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Encourage Your Customers to Leave You an Online Review

Doug Williams @ 4:22 am

This blog entry was posted on April 7, 2010.

Customer reviews need to be an important part of your marketing effort. This is especially true for local businesses. Local directories such as the Google 7-Pack use the number of reviews as an important measure of which listings to display. Because you are asking for customer reviews, your staff becomes more focused on providing an even higher level of service, which translates into happier customers.

This gives prospective customers the “social proof” they are looking for about what to expect in doing business with your company.

How can you encourage reviews?

  1. Ask for a review with each order. This can be an email sent as a thank you for their recent order, include a link to a review site where they can complete a review. An alternative to this is to follow up with a postcard asking for a review of your product or service.
  2. Incentives: Offer a discount on a future order or some free offer if they will take the time to review your service. Some experts caution against this since it could be viewed as a form of a paid review.
  3. Contest: Offer to enter everyone that completes a review into a drawing for something of value. This should be for any review (good or bad). The idea is to solicit feedback that will help your business improve.
  4. Consistency: It is better to have a consistent stream of reviews rather than a bunch of reviews that come in all at one time. Set up a system that regularly asks for a review.

Not all reviews will be positive, no matter how great the service is that you offer. You will find though that the vast majority of reviews to be good… providing you do provide a quality service.

If you are concerned about potential reviews, then this may be a sign that you may need to make some changes in how you do business.

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Filed under: Social Media Marketing



The Social Media Marketing Obsession

Doug Williams @ 3:47 am

This blog entry was posted on March 15, 2010.

The rise of blogs, social networks, social bookmarking and other social media has created a new source for traffic for websites. A top story on Digg can drive much more traffic than a top search engine ranking. This has created a new process called Social Media Optimization (SMO).

Social media optimization is a form of word of mouth marketing through the use of social networking, social bookmarking, and media sharing (photo, video) websites. The essence of SMO is giving people a reason to visit and link to your site because of great original content.

Use social media to build your brand and your reputation, not to sell products. Brand yourself as a leader. Your brand is what you represent, what you care about and your connection to others. You want to be the unique and persuasive voice in your market. Your goal is to create a cultural following.

Social media optimization is different than search engine optimization. Social media markets directly to your target audience and search engine optimization markets to the search engines. SEO is about building rankings while SMO is about building a community.

Today we live in a world where you can’t hide. The world will become more transparent… not less. There is no more lurking in the shadows. Social media shines a light on everything and everybody.

The online marketing landscape has changed tremendously in just the past 5 years. It is getting increasingly chaotic. The old style of controlling your market is dead. It is about interacting and conversing with your market at a grassroots level.

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Filed under: Social Media Marketing



73 Percent of Bloggers Also Use Twitter

Doug Williams @ 5:29 am

This blog entry was posted on February 23, 2010.

Bloggers use Twitter much more than does the general population according to a 2009 study by Penn, Schoen, & Berland Associates. The study found only 14% of the general population is using Twitter while 73% of all bloggers will use Twitter. Small business bloggers (self employed) have the highest use of Twitter at 88%. The general population included interviews with over 1000 over 18 Internet users.

How small business bloggers use Twitter?

  • 85% Promote my blog
  • 73% Market my business
  • 69% To bring interesting links to light
  • 63% Interact with readers of my blog
  • 61% To understand what people are buzzing about
  • 52% Keep up with news events
  • 48% For research
  • 41% Interact with companies

Most of the small business bloggers have linked their Twitter account with their blog. 52% of all bloggers surveyed syndicate their blog posts to their Twitter Account. 61% of small business blogs are set to automatically send a Tweet to their Twitter account with each new blog posting.

26% of bloggers who also use Twitter say that the service has eaten into the time they spend updating their traditional blogs – though 65% say it has had no effect.

These results are similar to a 2008 study by Pew Internet that found 11 percent of adults in the US who use the Internet claim to have used Twitter. They found the adoption rate of Twitter to be highest with 25-34 year old Internet users. The median age for Twitter users was found to be 31.

