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Is Your Company Afraid of Blog and Social Media Commitment?

February 22, 2012 by 1 Comment

When I’m approached by business owners who want to start a blog or rewrite their blog content along with increasing their social media presence, I usually think to myself, “Hmmm. How committed are they to developing and maintaining a blog? Are they ready for the commitment that social media requires?” When it comes to blogs, most business owners, especially small business owners, subscribe to the “If you build it, they will come” thinking. Unfortunately, it takes more ‘thinking’ your way to millions of blog readers, likes, and followers. It takes time, dedication, perseverance, and trust.

Before I begin writing a blog, rewriting blog posts, or handling social media management, I ask a lot of questions. This is a good way for me to assess if the ‘potential’ client understands the amount of work that goes into building and maintaining a blog and social media pages. Here are my questions:

  • Do you have a blog? If yes, how many blog posts do you have? If no, how many blog posts would you like?
  • What blogging platform do you use or prefer?
  • What is your goal for the blog?
  • Do you have keywords/phrases? If yes, what are they? If no, is this something you’d like me to research?
  • Do you have an SEO system in place? If so, who’s the company and what have they done for you? What analysis has been done thus far? If no, are you looking to hire an SEO company? What do you want them to handle?
  • Do you have social media accounts? If yes, what are they? If no, which ones would you like to use?
  • What is the goal of social media? More likes? More followers? More leads? More conversions? Both? All of the above?
  • How patient are you when it comes to growing the blog and social media sites?

Sometimes clients, especially small business owners, become overwhelmed because they don’t realize the commitment involved with having a blog and social media websites.

Fact: Did you know that most social media managers spend 30 or more hours per week on social media? It’s important to stay connected with current fans and followers in addition to gaining new ones.

How to Use a Blog and Social Media to Drive Traffic and Build a Web Presence

Blog
English: Blogs on JoopeA

Image via Wikipedia

Take advantage of WordPress plugins like Yoast. I’ve been testing out the plugin for a few weeks, and I’m enjoying it. The plugin forces you to write better headlines, preferably SEO, along with body content. The plugin analyzes the content to ensure the following:

  • The focus keyword/phrase was used.
  • A picture with an alt tag was used.
  • The keyword density is on target.
  • The page content is at least 300 words.
  • The URL contains the keyword.
  • The meta description includes the primary keyword/phrase.
  • The primary keyword/phrase is in the beginning of the page title.

These and other metrics have helped me hone my SEO writing skills. When it comes to SEO, there’s always more to learn.

Use email lists. If you’re not sending out a monthly newsletter, you may want to consider it. If you have a newsletter, include an ‘excerpt’ from a blog post and link back to your company’s website. This is a good start to driving and building web traffic.

Link building. Many companies pay for link building; however, if you’re not linking to your current customers’ blogs, you’re missing out on traffic and strengthening your relationship with them.

Tip: Link to relevant blogs within your industry and become active on them. Leave comments on blog posts and forums. Show that you’re an authority in the industry that shouldn’t be ignored.

Advertise your blog. Marketing materials such as business cards, postcards, and brochures should contain your blog’s URL in addition to contact information. You could also include it on your email signature, purchase orders, invoices, receipts, at the end of a Power Point presentation, etc. to gain more visibility.

Social Media

Twitter. Not only could you tweet your blog post, you could ‘retweet’ your followers. This is a great way to build a following. Tweet during ‘peak hours’ for your business which could be in the late morning or afternoon. This is something you’d want to test.

Facebook. There are 845 million Facebook users. If you’re not using Facebook or using it properly, you’re missing out an opportunity to market your business. Consider having a Facebook like/lead page that will knock the socks off of visitors and entice them to visit your website and read your blog.

LinkedIn. If you’re not taking advantage of LinkedIn, do so now. It’s a social media site for professionals and you can connect with others within your industry. Be helpful by answering questions in the ‘Answers’ section. Show off your expertise.

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My 7 Best Keyword Research Tips Ever

February 16, 2012 by 4 Comments

Finding the right keywords for your website can be a tedious process. Keyword research takes time, but it doesn’t have to a ‘dreaded’ task. The main point to remember when researching keywords is to ask and answer the following questions:

  1. Who is the target audience?
  2. What is the main focus of my website?

If you don’t know who the target audience is then you’ll have a difficult time finding keywords and phrases for your website. Keep it simple – don’t make keyword research a complicated process when it doesn’t have to be.

