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 been using Google+ and covering it on my G+ account (ScottGooglePlus.info — TIP: domains cost abou $10, buy one and forward it to your Google+ page, like I did) for a couple of months now — and the nascent social venue is really on the rise for B2B Professionals.  I recently worked with a couple of clients, one in the Mortgage Industry, and another in Law, and we uncovered a number of competitors and prospects using the Find People on Plus Directory.  In this post, we’ll look at some tips and techniques to give you a leg up on Plus.  Let’s look at:

• Social Signals & SEO
• Sales in Social Venues
• A Game Changing Disruption — G+ BroadCasting via “Hang Outs” Feature
• How B2B Professionals can use the Plus to up their business game

Google+ Tactics for B2B Professionals

Here’s we’ll focus on five tactics that have been working for me and other professionals:

1. Listen to Prospects, then engage:  Earlier, I mentioned the excellent Google Plus Directory, Find People on Plus.  With over 16 million members, you can tune into your prospects — put each in their own “Circle”.  You do this by refining your search at the Directory, to find the right group of people, which for a Mortgage pro, for example, could mean tuning into Real Estate agents who could lead them to prospects.  Watch for a while, by clicking on their circle to see only posts from this group, then start commenting in a conversational way to engage.
2. Keep an eye on your competition:  Next, watch how your savvy competition is using the new social venue  A Mortgage Professional in San Diego, for example would look at competition by searching for other Mortgage Pros in that geographic area — like this (39 competitors are already using Google+ there).
3. Write Plus-1′s from any site with a button now:  When you are visiting a site that has a Plus-1 button on it — click it, and you can immediately comment on what you find — which should be either colleagues, prospects, or competition in your industry.  +Danny Whatmough has more on this with a visual example for you at Social Media Today.
4. Connect with influencers prior to your next conference:  Here your tactic is to simply go to the website for your next business conference, then use Google+ people search to track all the presenters and infuencers for it — prior to the conference.  Throw them all in their own circle using the G+ tools, tune in, and engage.
5. Come join our Google+ Business Group on LinkedIN, and share your G+ address, plus discuss more ways to use it in business.

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.

What a week for Google with 20 million new G+ users at last count!  Below you’ll find a reference list of usage tactics, guides to help you come up to speed, and some apps to help you work efficiently.  Welcome to the revolution – follow me at ScottGooglePlus.info.

The Future for Google+

• Is Google the Next Big Thing?  Find out what some thought leaders think.
• How will Google Plus change your Business Game? Take a new Poll on that and watch this one to see how your colleagues (at LinkedIN) vote.
• On Phones:  Huddles… the wedding of Google+ and Smart Phones (never forget the Android factor)
• Discuss Usage, Marketing, and the Future of Google+  in a new LinkedIN Group — Business with Google Plus

Google+ Usage Tactics and Techniques

• Been Invited?  How to get the elusive Google+ invitation.
  
• Very usable  Google+ Directory: Scroll down on left to find people by Occupation, State and City.  You can drill down by city, then profession if you like, or do a general search, for say — WordPress — then drill down from there.
• A real-time list of Google+ “Hangouts“, and you can list yours there.
• Great article on using G+ for your job search: Includes 5-slide overview of Circles is another good visual primer.

Google+ Articles with a Marketing Focus:

• Interesting take on G+ marketing strategies…Reshared post from +Carri Bugbee BruceClay – Google+ Profile Optimization: Branding, SEO and Social Media Marketing
• Is G+ the best Content Marketing Tool?  My own take is that because G+ emphasized Conversation over Content, that while it will serve many purposes of Content Marketers, that should be secondary to making authentic Connections.  Conversation, Content, and Connections are definitely three things that G+ enables.
• Excellent set of tips on using G+ for marketing, market research and other tactics.
• Here’s an excellent post about how to use Social Media to circle around your prospects (used “circle” on purpose… G+ is ideal for it) by +Chris Abraham — on Biznology.  Mr. Abraham not only reveals how to “smoke out” prospects, but also notes the huge organic SEO benefit.
• Wait a minute… what has Google been doing while we all are focused on Google+? +Steve Rubel has some excellent thoughts on that from an advertising and social signal perspective.

Google+ Guides & Primers

• Another good primer on Google+, this time from Sitepoint — thanks to +Joel Falconer
• I have a simple one-page PDF for download showing Google+ integration with other networks (Twitter, FB, and LinkedIN), and also with WordPress.
• Another great visual guide (it’s a series of images you flip through on G+)  The Google+ Start-Up Guide
  

  From the G+ Startup Guide by Saidur (Cy) Hossain

• Flip through Mr. Wong’s slides – excellent strategic overview of what Google+ represents  (Click first slide to open larger and get navigation arrows)
• And here’s a short You-Tube video with ways to adjust G+ Settings:

Google+ Browser, Phone and iPad Apps

• Chrome Browser App: Let the G+ app enhancements begin… this one, G+ me,  does look nice, but I have to agree with +Danny Sullivan that adding too many browser apps have been known to slow things down.
  