18-24 : 19%
25-34 : 20%
35-44 : 10%
45-54 : 5%
55-64 : 4%
65 + : 2%

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Filed under: Blog Marketing,Social Media Marketing



5 Biggest Social Media Marketing Mistakes

Doug Williams @ 5:29 am

This blog entry was posted on December 29, 2009.

Social media is like having a conversation over the back fence with a neighbor. It’s like getting an unexpected phone call from an old high school friend and catching up. It is laid back and conversational. Yet many companies who enter this arena don’t get it and try too hard. Here are the common mistakes marketers make when entering social media marketing.

  1. Self Promoting: Promoting yourself and not providing value is a huge mistake. As you enter into the social media world it is about participation and entering into the conversations. We all see companies that enter into Twitter, blogging and social networking that spend their energy marketing themselves. This is a sure way to get people to run the other direction.
  2. Not Listening: Social media is supposed to be conversational. This means two or more people listening and then interacting. If your focus is on broadcasting, then you are not engaging at a social level. Building relationships requires listening to understand the other person’s point of view.
  3. Not Conversational: Don’t try and control and force your point of view. Your goal is to listen, build trust and understand the other person’s viewpoint. Yes, you want to voice your point of view, but avoid criticizing and offending. Avoid being too formal, boring and proper. Interact and let your personality show.
  4. Too much participation: If you try and participate in too many forms of social media your participation becomes spotty and inconsistent. You may experiment with a wide range of tools. Find the few areas you really enjoy and are good at. Settle in on your favorites and focus. You will enjoy it more and build better relationships.
  5. Giving up after a short time: Social media marketing is about creating and sustaining lasting relationships. It takes time and many conversations. Social media is not the instant solution. Be prepared for a long term commitment or don’t do it at all.

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Filed under: Social Media Marketing



My 5 Internet Marketing Predictions for 2010

Doug Williams @ 6:14 am

This blog entry was posted on December 27, 2009.

Businesses will continuing moving away from traditional marketing and toward Internet marketing. Many more traditional brick and mortar companies will begin tapping into web marketing. I have dusted off my crystal ball and am looking ahead to 2010 and how the web will change these small businesses.

  1. More local websites: 53% of Small Businesses will have a website by December 2010. The number of small businesses that have a website has grown from 36% (November 2007) to 45% (August 2009) according to a studies by Discover Business card and Rasmussen Reports. This trend will accelerate as small businesses watch the increasing trend of local search from handheld mobile devices such as Smart Phones. This same report says that 47 percent of consumers say they are more likely to use a business if they have a web site.
  2. Video will continue to grow: The website YouTube has 35% more video searches than the #2 search engine Yahoo has total searches (October 2009). 84.4% percent of online visitors watch web videos with the average viewer  (October 2009). The price of producing a video production continues to decrease. The price of Flip video cameras are under $200 making video cheap and easy to make. The standard video will be about 4 minutes and will be used in social media marketing and to visually demonstrate products in action.
  3. Blog websites to increase: More companies will move their primary website to blog platforms such as WordPress.org. RSS feeds are a powerful SEO tool and the search engine friendly structure makes these blog websites a natural. Blogs lend themselves better to social media marketing. Adding WordPress plugins such as Sociable or reTweet make integration into social media easy.
  4. Relationship Marketing: On the web, size doesn’t matter, relationships matter. How marketing is done is changing at an ever increasing rate. Traditional marketing broadcasts a message. Businesses will move more into social media marketing where they can engage their targeted customer and interact with them. Blog marketing will continue to grow but will become more integrated with other forms of social media.
  5. Polarization in Social Media: The over 40 crowd will settle in on just a few forms of social media to interact and get their information. This older crowd will try and distance themselves from the “noise” and chatter that comes with many forms of social media like Twitter. The younger consumers will increase their use of social media on all fronts. Businesses marketing to younger consumers will have to step up their entry into social media marketing.

