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

Download your Google Plus Guide (PDF) – click image.

Most tuned in Content Marketing and WordPress MarCom professionals are aware of the tremendous success Google is having with Google Plus. Just a few weeks ago, I wrote about a manual +1 embedding method to get the button on your blog and CMS.  Now, to answer questions about strategies, extensions and plugins, here’s your WebFadds Guide to using Google Plus (complete with PDF — download at right).  We’ll take a look at what I call “Circling Strategies”, plus (pun intended) learn how to integrate Google Plus with other networks and WordPress.

Google Plus Circling Strategies

One great feature of Google Plus that will empower you to speak directly to and listen (always remember to listen) to targeted groups is called, “Circles.” The concept is simple — drag and drop your important contacts into appropriate and specific circles you create, then you can set your stream to only display messages from a certain circle or circles — the listening part.  You also can send message only to certain circles, plus enable image albums to be only viewable by certain circles.  Let’s consider some “circling strategies”:

• Target Images:  You create a circle for potential clients in your industry, called “prospects.”  Then you create a photo album of helpful images (think screenshots and powerpoint-like slides that explain important concepts), enable it for just that group, and “stream” out a notice and trickle of individual photos just to that circle.
• Phone Stream:  Continue to stream your comments and images to a certain circle using your phone’s built in camera and a Google Plus app on your phone.
• Serve Clients:  Create another circle just for your current clients, and load an album with PDFs and visual examples to frequently asked questions.
• The Schmooze Factor:  People buy from those they feel they know, so you have an opportunity to let your personality shine by gradually allowing clients and prospects to see more of your personal side.
• The International Effect:  Recall that Google earlier intended to add real-time translation for chats into the Google Wave and think about what that means for developing your global circles.

Watch out Mr. Zuckerberg — the circling feature alone (not to mention all the other Google integrations with Gmail, etc.) zooms Google right past the clunky way FaceBook operates.

Integrating Google Plus with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIN

Now that your circles are streaming, it’s time to get efficient.  This is a brand new network with its own learning curve.  Tim O’Reilly was complaining about its complexity on his Google plus stream today… but he does seem to be embracing it.  So, your tactic here is to seek efficient integration using a Chrome extension or two to make it easy to send Google+ stream comments over to Twitter, LinkedIN, and Facebook.  To do this, go and get the Extended Share extension from the Google Chrome Web Store:

Remember to be in Chrome (I’m usually surfing in FireFox), then just click install.  You will find options to select the networks to use under Window ==> Extensions.  Then you’ll see the “Share On” link which will pop-up a box with the network icons you selected.  Click the icons and post to those networks.

Integration on your WordPress CMS and Business Blogs

One of the best things about WordPress as a CMS solution are the thousands of plugins available in the great spirit of the open source community.  I have been looking for one that provides a smooth integration for Twitter, LinkedIN, StumbleUpon (many overlook this, but it is showing recent growth, and Analytics stats prove its worth), and now FaceBook — and it’s here, thanks to Kunal over at SearchTechWord.  You install, then configure it, with the option to have it placed at the top of posts and on the blog index page as you can see here at WebFadds.com, or use it in a side floating option position as you see in the screenshot below:

There ya go — you’re all integrated and on your way with Google Plus… let the circling begin.  Contact us if you need help with any of these integrations.

Web Engagement, Social Marketing Tip, and Visual Optimization

On today’s web, it’s all about Engagement and Connection.  In fact, Connection now trumps Content (see why in Why Content is King No More)  as the most important part of your marketing tactics.  Connection to who?  Prospects, leads, and customers.  One on one.  Think of this like what your sales people do at a tradeshow.  They engage booth visitors and get to know them.  People buy from those they know.  That’s the promise of Social Media, and many national brands have already proven this — two times in a row, SouthWest Air has had its highest ticket sales ever, from promotions that only happened on Twitter.  So… what is your “1:1″ marketing strategy?  In this post, I’ll give you some tips, tactics and techniques to help you. One big key — insights into your potential customers. Learn more about 1:1 marketing strategies and tactics from Marketing Experiments (highly recommended) – One To One Marketing.

