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.

Students: Leave your trailing questions below in comments, and then in about a week, Scott will post a follow-up video here with a screencast to illustrate the answers.

Follow UP Video (based on your questions after workshop)

[To come after reading comments]

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.

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

I’ve found that many marketers are overlooking lesser known techniques for WordPress Content Marketing strategy.  We’ll examine three tactics in this post, and to keep it simple, I’ll narrow down desired on-site Content Marketing goals to two categories:  engagement (visitors view 3 or more pages), and lead generation for B2B.  We’ll leave ecommerce sales aside for now, and in this post look at 3 ways to use WordPress tools to increase engagement, and so lower your bounce rates.  In a future post, I’ll cover lead generation tactics using WordPress.

Above (click to enlarge) we have added several key post categories to our "Blog" menu item to elevate awareness of available content.

Remember to Add Important Categories to your WordPress Menus

Category archives are landing pages too.  Not only does Google index them, but they also provide a gateway to important content on your site, so your tactic here is to surface links to important categories in a highly visible position.  Most content marketers using WordPress do so using a sidebar widget — but there’s an easy, and more visible way to do this.  I’ll share it with you, but first… how do you know which categories are most important to your visitors?  Analytics.

Check Analytics first to see what categories visitors frequent, but since they are likely not being promoted a lot on your site, check also for what key phrases your visitors use before visiting your site — both answers are available in Analytics.  Then, your tactic is  to use the new WordPress 3.x menu system to add categories as selectable items on a pop-down menu.

Most people only think of showing links to pages, and sometimes posts — but why not promote categories of content that you know visitors are seeking on your site?  And, when you do make sure you write a keyword-rich description that appears at the top of your categories — good themes like our Thematic-MAX framework build in the ability to do this.
TIP:  You can reword the Category Title in the Link to something more compelling — then watch “in-page Analytics” to see if your click-through rate increases.

Above (click to enlarge) are some settings with a MaxRef Widget to reveal key content.

Use Sidebar Widgets to Reveal, Engage, and Reduce Bounces

Most WordPress users know about the “Recent Posts” widget that comes standard with WordPress, but what about promoting older posts that are equally important, and for which your Analytics reports show a high degree of interest?

WebFadds has produced a great Content Marketing plugin  after considering much the same questions — MaxRef Widgets (I’d also like to give thanks to Newt Barret, co-Author of “Get Content, Get Customers” who prompted some of these ideas, originally).  “MaxRef” stands for Maximum Reference to content, and the reason we added an “s” to Widget, is that you can use as many as you need in your sidebars and widget locations — we often place one in the footer area to re-engage visitors who have scrolled to the bottom of a page, and are thinking about leaving.

We’re pleased that MaxRef Widgets has a 5-Star rating with over 4,000 downloads at the WordPress plugin repository.  Our screenshot (click to enlarge) shows an example tactic to use its various settings to reveal posts about how Landing Page Optimization helps your ROI.  Of course you can use it for a different strategy, like rotating overall posts into view so visitors may engage with less recent, but equally valuable content.

Link to searches on your blog based on Analytics Key Phrases

WordPress automatically presents a dynamically updated lists based on keywords or phrases entered into its built-in search field(s).  So the next time you write a post, here are three steps to take:

• First check your Analytics for visitor patterns including what keywords/key phrases relating to your post are popular
• Do a search on your WordPress CMS for the phrase* you decide upon.  Copy the URL that results (in your browser).
• Past that into your post using relevant text.  Here are two examples:  Content Marketing  |  Landing Page Optimization

*TIP:  Research shows that Google users are frequently typing in 2-4 word phrases, rather than just a single keyword.

I write for other publications from time to time, in the area of WordPress Development strategies and Optimization tactcs. This is the second post in a CMI series on Connection Cycle Marketing (CCM). 

Remember you are not optimizing a “website,” but actually optimizing the way your visitors/prospects THINK about your company and its offers.

With that in mind, it’s TLA time, folks (Three Letter Acronyms)! I’ll walk you through three types of optimization and their associated tests: what they are, why you would use them and when they make sense.

VBO – Visitor Behavior Optimization

VBO answers the “why” of visitor behavior beyond the “what” we get from analytics. For instance, with VBO testing you can ask a visitor “Why did you exit our shopping cart?” or “Why did you choose (or not choose) to download our white paper?” Analytics only report what users did or did not do.

One popular method to test for VBO is to get a heat map of where people click on a page and then ask them questions that get to the “why” of their behavior.

Take a look at FiveSecondTest.com. The screenshot shown is one kind of VBO test we did for CMI (click to enlarge). It provided feedback on where people tend to click on the page (heatmap at left) and what they remembered and believed the site to be about.

Another way to hear what real customers think (not what “HIPPOs” think – see below) is to do an exit survey. I like 4QSurvey.com for this. Note that there are a lot of survey plug-ins and methods out there, but the 4Q people provide a robust community to help you analyze the results you get.

When to use this:  VBO testing is ideal once your have a preliminary design for your site before it is developed. You can quickly get feedback and make changes based on feedback before expensive programming changes are required.

LPO – Landing Page Optimization

LPO focuses on what a user does on a particular page, such as a lead form page for a B2B company or a shopping cart page for a B2C company.

One tactic that works well is a simple A/B test to rotate a different page with a twist on the headline, graphic and call to action to every other visitor. Then you pick the page that “won” (i.e., resulted in the desired outcomes).

