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Archives For August 2012

Marketing Strategy Review

August 25, 2012 — Leave a comment

It’s important for you to have a periodic marketing strategy review. You may even consider evaluating your online marketing strategy every 30 days. Here are a few questions to ask when doing your review.

Have you checked the metrics on your site and is it promoting the right message to your target audience? You should have your site set up in Google Analytics and be using Google’s Webmaster tools to monitor the performance of your site. Your content should reflect the wants and needs of your core audience. Make sure your site is search engine optimized for long-tail keywords. Research the keywords that fit your needs by using Google’s free keyword tool. And use lots of them. Don’t depend on one or two keywords for your SEO.

Are you leveraging social media in the most effective way possible to engage your target market? At the very least, you should have Twitter and LinkedIn accounts along with a Facebook Page. The key to success in this area is consistency. Post a few times per week or once daily. The optimal time to post to social media is generally early to mid-afternoon during the week.

Do you have a blog on your website that provides useful information? Posting short 200 – 300 word blog posts is a great way to build credibility and become the expert in the eyes of your clients and prospects.

Are you using article marketing sites to educate and inform people in your target market? Some people say article marketing is dead, but I know firsthand that it still works. It also helps you get more content to rank well on Google if you are using one of the better article marketing sites, such as ezinearticles.com.

Do you have a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly newsletter? This is a great way to maintain ongoing contact with the marketplace to keep that top-of-mind presence. Email marketing tools, such as Constant Contact provide easy to use templates for creating professional quality emails.

How do you compare to your competition? Find the keywords they are ranking on, study their content, and ask yourself if there are missed opportunities in your current business model when compared to your competition.

Are you using offline marketing strategies? Direct mail, networking, making phone calls, making appointments are all part of your overall marketing strategy. Just because you have online tools in place does not mean you can ignore traditional marketing.

If you do everything I listed above, you will have a great start on assuring your online marketing success.

In marketing , , ,
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Get Social For SEO

August 14, 2012 — Leave a comment

With the recent updates to Google’s search algorithm (Panda and Penguin), the focus has been placed more on your brand, your reputation, and how well you engage your followers than on how well you can “tweak” your site for SEO (search engine optimization).

Don’t get me wrong. It’s still very important to do everything you can to properly optimize your site for the major search engines doing all the regular SEO tasks. But the SEO game is changing.

Social media (Google+, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) is becoming more relevant when it comes to ranking well in search results. And it’s not just about you posting pictures of your cousin’s wedding on your Facebook page.

It is about engaging your audience and managing how your brand is perceived by Google and everyone else. It is about having conversations and discussions with your followers, friends, and contacts on a regular basis.

So how do you do this? How do you engage your audience in discussions that are interesting enough for them to want to post a comment or retweet something you have posted?

The key is to post things that are relevant to them and the people in their circle of influence. To do this, you have to know the demographics and psychographics of your followers.

Just as you have to know this to sell to a specific market offline using traditional marketing methods, you now have to know these things to post information that is interesting enough and relevant enough for them to share with their friends.

When you think about your clients and prospects, think about the questions they ask on a consistent basis. Post things geared towards solving their problems and education. Post links to articles, videos, or other interesting things that will be beneficial to your target market. Constantly promoting yourself or telling everyone how great you are is not the approach to take if you want to engage your audience and rank well in the search engines.

It takes a little work to learn what you need to know and to come up with appropriate posts, but the time you invest in doing this will be well worth the effort. The marketplace (and Google) will appreciate and reward you with more business and better search engine rankings.

Do your part and retweet, comment on other people’s posts, share their newsletters and YouTube videos. Get involved in others conversations by participating in discussion groups on LinkedIn.

In a nutshell, Google wants to be sure your brand is relevant to whatever someone is searching for and that you are creating engagement around your brand.

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Urgent

August 8, 2012 — Leave a comment

Creating a sense of urgency in your business is one of the most important things you can do to experience both solid growth in your business and personal growth. But you have to focus that sense of urgency on what’s important in your business.

Steven Covey said, “If we don’t have a clear idea of what’s important, of the results we desire in our lives, we are easily diverted into responding to the urgent.” He says you must focus on what’s important, not what’s urgent.

For example, you may be gaining momentum in your sales and marketing efforts when you get an email telling you how to make $100k in the next month with very little work. And some people may fall for these type or similar things because they are looking for the easy way to get ahead. I refer to these type side trips as shiny things. They may seem urgent, but they are not important. You don’t want to lose your focus and momentum in your business by chasing shiny things.

Here is how you can prevent yourself from taking side trips in your business or in your life, and how you can create a sense of urgency for the important things you need to do.

Number one is stay focused. Don’t get distracted from the main goal in your business, which should be to make money, so you can keep the doors open and help more people.

Number two is know what’s important to you. Make a list of the 3 most important things you want to accomplish in your business on a daily basis. And ask yourself, “is this getting me closer to where I want to be”. If it’s not, then you don’t need to be doing it.

Number three is to have someone in your life who holds you accountable for your actions and helps keep you on your track. This is so valuable for keeping you focused on the important things and for maintaining that sense urgency in your business.

And number four is to be confident in whatever you do and keep moving forward regardless of circumstances, failures, or setbacks so you can maintain your sense of urgency regardless of your circumstances or what’s going on around you.

In time management , ,
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Why Are You Tweeting?

August 1, 2012 — Leave a comment

It seems as if everyone is on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. But why? What is the purpose of using social media in your business?

The three main reasons for using social media in your business are to engage your audience and to continually build those relationships. I believe, as a general rule, it’s impossible to build a solid relationship through social media, but it can be the genesis for building business relationships.

And whether you think social media is a waste of time or not, you have to be using the tools because many of your potential clients are using them. Think of it this way. If you knew you could go to a networking event and possibly meet 100 new prospects for your business, would you do it?

Of course you would. When you use social media, that is basically what you are doing. You are attending a networking event that is open to anyone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

But you can’t just show up. You have to engage, start conversations, and share information that your target audience will find interesting, entertaining, and shareable. You want to create posts that your audience will want to share with other people like them. That is where the real power of social media comes into play.

Can you make money from using social media? That is like asking if you can make money from a press release or from a networking event. It goes back to the basics of business. It’s all about the relationships you build and social media is just one more tool you can use to start conversations and start building relationships.

So, when you are posting something to any of your social networks, ask youself this question. Why would my audience care about this post? Is it something that will help them in their business or help them get to know you better? Is it something they will find entertaining? Is it something they will want to share with other people like them?

Also think about the time of day you are posting. Studies have shown the best time to post (or tweet) something is early afternoon. Show up when your audience is more likely to read your post.

One of the best strategies you can use on Twitter is to retweet someone else’s tweet. On Facebook, posting a comment on a post that someone made is a great strategy.

Make sure whatever you post on your social media is worthy of being retweeted, commented on, or shared. Post things at the right time to increase the chances your posts will be read. If you do these things, you will get better results from the time you invest.

In twitter , ,
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