Another new TLA — W.E.M., Web Engagement Management

Ok… so how do we engage and learn more about our prospects?  How about yet another TLA — Three Letter Acronym.  Tired as I am of TLAs, I like what this one is about… WEM — Web Engagement Management.  In a great post on the “5 Pillars of W.E.M.”, writing at CMSWire, Barb Mosher identifies them as:

1. Content Optimization
2. Multi-Channel Management
3. Conversational Engagement
4. Demand Generation
5. Sales & Relationship Automation

More on each point in future posts, but the key is that all five are required for an effective Web Engagement strategy.  Read the source article here:   5 Pillars of Web Engagement Management

Social Marketing Tip with HootSuite

So, let’s look at a tactic to address two WEM “pillars”:  Multi-Channel Management, and Conversational Engagement.  Time is a scarce commodity in most MarCom departments, and especially during this time of rapid social technology change.  That’s why I like HootSuite for its team workflow and cross platform engagement automation features.  So, my tip of the week is show below — use HootSuite’s “hidden” ability to profile tweeters:

Above (click for larger view), using Hootsuite to first monitor important business conversations, we can then learn more about a prospect by clicking on their photo/logo, then clicking on “view more tweets from…”.  Use this tactic to find out how influential the prospect is, and what their major interest focus might be.  Contact us to explore ways to use this engagement tool in your 1:1 marketing strategy.

Visual Media Optimization for Your WordPress CMS

With millions of smartphones, and now over 2 million iPads sold with more “tablets” on the way, now is the right time to consider your visual media methods of engagement and persuasion on your site.  We develop successful CMS solutions on the WordPress platform and are always looking for good ways to do this, so I’m pleased to recommend a versatile way to do that — with one note of caution.  Slideshows are great visual ways to explain B2B technical concepts in a persuasive and easy to understand way.  Consider the slides we did for a recent client, Lopez Research (click small image at right to see site).  This is a simple and effective way to present what you do in a way that engages emotions.  Remember — everyone makes a buy decision based on emotion.  What’s the caution?  Well, right now Apple has said they will not use Flash on their platforms, and most slideshows are done using Flash to drive them.  We look for new emerging standards in HTML 5.0 to break through this wall soon.

Above, a new plugin offers you the ability to show images that zoom and pan, while text explains the concept pictured and gives a link deeper into your site content.

Have a Web Engagement Management challenge you’d like us to review?  Great — contact us today and we’ll do a free review.

WebFadds is an Agency specializing in CMS Websites and Business Blogs, plus Marketing techniques optimized for Connection Cycle Marketing — CCM. We focus on delivering SEO savvy, Content Management System solutions on the market-leading WordPress platform, then provide Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Landing Page Optimization services to ensure you get maximum visitors converting to prospects, leads, and customers.

In this Post:

How can you get the most out of your CMS plus stay on top of the opportunities to engage prospects on social networks? Well one tool I really recommend — Hootsuite — is busily combining all the major social networks on one dashboard, plus blogging on WordPress.com.  This collision creates a mashup that points to where we’re headed in the next five years, I think.  If you’re still asking, “is social media a business tool,” you’re missing the train. And our CMS of choice, WordPress, has added even more great Content Management features in version 3.0, due out in a couple of wees, so we’ll take a look at those.

Social Media Tip: Now, use Google to find out what people are chatting about in your city. Go there and type in “location *portland” (substitute your city). On the left choose “Discussions”, then “past week.” Note that you can also choose “blogs.” You can also choose further search refinements at left. Click here to see what I found.

A Social Suite to the Max

Hootsuite is taking the word “suite” seriously.  In the last few months they’ve added up and coming social network FourSquare, the ability to reach Fan Pages on Facebook (standard Facebook was already built in), LinkedIN, plus greatly extended the networks you can reach by adding Ping.FM, itself a network aggregator that reaches another 30 or so second tier media sites.  They’ve created an iPhone application.  They’ve beefed up team collaboration features — great for corporate MarCom departments.  Kudos to Hootsuite.

