How To Maximize SEO And Leads With Social Media Marketing

Marketing in the distributed web today can become very, confusing very fast.

Imagine you have content distributed all over the web and you continue to do this every week (and you should). Facebook pages, HubPages, Twitter, article directories….the list is endless, especially when you add the local and market focused social nets, blogs, and directories. If you did not have a strategy for managing the content and how you want to engage and move customers around your distributed content this can quickly become a giant mess. Even worse, the power of these efforts working together will be very diluted.

What to do? Track and plan…

1. Make sure you have tracking in place so you know where your content is and how well that vehicle is performing. Links within sites you are publishing content to should have tracking code (bit.ly is one of many solutions for this) so you can measure your return on time and money. You can also look at your Google Analytics reports and look at the reference sites report to measure how productive your social media efforts are by channel (e.g Facebook, ezine articles etc).
2. Social media marketing is as much about SEO as it is about increasing your digital footprint to generating leads and traffic. So, planning out anchor text cross linking in advance will really help make sure that you (or whoever you outsourced social media page creation and maintenance to) maximize this opportunity. Remember you want to send “link juice” to your social media authority sites as well as your website. Think of it as a nest that becomes woven together into a solid cross linking strategy.
3. Be consistent with your linking strategy as you publish new content every week to the various sites. Make adjustments to what content topics you focus on as you learn from your tracking.

Putting it all together is where the magic happens for your business. This will separate the companies that throw-up a Facebook page and think they are doing social media marketing from the businesses that are using it as a serious business building tool.

What do you think?

24 Ways To Grow Your Email List

Their are many ways to get someone to sign up for your email marketing list. We put together a comprehensive list below to get you thinking.

1. Giving something for free like a PDF or Video. Make visitors sign up to your opt-in form before you let them download it.
2. Include a newsletter sign-up link in your signature of all of your emails.
3. Send an opt-in email to your address book giving them something valuable (Link Bait) and ask them to join your list.
4. Host events- Art galleries, software companies, retail shops, consultants (lunch & learn) can all host an event and request attendees to sign up.
5. Incentivize employees – Give a reward for collecting email addresses for qualified leads.
6. Referrals – Ask you customers to refer you, and in exchange you’ll give them a discount.
7. Giveaways – Send “bulky mail” and ask for their email address as well as their postal address.
8. Do you have a snail mail list without emails? Send them a direct mail (use a postcard) offer they can only get if they sign up to your email list.
9. Include newsletter sign up or other “link bait” opt in forms on every page on your site.
10. Use exit popup windows – When someone attempts to leave your site, pop up a window and ask for the email address in return for “link bait”.
11. Include a forward-to-a-friend link in your auto responder emails just in case your recipient wants to forward your content to someone they think will find it interesting.
12. Include a share, post and forward-to-a-friend on every page of your site.
13. When telemarketing, don’t let your callers hang up until they ask if they can add them to your newsletter.
14. Trade newsletter space with related businesses, include a link for their opt-in form and ask them to include yours in their newsletter.
15. Put a fishbowl on your counter and do a weekly prize giveaway of your product – then announce it to your newsletter. Add everyone who put his or her card in on to your newsletter list.
16. Host your own group on Facebook, LinkedIn, Biznik and other social networks and invite people to it and post new links and invite others to do the same. You can also promote your own newletter list as long as you don’t over do it.
17. Post your blog and a link to your newsletter into Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks.
18. Have newsletter and “link bait” sign up applications on your Facebook Fan page and other social network sites.
19. Tweet your content (link bait) and newsletter topics to get sign ups.
20. Put an offer on the back of your business cards to get people to sign up for your newsletter.
21. Offer a birthday club where you give something special to people who sign up.
22. Tradeshows – Bring a clipboard or sign-up book with you to tradeshows and ask for permission to send email to those who sign up.
23. Join your local chamber of commerce, email the member list (if it’s opt-in) about your services with a link to sign up to your newsletter.
24. Trade shows – Collect business cards and scan them into a spreadsheet. Make sure you ask permission to send email to them, then mark the card.

What did I leave out?

Want To Increase Your Leads…Add Channels!

One of the most common questions we get from clients is, “how do we get more leads?” Leads are the lifeblood for any business, and they are harder to come by in a tough economic environment.

The first thing we do is analyze where leads are currently being sourced? We also look at the number of leads by channel. Even better, what is the ROI of each lead as well as conversion by channel. Without tracking you will never know where your business should continue to invest and focus time. As important as tracking is, this post is not about tracking. We want to focus on making sure you are making use of all the possible lead sources online.

