Properly Applying Social Media to Your Business

With all the buzz surrounding social media these days, most savvy business owners have become interested in figuring out how this medium can be used toward boosting their bottom line.  While there is no disputing the fact that social media will only play an increasing role within the business world, many businesses are still struggling to figure out how to use its ever widening range of tools to their benefits.

One Size Does Not Fit All

Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter are some of the most popular social media and networking tools currently available to internet users.  Even though these services are free and available to all, this does not mean that their adoption makes sense for every business.  Proper usage and customization of these services is the key to successful social media.  Just as size ten shoe will not fit every person who wears shoes, Twitter is not a tool that can benefit each and every type of business.  Improperly using social media will make a business look amateurish, un-savvy, and unappealing to customers.

Know Your Business And Be Forward Thinking

Understanding your business means that you’ll have the ability to diffuse problems before they arise, make changes to your business model in order to keep it competitive, and utilize all the resources around you in order to maximize profits.  When faced with social media, understanding your business will translate into the proper application of the available tools.  Remember that doing this properly will allow your customer base to better use your services.  If what you are doing with social media feels like it may not be a good fit, it probably isn’t.  Do not simply guess at whether what you are doing is relevant to your customers.  Set up focus groups in order to provide you with feedback, communicate with colleagues on their impressions, and speak with your customers regarding their impressions.  Ultimately, the proof will be in the analytics.  If your social media initiatives attract lots of traffic, you are probably doing something right.

Know Social Media

Recently, 6S Marketing in Vancouver, Canada completed a comprehensive study on how businesses are using social media to expand their online communities and reach out to both existing and potential customers.  You can read these survey results here.

Web Writing for Marketing Purposes

web formatting

Think anyone can write for the web? Think again.

Reading on the web is different than reading printed media.  In order to write effectively on the internet you will be required to re-learn some of the things your teachers taught you in high school and college.

For starters, here are a few important things you should understand before you write articles online:

1. Readers on the web scan content, they don’t read it thoroughly.
2. Online readers look at text BEFORE they look at images.
3. People reading a web page scan it in an “F Pattern” rather than simply reading it from left to right.
4. An average viewer will look at a web page they have found via search for ten seconds or less.

So it looks like people reading on the web seem to have low attention spans, and scan content in order to avoid wasting time on misguided lengthy searches.  How must a web writer compensate for these trends?  Here’s a guide to get you started.

Titles

Just like writing for any other format, your title is extremely important.   On the web, the content of your article is likely to be judged solely of the wording of your title.  This is even more truer if a reader has found your article by using a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN Live.

In order to avoid confusion, titles on the web should NEVER be underlined.  Underlined text on the Internet signifies a link, and as the title of your article should not link to itself, underlining it will only cause confusion.  An exception to this is when the title of the article is intended to be a link in a list or a menu elsewhere on site.

Blurbs

A blurb is a tool which, when combined with the title, provides the reader with a snapshot of your article’s content. Blurbs should be short and sweet.  All that is necessary is an excerpt of the text within your article or a one-line summary of it.

Subheads

People scan content on the web.  For this reason, using subheadings to break up the content of your article into easily identifiable chunks is essential.  If a reader has decided to continue reading your article after scanning the title and blurb, using subheads within the text will help them find the exact piece of content that they are searching for. Using a subheading every 50 to 100 words within your article is essential.

Lists

Using lists in order to summarize and large amounts of information is an extremely effective way of providing lots of content to readers in as few words as possible.  Keeping the word count down on the web is essential, and using lists enables an author to list their points as opposed to framing them within a verbose paragraph.

Web Writing 2.0 – Pay Attention To Your Netiquette

web writing 2.0

“Is it true that there are actual rules regarding written content creation on the web?”

I recently read an article at albion.com about Internet etiquette, aka ‘netiquette’, and what writers and content contributors should keep in mind when writing on the web.  While most parts of this article seemed rather straight forward, there were two concepts in particular which, although obvious, should be carefully considered when writing for the web.

