “Google Fresh”, but the most important thing for you to remember is that Google is now rewarding “recency” more highly in their ranking formula — keep writing content consistently.  See Web Pro News Article (Contact WebFadds if you’d like a quote on regular blog posts written by specialists in your industry)

3 Surprising Rules for Inbound Marketers

This infographic (click to enlarge) shows that FaceBook likers just aren't that interested in your brand

1) FaceBook Likes Are Not That Important

Are FaceBook Likes Really That Important? I say no. Here’s why: First we have a number of studies pointing out fickle reasons prospects click the like button; also, news that some companies are selling likes; and that many likes are from people not in a geographic location where they could do business with a brick and mortar store. Now Crowd Science has produced an InfoGraphic and article (right — click to enlarge) based on research that reveals “Facebook brand pages have been ’liked‘ by only 9% of Internet users — trailing the number of ‘likes’ for all other Facebook elements.” 

I also do not see high engagement or good conversions from Facebook for our B2B clients in Analytics. Take-away?  B2B MarCom Social Strategy should focus on LinkedIN, Twitter, and new Google+ Brand pages — before spending much time on Facebook.   

2) People Dislike Marketing Automation

Do You Hate Marketing “Automation? I do, and I bet your prospects do as well. This continuing mistake by Content Marketers (auto-bot links to blog posts sent to social venues, etc.), is addressed very well by HubSpot with a quick presentation and whitepaper. Flipping through their 10 things to hate slides, I particularly agree that Marketing Automation is “too sales driven.” Social business is not initially about driving hard for the sale… would you agree?

3) SEO May Beat PPC & Social Media for Lead Generation

Note I said “may”, because the jury is not in on this one in my mind.  But SEO is the winner for leads, according to a new report. +Matt McGee, writing for Search Engine Land, dissects the report and provides more insights including that B2B marketers do around 16% using SEO for lead gathering, and 33% of B2B marketing budgets go to SEO. B2C had different results with more emphasis on PPC and Social Marketing. And, no surprise since Social & SEO are merging, “60 percent of respondents said they plan to increase their budget for social media marketing in 2012.”

SEO Periodic Table of Ranking Factors

I think the jury is not in about whether PPC would beat SEO in lead generation, but sooner than later you’ll need to focus on SEO and that includes Social Media.  So, whether you begin with Social Media budget, then realize it’s linked to SEO, or just start with SEO work itself  this great info-graphic from Search Engine Land — The SEO Periodic Table of Ranking Factors — will help you get going (left — click to enlarge). I love the concise definition of on-page ranking factors, “Elements influenced by readers, visitors and other publishers.” Why do I love that? Because in my experience, it is the most neglected area in the practice of SEO.  Too often, C-Level managers insist on “inside-out” thinking, calling for optimization with key phrases they believe represents their company, instead of going with those that research shows will most influence visitors to engage. 

Stay tuned — rules for “Inbound Marketers” change almost weekly now.  I’ll keep you posted here and on Google+.

Things just keep on developing in the trenches of the SEO, PPC, and Social Media skirmishes, which means Content Marketers and MarCom pros need to pay close attention to integration and convergence happening in different areas of inbound marketing. We’ll look at three Inbound Marketing Trends here, discuss what they mean, and look at some emerging tactics to help you take advantage and ride the wave.

“The average outbound lead costs $373. The average inbound lead costs $143.”

Click the graphic above for a good overview of "Inbound Marketing" by Voltier Digital

Note I used two marketing focus labels in the introduction — “Inbound Marketing”, and “Content Marketing”. The first looks at methods to get people to your website, while the second has at its core creating relevant and compelling posts, media and other forms of content. These two disciplines overlap in a number of ways, so in the interests of integration, I’ll add the umbrella term, “Connection Cycle Marketing“, wherein the authentic connections leading to sales are king. I mention this, because as we discuss emerging trends it is useful to think of first, ways to get prospects to your website, then how content engages them when they arrive, and finally how this process persuades these site visitors to become customers. Then you do it all again — that’s the “cycle” part.  With that in mind, let’s look at the three “Inbound Marketing” trends now.