From one dashboard, I can now handle all the essental social media tasks — and automate a number of them.  In order to stay on top of all of this for our clients, I am attending “Hootsuite University” — several hours of training and testing on using Hootsuite, and best practices at the major social networks.  I’ll report on that in upcoming posts.  Contact us for Social Media training and campaign options.

Above, you see the tool to add a Social Network in HootSuite, with Ping.fm showing.  TIP:  Ping.fm is a stealth tool that extends your reach greatly via 30 networks, mobile messaging, chat, and a growing number of 3rd party applications. It seems like a lot to come up on, but with our help you can set it all up once, automate 80% of the work, and greatly increase visibility for your strategic Marketing Communication.

WordPress 3.0 adds Great CMS Features

Here are some top new features to be thinking about using in the forthcoming update of WordPress to version 3.0:

• Control of Menus: Called “Menu Management” in WP 3.0, this new feature gives you a simple drag and drop interface to add links to categories, posts, external sites… plus package “custom menus” as sidebar widgets where your theme allows.  Wow — Kudos to the WordPress core team.  Note that WebFadds builds custom themes for CMS solutions with 13 widget-ready areas, and these menus could be available in any of them.
  Above – the new Menu Manager in WordPress 3.0 is powerful, but easy to use.
• Custom Post Types:  Right now you may only choose between a post and a page, but in WordPress 3.0, you can define your own post types and select attributes.  Think Directory.  For example, you could set-up a business directory, a set of photo galleries or portfolio pages, a set for case studies, etc.  Then you can assign special tags and categories just for this post type.  Then, modify your theme design so the user interface helps your visitors navigate through your new sections.
• Multiple Customized Blogs: We have been using customized categories to set up more than one blog for larger clients.  This works ok because each category has its own RSS feed in WordPress, and its index page may be styled uniquely.  But now, the WordPress team has combined “WordPress MU” (Multi-user), formerly a separate project and download, into the core WordPress program.  So, you may now host a collection of separate blogs, each with their own custom theme, from one hosting plan and WordPress administration area.  This should be great for universities, companies with satellite offices, news organizations — any group with the need for “departments” with their own identity.

Your themes will require modifications to accommodate these new features — contact us for details.

What’s with the metaphor in the title? Well, besides the fact that I hail from the Pacific Northwest — home of raindrops and rivers — there’s been a surge (pun intended) recently in new services for the techie-socials among us, with related apps — the raindrops. Then, there’s the great mash-up of services, where drops and streams combine to make… rivers of conscious social connections.  And guess what?  At least one new river looks to carry a raft of customers to small businesses in your hometown.

Streams Collide: Google Buzz  has millions of instant users — plus its own app store online — BuzzAware, already, in just about a month. One new service combines Buzz, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube — allowing easy sending of videos and photos — see HomePuzz.

Hootsuite, my social aggregator of choice, allows me to simultaneously monitor tweets about my company, linkedin network activity, and Facebook updates — on one screen. Oh, and Hootsuite just added FourSquare as a new network it monitors. Now what’s FourSquare? It’s yet another new way to connect socially, but it specializes in pulling online people into real world places. And, Mashable reports that Foursquare has momentum — 100,000 new users in the last… 10 days. Wow. Of course all of these social flows are streaming (another water analogy?) on the latest “phones” with apps galore for iPhones, Google’s Android platform, and Blackberries. Whew.

Above, my customized Hootsuite view monitors personalized streams from Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.  I’ve also added Plaxo, and FourSquare.