  
• iPad Hack:  If you can’t wait, here’s how to Get G+ on your iPad (remember… you do the first 5-6 steps on your desktop or laptop Mac BEFORE hooking up your iPad to the Mac)
• iPad App Coming Soon: I’m waiting for this iPad app — there’s no name given, but it comes from the Google team itself (it’s waiting for approval from Apple)… read article about it and keep watch
• SmartPhones: Here’s how to get Google+ on SmartPhones (iPhones and Android)… go to: http://www.google.com/mobile/+/ Notice carefully the “Huddle” feature, referenced earlier — it’s specifically to help mobile people coordinate get-togethers.

Now you can take advantage of the new, simple — it’s drag and drop — menu system in WordPress 3.0 to reveal all types of content at your website. It’s a new CMS feature that lets you bring posts, categories, tags and more, directly to your navigation menu – great for content marketing strategy. This is important for “Visitor Behavior Optimization” (VBO) where you make adjustments to your dynamic site structure based on a review of Analytics and other testing reports (more on VBO in a future video).

Learn more about using WordPress 3.0 Menus in this 3.5 minute video…

If you find yourself squinting — watch in a larger window at Screencast.com.

Video Production & Distribution Note:  We use Jing Pro by TechSmith to produce our videos, then upload them both to the Jing Site and also to YouTube.com for a double marketing reach.  So far we like the quality that Jing delivers better than the standard compression delivered at YouTube.

In this ISSUE:

In this issue we will reviewhow WordPress 3.0 (coming in late April) allows you to adjust your menus to deliver popular content, a new, easy way to do optimizations in your WordPress CMS, and how a well-known SEO company optimized a landing page to increase sales by $1 million a year.  Our topics are directly related.  The more ways you can deliver what your visitors actually want (not what you think they want), the more successful you will be.  $1 million.  Can’t promise you that much, but following the techniques given here will definitely increase your conversions — when a web visitor “converts” to a prospect, lead, or customer. And that’s what it’s all about in the Connection Cycle Marketing (CCM) game.  Let’s learn some specifics.

WordPress 3.0 to Deliver Precision Content Delivery via Menus ::::::::::::

Above, note that you will be able to easily create a menu item that links to individual posts, media, categories, and post tags.

Know what your prospects want.  Deliver it. Have you used Analytics to note key content that “engaged visitors” hunt for at your site (“engaged visitors” are those viewing 3 or more pages)?  Once you do, you’ll be able to better deliver it to visitors using WordPress 3.0 enhanced menu options.  Due in late April, this menu option enhancement should prove to be very popular with CMS managers on the WordPress platform.  Why?  For the simple reason it will be easier to deliver exactly the content that visitors seek with the new system.  Imagine a menu link directly to a compelling sales video.  How about direct to a list of post and pages for a popular “tag”?  Good work WordPress core team.

New Visual Website Optimizer for WordPress Plugin ::::::::::::

Above, the Visual Website Optimizer shows you which page variation gives you the best chance to beat the original test version.

Optimize visitor behavior. It’s one thing to get visitors to your site and help them find the content they seek — next you have to convert them from visitors to prospects, leads, and customers.  And, now there’s a helpful plugin from Visual Website Optimizer to help you do just that.  This is good because although Google also makes a Website Optimizer (we like and use it too when its strengths are appropriate), this company provides a WordPress plugin to help you set up the campaign parameters on your site.  We also like its easy to understand reporting charts.  You define a control version of a page, then some variations.  The Optimizer tracks what visitors do, and reports the best variation showing the highest likely improvement.  Always be testing.  Always be optimizing.  Get the plugin here.

How an Optimization company made $1 million for SEOmoz.org ::::::::::::

Million Dollar Case Study: If you’re concerned with SEO, you should be aware of the helpful professional tools and information you can find at SEOmoz.org.  They’re great at SEO — which gets visitors to your sites.  But, the major lesson to note here is that SEO only gets people to your site… you could be leaving literally millions on the table, unless you do what SEOmoz was smart enough to do next.  They optimized, with the as a team effort with Conversion Rate Experts.  Here are the major success points for their campaign:

• They did a lot of listening — to the customer.  Time and again, I see clients making the mistake of thinking that people who know their product and service inside the company… know what to do.  They don’t.  Only your customers know what they need you to do.  SEOmoz, heeded this wisdom, talked with paying and non-paying members, and let their consultants become a customer.  They took surveys and analyzed them.  They listened.  It paid off.
• They used quick wireframe pages to consider new page prototypes
• They ran a series of tests for continual improvements
• They ignored “best practices” and quadrupled the length of the conversion page to better engage visitors
• They explained precisely what customers would get
• They used compelling video to tell the story
• They served customers after subscription (reducing cancellations and charge backs) with a getting quick started guide

Read the rest of the article>>

That’s it for this issue — contact us when you need to Optimize, Connect, and Convert!

