Business Marketing Today: We Need A New Tool Chest

In Mastermind groups and client meetings I’ve noticed two things.

First, most companies (by the time we actually meet them) acknowledge and embrace the changing marketing landscape.  They get it…and are eager to learn how to adapt before competitors. Second, the first instinct is to use old techniques in a new paradigm. I see it because I sometimes do it myself.

Seth Godin blogged about the need to “change hammers” based on the situation.  We all tend to go to the same old tools based on training, comfort or experience.  This new normal of marketing requires a new kind of professionalism.  This is about customer focus, flexibility, dedication, insight and smarts.  Out-shouting your competitors does not necessarily work, and can in fact do more harm than good.

Taking old school tools and putting them into a new paradigm will not work either.  Instead of interrupting prospects and outshouting competitors, focus on education with your prospects. Give them something really valuable, your unique knowledge about how to solve a problem they have. Instead of continually washing the same message over prospects, get into a relationship where you nurture, build trust and authority.

The cool thing about this new normal is that technology makes it possible to automate most of the tasks so you can focus on the marketing.

Trust me, if you do this right you will not only get more leads and customers, but your business will gain a huge economic advantage. More on that later…

Facebook Marketing: Pages and Groups

Facebook recently overhauled Groups to look a lot like Pages with a few small (but significant) functionality tweaks. For marketers, how should you think about Groups and Pages in your social media marketing mix?

Facebook attempts to explain the difference:

“Keep in mind that while Groups and Pages now look the same, they still serve different purposes. Groups are for fostering member-to-member collaboration, while Pages remain the best way to broadcast messages to your fans if you are a business, organization, public figure or other entity.”

Groups provide a great opportunity to demonstrate leadership in a market or niche.  If a strong group does not exist already, you can fill the void and create a Group. Key here is to lead the community, inspire innovative thinking and open communication and community.  If you do that, you will learn new things about your prospects, understand where your market is headed and be a sharper marketer. Oh yea, you get authority and leadership perception in your market as well.  But you need to inspire before you can lead.

Pages are a great place to broadcast your messages to you Fan base. Key with Pages is to incorporate a linking strategy from your Facebook Pages with your blog, website and other distributed content.  Facebook Fan Pages are a great audience aggregation vehicle, but you need to move your fans to where you will eventually do business with them.  That is your webiste.

Like any new media vehicle you employ, Facebook should fit into your overarching strategy and tactics that drive more leads, customers and profits to your business.

Accidental SEO:The Laws Of Physics

That’s right search engine optimization is like one of the basic laws of physics.  For every action their is an equal and opposite reaction.  Well, in the case of SEO it may not always be equal, but something is going to happen if you just make some basic changes to what you are doing on your website.

A CEO I work with mentioned yesterday that they changed their website last summer.  Nothing special or very strategic, just an update.  They increased their leads (and share of search engine results) over 600%! Not bad for a website re-launch sans consultants or strategy.

Now, we are not suggesting you can just throw a dart against the board and expect these kind of results.  The point is sometimes we get so confused by all the strategy and latest techniques that we don’t do anything. With the right content management system, and a creative staff, most businesses should be in a position to test lots of new things frequently and very inexpensively.  Quick cycles of implement, test, learn rinse and repeat.

Key guideposts for this kind of implementation:

• Have a keyword strategy set that you are confident will get you results (traffic and conversion) if you win.  Nothing is worse that aiming at the wrong goal and finding out after you win.
• Test one thing at a time so you isolate variables and know when something is really working. Also know what you are testing…what is the outcome (leads, sales, downloads) you are looking for?
• Record everything you do.  Make sure you keep a record of every change you make, with date and results.  This will help you continue to build on your quick cycles and not go back and repeat implementations that did not work.

These same rules apply for social media implementation.  SEO and social media are related and together a very powerful combination.

Now go give it a try!

Facebook Pages: 9 Steps To Business Marketing Success

Facebook is the social media phenom.  It is the third most trafficked site on the Internet and is increasingly becoming a powerful business tool with Groups and Pages that can be used to connect and educate prospects and promote  your business.

Before you start to build your Facebook Page, make sure you should have an overall social media business strategy.  As we have discussed in previous posts, all the elements of what we call the “distributed web” work together and build on each other.