Inbound Marketing Trends 1 – Inbound Marketing offers better results than Outbound Marketing

• HubSpot, the internet marketing company that offers both marketing analysis and software tools, reports that “The average outbound lead costs $373. The average inbound lead costs $143.”  For “outbound,” think old-school with collaterals like brochures and direct mail being produced by MarCom professionals and being sent out of your company to engage prospects.  “Inbound Marketing” involves all of the strategies and tactics for engaging prospects online and pulling them to your site — including SEO, SEM (Search Engine Marketing which often involves PPC), and Social Media Marketing — SMM.  Whew… there are all those TLA’s again (Three Letter Acronyms).  Once you get visitors to your site, you need to have engaging and compelling content, then use testing and engagement tactics including CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) and VBO (Visitor Behavior Optimization) — sorry… more TLA’s.
• What this Means: MarCom professionals now need to think about ways to pull in prospects instead of focusing on pushing out messages to them.  This applies not only to old-school printed marketing materials, but also in new social venues, where a lot of marketers are perpetuating a similar mistake and simply pushing messages out there too.
• Tactics: I’ve mentioned a number of tactics above, but I would sum them all up as using these tactics in your continual “Connection Cycle Marketing” practice, which of course is another TLA… CCM.   Bind all of these together with solid business outcome goals for your key performance indicators in your Analytics program, and make each tactic prove itself for ROI.  Used well together you will have a very powerful synergy for your Marketing efforts.

Avoid the “content bot” approach — auto posting just links to your content in social venues –  where possible.  Business social is about creating relationships — the emotional handshake that leads to sales, and for these you must be “authentically present”.

Inbound Marketing Trends 2 – PPC becomes more important for both SEO and Testing

• PPC — Pay Per Click ads — are becoming much more important for your connection cycle marketing work, in part because it is so easy to test value propositions, and also because Google has recently announced that it will no longer report the organic keywords used to reach your site — but it will continue to provide PPC related keyword reports.  Google said it is doing this for privacy concerns, but the net result will probably be more revenue via its PPC platform — Google Adwords.
• What this Means: You’ll turn to adwords keyword reporting when you are looking for keywords that are proven to engage your prospects.
• Tactics: Here are two tactics to use PPC in your overall Connection Cycle Marketing strategy:
  1. Test your value proposition (ie. My Service Saves Time, versus, My Service Costs Less) in headlines in PPC ads, then also in A/B tests on your landing pages (make sure your landing page messaging coordinates with the ads you place)
  2. Look for long-tail key phrases in PPC that are often more affordable (ie. if you are an HVAC contractor, a “longer tail” phrase would be “Air Conditioning Cost Reduction, Houston”, versus just “Air Conditioning Repair”).  When you find them, write compelling blog posts focusing on those key phrases.

Inbound Marketing Trends 3- SEO and Social Media Marketing (SMM) are merging

• Google has announced it is factoring “Social Signals” into its famous, never published, always updating ranking algorithm.  Of course Google+ will play a prominent role (hint:  get a Google+ account now — there are already thousands of prospects on the serve totalling over 60 million users).
• Rand Fishkin, CEO of the respected SEOmoz, commented on Google+ recently that, ” Content, search, social and conversion are all connected, and I don’t think any web marketer can be successful without combining these practices.”  He said that, “For many years, I thought I could just be an SEO.”  Not anymore.
• What this Means:  The concept of “SEO” — Search Engine Optimization — changes as Google, and other search engines add new elements to the formula, and as each element becomes more important.  In this case, Google can count what posts and other content people are liking, G-plusing, and social bookmarking.
• Tactics:  Set up goals and track specific referrals from social media venues, then how they track through to desired outcome goals (ie. download a whitepaper, fill out a lead form, etc.) at your site.  Avoid the “content bot” approach — auto posting just links to your content in social venues –  where possible.  Business social is about creating relationships — the emotional handshake that leads to sales, and for these you must be “authentically present”.  Since you can’t be in several places at the same time, you need an efficient tactic for your Social Media presence — WebFadds has an overview of one for you here.

Stay on top of these three Inbound Marketing Trends as you go about your work — note that HubSpot offers a good “Inbound Marketing” certification program (I went through the course, myself).  In this time of great change, ongoing education is crucial.  We have some more articles on Connection Cycle Marketing to help you.

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.

Everyone’s abuzz about how Google and other search engines are now heavily weighting your “social signals” — how many people like, friend, retweet, repost at LinkedIN, and Google+ your content.   Google+ too?  Yep.  But how do you stay on top of your Social Media Strategy?