Local Business Enters the Social Media Flow…

So, what does all this mean for business? Well, quite a bit if you’re 15th Ave. Coffee & Tea in Seattle, Coopersmiths’s Pub in Ft. Collins, or one of 15 ice-cream parlors listed in the Portland area, including Granny Gedunk in Stevenson, WA. A popular promotion is to award a freebie to a patron with the most recorded visits to your establishment as reported by Foursquare. “Just show me your phone” –  you can ask to see the official Foursquare tally for someone with most visits to your venue.  In Foursquare parlance, that person is known as the “Mayor” and people compete to become Mayor so they can get the award — a free coffee, complimentary cone, etc. Heck, there’s even a “Mayor” of a Plaid Pantry on Interstate in my hometown of Portland, Oregon. Not a lot of imagination on the part of that Mayor, but it must be paying off for that chain convenience store.  You can see a list of some popular Foursquare haunts here.

Above is a promotion advertising perks for the “Mayor” from Foursquare

Not long ago, I resisted the torrent of social media washing my way. Back about 18 months ago, I had not even joined Twitter. Now I have over 8000 followers there for WebFadds. Any business? Yes. One confirmed client by Twitter contact alone, plus Analytics shows a good flow of traffic to my business site from there.

Use Analytics to make Social Media prove itself for your business. Above, I can see direct traffic from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIN to WebFadds.com.  TIP:  The next step is to review dollar value goals in Analytics so you can gauge the ROI from Social Media activities. LinkedIN shows a 7.7% conversion rate, with Twitter landing 2.3% in conversions for the past month.  Make it pay — contact me for more details.

So now it’s time to dive into FourSquare, and widen my Hootsuite monitoring window to add another Social Media flow to watch. Tweets, Facebook Friends, LinkedIN business, Foursquare hometown — scrolling on screen direct to stream of conscious connection.

Where does it all end? It doesn’t — the ocean is too big. The better question might be — where will it take you? My advice is to connect anew on Foursquare now — the tool automatically finds friends from Gmail, Twitter, and Facebook. It’s good to see social become local, once again.

We’ll be pleased to give you a quote on launching, and monitoring your Social Media Marketing campaign.

How do you monitor social media impact? First… get clear on your goals.

In this post, we’ll take a look goals for Social Media Marketing (SMM), business wise, and then some techniques for monitoring, reviewing and reporting on same.  Here’s what I’ll cover:

• Two basic objectives when setting Goals for Social Media Monitoring
• TweetReach Reporting for Reach of Tweets
• HootSuite Reporting for Reach & Demographics of Tweets
• Analytics Reporting for ROI

Two basic objectives when setting Goals

We’ll concentrate on two basic objectives for business tweeting:  Reach, which may also be a factor in influence, and unique site visitors sent via twitter who make a conversion goal at your site (ie. sign up for newsletter, fill out a lead form, etc.). There is also a case to be made in business for Twitter as a tool to build “brand awareness”, but you need actual research interviews to determine effectiveness. “Branding” does not automatically appear because you are visible. It occurs when your brand sticks in the memory of your target group.  To truly understand the effect of Social Media on your branding, you have to conduct focus groups and polls of real prospects.

So, let’s look at Reach and Important Unique Visitors, which we can study using online tools.

TweetReach Reporting for Reach

TweetReach.com reports on how many people saw a tweet — including those that retweeted it. Here is a chart for a tweet we sent approx. 24 hours ago — a tweet about studying up on techniques using HootSuite.

Above, we can see 8,567 impressions for two accounts on which we tweeted the same message. WebFadds, and WPsiteHosting (we have a marketing agreement with them) put the word out. Note two key tactics: we manage both twitter accounts in one HootSuite configuration, and we always recommend that all businesses can approach the market with via more than one Twitter account.

HootSuite Reporting for Reach

We’ve recent switched to HootSuite from EasyTweets, as our program of choice for managing multiple Twitter accounts. It also provides reach to FaceBook, LinkedIN, and via PINGfm — 40 other social networks. Plus HootSuite is leading the wave of smartphone use with apps available both for the iPhone and Android platforms.

Using HootSuite’s “Ow.ly” URL shortener enables you to chart how many people actually clicked on your tweet links. This takes it beyond visibility (number of people who saw a tweet) to influence (how many people followed your suggested links). Click to enlarge image.