Organizing all your media prior to building social media pages in the distributed web is also a good idea.  Have your logos, articles, videos and pictures ready in a handy digital file so they are easy to access.  Make sure you have a keyword strategy, a linking strategy that targets specific landing pages on your website and blog, content that will attract fans and link bait that will get leads…before you start building a Page (or any other social media pages).

When you are ready to build, here are 9 steps to take to make sure you are off to a good start in building a fan base:

1. Get the Title right

When first creating your fan page, you need to choose a title; it could be your brand name, personal name, or business name, but make sure you add a few descriptive keywords you are targeting for SEO purposes. The shorter the title, the better, because each time you add content to your fan page your long title will append to each post.  Also, if you promote your fan page though the Facebook ad network, long titles tend to get cut off and make your ad look incomplete.

2. Make sure your picture is optimized for the space you have

Facebook’s ideal size for a fan page image 200 pixels wide by 600 pixels high.

Whenever you post on your own fan page, the thumbnail image that appears will show a section of your main picture, so you may need to play with your graphic to get the image just the way you want it. We found this out the hard way with Surefire Social…

3. Customize a page for non-fans to land on

You can create a customized “landing page” for non-fans to encourage them to become fans.  You can fully customize it with images, keyword-rich text, links, even video.  Just add the Static FBML app, paste in your FBML code (very similar to HTML), then edit your fan page settings to select the specific tab you wish non-fans to land on.

For examples, see http://www.facebook.com/ellentv, http://www.facebook.com/cocacola, http://www.facebook.com/ONE, http

5. Describe your business well and have a call to action

The small text box area just under your fan page picture is a place to summarize what you do, what your product or service is, and how your business will benefit your target customer. Make sure you include a call to action with a hyperlink  (include the “http://” so it’s clickable).

6. Secure a real user name with your business or product title

After you get your first 25 fans, Facebook allows you to register a unique username (often called a vanity URL) at http://facebook.com/username. So, instead of being a long, unmemorable link, you can shorten the link by using your brand name, company name, etc.

7. Import your blog posts

Using the Notes app, pull in your blog feed so that each time you make a blog post, your fan page automatically updates and your fans can read and comment on the post. Doing so also helps to consistently add content to your fan page and keep it fresh and engaging. You will need to do this separately for each Page you have as well as you blog.  It is basically a three step process.  First, to to your Page and make sure you have the Notes Tab available (if not hit the plus tab and then click Notes). Then click on edit notes and after you get to that page click on the top right (edit section) the notes tab.  You can take it from there.

7. Create a dialogue on your Page

We know sometimes we have strategic reasons for showing posts only by you on the fan page, or only by your fans, but we highly recommend setting it to show both. That way, anyone who comes to your page can see the interaction from both sides.

8. Encourage your fans to add content

For some businesses and product categories, it makes sense to allow and encourage your fans to add their own photos, videos, and comments on your “wall.” Allowing and encouraging your fans to add their own content will make them feel more a part of your business and community, and when they tag themselves that content goes out into their feeds creating more visibility for your business.  Imagine if you are a contractor and some of your clients started to put up photos of the great work you did and comment on those photos…

9. Make sure you respond to your fans

Providing quality content is just one aspect of building a good Facebook fan page (or any social networking presence, for that matter). Another critical aspect is engagement. By actively responding to your fans’ comments, questions, suggestions, ideas, etc., you show that you’re a company that cares, listens, takes action, and engages your community.

Don’t try to do all this at once. Implement some of it and then add more once you feel you have some traction.  The key is to keep improving. Most of all, have fun! These are your customers you are interacting with.

How To Win In Business Marketing- In The New Normal

Business it tough these days.

New technologies, social media apps, web 2.0 sites…all combine to making it even harder to effectively market your products and services. We talk a lot about this new technology and how to make it work for your advantage.  This is a time of disruption where winners and losers will emerge in this “new normal” of marketing. But…

Truth be told, I get many executives and entrepreneurs that tell me that this new marketing and social media stuff is too hard. They try blogging or publishing articles or participating in forums but don’t seem to get traction.  We find that you need two things to be successful in this new marketing environment:

1. You need to approach marketing planning (in this new normal) strategically, incorporating all the new tools you have to work with.  I often work with companies that have been flailing from one social media tactic to the other based on the latest fad or email course they received.  This is not a strategy.  Develop a system that is based on accountable objectives and incorporate it into your business work flow.
2. Be determined to be consistent and persistent.  What makes this tough with social media marketing is you can’t just develop a print or TV campaign, build a media plan and then just run it.  You need to be involved and nurture your relationships. The cost of implementing these programs are very small but you need to experiment and “dial in” what your target audience in interested in and provide support and information through your expertise.  Hey, imagine that, you actually need to get close to your customers!