Respect Other People’s Time And Bandwidth

If you take your blog seriously or you are looking to build up your level of ’street cred’ on someone else’s blog or website, it is always important to consider that there will be an audience reading what you write.  Most online readers scan the articles and written comments they find.  If your intent is to build a loyal following of subscribers and readers, it’s important to remember that if you waste people’s time with useless or unreliable content, you are likely to never get their time again.  Make sure that the comments you leave and the articles you write are topical, accurate, and succinct. It’s probably also a good idea to keep the following concepts in mind:

• You are not the center of Cyberspace; so don’t expect instant feedback and responses to your comments and questions.
• Rules for discussion groups: don’t write a novel in these sections.  Some people’s computers are slower than yours!
• To whom should the message be directed? Don’t CC, carbon copy, people to email messages that don’t apply to them.  It’s rude.

Share Expert Knowledge

I found this particular section of the article interesting for one simple reason; people like to keep important knowledge secret.  The article doesn’t suggest that sharing your knowledge equates to giving away all your trade secrets, but rather that when you see that someone has asked a question that you can answer, you should do it.  According to the article’s author, “don’t be afraid to share what you know”.

If you have posted something on your blog and you’ve received lots of questions, take the time to write up a summary of all their questions and post it.  Remember, you must consider these people to be your clients, not just your readers.  The web is all about networking, and by keeping your readers happy, you will ultimately achieve your goals.

That’s all for now.

Did you see the Colbert Report this week?

We’ve been chatting a lot about Internet marketing strategy on this blog, but this week we’re going to take a break to talk a little bit about The Colbert Report this week.

AP – In this handout photo taken Sunday, June 7, 2009, released by the U.S. military, comedian Stephen Colbert, …

If you missed it, The Colbert Report was broadcast this week each night from Iraq.  That’s right, IRAQ! But just as you thought that one of the famed late night faux-news satires was about to do some actual reporting, you thought wrong.  Hanging out in Iraq for the week only seems to have added more fuel to the Colbert fire.

Boot Camp

Among other things, Colbert used his brief stay in the Middle East as an opportunity to spend some time in basic training with the US Army.  Watching Colbert play-up his celeb status next to a large, tough, and dangerous-looking drill sergeant was absolutely hilarious.  At times I honestly wasn’t sure weather the drill sergeant was about to laugh or smack Colbert in the face.  Either way, these segments were absolutely hysterical.

The Obama Cameo

The Colbert Report had many, many cameos this week, but the most notable by far involved none other than The President of The United States; Barack Obama.  This set a new precedent with regard to the accessibility of the US head of state. Prior to the Obama administration, it would have been unheard of for a sitting United States president to appear on a prime time or late-night television show.  The best part is that the appearance was by far, the funniest segment of the show this week.

During his interview with the commanding US general for the region, Obama appeared on a television screen behind Colbert and his guest.  As if the appearance itself wasn’t notable enough, Obama actually ordered the United States general to shave Colbert’s head in order to ensure that he gained the full experience of his visit with the armed forces in Iraq.  It was priceless.  Not only did Colbert’s head get shaved on the show, but Obama made history as the first sitting US president to join in on a comedy bit on late night television.

Other Guests

Aside from the President, other guests this week included Tom Hanks, Joseph Biden, Sarah Palin, the vice president of Irag, U.S. Gen. Ray Odierno, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, John McCain, and several other notable icons.   All in all, very, very entertaining!  Apparently Colbert now has the amazing ability to influence world leaders into joining him on his show.  Amazing.

Mozilla’s SEO Quake

Have you ever wondered how your favorite sites are viewed in the eyes of search engines, or how they are indexed?

There are many reasons to the Firefox over Internet Explorer, Safari, or Opera, but the most alluring reason for people interested in internet marketing is the ability to install add-ons to your browser that give it extra functionality.  These little bits of software that give your browser special abilities are known as extensions.