Above, HootSuite additionally shows you of clicks by Region, and by Top Referrers. Click to enlarge image.

Analytics Reporting for ROI of Social Media

If you spend any time in business groups on LinkedIN (recommended) you will see debates ranging about the relevance of Social Media in corporate MARcom planning. While there are still some arguing against it, most now believe it is a key area for inclusion in marketing budgets, including C-Level Marketing Execs. who rank it highly on this current poll we have there (take the poll to see demographics of respondents): POLL – The Best ROI for Online Marketing in 2010 will come from…

Since cost-conscious managers are anxious to justify time and effort spent on Social Media, one good way to study ROI, is to take a look at Google Analytics (you do have an analytics package installed, don’t you?), for how many people visit your site from a Social Media venue… and what they do next. If you further have $ value goals set up (you should), you can find out how many completed a business goal of value to your company.  You should also pay attention to custom user segments — and one we highly recommend is “engaged users” — those viewing 3 or more pages at your sites.

Above we can see that Titter sent the most visitors (191) in a two month period, and that around 6% of those visitors were engaged on WebFadds.com.  But it is Linkedin.com that shows both the best percentage of engaged visitors (25%), and also shows that 40% of those visitors filled out a lead form on our site — completing “conversion goal” in Analytics terminology.  This tells us a couple of very important things — we need to target our Twitter followers better, or provide content to better serve them, and our LinkedIN strategy is paying off.

Are there Twitter Business Tactics that work? Let’s find out…

I often get questions from clients about if and when and why they should use Twitter in business? Answers: Yes. Now. To listen and connect. Will they lose control? Answer: Sometimes you have to let go for a bit in order to get a better hold. I am going to give you some specific examples here.

I’ve been taking “Inbound Marketing University” courses (recommended), and a recent one was with Laura Fitton, co-author of Twitter for Dummies, and @Pistachio on Twitter. I’ve added her to our Cabal list of Content and Connection Cycle Marketers on Twitter  – click and follow the list for some great, SEO, SMM insights.

Why would a business use Twitter even if most customers are not there yet? Great Question. Fitton, listed a number of great reasons in her webinar, including SEO, listening to your industry and market, and even using it for internal brainstorming and team building. And listening is very important. Most good CRMs like SalesForce.com, SugarCRM, and Batchbook are building in Twitter modules. Using Batchbook, which I recommend for companies of 5-50 people, I can see what a prospect has been tweeting about right on their record page — very valuable “listening” for consultative selling.

Above is a screenshot from Batchbook CRM for a client record where the client’s Twitter stream and LinkedIN Social information are visible — an excellent sales tool.

But are the big brands using Twitter for business? Yes.  ComCast famously uses it for customer service.  Starbucks puts out promotional messages.  Even Walmart has a Twitter homepage.  And, check out the Zappos Twitter home page.    These are pages built at their home site to feature who’s doing the tweeting, and provide visitors with an entre into the conversation — a recommended tactic.

How do you prove to the boss that Twitter is worth it? One of our services provides custom Google Analytics with actionable advice, and so we look at Social Media and track visitors from Twitter.com and other Social sites through to $ value conversion goals for a direct link to ROI.  Using this tactic you can find out exactly the conversion value (visitors coming from Twitter and “converting” to a prospect, lead, or customer) of your Social Media Visitors.  It’s more difficult to calculate “Brand Awareness”, but that’s another benefit of Twitter visibility.

Still another way to show value is the “ripple” message extension factor — how far your tweets go via retweeting. I recently wrote a post here about “Why Content is King No More“, and the tool TweetReach.com (go try it) shows it reached 6,119 people via Twitter:

Above, Tweet Reach reports on the ripple effect of my post, who retweeted it, what they said, and gives links to their Twitter pages.

Ok… you get the idea. Now get started. Wait — who should you follow? Well, that’s my last tip. There are a lot of great helpful applications for Twitter, and one that’s very appropriate for this answer is: Mr. Tweet.

