Get People Talking About Your Business: Building Your Online Marketing Ecosystem Part XIV

By John Joyce on April 7, 2010 - Comments 0

You need to get people talking about your business.  Period.  Your product/service must offer an experience that compels customers to talk about you and recommend your business to their network of contacts.  Of course, there’s a flipside to this equation and that’s when someone has a negative experience with your business and they decide to share that information on social networks.  If you experience the latter, don’t run and hide; address the issue head-on and diffuse the situation within the same public forum it began.

To get started, visit each of these sites to determine if your business is listed and what people are saying.  Claim your business, manage the conversation and address issues as soon as possible.  You can’t make these sites go away so your best bet is to develop a strategy to make them work in your favor.  This is an yet another social medium that isn’t perfect and is continuously evolving and your strategy will have to do the same.

Click to see interactive online marketing ecosystem.

By now you’ve heard all the hoopla about Yelp having “long faced criticism that it gives preferential treatment to businesses that advertise with the company.”  Although Yelp maintains that there is no connection between the two, they did announce significant changes to the service this week.

Service providers like Yelp have proven how lucrative the local search advertising market is and Google is currently testing Enhanced Listings in Google Local Business Center that would allow business owners to create a unique, differentiated listing.  Google’s beta service currently offers the following:

• Add yellow tags to promote coupons, a photo of your business, and more.
• Stand out in local business results on Google & Google Maps.
• See your performance in your account anytime.
• Cancel anytime. Pay just $25 a month.

Will Google face the same scrutiny as Yelp?  We’ll have to see how this plays out but, if Google can collect $25 per month from a large percentage of small business owners, there’s a good chance we’ll see this rolled out in the near term.

The bottom line for businesses, especially “local” businesses, is to be aware of all these feedback sites and to monitor your reputation regularly.

Building Your Online Marketing Ecosystem Part IX: Crowdsourced Buzz

By John Joyce on March 23, 2010 - Comments 1

We "digg" the stuff you write on your blog!

If the first two requirements of effective blogging are 1) an enticing headline and 2) valuable content, then #3 would be choosing a topic that is so hot that your readers are going to share it with the masses on sites like Digg and Reddit.  These types of crowdsourced buzz platforms allow the collective community to drive awareness and create buzz around user submitted news and blog posts.  As you have more than likely already learned,  the more posts you write, the better you’ll be able to understand what type of headlines and content are catching people’s attention and you’ll begin to discover your “voice”.  Promoting your blog to these platforms is a bit different from the basic SEO strategy implemented within your site, so I’ll review some of the specifics to help you develop your own “external buzz strategy”.  (Since Digg is currently the most popular platform, I’ll use that as my point of reference when citing examples and tactics)

Click image to see interactive online marketing ecosystem

Once a post makes it to one of these sites, you can notify your network to start fanning the flames by voting and forwarding the link.  Of course, as is true with many of these “exposure platforms”, there is etiquette that must be followed in the course of presenting content to the masses.

Here are a few tips:

1. Don’t submit your own content to Digg.  If possible, ask friends to submit for you.
2. If your friends are going to submit your content, make sure they also submit additional content from other sources at the same time.
3. As mentioned in the beginning of this post, write a compelling headline and description.
4. Be active in the Digg community by voting, developing your profile and inviting friends.

This might sound like a lot of work but getting “Dugg on Digg” can drive substantial traffic to your site.  Actively participate in the community and you should be justly rewarded.

Optimizing For Google Images To Strengthen Your Keyword Exposure

By John Joyce on March 19, 2010 - Comments 0

Make Sure Images Help "Tell The Story" To Search Engines

Always be optimizing. This is the mindset required to drive and strengthen your online presence to the point where you are always “found” wherever people are searching for your keywords. This includes prospects who are searching Google Images.  You have to view images as additional mechanisms for delivering your keyword content.

Believe it or not, images do more than simply make a blog post more appealing to the eye. They actually allow you to include additional “search engine friendly” content within your images that compliments your overall page/site SEO goals.  Once you implement this process in your overall routine, you’ll see it become more and more automatic over time.