Why do I think Google+ is a winner for B2B MarCom professionals?  Power, placement and pull.  Its tool set is powerful (resources to help you here).  Placement?  It’s everywhere from YouTube, to maps, to Android to websites to… well, everything Google- – and more.  Pull?  Google has over 80% of search eyeballs, and they are factoring Google+ “social signals” into their ranking factors.  In fact… most savvy SEO practitioners admit that Social Media and SEO are converging.

Google+ “Listening” TIP:  Check out this professional directory with over 16 million G+ users to listen to your competition, and study your prospects.

Things are changing fast, and it’s hard to maintain an authentic (live) presence in all social venues.  Here’s a list of Social Media Strategy Success Tactics in a powerful B2B package to minimize time spent, and maximize your SEO and ROI benefits from emerging social media venues:

The Plan to leverage a Smart Social Media Strategy:

1. Get a Presence in the “Big Five” Social Venues — Twitter, Google+. FaceBook, LinkedIN, and StumbleUpon.  Just one of the tactics we use is the WordPress plugin that provides quick ways to bookmark your business blog posts into all 5 venues (see top of this page).  But we know, you don’t have time to be in all places, so ask us about our “focused lead social  venue strategy.”
   
2. Save time, and proactively promote from one social media dashboard (they’re adding Google+ soon):  HootSuite*
   

   Consolidate your social media work on one convenient dashboard for all accounts, accessible by all your MarCom team.

3. Use an emerging “curation” tactic offered by Twylah.com to present your relevant Twitter messages in a zine-like format — on a subdomain for your site, so you get added SEO juice… see ours here:  http://tweetradar.webfadds.com/
   

   Deploy a dynamically updated tweet curation subdomain at your site which serves the dual purpose of refocusing prospects on important tween content plus gathers more SEO value to your domain

    

   • You set your blog to auto tweet to Twitter using HootSuite tools — set it then forget it, and focus instead on the new emerging leader… Google+
4. B2B Marketers… jump into Google+ — it is now recommended over Facebook (more options), and Twitter (better content tools).  TIP:  You may “curate” what you post back from Google+ to your blog.. with an auto-download of recent posts, as I did at my own blog:  http://www.webfadds.com/2011/07/google-digest-of-primers-guides-and-resources/
   
   • Find me on Google+ at ScottGooglePlus.info
5. Make your Social Business Efforts Prove themselves for ROI.  We’ll work with you and create a custom Analytics report designed to show how visitors to your site from each social venue completes desired business goals at your sites including signing up for newsletters, downloading white papers, and completing lead forms.

This is a powerful Minimize-Maximize strategy for your Social Media presence that I  sum up like this:  Minimize time using a central social media dashboard (HootSuite), then use Google+ as your primary “live presence” social venue for B2B professionals.  Maximize ROI using content curation techniques and good Content Marketing tactics — always testing that your Social Media activities yield optimum prospects and customers.

We will be happy to provide you with a prompt estimate for consulting and integration work as you strengthen your Content Curation and Social Signals Strategy.

* Scott Frangos is a Certified Social Media Consultant for HootSuite, and WebFadds has a marketing agreement with HootSuite

Last week I wrote about how Content is the Kings’ Gold… but not the King. In that post, I promised I’d write a bit more about “Authentic Connections”, and different kinds of Optimizations that the King can use  as he or she pays out the gold.  We’ll get a big picture feel for how this works here.

Connection Cycle Marketing:  Online marketing continues to rapidly evolve and so do the related TLA (Three Letter Acronym) disciplines of SEO, SEM, CRO, LPO, VBO, etc. All are part of the marketing mix you need for success, but there must be a simpler way to think about going about it?  Yes… and no — we’ll look at the bigger picture here — the “Yes” part because it’s simpler. 

I like to include them all together under an umbrella term I call Connection Cycle Marketing — CCM.  The important point about this focus is that Connection, between you and your prospects, is the real King you are after.  You are King of your business, but your prospective customers are King of your livelihood, so while Content is very important (your Gold) it is a kind of currency you pay out to get to that final goal — the authentic Connection with site visitors.

“… you think in terms of optimizing visitor behavior at your site — a subtle but very important strategy.  You want to optimize for what visitors will think, instead of just what you want them to do.”