SPECIAL: Mention this post to me, and receive 10% OFF on a Social Media Marketing campaign thru June of 2010

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

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.

Playing Ball: Innovation, change, and Social Media Marketing growth… it’s happening rapidly each week.  Last week, Twitter reported astronomic growth — up 422% in 12 months. WordPress reported 2 million business blog and CMS installations in 2008.  Wow.  Talk about “playing ball on running water.”  How do you grab a hold of this tiger and make efficient and effective use of it in Business?  I’ll give you some pointers on how to stay optimized.

CMS Thought of the Week: The *whole web* is your Content Management System.  Today, I was checking my LinkedIN homepage, and reviewed a number of blog posts — there — from friends and colleagues.  The same posts often show up in my twitter stream (shortened into 140 characters with links back to posts). And, Google lets you create a sort of “mash-up” via Google reader (for RSS feeds) where you can share your posts and those of others — see: my Google Reader Public Mashup.  Are you optimized to take advantage of these key web CMS techniques?  Contact me and we’ll work on it together.

Twitter Tips of the Week: If you’re looking for a job, check this link to an excellent Mashable article (a great web publication, using a CMS developed in WordPress) will help you learn how — on Twitter.  That’s right!  I’ve found and worked with two clients there in two weeks.  Plus… even if you’re not looking now… consider the article carefully and you’ll understand some key Twitter Social Media Marketing strategies and Tactics.

Next, look carefully at the “Five Phases of Social Media Marketing” — Social Marketing is not “free”, but it will pay off when you tie it into Analytics… and — analyze for conversions (that’s the R.O.I. secret).  One great question from the article:  “Will your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system interface with your social media tools?”  Watch for good CRM’s to start adding in Twitter functionality.

WordPress Eding Tips on Video: WordPress is a great CMS solution — we develop exclusively with it.  As you learn WordPress, and start managing the admin. area, you may like to review these short (approx. 2 min.) videos.  There are more available at WordPress.tv, but these are my “A-List” to help your work be optimized… in WordPress:

Posts:

• writing-and-publishing-a-post
• using-quick-edit-and-bulk-edit-to-manage-your-posts-in-half-the-time
• saving-and-returning-to-draft-posts-pages
• publishing-your-post-at-a-later-date

Add Categories & Tags to Your Posts (always do this — good for both SEO, and helpful site navigation):

• adding-categories-and-tags-to-your-posts

Pages:

• creating-a-post-excerpt-using-the-more-tag

Sidebar:

• adding-a-widget-to-your-sidebar

There you go.  That should help you optimize your WordPress and Social Media work.  Now… about those conversions? Have you optimized your landing pages so you can increase your conversion rates?  Contact me.

WordPress CMS News: A new report shows WordPress taking a leading position as one of the top four Open Source Content Management Solutions — read more here.  Version 2.8 is coming soon, and rumored to add even more flexible CMS capabilities.  If you have upgraded to 2.7.x, the upgrade to 2.8 will be easy — no expensive programmer required… just push a button.  If now… contact us, and we can upgrade you.

Are you optimized for Twittering yet? Social Media Marketing is coming fast and hard, with Twitter a major force (see below).  You will find me twittering @webfadds (and Spirit too). And, there are ways to optimize and automate — I’ll show you some here.

Not yet? Well, maybe you’re still on the fence about the “business worthiness” of Tweeting. It’s simply micro-blogging for business people and you are out there letting people get to know you before they buy. Why? People buy from people they know. It’s that simple. Add to that the ability to brand and establish authority in your niche.

And, the Twittersphere itself is offering increasingly useful tools to take your twittering to the next level…

Twitter Resources:

• Polling? You bet — check out: StrawPoll
• Productivity? It’s covered. Track Daily Goals with a social twist of accountability  | An event manager that auto-links to Google Maps, updates your Google Calendar, and auto-invites via Twitter  | Twitter for Organizations | Share files on Twitter
• Job Search? You got it… a job search engine for Twitter
• Research? Check it out… Track Trends and Events with TwitScoop | Tweetscan hunts for topics of interest and sends you an alert
• Publicity? Of course. TweeTube shares photos, YouTube videos, multiple website urls and more (from your iPhone too)
• Staying Efficiently Organized? Right. Have a good look at Easy Tweets* to promote your business and monitor your brands featuring an easy, efficient dashboard (we include coaching for this service in our Social Media MAX pack)
• In Gmail? Yup. Get an app to do Twitter from Gmail (another reason why Google is watching carefully)

Interesting Business Marketing Use of Twitter: ForkFly — a service providing discounts from hundreds of Portland, Oregon merchants. Hmmmmm. Get a following, sell access to focused followers. Earn money. Opportunity knocks.