SEO Quake

The most useful extension for analysing website ranks and indexing is called SEO Quake, and it is made by Mozilla; the same company which makes the Firefox browser.  This particular extension is free, and allows its user to view a whole host of noteworthy stats regarding the websites they are visiting on the web. As part of its default installation, you can see what a site’s PR rank is, how many of its pages are indexed by Google, how many pages are indexed by Yahoo, Windows Live, and how many times the site has been bookmarked on del.ici.ous.

Whois Records and Keyword Density

If you are researching a competitors website, WHOIS records are an invaluable source of information.  As part of your toolkit for link-building, understand who is linking to your competitors sites, where they are based, and what other sites they own is an extremely important segment of search engine marketing.  Clicking on the ‘density’ button in SEO Quake will provide you with information on which keywords a particular website is targeting in its written content.  If the site is clearly using four or five specific keywords in all of its content, this might be a good place to begin researching that sites indexed rankings for those terms.

The Wayback Machine

Finally, the Wayback Machine is a high performance tool for understanding how a particular site has been optimized over the years from its inception to the present day.  Studying what changes a webmaster has made to the usability of their site can yield a wealth of information to those in competitive internet marketing industries.  You can determine which elements on a page don’t work and which ones do.  What features and functions did the webmaster decide to adopt of abandon over the years.

Of course, all of this only scratches the surface.  There are many more important tool which you’ll need in order to keep digging and truly understand what a particular website is doing in order to climb the ranks of internet marketing.  We’ll be coveing these in the weeks to come.

Getting Indexed By Google in 24 Hours

Do you know any tricks for getting indexed quickly by search engines?  Most people who create their own blogs or websites quickly figure out that getting noticed by the search engines isn’t always easy.  Firstly, there is usually stiff competition from other sites which want to get indexed for the same topics as you.  And then, even if you DO follow all their instructions, it can take months to become searchable for specified keywords.  Well, you’re lucky that you’ve found this article because I’ll let you in on an insider trick which can make this whole process A LOT quicker and easier.

Some Background Information

We all know that search engines rank websites based on their level of relevance to a particular search topic.  Part of how Google does this is by assigning every website in its index with what is known as a “PageRank”.

PageRanks are assigned to websites based on a logarithmic scale between 0 and 10, but to keep things simple, we won’t get into the math behind this.  If your site has a PageRank of 3, then it is refered to as a ‘PR3′ site, a PageRank of 4 is a PR4, and so on and so forth.  When webmasters link to one another for the purposes of search engine optimization, the sites that they choose for link building are often chosen solely on whether or not they have a high PageRank.

So here’s the trick

We all know that your site gets indexed once a Google ’spider’ or ‘web crawler’ scans it and copies a synopsis of its data into the Google database.  This is what getting ‘indexed’ is refering to.  What most people don’t understand, is that Google is always re-indexing websites in order to continually track their relevance to various search terms.  Indexed sites with a high PageRank get indexed more frequently, and as the spider indexes a website, it will also crawl through any links present on that site and index the linked-to site.  Sites of a PR5 or higher get indexed about every 24 hours.  This means that even if your site is brand new, if it receives an inbound link from a PR5 site, a Google spider will find and index it within approximately 24 hours.  SWEET BEANS!

Now the only problem is figuring out how to get a webmaster with a PR5 site to actually link to you!

***Fun Fact***

Most people think that the word ‘page’ in the term PageRank makes reference to ‘webpage’ or ‘homepage’, but in fact the term ‘page’ is used in reference to Larry Page; the Google co-founder who wrote the algorithm which Google exclusively licenses from Stanford University in order to assign PageRanks to websites.)

What’s the deal with Twitter?

Ever heard of the terms “social media”, or “social networking”?