Understand Using the Rule of Fours…

Let’s consider high level strategic thinking by grouping tactics four ways.  People seem to like grouping things in fours, going back thousands of years.  We have the Greek concept of four primary elements, four Apostles, the four noble Truths in Buddhism, and the four Horsemen of the Apocolypse.  We will look at three interesting “fours” for Connection Cycle Marketing.

1 – Optimize. 2 – Connect. 3 – Convert.  4 – Repeat. That’s the first “four” approach — the WebFadds rule of Four.  Optimize includes not only SEO, but also Landing Page Optimization, and Conversion Rate Optimization.  Plus you need an optimized CMS — another TLA standing for Content Management System. SEO gets people to your site, and the others make sure they complete desired business outcomes.  Then you Connect with visitors so that you may Convert them to customers.  What did I leave out?  Well, it’s implied that if you’re optimizing something at a website, it must be Content.  Let’s look at that closer in the next grouping of fours…

1 – Social Media Marketing.  2 – Content Marketing.  3 – Optimizations.  4 – CRM for Lead Nurturing. Now we start with Social Media and seek to connect there with real people, gaining an “authentic connection” instead of simply auto-blasting links to posts and content on your site.  We use good Content marketing tactics to further “romance” prospects “authority, liking and reciprocity”, as Scott Brinker writes about it – in Four Principles of Conversion Content Marketing. Then we convert, often with a lead form, and while they are prospects we use a CRM (this TLA stands for Customer Relationship Manaager) for lead nurturing.

One More Group of Four…

Brinker's Post-Click Marketing Heuristic (click to see larger), is a good way to work through a Marketing attack keyed to audience types.

1 – Audience Type Awareness.  2 – Content to Persuade each Audience Type.  3 – Visitor Behavior Optimization (VBO).  4 – Transform Leads to Customers. A couple of key differences in this fourfold approach:  you begin by understanding different types of visitors with different learning styles, needs, and thought processes will visit your site, then instead of thinking about optimizing a site… you think in terms of optimizing visitor behavior at your site — a subtle but very important strategy.

You want to optimize for what visitors will think, instead of just what you want them to do.  This requires some different testing methods, and design tactics.  Scott Brinker, again, has some very interesting related insights and has developed a detailed chart in a post on “A Post-Click Marketing Heuristic.”  He identifies three major focus areas in his chart:  Context, Content, Conversions (I guess that would be CCC).  I like his work, but respectfully submit that he has left out the whole unification of the web team with the sales team via quality of lead captured and automatically entered into a good CRM. Finally you need feedback from Sales to MarCom-Web Team so they can adjust tactics based on sales results.

This should give you some good ways to approach CCM, and all the other TLA’s.  We’ll talk more about them here as we go, and I look forward to your thoughts and comments.

In this ISSUE:

NOTE: There’s still time to save on our WordPress Service and Upgrade PAK — thru. Jan. 15th. See: WP 2.9.x Features & Upgrade Special

Best ROI for online marketing in 2010? ::::::::::::

We have a new poll at LinkedIN of C-Level Marketing Managers to find out what popular marketing methods they believe will be key for ROI this year — you can take it too: BEST ROI POLL . Initial results (51 respondents) are shown here (click to enlarge)… and there’s a demographic breakdown revealed after the poll is taken showing age range, company size, role and other metrics. So far, CRO – Conversion Rate Optimization – is winning, by a nose over SMM – Social Media Marketing. Did you hear that Pepsi pulled out of the Super Bowl advertising in favor of Social Media? Hmmmm. This is definitely the year for Social Media in terms of spending, but I am in agreement with the current poll stats that CRO will be best for your ROI. I’ll report more on the Poll results in a future post, but in this issue I’d like to give you some tips about each for each of the tactics queried in the Poll: CRO, SEO, PPC, eMail, and SMM.

CRO Tip: Click Heat Maps for VBO… ::::::::::::::::::::::::

Above, (click to enlarge) the click heat map for WPsiteHosting.com shows what elements draw clicks and gives some commentary.

Ok, get ready for another TLA (Three Letter Acronym) for this issue’s tip on optimizing — VBO… Visitor Behavior Optimization. How many times have you been in an internal discussion about what color a box or link should be on your page so more people would click it? Everyone’s got their opinions — even the pros, and often just about everyone’s opinion is wrong — even the pros. So why not ask your visitors? WebFadds has been doing just that and learning some very good things about what visitors do at our site and client sites. Some methods include Click Heat Maps (click screenshot to see one for WPsiteHosting.com — where a lot of our clients have their sites), recorded visit tracking (no audio), and usability testing with transcript and recorded audio. We’re building this in for original design, redesign, and landing page optimization — read more about it here, and contact us for a quote.