Content management systems (CMS), like WordPress, Joomla or Drupal help automate the process of optimization and keep you from having to write any html code yourself.  If you are actually writing your own code, the syntax is very straightforward and you can learn more here.

The main theme here is to treat images like the rest of your content and make sure you do the following 3 things:

1. Give your image a descriptive title.  As soon as you download an image from a service like iStockphoto, change the cryptic file name that looks like 08948istockphoto23bizimage.jpg.
2. Make sure the body content and image content are consistent and working toward the same target audience.
3. When possible, choose content that is very popular at this moment in time and somehow relates to the information you’re presenting.  See my post regarding Susan Boyle.

Just remember that content is still king and there’s no excuse for missing an opportunity to boost your exposure/rank with the search engines by delivering the most optimized content possible.  If you’re posting images on your websitesite/blog, you must now add “image optimization” to your regular operating procedures.

Building Your Online Marketing Ecosystem Part VIII: Sharing Content Outside Your Website

By John Joyce on March 17, 2010 - Comments 0

The popularity of services like Scribd and Slideshare has proven the power of “content repositories” where you post marketing documents and leverage the high search rankings of these powerful content sites. It follows the same reasoning as listing your business with Merchant Circle or some other business community site – your website might not come up on page 1 in Google search, but your business/documents listed on one of these repositories will come up on the first page. Check out the services below and see how you can easily extend your reach by sharing your content outside of your actual website.

Click Image to View Interactive Online Marketing Ecosystem

Introducing The Interactive Online Marketing Ecosystem

By John Joyce on March 11, 2010 - Comments 0

In an effort to offer the most value to our readers, we have created an interactive map of the Online Marketing Ecosystem. There are so many marketing technologies available that we felt it was important to present your options in one central location. This will be a “living” map and will be updated as often as needed – as long as you’re willing to share your ideas and suggestions with us.

Here are some simple navigation tips:

• Click and drag to move around the map
• Hover over the small arrow next to the name of each tool to see/follow the external link
• Click zoom in/out buttons at bottom of the window
• Click “full screen” button to view in a browser window

Please let us know about your favorite marketing categories/tools that we should add to the list.

Thanks!

Building Your Online Marketing Ecosystem Part VI: Friends And Family

By John Joyce on March 9, 2010 - Comments 0

Click Image to View Interactive Online Marketing Ecosystem

This one’s going to be quick based on the fact that most people are already Facebook users and understand the power of the platform.  As I have said over and over again (sorry for being a broken record), you have to present your business information in as many places as possible and that includes social networks.

As was illustrated in my last post, you can automate the process of spreading the word across different platforms without actually having to manually do so within each application.  If you don’t want to post your marketing outreach on your personal page, make sure you create a fan page in Facebook and only post there.  Either way, your friends and family are great resources for creating word of mouth momentum.

Building Your Online Marketing Ecosystem Part V: Create A Playbook

By John Joyce on March 6, 2010 - Comments 0

I mentioned in my last post that I would discuss the “how to” of implementing operational efficiencies within your social marketing efforts so let’s get to it.  Friends and clients are always asking me, “is this social media thing really worth the time and effort?”   My answer is, “it doesn’t have to take a lot of your time as long as you 1) Carve out a set allotment of time each day to develop conversation points and 2) Identify the appropriate tools to automate and streamline the delivery process.  The graphic below is only a small portion of the tools making up the “Twitterverse”:

Click Image to View Interactive Online Marketing Ecosystem

As a consultant, I work with clients during regular business hours so it’s most efficient for me to execute social media tactics early in the morning.  The overarching goal is to remain top of mind within your “community” by consistently helping, sharing and soliciting feedback.

Here’s a quick example of linking together several tools to more efficiently bring your message to social media platforms:

Click Image to View Interactive Online Marketing Ecosystem

It might take some time for you to figure out what tools fit your specific social media needs but, once you’ve identified the most effective system, you’ll actually find yourself able to focus on content creation instead of manual distribution.  You make time each morning to brush your teeth and have a cup of coffee so your social media efforts should be just as automatic.