Funny thing is, in this new “distributed web” we have a lot more channels to explore. Let’s quickly look at the online channels your business will want to test and use:

• Natural Web Search (SEO)- SEO is the ante for any business. The key here is in today’s distributed, social web, all the content you are going to publish around the web will help your SEO rankings in a big way if you do it right strategically.
• Pay Per Click (PPC)- PPC costs are going up in a big way for competitive categories. But with the right buying strategy and optimized landing pages you still can make this an effective channel.
• Social Media Marketing- We are most excited about Social media because it is free and offers both huge reach and targeted marketing opportunities. Doing social media right takes a comprehensive strategy (not one off Facebook Fan Page or Twitter) and consistent presence but the payoff can be huge.
• Banner Ads- The online advertising stalwart, it is being renewed with new, niche ad networks and banners in some new social communities.
• Article Links- Article marketing is the new “black” in online business marketing. The reason is content is king for marketers in this new distributed web. Getting attention in the attention economy is done through content. And it’s viral!
• Directories- Directories play a great role in organizing the distributed web and are important for your website marketing plan. Don’t forget the vertical market directories that are targeted for your market.
• Partners- Find partners to promote your business, who are in related markets, have a valuable list of potential buyers. Social media can help here because you can meet more potential partners when you are involved in the online communities.

Offline channels are also effective and should be tested as well. For best results, offline and online channels should work together. Drive target customers from offline media like TV, Radio or print to your online owned media like your website, Facebook Fan page and other places around the web. Use your “link bait” as the reason for them to go there. Also, take your online conversations and relationships offline via phone meeting, seminar or conferences to bring your relationship to another level.

Anything I missed? What works for your business…

Social Media Marketing On 45 Minutes A Day

Social media marketing takes time. From the business owner or CEO to staff at all levels, done right everyone has a role to play so your business can cover the most ground and have the largest impact. By the way, this routine will have a very positive effect on your business in many ways.

One of the biggest issues we hear from our larger clients, and the Surefire Social DYI customers alike, is the time they think it takes to do social media marketing. Let’s break this down and create a workflow that is manageable and sustainable for everyone. Here are 5 tips to a 45 minute per day routine that will pay off bigtime:

1. Set up workflow so you have all you need prepared in advance- Profiles, Pages, RSS Reader, URL shorteners, microblog distribution platform…all need to be set up and understood how to work them in advance. If you are a senior exec in the company, we also recommend that you have someone on your staff responsible for social media marketing keep track of all the content you are going to publish including articles, blog posts, videos , PR Releases etc in a Google Docs file that can be shared by all stakeholders. This provides stewardship and content that can be directly shared by you all in one place.
2. Develop a social media routine and put it on your calendar- You need to participate on a regular basis so put your routine on your calendar and stick to it.
3. Identify the pulse of the conversation and join in- You can’t be everywhere, but make sure you are where people are congregating and discussing topics relevant to your product or service. Make sure you understand the “pulse of the conversation” so you are posting comments and blog posts that are relevant and add to the discussion. Having the tools and workflow outlined in point 1 will help.
4. Spend and equal amount of time listening and posting- As business owners and executives we are naturally inclined to talk about our products and services and “sell”. Don’t do it. This is about education and nurturing potential customers. Even better, this is about a great opportunity to listen to the dialog among potential customers, competitors and partners so we better understand how to meet needs and sell more stuff!
5. Don’t get caught in the black hole of social media- It is easy to get caught up in the blogs, Tweets, forums and social networks because the opportunities and ideas can be endless. It’s important to stay structured and with purpose in your routine so you do not over invest time in social media. Having others in your organization also contribute will help your business cover more ground without over burdening any one individual.

If you follow these tips you should be able to invest 45 minutes every day to commenting on a few blogs that are highly visible, listening to the pulse of the conversations and posting a 250 to 450 word blog post. Even better, you will have a better feel for your market than you ever did. That is the key here. Social media mareketing makes you a better business person because it forces you to stop, listen and write down your thoughts.

No excuses…go do it!

Event And Social Media Marketing: 5 Keys To A Successful Promotion

Event and social media marketing can team up to become a very powerful, viral marketing lead generation tool. Here is a great example from a Christmas event I just attended.

Ok….I’ll just get this out of the way. I went to the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular Show the other night with my family and friends. What can I say, when it comes to Christmas I love all this stuff!

Well, soon as we walked into the Patriot Center my daughter and her friend noticed a Capital One (the event sponsor) floor display with several attractive women offering to have a picture taken with the Rockettes, for FREE! WOW…these girls were excited. Now, the Rockettes were actually nowhere in site. This was the say, “virtual Rockettes? It was just a display and background with a place for participants to stand so when they superimposed the Rockettes image it all looked good.

After shooting the pic, the attendants of the display gave us a card with a unique code and instructions for how to retrieve the photo online within 72 hours. I started thinking, this is going to be very cool. I knew where this was headed. Think about it. A few years ago all event sponsor could do with and event marketing program like this is put the picture up on a website for someone to download. Maybe order a print online (that costs money!). With the power of social media marketing applications and easy to share functionality, this was a completely different story.

Capital One did not disappoint. We put our code in and the picture looked great. Very fun. Even better, they had share, email, print and save (for Christmas card maybe) buttons all around that picture to make it viral. BTW, we can also put that pic on a newly minted Capital One card which I am still considering.