SEO Tip: Title & Primary Terms:::::::::::::::::

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.org (excellent site with tools to review your web performance), has done a couple of studies in the US and in Europe that point to a key tip for SEO workers: make sure your primary key phrase is in the FIRST part of your Title Tags. Below is a screenshot of an SEO plugin we install as part of our Max-SEO service with a key phrase highlighted in the Title Tag Entry field. To this advice, I would add that the most successful results we see with our clients come when that same primary key phrase (don’t try to use too many keywords/terms in a shotgun approach… instead, rifle in on one phrase for which you want to rank well) is used in seo-savvy copy that still reads well. This relates to the part of Google’s ranking formula called “density” — the number of times a phrase occurs on a page or in a post.

SMM Tip: Listen to Local Tweeters :::::::::::::::::

Above, Nearby Tweets is "tuned" into local talk about SEO.

Use NearbyTweets.com (version 2 BETA adds some great features including saved searches, search radius and more), to find people in your city talking about what you sell. Engage them. Meet them. Do so from a social, or soft-sell standpoint. Don’t begin by pushing what you have to sell. Just talk to them, and listen. In sales, there was a strategy called “consultative selling” that was very popular early this decade. It still works. Listen and wait for them to ask your advice. Then consult. Speaking of consulting, contact us to schedule a SMM training session with your sales and marketing team.

PPC Tip: Quality Score & LPO :::::::::::::

Ok… here’s another TLA for you — LPO, that’s Landing Page Optimization. I actually think that PPC is getting overlooked in the Poll — it can offer great ROI, but there’s a factor in adwords, Google calls your Quality Score that helps determines your placement, per click costs, and so your ROI. Unfortunately we see a lot of clients who are unwilling to give control of the Landing page advertised in adwords ads over to your marketing team. There’s a longer explanation to it (see our colleague Tom Hale’s excellent post on the subject), but to think about why it’s important, remember that Google wants people who click on ads to find highly relevant information, and there are ways to make that happen. One way, is to make sure the key phrase in the Ad headline is used prominently on the landing page. Of course, PPC, like organic SEO, just gets you targeted visitors — what they do after they get there is the other part of LPO. Contact us if you’d like to increase conversions on your landing pages.

eMail Tip: Subject line length :::::::::::::::::

Finally, here’s a tip on the other marketing tactic that’s languishing in the Poll — email Marketing. Email marketing can and should be optimized and tracked in Analytics for best ROI. Mailer-Mailer, an email marketing service provider, has created an excellent report with recommendations on Subject Line Length, Subject Line Content, Personalization, Bounces, and Click Rates. One tip… emails with subject lines of 35 characters or less get more opened more. And the best part of this tip… is the report is free for the download, here: Mailer Mailer Report. Pretty good marketing for Mailer Mailer, huh?

So, I’ll leave you with the challenge question: What are you offering for viral reports, ebooks, and white papers that can be tracked and shown to bring you more business?

WebFadds.com is an agency focused on CMS, Social Media Marketing, & Landing Page Optimization solutions. Contact us today for a free quote. And, be sure to download our latest Guide: “Winning Twitter Marketing Tools & Tactics”.

Extending Your Presence Online — How Intense Debate Comments Helps SEO

“He Parlayed his Way to a Million Dollars” – unknown

As I’ve said before, Publishing is the new Marketing, and Marketing via Content now offers continuing new ways to extend your reach and engagement prospects. But you have to foment — that is, promote the growth and development of  your comments, so you can “parlay” your way toward business objectives. One way to do this is with “Intense Debate” — a WordPress plugin that also helps you with SEO.

What is “Intense Debate”? It’s a plugin for WordPress that makes commenting easier to manage and extends your potential reach by allowing your blog readers to choose to tweet their comments. IntenseDebate.com is owned and managed by the same folks that are behind WordPress.com (the remote hosted blogging platform used by millions) and WordPress.org (the software used to create your own hosted CMS and business blog solutions) — Automattic.com.  The company also enables Blogger, Tublr. and TypePad integration.  Features include Comment Threading, Reply by Email, Reputation points and Comment Voting, and Twitter integration — your commenters have the option to send a simultaneous tweet when they post a comment.  Add to that the opening up of the plugin’s API to developers, and I think there’s even more potential to plumb here.  Try it by leaving a comment below.