Another Interesting, Government (hey… looks like they can be efficient sometimes) use of Twitter: If you are a Twitter user you can get northbound Canadian border wait times by sending a direct message to WSDOT – the Washington State Department of Transportation.

Is all of this useful in business? Well, what is one closed sale worth to you? Ten? I had a business meeting last week with a prospect I found on twitter, and am estimating proposals this week. Still questioning it? I agree, in business you have to focus on ROI… so do it. You can track it — Web Analytics Word is reported that Ominiture, a popular commercial Analytics provider, is integrating with Twitter.

Time to Get Going: We have a new package — Social Media-MAX Pack – here at WebFadds to help you get going. You leverage your Business Blog in a synergy with Twitter to engage prospects and leads… and learn about your niche. We coach and train you on efficiency in addition to installing and configuring your package. Contact us to start today.

It works. A week ago, I had 38 followers on Twitter. Now I have 295 (at time of writing), 344 predicted later this week, with over 1,000 predicted ( by yet another twitter service, of course) next month…

How did I do it? I’m practicing what I teach… using the synergy in our Social Media-MAX Pack is very powerful. Like a rocket. Watch me prove this @webfadds.

Is it fake? No.  Not if your intent is actually to engage colleagues and prospects in dialog about your niche focus, and business passions (with a bit of the personal side sprinked in, so people can know you too).  There are automated tools that save you time, but if you proceed ethically, (no spam) with honest intent… it’s for real.  You’ll probably see a few “fakes”… but Twitter is pretty quick to close down those accounts.

You can use our “old technology” contact form to get started… or just contact me on Twitter. And, we can chat about ways to increase conversions at your site too.

* WebFadds is an authorized reseller for Easy Tweets.  You’ll find excellent service and features (more coming… in Beta now) from the support folks there.

Social Media Marketing — who has time for this busy new marketing strategy? Busy indeed, but optimizable using automated techniques… I’ll tell you how.

What is Social Media Marketing? Simply put, it’s the use of new technologies — from blogging to twitter tweets — to engage prospects for your company’s services and products.

Is Social Media Marketing (SMM) on the Rise? Yes. You know — I resisted Twitter for some time due to my perception that it was juvenile and had no real business purpose. Wrong.

One example of how I was wrong about Twitter, and a tip for you: I used a new Nearby Tweets Search Engine (Twitter posts are called “Tweets”) recently to find out who was talking about similar business strategies in my neighborhood. Results? I have five leads, and one coffee meeting scheduled to discuss new business. Could I have looked up related businesses on Google? Perhaps. But I would not have known who was actively and currently focusing on certain business topics. That’s the key, and you can easily do the same.

Take a look below at the “Benefits of Social Media Marketing” chart which appears in a whitepaper, free for the download, by Michael Stelzner, who interviewed 900 business people and marketers for his research. You’ll get some great insights when you read the report.

Above, over 900 business professionals report positive results using Social Media Marketing methods (from Social Media Marketing Industry Report, by Michael Stelzner)

How to understand SMM and make it work? Two recommendations: Think about standard sales and marketing principles in new venues. Look for automation.

On the first point, just think about standard sales methods and think of social media a bit like those “business after hours” prospecting events that sales people always attend. You tune in, listen, make yourself known, and schmooz around a bit. People buy from those they know.

Of course, you’ve still got to find the time to make the switch from old ways of doing things to new. Good news. Since the new “venue” for Social Media Marketing is online, on computers, some of the work may be automated. I want to caution you — you still have to get in there and “hand out cards” and make your personality known… that’s what it’s all about.

Which social media sites for business? There are a lot of choices out there, but for now, I recommend concentrating on just three: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIN. These are market leaders, each with a different focus and functionality, and I have seen all three bring business for our clients.

New WebFadds Social Media Max Service: Now about automation — one of the reasons we’re focused on CMS solutions using the WordPress platform (in addition to SEO strengths) is the excellent sets of plugins to add features and streamline your work. We have identified eight key plugins for SMM which in particular automate blog postings to twitter, and facebook walls, display of feeds from twitter in your blog, display of linked in information, and more.

We will install and configure this Social Media Max package on your WordPress Content Management System for $739. Need your Facebook, LinkedIN, and Twitter accounts set-up too? No problem — we’ll do it for $339. Includes initial coaching on working these services for business “conversion” purposes. We then set up your Easy Tweets controls for a powerful way to grow your twitter following, and channel them back to your business blog (we coach you on success with your Easy Tweets – $25mo. account). And for a limited time, we’ll include installation of Google Analytics at your site to help you track your site for conversion health. Contact me today to get started.

That’s enough Optimizing for this time — remember to always be converting.