You guessed it, this picture will be all over Facebook profiles for two families within hours of this post…and that exposure for Capital One is only from one picture taken at the event. Did I mention their was a line to get the picture taken?

I am not sure if the holidays have me carried away or not, but this was a great application of social media and event marketing that worked really well for Capital One. The leverage and exposure for Capital One was huge. I would love to see the numbers.

Here are some keys to the success of this event/social media marketing program:

• Strong reason for sharing- This is special holiday event for the family that people love to memorialize. Combine that with the celebrity power of the picture with the Rockettes, and this is something people want to share and talk about.
• Immediate action- Operationally this worked great. We had the pic available within 48 hours. It would have been great if they gave us a heads up instead of making us check every time.
• Impactful presence at the event to engage people- The location, feel and people that engaged attendees at this event made it fun and inviting. I have seen programs like this go bad because they have uninterested attendants engaging with potential participants or the display looked lame.
• Online interfaces very easy to use- The UI and functionality was dead simple to use and also very easy to share the photo and have fun with it.
• FREE- Free works great to engage your target. Give them something valuable and they will like you. We use this technique a lot with information products and education. This was a great use of a free product to engage the target customer group and generate leads.

One aspect of the campaign I don’t understand is why Capital One didn’t get any contact information from participants. This really was a branding campaign, and I am sure it worked well in that regard. But I wonder if their was a missed opporutnity to get name and email addresses in this process. For example, get the name and email address of dad or mom when the pic is taken and send them a reminder email to pick up the picture when it was ready. Great reason (to get the email) and you can send them follow up auto responders that tie to that event…so them what the credit card would look like with the picture that was taken and get them to buy if for holiday shopping?

It’s ok…share your pictures and stories about event and social media marketing!

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.

7 Surefire Business Marketing Tips For A Competitive Market

What if your competitors already achieved top search engine rankings, developed hundreds of pages of content, built massive email lists and dominate the social marketing space…

How can you possibly compete with that?

You can approach competition with two mindsets: fight or flight!  You either give up quickly and move on to another niche (or less competitive keywords) or you decide you are going to take them head on and beat them in the SERP’s using every SEO and social media tool you know.

Either of those positions may end up cheating you of the profits that can be yours.  You’re giving your competition entirely too much credit.  If you are intimidated, they will win.

The truth is saturated, competitive markets generally offer huge opportunities….that’s why so may competitors are in it.  In addition to high demand, there are other advantages to working in competitive markets:

• Higher Ad Revenue
• Higher Adsense Payout
• More Affiliates/Partners to Recruit
• More Affiliate Programs
• More Quality Linking Partners

Let’s take a high level view of seven simple ways you can strategically use competition to your advantage in practically any market or niche…

1. Don’t make the common mistake of looking at the total number of search results for any given keyword phrase as your competitive framework.  You are only ever competing with the top 10 pages that show up in the search results. Period! The trick, instead of trying to get your link on the top ten results (SERP’s) for that keyword or phrase, think about trying to get a link on some, all, or any of the 10 pages already displayed in the results.  Getting a link from these pages will give your website great traffic and high PR value.  Many of them will not be direct competitors, so if you have the right approach, you can work with them.
2. Locate the top bloggers in your niche…study them carefully.  Get their feed and a feeling for the style of writing they like. Once you get a feeling for what they like, write a quality guest post and offer it to them exclusively. Give them a time frame, like 72 hours to respond. If they don’t respond or turn you down, go to the next blogger. Some may feel it makes no sense to add your credibility to another blogger in your nice, Seth Godin had a good post about guest blogging you can check out.
3. Trackbacks are another great way to funnel targeted traffic out of more popular or established blogs to your niche.  You need your own blog of course to employ this strategy.  Most blog platforms automatically publish a link in a preset trackback area, or in the comments area when a link is created from another blog post. So, if you link to my blog post from your blog post, a link to your blog post will show up on mine. Keep an eye on those blogs, specifically for hot topics that you can contribute to the discussion. Create a post on your own blog and link to their post as a reference.
4. The money is in the list but it does not just have to be your own list. Identify quality publishers in your market or niche and keep track of all their publications, subscribe to them (and all their feeds).  Identify what content they like and write something for them and see if they will publish it. Case studies, interviews and product reviews are always a good place to start.
5. Identify non-competitive businesses in your market and find ways to partner with them.  Offer their customers a special coupon code and make the code unique to that audience so they feel like it is a special opporutnity.
6. Friend your competitors in their social networks and get involved in their communities.  Don’t be obnoxious, just get visibility to your target audience.  You will also become known to your competitive friends and perhaps think about partnering for future products or services.
7. Many niches and markets have aggressive affiliates.  Identify who they are and leverage thier networks to jump start your business and break though the crowd.

Competitive markets are more of a challenge but the rewards are also bigger if you succeed.  Create a process, have patience and don’t give up!

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.