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Filed under: Internet Marketing,Internet Predictions,Local Search,Social Media Marketing



5 Steps in Launching Your Social Media Marketing Campaign

Doug Williams @ 6:43 am

This blog entry was posted on November 15, 2009.

Social Media Marketing is used to influence perception of your company or your brand. It is used to  interact with people who could be interested in your products or services. Use social media to  bring traffic to your website and through links and to gain better search engine rankings. You can use social media to do some or all of these.

Before you jump into using Facebook or Twitter, you should take some time to plan what it is you want to accomplish. How should you launch your social media initiative?

  1. Purpose: What is your topic? What are you trying to accomplish? Get inbound links? Sign-up subscribers? Improve brand perception? Settle on one primary purpose and 2-3 secondary ones. Now firm these into measurable goals such as attract 500 links to your company blog within 6 months.
  2. Audience: What do you know about the people most interested in what you have to offer? This goes well beyond age, education level and income bracket. What interests them? What are their passions? Where do they spend their time reading, learning and discussing?
  3. Where: Start by being a detective. Track down where the conversations are happening. Are they on blogs? In forums? Are discussions happening on social networks? Are answers being sought on YouTube or perhaps LinkedIn Answers? These locations are where you will want to start your campaign.
  4. Participate: Each day join the dialog and become part of the community. The amount of influence you exert will be based on how actively you join in the conversations and contribute. Comment on blogs, join in the forum discussions, follow and Tweet on Twitter and be active in the social networks. Set-up your own pages, blog marketing and YouTube channels.
  5. Monitoring: Set-up your own listening or monitoring system. Use Google Alerts (free) or some of the more sophisticated paid tools to track brand mentions, blog conversations, social media or tweets. If your goals are around SEO, measure and monitor links and rankings. What you measure and monitor will be based on you purpose and goals. Measure your progress toward your goals.

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Filed under: Social Media Marketing



How to Measure ROI for Social Media Marketing

Doug Williams @ 5:20 am

This blog entry was posted on November 5, 2009.

Many companies are joining social media with enthusiasm as way to reach new customers, but how do you measure a payoff? How can you determine whether you are getting a return on your investment? According to an August 2009 survey, 84% of marketers aren’t measuring ROI on their social media marketing efforts. 40% of the respondents didn’t believe it could be measured.

Many companies that are measuring success of their campaigns are watching for direct measurable results from their campaigns. These will show improvements, but don’t translatedirectly into ROI. These include metrics like.

  1. Facebook fans.
  2. Followers on Twitter
  3. ReTweets
  4. Brand mentions or brand searches
  5. Page views
  6. Unique visitors
  7. Time spent on site
  8. Search ranking improvement
  9. Link acquisition rate
  10. Comments and trackbacks

These are great indicators that show a campaign is having success, but they fail to show if they are yielding bottom line results. Senior managers and business owners are looking for financial impact. ROI needs to be tied back to business metrics such as increases in sales, decreases in expenses and profitability.

The best way to do this is to create graphs of the social media indicators that are showing results over time and then overlay these results with key financial results.

As an example, if you can measure an increase of brand mentions by week for the past year against the weekly sales on the company website, you may be able to see a direct correlation to an increase in mentions with an increase in sales. The key is to overlay results from various campaigns to see which are having an impact.

A good presentation of how this works is done by Oliver Blanchard Basics of Social Media ROI.

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Filed under: Social Media Marketing



Use Social Media to Improve Search Engine Rankings

Doug Williams @ 6:25 am

This blog entry was posted on November 1, 2009.

Companies everywhere are jumping into Social Media Marketing to engage potential customers in conversations.  Social media marketing typically uses a combination of blogging, social networks, YouTube, Twitter, social bookmarking and more. What many don’t realize is that social media marketing can be used to quickly raise organic SEO search results for their business website.

Organic SEO uses keyword phrases prominently on the web page itself (headings,   body text, hyperlinks, etc.). This though is only part of the organic SEO process. To be effective a good link popularity strategy must also be applied. Links from social media are among the most powerful available.

Use these strategies to attract social media links.