Above – the Intense Debate comments template allows your commenters to login with Social Networking IDs, Subscribe to comments, and also to post comments on Twitter.

How does Comment Debate help you in SEO? The system provides a very clean, rankable set of Comments on your site, plus gives each commenter the option to tweet their comments when they post them — with links back to your site.

Above, you can manage the comments from more than one blog — all in the same place.

How does Comment Debate help you in Business?

• As stated at Intense Debate — the system serves to bring “quality comments to the forefront”.  And “forefront” translates to engagement with just the right sort of thinkers and prospects for your brand.
• Save Administration Time: Once you have an Intense Debate account, you can quickly manage the comments from multiple blogs all from one control panel online.
• Synergy Loop:  You comment on a post(s) at other sites related to your business mission, and this gets automatically tweeted on Twitter, whereby like-minded people may visit your business blog, comment and have their comments then appear on Twitter with links back to your blog.

Can my business stand up in an “intense” debate? Of course.  This is like asking if your sales force will be able to handle discussion, and even criticism at a trade show.  They can, can’t they?  Good companies will always embrace engaging the market because the constructive criticism will help them perfect products and services.  And great sales people know that debate is an opportunity to present your position which leads to more sales.  Plus, you can always moderate your comment system to weed out spam and destructive comments.

Recommendation: Install IntenseDebate (the WordPress plugin is freely distributed) and add your business blog to the debate.  Webfadds will be pleased to provide this service for you — we’ll be adding it as an option for our Social Marketing Solutions (just contact us at that page).

In this Issue:

Read on to find tips, and tactics for each item… and more.

Optimizer Tips :::::::::::::::::::::::::

• Tim Ash, writing for Search Engine Watch, writes: “It isn’t uncommon to completely redesign your whole landing page and test it head-to-head against your original.” Are you doing this? If you’re not — you could be missing the chance to increase your “conversions” (convert visitors to leads and customers) by 23% or more — see: WhichTestWon.com:
  
  Above test increased conversions 23% for a SaaS — Software as a Service client.

• A WildWestWeb.com article on top four tips to increase conversions advises, “Your ads and your landing page copy must match.” This is a doubly important piece of advice. Important for increasing conversions, and important in increasing your quality score with Google PPC ads — a tactic which can actually lower click costs.

How much is each lead at your site worth? If you sell a service for $1000, and close one in ten leads, then each lead is worth $100 to your company. An increase of 23% would represent significant income for your company… so start watching “conversions” in Google Analytics.

We publish tips like these daily on our Twitter account @WebFadds. Contact us for your next Landing Page Optimization campaign.

WordPress Tips :::::::::::::::::::::::::

SEO: Consider this new plugin for your WordPress Business Blog and CMS:  SEO Smart Links.    The plugin works to improve your site’s interlinking by finding keywords in your posts, pages and comments and linking them to your other posts, pages, categories and tags.

Rich Content: Remember, publishing is the new marketing, so ask yourself how best to market your content.  Here’s an interesting new service to consider — Apture — a platform to “enhance your blog posts and articles with interactive videos, images, Wikipedia, maps and more from 50+ sources without making readers leave the page.”  We’re going to test it here at WebFadds, and you’ll see examples in our next edition.  For now take a look at the possibilities:

Above, (click to enlarge), is an example of how with one link, Apture (via a WordPress plugin), allows you to insert a YouTube video, related Twitter comments, a related Wikipedia article, and an Amazon.com related link — all in one mashup.  We like the potential here.

Twitter Tips :::::::::::::::::::::::::

Twitter Mashups keep on coming: I am continually amazed at the creativity and range of features appearing in applications that revolve around Twitter. Often, they are a concept in search of practical application. So, when you first read about them, they don’t immediately suggest a good business use. Let’s brainstorm:

TwitterCal.com – why would I want to get twitter updates automatically to a Google calendar? Well, remember that you can set and save custom searches on Twitter (right bar). Recall also that you can have any number of Google accounts each with more than one calendar. And, Google calendars can be embedded in web pages. So… let’s connect the dots:

• Pick a business event tracking message you want to show in calendar format on your site. This could be local marketing & business meetings, like SEO groups, software groups, chamber of commerce meetings, etc.
• Set up a new calendar for it in your Gmail account
• Set up your free Twittercal.com account
• Go to your Twitter account and use some intermediate level skills to refine your search for local events. Save the search.
• Do a search and use the Twittercal protocal to send an event to your calendar — (add any events by sending a direct message to gcal – ie: d gcal meeting with fred on monday, 25th of june at 9am)
• Embed the calendar into your site as a service for your readers.

