Be The Subject Matter Expert: Building Your Online Marketing Ecosystem Part XVI

By John Joyce on May 5, 2010 - Comments 0

If you know the answer to a question, you had better raise your hand and let everyone know that you are a subject matter expert.  There are plenty of prospective customers out there looking for answers and all you have to do is share your experience and knowledge with them.  I use a service called Lotusjump (affiliate link) which automates the process of finding questions that pertain to specific keywords I have entered into their system.  Not only do I benefit from positioning myself as being knowledgeable in a specific area, but each answer posted is now an inbound link to my site.  There is a modest monthly fee for this service but it saves you a bunch of time and teaches you how and where you should be investing your SEO resources.

You would be surprised how many prospective customers are asking questions on sites like Answers.com and Yahoo Answers.  And, for the most part, they’re more than happy to award you “the best answer” moniker for taking the time to give thoughtful and insightful answers.

Much like blogging, it might take you awhile to find your “voice” and style for answering questions but this will develop over time.  The most important thing to remember is that you don’t want to be the “blah, blah, blah, hey look at me” guy/girl.  Here are a few guidelines for effectively highlighting your knowledge and experience:

1. Make sure the question is clear.  Don’t be afraid to ask for quick clarification.
2. Get right to the point.  Don’t yammer on like Ron Burgundy about being “a big deal”.
3. Be authoritative.  You need to do x, y and then z.   Don’t do a, b or c.
4. Tell them why.
5. When possible, insert links to your site, white papers, etc.

Although it isn’t included in the image to the right, LinkedIn is another great place for you to build your reputation as an expert.  Since this is a business site with millions of members the competition for “best answer” is substantial as compared to the standard answer forums.

Take a look at these sites to get an idea of the questions you can expect and study the responses of the people who have given the best answers.  It’s not that complicated.  People have questions and you have answers.  So, get to work!

Why Are There Bad Reviews Of Your Business In Google Maps?

By John Joyce on April 20, 2010 - Comments 2

Did you know that people can post a review of your business in Google Maps?  Google also pulls reviews from other sites (Citysearch, Insiderpages) and automatically posts them to your business listing.  Strangely, as the business owner, you have very little control over these reviews so you’ll have to add this to your “watch list” for online reputation management.

Sentiment Analysis is a quickly growing data set that listing services are collecting and publishing, so, what are your options when dealing with negative feedback that finds its way into your business listing?

• If a review was posted directly to your business listing in Google, you can flag it and then you’ll have to prove that the post violates published terms and conditions.
• Are you able to identify the person who posted the negative comment?  If so, reach out to them, listen to their feedback and try to address their concerns.  Ask them if they would be willing to change or delete their negative review.
• Google suggests you contact the webmaster of the 3rd party sites if the negative review wasn’t posted directly to your business listing.  Some of these sites do allow you to post a “response from management” but that won’t show up in Google Maps.  (Google does not allow you to post this type of response)
• Google lists 5-6 reviews so  you can solicit new reviews from satisfied customers in an effort to push the negative ones off the page.  Be careful, though; too many reviews being posted in a short period of time will trigger spam alerts and hurt your ranking.

Obviously, it helps to have a solid customer support system in place and an easy process for sharing feedback directly with you so these types of issues are not broadcast to the general public.  Reputation management is an important aspect of your daily marketing life and should be treated as such.

Using Foursquare To Build Brand Loyalty: Building Your Online Marketing Ecosystem Part XV

By John Joyce on April 9, 2010 - Comments 0

Personally, I haven’t found anything useful about foursquare other than to compete for the Mayorship of a local health club with my friend Anand Rajaram over at Office Drop.  With that said, I do think businesses that exclusively operate locally can creatively leverage this type of location-based marketing service to “monitor and market” in real time.

Click to view interactive online marketing ecosystem.

If a business embraces a service like foursquare, they instantly connect with their customer base in a way that promotes customer loyalty and offers a compelling reason to come back. (along with bragging rights)

If there are people already visiting your establishment who use a smart phone, then all you have to do is notify them that you are offering specials via foursquare.  As stated on their website, “foursquare aims to encourage people to explore their neighborhoods and then reward people for doing so. We do this by combining our friend-finder and social city guide elements with game mechanics – our users earn points, win mayorships and unlock badges for trying newplaces and revisiting old favorites”.

