social

Hyper Local Advertising Thoughts

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The great debate for local advertising has begun.  Local Advertising is the final frontier for companies trying to expose their brands to customers.  Popular “check-in” apps like Gowalla and Foursquare have become ubiquitous.  Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other major social players are all integrating social check-ins into their respective API’s, but what does this mean for us? We’re now volunteering our personal information about our habits and preferences to major companies.  These companies can use that data to create a revenue model on a global scale.  If I am a 20-something in addison who frequents the flying saucer, it doesn’t matter that I haven’t written my glowing review on yelp.  The fact that I have checked in on my phone every week for X weeks in a row shows brand loyalty, which is more important than a simple review.

Obviously, great reviews help businesses on a local level.  they help offset the unavoidable negative reviews from trolls and rare occasions of poor service.. (these reviews are inherit parts of business.  a negative experience has an exponentially higher likelyhood of being shared than a pleasurable experience)  But tangible check ins at a business are still under-appreciated and will definitely garner greater influence as the hyper local landscape smooths out.

I believe that in the next 18 months a business model that integrates the best aspects of groupon / livingsocial, yelp, and (insert any check-in service) will start to gain momentum.  If a business can offer real viable discounts and benefits to their loyal “follower’s” then the check-in model will grow and with that the revenue model for the companies building the API’s will be realized.

SEocial – SEO meets Social Media

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Redundant blog post starts now! Social Media and SEO have been on a collision course for the last two or three years. The Major search engines include social media results in real time on their SERPs. With the recent release of Google Plus and the +1 button showing up in almost all of google products, social will continue to play a larger role in SEO. The social and seo industries have merged into one cohesive marketing segment. There is no longer a way to differentiate between an SEO and Social expert and businesses need to keep this in mind when search for online marketing support.

How is your business utilizing social? are you just updating news, current events, and specials? Do you engage customers and answer questions? Are you providing keyword rich replies with links to quantitative content? By incorporating the same best practices for SEO into social you will see high conversions in terms of sales and followers.

  • Engage Your Customers
  • Provide Relevant Keyword Rich Content
  • Cross Promote – Don’t Just Self Promote
  • Assist Your Fellow Social-ites
  • Link, Link, Link
  • Update frequently (3-5 times a week minimum)

By following these bullets you will start to see real results with your social strategies and in doing so you will directly assist your SEO.  Obviously this is very high level. You can be doing quite a bit more in terms of Video and other Social, but for a beginner these steps will definitely get you started on the right track.

the Google+ project will change the way we share & communicate

Blog, google, social media No Comments , ,

Today Google has announced the Google+ project. It is the culmination of all social aspects they’ve been working on for the last decade or so. I am thoroughly excited for this new feature set. I am a big fan of the +1 and other similar features google has been slowly incorporating and I have a feeling this is the first real step in the right direction after a few terrible products including google buzz and google wave. I hope to get my invite shortly and let you know what i find.

for now, here are a few videos

 

SEO Questions to ask your clients

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Being a fulltime SEO for a corporation, I find my side projects limited to helping one or two clients at a time.  Sometimes I think it would be nice to manage more clients to broaden my portfolio, but I think by engaging a limited number of companies at a time I can provide better service with stronger results.  I’ve recently come full circle and am helping a company I previously worked for in a different fashion with their search engine optimization.  I am very excited at the prospect of helping a company that helped me so much early in my career.

With this project, I plan on documenting certain steps that will hopefully help SMB’s who are trying to leverage SEO best practices for their own gain.  The first step on any search engine optimization project is to find out exactly what the company is trying to achieve with their SEO goals.  Below I have compiled a list of questions I frequently use before starting a new SEO project.  Feel free to review and use for your own purposes.