I’ve shown you the tools; now it’s up to you to put them to good use.  Also, please let me know if there are any tools you’re using that you would like to share with us.

Need Real Time Analytics? Announcing Small Biz Insight

By John Joyce on February 25, 2010 - Comments 0

Small Biz Insight is a real time web analytics service allowing you to view up to the minute data on the traffic to your web site. Most services don’t allow you to make split second decisions because of a substantial delay in their delivery of your website data.

Real time data lets you react to changes in your traffic as they occur. For example, if you had an article that hit the front page of a popular site like digg.com, you would see the traffic spike in Small Biz Insight immediately, along with links back to the sources sending you the traffic. Knowing this, you could make changes to your site or to the article itself to take advantage of the situation.

If instead you relied solely on a service like Google Analytics, it would be up to 24 hours before you even knew about the traffic, and by then it would be too late to do anything about it.

Here is a partial list of the real time information available to you in Small Biz Insight:

• Customizable dashboard
• Filtering and segmentation
• Twitter analytics
• iPhone version
• Goals and conversions
• Campaign tracking
• Support for Google Analytics tags
• Information on each individual visitor

There are two versions of Insight available – Self Serve for $9.95/month and Managed for $19.95 which will include customization and reporting services.  If you’re interested in learning more, please send us an email at info@thesmallbiznest.com or call us at (800)277-1187.

U.S. Small Business Outlook 2010: Lessons Learned From Forbes Insight

By John Joyce on February 18, 2010 - Comments 2

A Case For Optimism?

Forbes, in association with CIT, conducted one-on-one interviews with small business owners to better understand the lessons learned from the past 12-18 turbulent months.  Their findings, although not earth shattering, highlight a bit of a silver lining when you consider that most respondents have learned to work smarter and do more with less.

Unfortunately, nobody in Washington understands the needs of small business owners, therefore; they have been left to fend for themselves and figure out creative ways to survive and even thrive in a difficult economy.  If the legislators just listened to the needs of business owners, we could speed up the recovery process.

OK, I’ll get off my soap box and focus on the more interesting results of the survey:

• Nearly seven out of ten (68%) disagreed that healthcare reform efforts would benefit their businesses
• Nine out of ten small business owners agreed that current stimuli do not benefit small businesses
• 62% will invest more in marketing; specifically, lead generation
• More than 60% said they will run their business more aggressively in 2010
• 50% will invest in growth or expansion
• While 33% said they would likely reduce their hiring, 29% expected to hire more workers
• 50% will hold on to their cash
• Nearly 8 out of 10 respondents agreed – coming out of the recession, the old way of doing business won’t work; we need to find new ways to take advantage of market opportunities
• 79% say their market segment is more competitive than ever
• 46% will pursue new revenue streams

Small business owners are, by definition, risk takers and will always welcome a challenge.  The past 12-18 months have made business owners better leaders and more prudent decision makers.  However, the most telling quote from this study highlights the immense challenges ahead -  “this ordeal has taken its toll on how small business owners see the economy in general. Only about one-fifth of respondents (21%) believe that the financial crisis has already bottomed out, with 47% expecting this to occur in 2010. They predict the financial markets will turn around in 2010/2011, stability will return in 2011/2012, and growth won’t come back until 2012 or later.”

Don’t hold your breath waiting for our politicians to suddenly “get it”.  Simply take your lessons, apply them to the present and future, and continue to move the rock forward.

The Small BizNest Has Been Added to Alltop

By John Joyce on January 27, 2010 - Comments 1

I just wanted to write a quick post to let everyone know that our site has been added to Alltop. (under the Small Business category)  You can think of Alltop as the “online magazine rack” of the web where they display the five most recent headlines of the “top”  information sources.  You can actually create a “MyAlltop” page and identify the news sources you want to view on a regular basis and also share that custom page with others. This doesn’t change the way you currently access our blog, it simply gives you another option for viewing our small business news and insights.