My 7 Best Keyword Research Tips Ever
Keyword Research Panel at the Niche Affiliate ...

Keyword Research Panel at the Niche Affiliate Marketing System (NAMS) Workshop 4 (Photo credit: rogercarr)

1. Use Google AdWords Keyword Tool. This free tool is used by millions of people. You can conduct keyword research by entering your company’s website and or specific keywords. 

Google AdWords gives you the opportunity to sort keywords by high, low, or medium competition. This is important when you create Google AdWords advertisements.

2. Think about your target audience. Do you know who your target audience is? It’s important to know who your target market is before you begin conducting keyword research.  

3. Choose focused and descriptive words for your website. Stop worrying about the competition for one second and choose keywords specifically for your website. If you keep focusing on the competition, you won’t have a keyword list. Looking at your competitors keywords can be helpful because you can learn what they’re not ranking for. However, if you spend countless hours looking at your competitors, you won’t have a keyword list of your own.

4. Use Google Insights for Search and Google Trend. Use these tools to research trends in your industry. Type in a short and long tail keywords and review the data. You’ll be able to spot trends within your industry which can help you with your keyword research.

5. Review and remove negative keywords. If you own a floral shop, Google will more than likely suggest ‘flowers’ as a keyword. It may suggest related terms such as ‘silk flowers.’ This would be considered a ‘negative keyword’ if you don’t use silk flowers. You want to be aware of ‘negative keywords’ because you can disregard them when you create a Google AdWords advertisement. If you don’t, your ad will show up when customers search for ‘silk flowers.’

6. How many keywords do you want to optimize? How many products and services are you selling? If you only have one product then 5-10 keywords could work for you. However, if you’re selling more than one product and or service, you’ll want to expand your keyword list.

7. Analyze your website to see what it’s ranking for and make adjustments. You may not have to start over with a new keyword list; however, you want to make sure your current keywords are a priority. Analyzing what your website’s ranking for can lead you to keywords that were overlooked.

8. Assign a percentage to your keywords. If you’re a local travel company in Columbus, Ohio, you may not rank for a ‘general’ keyword term such as travel agency. Your company would be 100% relevant for ‘Columbus Travel Agency.’ Travel agency could get 10%, while ‘Columbus Caribbean Travel Agency’ could return 30-50% if you specialize in Caribbean vacations.

Tip: Google AdWords Keyword Tool provides analytics such as competition, local market, etc. Use these numbers and other analytics when conducting keyword research.

9. Select the final keyword list, for now. Let’s face it; markets change as do technologies. Keywords that worked for you yesterday may become obsolete today. It’s important to ‘keep your finger on the pulse’ of changes within customer buying trends and your industry. Periodically, review your keyword list and ‘tweak’ it when necessary.

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Ridiculously Easy SEO Habits to Start

February 2, 2012 by 5 Comments
English: seo company

Image via Wikipedia

Consider this Amandah’s Freelance Writer’s SEO guide to optimizing your company’s blog/website. Take the struggle out of optimizing your blog/website with these ridiculously easy SEO habits.

SEO doesn’t have to keep your management team up at night. Although there’s a science behind SEO, it doesn’t have to be tricky or complicated. Basically, you use keywords/phrases and tags within web content to drive traffic to your website. The caveat is to have well-written content and not a bunch of copy stuffed with keywords and phrases. Google’s not fond of that.

Ridiculously Easy SEO Habits to Start

1. Review the company’s current keyword/phrase and tags. Perhaps, it’s time to analyze the effectiveness of your current keyword/phrase and tags. If your company’s website isn’t receiving the web traffic you thought it would, it could be your keywords/phrases and tags.

2. Review web content. How well are the keywords/phrases and tags incorporated into blog posts, articles, and pages? Your optimization is too low. Or, the content may not be that compelling. Don’t forget about writing SEO headlines. It’s important to put the keyword in the beginning of the headline. If you’re using a secondary keyword, place it in the middle or end. It’s not a good idea to have the primary and secondary keywords next to each other.

3. Check out the competition. What’s your competition up to? How’s their content? Read their web content and compare it to yours. If their web content is better, it may be time to hire a freelance writer to revise your company’s.