An alternative to this is the multivariate test, which rotates in different combinations variables of page elements, so several versions of a page are presented. In a simpler multivariate test where you mix two headlines, with two compelling graphics and two calls to action, this would create nine versions of a page to test. Because you test more combinations, there is a greater chance you will find a version that “wins” with optimal results. Multivariate tests often result in better optimization gains, but require more visitors to the page to get actionable results.

Have a good look at WhichTestWon.com for some great examples. Instead of making arbitrary guesses on what will do well, you let your real visitors choose what “wins.”

When to use this:
I recommend using LPO after your site is launched. These are tests you can continually run and tweak.

CRO – Conversion Rate Optimization

Like LPO, CRO focuses on increasing the number of “conversions” on your website. Conversions are desired business outcomes, such as when you “convert” a visitor to a prospect when they complete a lead form. The main difference with CRO is that you usually test a series of pages instead of a single page. In essence, you are looking at the sales funnel that leads from your home page to a secondary page to an actual desired outcome page.

The CRO testing method may involve all the elements and methods discussed so far. It answers the “what” question but then you need to use the other strategies to understand “why.”

While you can use A/B and multivariate tests for CRO, Google Analytics provides a visual way to review such sales funnels, but you only get a “what” answer with it — what visitors did (went through the funnel) or did not do (bounced away from one page), etc.

This screenshot from Google Analytics (click to enlarge) is one way to consider a funnel (i.e., a series of pages leading to a goal). This is for the site CoffeeNutHut.com, and shows which pages best “engaged” visitors. We can study the top pages and ponder why they engaged better than those that didn’t. Often, we think of a funnel as leading to a specific outcome. For instance, in B2C that might be an ecommerce sale, or in B2B, a lead conversion. Here, we are just looking for best ways to funnel visitors into becoming “engaged” — continuing on to view three or more pages at the site.

TIP: All studies show that “engaged visitors” are most likely to buy your service or products, so this is an important custom segment to follow in analytics.

When to use this:
Like LPO, use CRO once your site has launched to continually improve your site.

General strategies for testing

Regardless of the test you use, keep these tips in mind:

Always be testing
This is a great way to continually improve your site ROI. Vanquish the “brochure site” mentality. Your website is NOT done when you finish the design; it’s only DONE when you finish optimizing for desired results, then start over.

Always build in a component to answer “why”
While analytics are critical in answering what your visitors are doing and not doing, aim to understand why your site visitors behave in certain ways by using tools such as VBO heat/memory tests, exit surveys and polls. You need to actually ASK your customers and prospects for this information.

Stop relying on the faith of your HIPPO
Often, content marketing teams default to the the “Highest Paid Person’s Opinion” (HIPPO), which is “faith based”, as in, “I really believe this will work.” Instead, reply with “let’s test that with another idea in an A/B test and see which test wins…by actually seeing how real visitors behave.” Worried about offending the HIPPO? Don’t. You are respecting their opinion by including it in the test, plus using a method of increasing site ROI that they can appreciate.

I look forward to your comments and questions. You can find more posts in the series on “Connection Cycle Marketing” on my author index page at Content Marketing Institute.

The Google+ interface comes with a number of powerful editing and interaction techniques, so I thought I’d share a few of my favorites with you over the next few weeks. In this post, we’ll look at formatting text, and also “tagging” someone you want to take notice on Google+ (it’s all about authentic connections).  In past articles, I’ve covered some other places to find guides, what leading strategists think about Google+, and some ways to integrate Google+ with other social networks and WordPress (we’re WordPress developers at WebFadds).  Now it’s time to get down to the business of interactive communication on Google+…

Text Formatting in Google+

If you’ve been blogging for a while, you probably have editing strategies to use bold or italic text when you want to emphasize important thoughts. In Journalism school I learned best uses for these communication tactics, and at formal magazines and newspapers there is usually a “house style” often demonstrated in a published style usage guide. The important thing is to use emphasis styles consistently when you wish to draw attention to certain thoughts in your posts, and now you can do it on Google+:

1. Use asterisks (*) around copy you want bold, and underscores ( _ ) around copy you want emphasized using italics. Also… use dashes (-) before and after for strike-throughs

2. After you share it,  you’ll see the formatting in your post.

I saw at least a couple of recent posts suggesting that Google+ posting could take the place of blogging, and that WordPress should be worried about that. I think Google has a ways to go, but since you have no character limit on the system it could be that for some professionals, Google+ will become a central method of posting over time.  The key

Here, I'm "tagging" Jay Baer — an Author, Seminar Speaker, and Social Media pundit of some reknown.

will be how you intend to tie your Google+ posts to your business outcome goals, and if they include gathering leads, and downloading whitepapers.. then you still need a central website for now.

Tagging People in your Google+ Posts

3. To “tag” someone on Google+ you begin typing the plus (+) sign then their name and click on the pop-up menu that appears.
4. Tagged names then appear in your post as a link, plus notification is sent to the person you tagged.

Why do you care about tagging people?  Because this is a primary social tactic to meet people, reward people (it’s good etiquette to mention them when you refer to something they’ve written, to help them build name recognition) and to gather recognition synergy to yourself by associating with other colleagues in your industry.  Remember this rule, always give prospects, and colleagues the “+”.