  1. Begin by adding a blog to your website. Writing interesting and original posts will be a natural link magnet from other blogs. Bloggers will naturally link to source articles that they reference in their blogs. Links to your blog which is part of your website, will benefit the entire website.
  2. Content is king: Adding a blog to your website allows you to regularly add keyword rich pages to your website. More content pages on your website will give the search engines more to index and bring in more search traffic. More content will also provide more potential for attracting links.
  3. Articles and white papers: Post authoritative articles and whitepapers on your website. Provide data, observations of your industry or market, make predictions and offer advice. These kinds of articles are powerful attractors of links.
  4. Encourage Bookmarking: Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, and Delicious are highly authoritative bookmarking sites which can dramatically improve search engine rankings if used properly. Add plugins to your blog that allow easy bookmarking by visitors.

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Filed under: SEO Strategies,Social Media Marketing



Basics of Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Doug Williams @ 5:18 am

This blog entry was posted on October 20, 2009.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is Internet marketing that focuses on branding, marketing communication and interaction with your targeted market. Social media marketing fosters two way communications rather than a one way broadcast of your marketing message. SMM makes use of online venues such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, forums, Digg, Delicious and more.

Effective social media marketing makes use of multiple venues and multiple media types. Media types can include content, images, videos and audio. The goal is to engage and interact in many places and in many ways.

Social media gives people a chance to talk, ask questions, share information and opinions, learn, network, bookmark, vote, give feedback and other social activities around a given topic. It is not about direct marketing, selling or direct promotion.

Social media marketing can be used to:

  1. Create a buzz: Use Twitter, blogs and videos to attract attention give attention to an event, product or service. The key is to make it fun and interesting… not salesy.
  2. Build a following: Use Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or other social networking to build a loyal fan base that you can reach out to. Blogging does this too.
  3. Engage in conversations: Use blogging, forums and social networking. Interaction and conversation is at the heart of social media.

Social media marketing is not advertising. It is not fully controlled by the organization. It strives to interact, engage and encourage participation. It is a marketing campaign not built on control, but on honest and respect. It is about people getting to know you.

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Filed under: Social Media Marketing



7 Popular Twitter Myths

Doug Williams @ 5:58 am

This blog entry was posted on October 16, 2009.

Some call it micro-blogging, others call it social networking, others call it a form of text messaging. What ever you call it, Twitter allows you to publish sort, succinct thoughts, messages and witticisms all in 140 characters or less. This can be done from a mobile phone, computer or via instant messaging. Most people misunderstand the real power in Twitter.

  1. 140 characters are not enough to say something meaningful. The real beauty in Twitter is that it forces you to be short and to the point. 140 characters. This gives you 25-30 words to say what you have to say. Many “Tweets” are summaries that point to other blogs or websites.
  2. Your “Tweets” should answer the question “What are you doing?” Although this is the question everyone sees on Twitter.com, it really has turned into “What do you want to share with the world?” In this way it really has turned into a micro-blogging platform.
  3. Twitter is now used for shameless self-promotion. There are some who try to use it this way, but spamming Twitter to generate traffic and sell your products doesn’t work. Think of it this way, If you tried this at a social gathering, people would just excuse themselves and walk away.
  4. Twitter offers too much information. In some ways this is true. But you have control over whom and how many that you follow. Keep your network focused on those that you find meaningful and quickly unfollow those that you find to have meaningless babble.
  5. People don’t care what you are eating right now. This is true, but they do care if you found a new great place to eat. Keep your tweets confined to interesting topics that are helpful or you will lose your followers.
  6. You should follow everyone who follows you. No, you should follow those that you find interesting. It’s about quality rather than quantity. Use Twitter to foster relationships and selectively listen to those that you want. It is not about getting as many mutual connections as possible.
  7. Everyone who follows you will read your tweets. No this might happen if your followers are only following just a few people. Many people are following hundreds or even a thousand people. You can only get a sampling of the activity and tweets that are occurring.

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Filed under: Myth Busters,Social Media Marketing



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