TweetBurner: When marketing on Twitter (make sure it doesn’t come off as spam) use “TweetBurner” to shorten your URLs… then track how they’re shared on Twitter.

Above, Twurl will track and show you how many clicks you got on Twitter for each link you post there.

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WebFadds.com is an agency focused on CMS, Social Media Marketing, & Landing Page Optimization solutions. Contact us today for a free quote. And, be sure to download our latest Guide: “Winning Twitter Marketing Tools & Tactics”.

Wouldn’t it be good if you could get 20% – 70% more leads from your site? Many companies do. What about increases of 200% – 400%? It’s possible. I’ll tell you how. And, we’ll see if the “description” tags most of us use to craft copy for search returns are outdated, plus we’ll consider an important new Twitter service… it’s commerce time for tweeters.

Conversion Alert: Are there ways to squeeze more ROI out of your website? Definitely, and recent studies show the pay-off can be very big. I attended a webinar this week by a company specializing in squeezing more results — conversions (like when a visitor “converts” to a prospect, etc.) — out of landing pages and direct emails. So far every single company that applies a certain conversion success formula has seen increases… and some of them are huge — over 200%. To prove it to yourself, all you need is a free Google analytics account set-up properly to track goals, conversions and related ROI numbers. Then you use another free tool — the Google “Optimizer” to test for winning combinations of headlines, graphics, and calls to action. We can make this happen with a Landing Page Optimization Campaign – contact me for a quote.

Google Evolution: Have you squinted at the Google search results page lately? If you do, you’ll see a “show options” link  at top left, which when clicked reveals a sidebar of search refinements like related videos, forums, past week returns and more. Nice. But for SEO professionals and “Content Masters,” still another Google development adds a new twist on ways to succeed in search ranking, attracting visitors and inspiring conversions: “Rich Snippets.” Now Google is encouraging webmasters to mark-up content so that Google will find and return more meaningful excerpts than what is commonly delivered in search returns. Watch for plugins to facilitate this work.

Above, watch video presentation by Google experts on new Rich Snippets tactics

Twitter Update: It’s commerce time on Twitter folks. You knew it had to happen. Check out Twitpay’s new RT2Buy service . So now for all those who ask just what is the ROI for twittering? You can have a direct answer in the form of revenue via your twitter followers. We have a great program — our Social Media-MAX Package – to build a focused, targeted list of followers efficiently — contact me today.

So… how are your landing pages… and now, your growing Twitter list(s) converting? Time to call an Optimizer – reach me at (360) 566-2451.

Twitter Engagement: Are you on Twitter yet?  Yes… it will pay off for your business if you use it efficiently and correctly to connect with prospects.  Below are some ideas on how to advertise using Twitter.

Remember… it’s not about followers. It’s about engagement. Many users miss the ways, besides just tweeting, to engage with their “followers”:

1. Reply directly at (@) someone. Use the at symbol then their twitter name to begin the message (hovering over their profile pic will show an auto reply icon that automatically types this in the send field). Then, they will see your message in their “@” message, via the link on the right sidebar.
2. Direct Messages: also on the right sidebar, this is your way to send a private message/tweet directly to the follower of your choice.

Emerging Twitter Ad services: Below you will find a short list of advertising services — interesting. My advice is that it is best to get your word out there naturally — organically — by engaging your prospects on twitter, and having your posts get discussed and retweated from your business blog (we can help you get business blog to twitter postings automated — contact me). After that, it will be interesting to use analytics to track and study ROI for the following services…

• URL shortening service includes paid ads: Adjix
• * Magpie sets up an Ad network for twitter: Be A Magpie
• * Twittads monetize a twitter profile: TwittAd
• * Featured Users features your Twitter profile: Featured Users

If you have a favorite service you’ve used from the four above, or another method of advertising… stop by and let us know. As always, we are interested in how traffic from ads “convert” visitors into prospects, leads, and customers.

So… how is your site converting?