Since the advent of services such as Facebook, there has been an explosion of interest in new forms of interactivity and networking on the internet.  If you are a member of Facebook than you understand the immense power that it gives its users.  The service allows individuals to network with people who they would normally have no other way of finding.  I myself have been able to re-connect with friends from elementary school, old jobs, and clubs.   Although Facebook seems to be here to stay (for a while anyhow), people are already searching for the next step in the evolution of social networking on the internet.  Some believe that they have found it in a service known as Twitter.

Tweet, Tweet

Express yourself in 140 characters or less.  It’s simple, and it’s taken the internet by storm.   Twitter offers its users the ability to get information between blogging and the news. The information is published directly from the author of the Twitter page you are following.  Celebrities use it to ‘tweet’ to you about their coffee runs, statesmen are using it to report on the workings of meetings on Capitol Hill.  The question is, does Twitter have staying power?

Is it Useful?

There is something quite viral about Twitter.  Having the ability to stay on top of a person’s every move is somewhat attractive.  But how long can you watch the same television channel for?  Many feel that Twitter has no staying power because it is too simple a service when compared to something more expansive like Facebook.  Twitter reports information in a fairly one dimensional way, while Facebook allows for the creation of groups, specific pages, the addition of friends, and a real interaction between all these things.  While there is no doubt regarding how interesting following someone on Twitter can be at first, it remains to be seen whether this form of communication will continut to evolve, or simply be remembered as a “flash in the pan”.  Time will tell.

Google Analytics

While it’s not the best of all tools available for online analytics, Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google which will help you understand how people are finding and interacting with your website. The service will help a webmaster determine which search engines users are using in order to find your site, which keywords they are typing in, the geographical location of those users, traffic volumes linking websites and more. If you you use your website for business, there is literally no excuse for not using a free web based analytical service. Simply not using one is the equivalent of trying to fly an aircraft with a blindfold on. Web analytics is a quickly emerging industry, and although the downside of using Google Analytics is that you are providing Google with a wealth of private information on your website, the upside is that you are being provided with sophisticated information which can be used to make better marketing decisions.

Map Overlay:

One of the coolest features of Google Analytics (especially to new users), is its Map Overlay feature which can easily be selected from the service’s main dashboard. The Map Overlay feature enables a webmaster to view the geographical origin of all their website’s users. The map’s design is extremely intuitive, breaking down traffic sources by country, and representing areas of higher vs lower traffic through the use of lighter and darker colors. If the user requires more detailed information regarding the traffic sources from a part, they can simply click on a country to access more highly detailed information on city, source, pages visited, average time on site, bounce rate, and more.

Visitor Overview:

This section of Google Analytics is devoted to providing the user with statistical data on the behavior and background of a website’s users.  Data included in this section can be used to determine whether a user is new or returning, which browser they are using, and specifically how the user interacts with your website.  By using the information within this section, a site’s webmaster can easily optimize a website and marketing strategy based on information regarding how users are currently interacting with the site.

Custom Reporting:

One of the most powerful aspects of the Google Analytics service is its ability to formulate custom reports based on tailored metrics for your website.  Different kinds of businesses value different kinds of information more highly than others, and this feature allows those businesses the ability to scale different kinds of information so that it is more applicable to their needs.

To visit the official Google Analytics page, click here.

Search Basics: Unique Content and Inbound Links

So after doing some keyword research you’ve finally chosen a topic for your new blog. Hooray! While this important first step has been completed, there’s still lots of work ahead of you. How are people going to find your blog online? How do search engines work anyway?

Let’s imagine that you’re a doctor and you specialize in infectious disease. You’ve decided to create a blog specifically about the Swine Flu, and you’d like to pop up in the search results for the keywords “swine flu”, and “H1N1″ when someone searches for those terms in Google. In order to successfully achieve this goal, you’ll need to know a few important things about how search engines like Google work.