SEO / Social Questions

  • What type of customers / audiences are you trying to reach with search engine optimization?
  • What are the top keywords potential searchers would type to find your site?
  • What Keywords would you like to focus on?
  • What is your primary geography scope?  What are the main areas you’re currently targeting successfully?
  • What future areas do you plan on expanding to?
  • What tracking software do you have currently for monitoring visitors?
  • How difficult is it to make minor adjustments to code and content?
  • What are your growth expectations for the next 12-18 months?
  • What do you want to accomplish in terms of SEO in the next year?
  • Do you own any secondary domains that you’re not currently using?
  • What other forms of advertising are you currently participating in?
  • What is the current marketing strategy?
  • Who is your web host?
  • What platform is the website built on?
  • What company are you using to design your website currently?
  • What are some major roadblocks you’ve hit in the past with your SEO/ PPC / and Social campaigns?
  • How important are bing and yahoo to your organic traffic?

Social

  • How often are you updating your social media currently?
  • What would you like to focus on primarily?
  • Do you have a blog setup?
  • How often would you like to update social campaigns?
  • What do you want to convey through social media?
  • What type of image do you want to portray in terms of messaging, attitude, etc?

As I said before, this is just a small list for you to use to gauge your clients or your own needs.  Did I leave any important questions off?  let me know!

Social Media Hangover and Optimization

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I was listening to a podcast this morning and heard an interesting term referring to the Social Media Hangover that has been fatiguing customers engaging businesses through social marketing.

The marketer was discussing how the majority of marketers for business are utilizing brand and business social media including twitter, facebook, and flickr to spam brand related blogs and information into the sphere. Obviously, Businesses engaged in social media advertising are utilizing these efforts to increase branding and recognition – This is the goal of any marketing effort.

In order to be effectively engage customers through social media, businesses must figure out the magic mixture of education, promotion, and exposure. These three spices can be viewed as the soup of Social Media Optimization.

As a social media marketer, you need to educate potential and current customers about your brand while maintaining a value prop and staying noninvasive in your efforts.  How does one do this?  There is no real answer as every brand is different.

For the brands I maintain, I encourage marketers to tweet at least once a day, but no more than 5 times a day for a business with under 10,000 followers.  In those tweets you need to distinguish what content is most important to push into the space.

Customers want engaging content that adds value.  Make sure you offer something that readers will enjoy or you might loseWeight Exercise another follower.

Social Media for SMB

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Social media has helped revolutionize the way people connect in unforeseeable ways. 10-15 years ago archaic chat boxes peppered AOL accounts as users began interacting with unknown counterparts in the online space. Today, users utilize their phones, laptops, or tablets, to give their friends and followers up to the second information from anywhere in the world. In other words “Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.”

As Social Media has moved into the main stream, businesses have been finding ways to monetize these tools to increase retention and customer interaction. It is now desirable to have a presence on multiple social media services including Facebook, twitter, flickr, LinkedIn, and YouTube, in order to respond to opportunities and concerns that may arise from customers and partners. Broadvox has established presence on all of these sites to support our product offering and sales. These media services allow unobtrusive access to our clients to let them know the goings on of Broadvox and details pertaining to new products or updates without spamming their inbox with emails.

Our endeavor into the social landscape is still very experimental. We are continually testing new services and new ways to utilize these platforms to increase our advertising and market share. We have found that twitter, LinkedIn, andYouTube offer the best access to provide information about the company to our VARs and customers. These 3 websites provide a great avenue for information distribution and interaction. We have also seen success using Facebook, butFacebook is inherently geared to avoid the business to consumer interaction. I anticipate in the coming months that Facebook will make major changes to their platform in order to allow businesses greater access to their customer base. In order to compete with the upcoming Google me social media product, Facebook will have to find new ways to monetize their brand and customer interactions. By allowing businesses greater direct access to their database, they will be able to stay competitive with Google’s ambitious venture into social media.

Part of the new landscape for any online marketing plan has to have a substantial investment in time and energy for social media. It is the most direct way for you to reach your customers at a personal level.