The rewards for those business that take advantage of the new marketing opportunities and persistently and consistently pursue them are huge. But it takes a different level of commitment, professionalism and persistence that we are used to.  Seth Godin calls it “the dip”, but if you are the business in your niche that breaks through, congratulations!  It’s called market domination!

7 Step SEO Action Plan For The Distributed Social Web

Success in the new “distributed web” is directly related to the concepts and benefits of SEO.  Social media marketing provides a controllable method of getting authoritative external links both directly and indirectly.  You get links directly by distributing and publishing valuable content(with anchor text links to your site) across various web 2.0 sites and content directories. Indirect linking benefits are derived from the incremental clout that you derive from you larger footprint on the web as a result of content distribution.  Bloggers and non-competitive websites would see huge benefits from getting reciprocal links from your expanded presence on the web.

Many “SEO Experts” make the task of search engine optimization appear to be more complicated that it really is.  Here is a 7 step action plan that will put you on top, particularly when implemented in the context of a social media marketing strategy.

1. Decide on the one search phrase you want your page to rank for.  It is possible to rank the same page for several searches, but by focusing your efforts on a single search term, you increase the power of each of your links.

2. Title your page with a variation of the phrase you want it to rank for. Your page title will be displayed prominently in the search results, so add additional descriptive words that will make humans want to visit your page.

3. Create a headline on your page that confirms the promise of your title.

4. Write your page content primarily for humans, but do try to use your complete search phrases and the separate works in your phrases into the text.  This will help both humans and search engines to understand what your page is about.

5. Create links to your page using link text that contains variations of your search phrase.  Natural places for these will be in the navigation menu for your site, footer links at the bottom of your pages and links within the text of your content.

6. Get external links to your pages that also use variations of your search phrases. This will help not only your rankings, but will also garner visitors from these other sites.

7. Rinse and Repeat!  No site is ever “done”— only made incrementally “better”.  So, continue creating content, linking it together and getting links from other sites.

Social Media Marketing Planning: What To Do First?

We kicked off our Mastermind group last night for the Surefire Social “Contractor Edition”, it was terrific.  These business owners are the cream of the crop…they are serious about running and growing their businesses. That is why they spend time and resources on education and training for themselves and their people.

One of the most discussed subjects was where to start when implementing a social media marketing program.  These days, business owners and managers get several emails a day from consultants and agencies offering training and products for every social media site under the sun.

Take a step back (and take a breath) and think about implementing a social media marketing program in this context:

1. Are you aimed at the right target?  Social media marketing provides multiple benefits to your business, SEO, lead generation and partnership opportunities..all because of a larger footprint across the distributed web.  But if you are aimed at winning the wrong keywords (and unique positioning) for your company, you can be wasting a ton of time and resources. Get your strategy and foundation right and it will be hard to screw this up too much.
2. Is you website built on a content management platform that allows for dynamic publishing (blogging and other content updates) and automated pinging of your published content to the major directories?  If not, it is best to make sure your “home base” in the distributed web is optimized before publishing content on other sites.  This needs to all work together.
3. Are you treating social media marketing as a strategy or a tactic?  This is a transformational opportunity for your business and brand.  While it is great to experiment and try new things, it is best done in the context of an overall strategy that is moving you in the same direction.  Have a strategic approach to you social media marketing plan.

It’s never been a more exciting time in marketing and media.  Make sure you are on the winning of this business disruption.

The Importance Of Workflow For Social Media

Implementing a comprehensive social media marketing program can seem overwhelming for any organization.  Keeping up with content development, blogging, posting and the buzz in your industry is tough while you try to run your business.

Integrating a common bookmarking system with common tag structure is a terrific way to keep everyone in the loop while automating downstream workflow.  We implement Delicious bookmarking for our own team and client organizations. As senior executives identify key ideas, content, writers, blogs, forums, competition etc across the Internet, they are able to organize, store and integrate these into a downstream workflow for others to write articles, sign up new writers or participate in key discussions without having to do all of it themselves.