Firstly, it’s important to understand that the purpose of Google (or any other search engine) is to successfully connect an internet user with what they are searching for on the web. If someone is researching ‘apples’, Google wants the most authoritative relevant web source on apples to be returned in search results when someone queries that term. In order to achieve this goal, search engines use complex mathematical algorithms which determine a website’s relevance to a particular search term.  Some of the most important things the algorithms try to identify in order to determine your website’s relevance to a subject are uniqueness of content, and the number of other sites on the internet that link to your site.

Unique Content

If your goal as an expert on the Swine Flu is to pop up in search results related to that term, then one of the most important things you are going to have to do is create unique written content on that topic. Search engines analyze millions of blogs and websites each day. If your site contains copied or plagiarized content from any other source on the internet, the search engines will easily identify this, and your search related rankings will consequently suffer. Alternatively, if your blog is full of rich, unique content that is interesting to readers, search engines will be able to determine this and you are one step closer to achieving the kind of rankings for search engine results that you are looking for.  Make sure that the keywords you are attempting to be indexed under (swine flu, H1N1) appear frequently in the text you are creating.  Having a keyword density of 1-2 keywords per paragraph is optimal.  It is also important that your keywords are mentioned in the title of the articles you write.

Inbound Links

If people begin to read your Swine Flu blog because it is relevant to the topics they are searching for, you will soon begin to attract the attention of other bloggers, websites, and social networking sites. These people will likely begin to link to your blog so that their own readers are able to make use of your unique and relevant content. Every time that another site on the internet links to your blog, search engines consider this to be like a vote in your favor. The more of these ‘votes’ you achieve, the more successful you will be at achieving a higher search result. There is one catch however. Not all votes are counted equal. Remember, the search engines have already ranked the relevance of many other sites to the topics you are writing about, and they are primarily concerned with returning relevant search results to their users. The only real links that will help you in your quest to achieve high search engine rankings are ones which the search engines deem to be relevant to your area of writing. So before you get your friend who runs a completely unrelated website to link to your blog because you want a higher search ranking; think again. Spammy links will actually hurt your ranking, while relevant ones will help you.

Here’s an interesting video on developing links for your site:

Making Money With Blogs

One of the first questions people often ask when learning about blogs is “how can you make money doing this?”.  Certain individuals on the web make millions of dollars a year by monetizing their blogs.  Monetizing a blog literally refers to turning your blog into a tool for making money.  There are three main things one must consider when monetizing a blog; content, search, and monetization method.  By understand how each of these three factors affects the success of your blog, you will soon understand how to create a niche for yourself, become visible on search engines, and make money from what you’re writing about.

Content – Deciding What to Write About:

The first step to developing a successful blog is choosing something to write about.  If you do research on the web, you’ll notice that when you search for a given keyword on Google, Yahoo, or other major search engines, there are hundreds if not hundreds of thousands of search results.  If your intention is to monetize your blog, you’ll want to give some serious thought to writing about something that not only excites you, but is also not heavily competitive with regard to how many other websites or blogs are competing to make money off the same topic.  For example, say you have decided to create a blog about “cheap flights”.  A quick search for this term on Google reveals that there are over 25.8 million relevant search results for that particular search phrase.  This means that if your intention is to monetize a blog about “cheap flights”, you’ll be competing with nearly 26 million other sites that Google has indexed on the same topic; probably not the greatest idea.  Alternatively, you can choose a topic to write about which is far less competitive.  Let’s look at the search term “umbilical cord blood” for instance.   A quick search of these keywords on Google shows that there are only 629,000 results for this particular string of keywords.  Now this may seem like a lot, but considering that today there are over 1 trillion websites which make up the internet, this number begins to look a lot more managable.  Generally speaking, when choosing a topic for the purposes of blog monetization, if there are less than 1 million results on Google for that topic, you have probably found a topic that is worth writing about.

Below are some valuable tools offered by Google which you can use to conduct keyword research.  By becoming familiar with keyword research tools, you’ll soon begin to understand how to choose content topics for your monetized blog.

Google Keyword Tool

Google Trends