In a difficult economy, a free cup of coffee or free appetizers at your favorite establishment means as much as the new lawn chairs my parents acquired from collecting S&H Green Stamps when I was a kid. (I know, I’m dating myself)

The ability for your customers to send out their location (your establishment) via social networks such at Twitter and Facebook creates a “viral invite” that can boost foot traffic exponentially.  There are also some fairly simple tools available to track your best customers, deliver special offers when someone checks in, and keep your best customers engaged and involved.

All you local business owners should at least give this a try and see if you can increase business by developing a marketing strategy around foursquare.  Trust me, you’ll still be way ahead of the curve if you do it now and you’ll have your system perfected by the time foursquare explodes.

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.

Help Your Customers Support Each Other: Building Your Online Marketing Ecosystem Part XIII

By John Joyce on April 6, 2010 - Comments 0

Now that you’ve disseminated your message across the entire universe, how are you going to interact with  customers who are looking for guidance but are spread across so many different platforms?  Enter web-based community support tools.

Click image to see interactive online marketing ecosystem.

As you can see from the graphic above, there are several options available and one that I see more an more often (since they’re now supported in Facebook and Google) is Get Satisfaction.  They allow you to interact with customers regardless of which community portal they’re using and are  easily extended throughout your Web presence via simple widgets and open APIs.  A Get Satisfaction community invites customers/visitors to participate in the conversation and provides a platform for conversation anywhere in the online experience.

Getting your message to the masses is only half the battle when it comes to building your online marketing ecosystem.  You also have to consider which operational enhancements are required to automate the management of your online presence.  Proactively engaging prospects and customers allows for diffusing negativity and garnering valuable feedback and insight as you interact with your customers on an ongoing basis.

The greatest marketing challenge facing small business owners today is simple.  Lack of time.  But, if you can create a community in front of your support solution that lets customers and prospects get answers from each other first, (often with faster response times than through traditional ticketing solutions) you have created a virtual support department. You can publish, archive and search every exchange, so there’s never a need to answer the same question twice.

So, the main thing to remember is that online marketing is no longer a unidirectional process – it has evolved into a collaboration of community where instant feedback and conversation can mean the difference between success and missed opportunity.

Add Personality To Your Website: Building Your Online Marketing Ecosystem Part XI

By John Joyce on March 30, 2010 - Comments 1

There has been a great deal written over the past year regarding the value of including video on your small business website.  The two main objections we hear over and over again are 1) I don’t have the time to create video content and 2) I don’t have the budget for the equipment and editing software.

Click to view interactive online marketing ecosystem.

Many of us said we didn’t have time to blog but now it’s a regular part of our daily/weekly routine and has become second nature.  So, the next logical progression is to begin integrating some interactive and engaging video content that will boost traffic and also keep visitors on your site longer.

Is there someone you would like to interview that your readers would find interesting?  Could you create a demo of a product or service that would be more compelling than a simple blog post?

So, you’re going to need a video camera (if you don’t already have one that can be plugged into your computer), editing software, and knowledge of integrating video into your website.

If you don’t feel comfortable getting involved in the editing and slicing of your content, you should check out a new service from Pixability where they send you a Flip camera, you shoot your video and send the camera back, and they create a professionally edited video masterpiece and send it back to you.

Building Your Online Marketing Ecosystem Part X: Vertical Communities

By John Joyce on March 25, 2010 - Comments 0

Facebook and similar networks where “socializing” is truly the main objective can be ineffective marketing platforms for many businesses. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have a fan page for your business but, what I am saying is that you have to prioritize the amount of effort you provision for each online marketing vehicle based on simple ROTI.  (Return On Time Invested)  For each network, you must ask yourself 1) How do you find your target audience? 2) How do you convey your message in a way that is meaningful to them? 3) Should you be marketing to people who have become members of the mafia or have started a farm? (you know exactly what I’m talking about)

Wouldn’t it make more sense to put your effort into a network of like-minded business people who are actually interested in professional networking, business deals and partnerships? I have been using LinkedIn since 2003 when it was in beta and it is, by far, the most effective business networking tool I have ever used.

Click image to view interactive online marketing ecosystem

Of course, the only way to know which network is best for your particular business model is to test both platforms.  An easy way to do this is to run some simple advertisements on LinkedIn and Facebook.  You set all demographic criteria to narrow down your target audience.  You can also set a daily limit for spend and choose to pay per click (PPC) or per thousand impressions (CPM).

Building your marketing ecosystem is a balancing act where you must test, evaluate, rinse and repeat.  It’s important to build your online presence but it’s even more important to optimize your efforts which is a perpetual learning experience.

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