You can implement lots of neat tricks to manage your time effectively and have an impact in the distributed web.  Think process and workflow…remember, social media marketing is a strategic implementation. A completely new way of doing businesses.  Treat it the same way you would any new large company initiative.  It needs to fit into the daily lives of your employees and their workflow to have a sustainable impact on your businesses.

Now just do it!

Marketing Promotions with Social Media: 5 Steps to making your promotion a social success

Good news: The herd of global Internet users is up to 1.5 billion. Bad news: If you don’t market to them in a way that seems slimy, they’ll stampede to get away from you. Read on to find out how to win their trust and loyalty.

With a reported 1.5 billion online users it is clear that the Internet is the place to be for business owners. More specifically, social media has emerged as the place where businesses are experiencing unprecedented connections with and responses from customers who want to be able to know and trust a company before handing over their hard-earned money.

To keep up with competition, it’s essential to tap into social media with your Online Marketing and Advertising promotions, but it must be done in a way that is appealing to customers, so you don’t come off has just another slimy salesperson.

Below are 5 steps to making your promotion a social success:

1. Ensure you know your niche and customers by conducting research. You want to make sure you are putting your time and energy into the right audience. Being able to identify your ideal customers and know where they frequent online helps you to get started on the right foot with your promotions. It is not going to be helpful to your business or your reputation to hit the wrong target market with your message. Instead, take the time to answer these questions: What customer problem am I solving? Who are my customers? Where do my customers look for information online? Listen to what your customers are saying and gain insights for keywords and phrases you can use to position your brand. By paying attention to customer discussions around the social web, you can also get excellent ideas for new products you can offer.
2. Build your credibility before attempting to sell. If you are excited about your product, you probably want to go to every social networking site available to spread the word, but it is almost guaranteed you will turn-off more customers than you will attract with this marketing method. You build your credibility by joining social sites and becoming a valued community member. This doesn’t take as long as you may think. By taking the time to answer some questions thoughtfully or start some meaningful discussions, you can quickly earn the respect of others on the site. Then, you will able to subtly recommend your products or services and sneak in a link!
3. Reveal your true self. Because the Internet has become such a social world, it makes sense that now is the time to let people in on your story. Let your personality shine through as you connect with others on various social media sites. In addition, you want to continue this theme with your business website and marketing communications. People want to purchase products and services from real people they can trust. So go ahead and get personal, sharing a little bit of your heart and soul. A passion for your business and what you do can be a major selling point.
4. Gear all of your marketing promotions toward the customer’s “what’s in it for me” mentality. A very common mistake business owners make is to spend all of their marketing efforts spreading the word about how awesome they are and how amazing their business is. Big mistake! People don’t want to know about YOU; they want to know what’s in it for them. How are you going to solve their problems? How are you going to meet their needs?
5. Keep it professional. While you definitely want to be a real person with whom customers can connect, it is important to maintain professionalism at all times. So, in other words, keep it clean, polite, and honest, and you can go a long way. You will also want to make sure your website is in great shape, so when the customers start coming (and they will because you have been working the social media!), they will find your site easily accessible and containing the information they are seeking.

Chris Marentis is a serial entrepreneur and recognized Internet Marketing expert having served as SVP at AOL and CEO of Clearspring Technologies. For more information on Online Marketing and Advertising, go to http://www.gennextmedia.com today.

Small Business Marketing With Social Media: Learn the topics and strategies you need to increase visibility

Looking for ideas and topics to get you started in small business marketing? The social media sites listed below can help you to come up with the content and strategies necessary to get plugged into social marketing for your small business.

Small businesses are always looking for unique ways to reach their target audience and market their brand. There are some common tools you can find on the web, but a more thorough search will deliver mediums that work a bit better for local businesses. One of the first steps for social marketing success is to identify the right topics and content that will attract your prospective customers’ attention. By making use of the sites and tactics listed below, your lead generation marketing numbers will skyrocket as users search specifically for what you can provide.

Retweetist.com: This site follows all things Twitter and allows you to keep up with popular topics, trends and people by tracking retweets across the site. Follow them with your Twitter account for access, and you will be privy to the most important information and relevant discussions on the web that day.