Mr. Tweet suggests people to follow: Mr. Tweet isa powerful connection application that learns about you as it goes, recommending people, and conversations as you recommend friends and build your network:

Mr. Tweet offers you a simple but powerful tool to build your network the smart way on Twitter.

We’ll review more twitter business strategies and tactics in posts to come, and remember that we offer a Twitter-Pro marketing package to help you focus on the best methods for your business.

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”.

In this ISSUE:

A Big Wave is coming ::::::::::::::::::::::::

Hail, Google: All of information, in the all knowing cloud mind, in the all present psyche of the ever inquiring consciousness of the googlezonification of the world. Pardon me. I just riffed poetic about Google — evil overlord, or ultimate resource of freedom — and it’s apparent continuous march to be, well, the ONE content management system. Case in point: the Google Wave. The Wave itself is a sort of embedded chat, plus email, plus documents… plus applications. Then consider that you can take a Wave and embed it in your WordPress CMS or Business Blog. Hmmmm.

What’s the Advantage of a Wave? Above, I played a game in a Wave with four other people, where the game could be any application (ecommerce apps are coming, with real-time translation).  Now remember that Waves can be played back… for an educational advantage, and also that they can be embedded in your websites.

Hey… I have some Google Wave invitations (Wave is still in Beta-By Invitation mode) left, so email me if you want one.

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

Never Say Submit: Two of the most important things I can tell you about optimization are that it’s not just about SEO, and sometimes a change to just one tiny element on a page means more conversions of visitors to customers. Oh, and never say “submit” in your buttons. Why? Well you can take a look at the two buttons below. Guess which one 96% more people continuing in the checkout process? You don’t have to guess… vote and see the results at Which Test Won.

Note that neither button said “Submit” — click image to go vote for a winner. On, and one final rule… always be testing — WebFadds can help you… Contact Us.

WordPress News :::::::::::::::::

Two items in this edition: WordPress just won the “Best Open Source CMS” Award award  for 2009 from PAKT Publishing, beating out Joomla, Drupal, MODx, and SilverStripe — it’s come a long way from its humble beginnings as a blogging platform.

And, WordPress is adding new editing features scheduled for the 2.9 upgrade, due in early December, include some image edition tools which Content Managers will like:

Above… you can now scale, rotate, crop and align — all in the new WordPress image editor.

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

Think Like a Journalist: I’ve often said that in today’s sphere online, Publishing is the new Marketing, but Marketing still equals sales. What’s that mean? It means you need to think like a Journalist first when you’re publishing, but write with conversions in mind. Conversions? Yes — an Analytics term where you can track your web efforts to see which are most effective at creating actions where your visitors “convert” to a prospect, lead or customer. One example is when a visitor fills out a form at your site, and so becomes a sales lead.

Ok… now what does this have to do with Twitter? Two things: first, you need to write short tweets that provide valuable information to your prospects/readers — just like journalists do. This might even be a question (in journalism school you learn that one of the most effective “leads” to get readers to read a story was the “question lead”). And, second, make sure your staff time spent is “ROI positive” by setting conversion dollar values in Analytics (contact us, and we’ll explain more).

A recent post on Mashable, detailed how five real-world journalists use Twitter and Social Media. You can learn from their techniques, and also remember that journalists are seeking information there, so if they use your tweets and credit you, it’s another way of amplifying your reach. Read the whole story here.

I’ll conclude with five tips to use Twitter like a Journalist:

• Instantly check sources before retweeting, by checking in forums, Facebook, etc.
• You can become a recognized expert to followers and potential journalists for interviews
• Pose a question to followers, then lead them to a poll on your site or LinkedIN that you create. Later tweet the results of the poll.
• Consider “angles” for a tweet and related blog post, the way Journalists consider angles for a story — by understanding how other people online relate to your subject matter (read their tweets)
• Remember that your “community” of readers/prospects extends beyond your blog and twitter — but be efficient by uploading a video to Facebook, then tweet and blog about it.

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”.

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”.