Popurls.com: This is a one-stop shop where you can find the top entries from multiple sites that users are visiting. Find out what people are interested in and target those audiences based on the latest interests. Incorporate the top entries into your feeds to lead people to your site.

Alltop.com: This online magazine provides a plethora of popular topics on the web, with stories updated by the hour. This site is a relevant source of what is popular in the market place, and boasts easy search tools. It’s a great source for brushing up on new social media tools to keep your marketing strategies fresh and relevant.

Trendhunter.com: This online magazine is an “explosion of cool” and kept up to date by a global network of trendsetters. Get ahead of the game with the next big thing by tracking this site. The reason this site is so valuable is that it helps generate ideas, shape our social context, and stimulate creativity. This is a great way to figure out how to be more influential within your social media marketing and develop services to meet the demands you find on the site.

Trendistic.com: Look to this site in order to find daily trends in Twitter, complete with charts and graphs, and a list of popular topics. Tweak your feeds to be more relevant to the current daily trends and ensure more website traffic.

Twitturly.com: This site ranks and tracks what URL’s people are talking about on Twitter. It’s a quick reference to find out what information gets passed along and what doesn’t. You can also check to see how your information is ranking.

Makeuseof.com: This site has tools and resources that you can use and is a great source for finding anything from the top 5 things to do in an emergency to different ways kids can make money online. Find a significant URL to add value to your postings here.

Lifehacker.com: Another general site similar to makeuseof.com, this site has tips and downloads for everyday life.

Tweetgrid.com: An extension of Twitter, this search dashboard lets you search up to 9 different topics, events, people, groups, phrases, etc in real time. So, when new tweets are created, they will be automatically updated in your grid. This will help you stay relevant with your feeds and allow you to change them as the information deems necessary.

Tweetmeme.com: This site tracks what is cool and being talked about on Twitter. Everything is sorted by rank, so the things that are talked about most have the highest ranking. Tweetmeme.com tracks old and new content, and all media is categorized by blogs, photos, audio, and video. You can perform searches on this site for the highest ranking content and create similar posts that will guarantee traffic.

Twopular.com: This site pulls up trends on Twitter in real time. No need to refresh the page, and you can keep up by always having current information in your posts.

Twitturls.com: Works by grabbing the links that people post in their Twitter feeds and then counts them, scores them, and then lists them. Shows results by day and is refreshed every minute. Through this site you can check out the highest ranking links to see if you can make a posting relevant to your business.

Twitlinks.com: Features latest news that is for the more technologically inclined. Up to the minute tech links. Great for tech marketers who want to find small businesses online and offer solutions to their needs.

Twittersphere.com: A collection of the most hyped stories found on Twitter. Check regularly to see which stories get the most hits. Also a great portal for posting local specials relevant to your business.

Twitscoop.com: An easy way to stay on top of Twitter. Click on one of the words in the cloud map on the right and it shows you how many times the word has appeared in tweets. This is a great calculating tool for keyword research.

Sitevolume.com: Fantastic medium for pulling up keyword counts for 5 various sites. Simply pick a site you want to check, type in up to 5 keywords, and it pulls up how many times those words appear. You can check which words are the most relevant and incorporate them into your social media tools.

Twitgraph.com: Charts your actual usage of twitter complete with visuals. Use this to track what has been the most popular topics in your threads.

Killerstartups.com: Interesting site that reviews 15+ internet startups per day, then the readers vote on which one they think will be a killer. This site can be a great source for being the first to find upcoming needs for your products and services.

Any one of these web-marketing strategies will provide you with many avenues to get the latest topics and information that people are seeking. Because you want to meet a need or fulfill an interest of your prospective customer, it is vital to stay current with popular topics and informational trends. When you appear to be a business in-the-know, you will build credibility for your brand, while reaching a wider spectrum of the public. Keep in mind that it is important to measure your results. Also, make sure that you are having two-way conversations instead of only talking “at” your audience.

Furthermore, it is important to ensure your network is growing. Work on building relationships through credibility, dialogue and content relevancy. By following this structure to market your business, you will be maximizing the power of your social network, and expanding opportunities for your company.

Chris Marentis is a serial entrepreneur and recognized Internet Marketing expert having served as SVP at AOL and CEO of Clearspring Technologies. For more information on Small Business Marketing, go to http://www.surefiresocial.com today.

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