4. Review the number of internal and external links. Perhaps, your company’s link building isn’t what it can be. If you don’t link to high-quality pages within your company’s website, you’re missing out on the opportunity to optimize the website. Also, it’s important to provide customers with helpful, high-quality external links that complement your company. 

5. Look for ‘stop words‘ within permalinks. Search engines disregard common words as the ones listed below. It makes no sense to have them in your permalinks. 

Sample List of Stop words

about
above
after
again
all
and
for
get
to

6. The company’s website doesn’t have a search engine friendly design. It’s important that your company’s website is clean and easy to use. More importantly, it needs to be search engine friendly. If images are used it’s imperative to utilize the ‘alt text’ feature that’s available in blogging platforms such as WordPress and Blogger. This provides a text description of images.

7. Your company doesn’t provide transcripts of audio and video. Let’s face it; some visitors may prefer reading a transcript of an audio recording or video. More importantly, developing these SEO habit will help your company help search engine index these materials. This can lead to more web traffic which can increase customer conversion rates.

8. Your company doesn’t take advantage of SEO services. If your company doesn’t have an RSS feed (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication), they’re missing out on web traffic. These are easy to maintain and code. They’ll update when new content is added to the website.

9. Your company doesn’t take advantage of SEO tools. Most companies use Google Analytics to analyze their website’s traffic. It’s easy to set up and use. You receive information on keywords and searches. It’s a great way to set up an ‘A/B’ test to see which keywords/phrases work for your company.

10. Pay attention to Google Panda. This is a job for your web master. Rather than having as many URLs indexed as possible, your company should have its best, highest quality URLs indexed. Have your web master remove all unnecessary, extraneous, low ranking, and duplicate URLs from the index. As mentioned in Point #4, link to high-quality external links. Google Panda is pushing everyone to put their best foot forward and publish high quality content. 

11. Stay up-to-date with SEO trends. Technology trends come and go. It’s important to keep up-to-date with the ever changing world of SEO. I myself am self-taught when it comes to SEO. However, I’ve been looking into SEO certification courses and programs. I just began my search.  

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Is Article Marketing Dead?

October 11, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Question: Is article marketing dead?

Answer: According to Jeff Herring, “No, it’s not.” However, the way you approach article marketing needs to shift if you want to attract the ‘right’ people to your website. These people will purchase your products and services.

Article marketing includes the following:

• Content creation includes audio, text and video. Content is king; however, building trustworthy relationships trumps content.

• Online visibility means people need to be able to find you online. It doesn’t matter how good your web design or layout is. If people can’t find you, no one will purchase your products and or services.

FYI: Write compelling articles and you’ll have something of value to add to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, your Blog, etc.

• Traffic generation matters. Even if you’re receiving 1 million hits per day, don’t stop utilizing article marketing because you want to continue to earn an income.

• List building: Who do you want on your list? It’s important to connect with the right clients and customers. Stop wasting time marketing to those who won’t purchase your products/services or can’t afford it right now.

Tip: Review the traffic rankings on Alexa. For example, Google is #1, Facebook is #2, Twitter is #9 and LinkedIn is #13. Post your articles to these websites or give a synopsis of your articles.

• Product creation:  What problems are you solving? You could solve your clients and customers problems by offering them a book, eBook, online or home study course, teleseminars and webinars, etc.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that article marketing is dead. What has changed is how articles are written. They have more of a ‘sales’ undertone to them without selling to your target market. Remember, most people are tired of being sold to. They want to know, “What’s in it for me? What problem are you solving for me? How does this benefit me? Why should I care?” Pay attention to the above criteria and you’ll be successful with article marketing.

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How to Create Marketing Emails That Get Opened

September 27, 2011 by Leave a Comment
no spam!

Image via Wikipedia

Are your email marketing campaigns opened all or most of the time? If you’re experiencing lackluster results, follow the guidelines below to increase the number of times your campaigns are opened. Remember to avoid SPAM words such as Free and Urgent. Proofread emails carefully — you never know who’s reading them!

How to Create Marketing Emails That Get Opened

1. Create an identifiable look and feel of email campaigns.

2. Use consistent a color pattern.

3. Use a short and simple subject line. Remember, mobile devices don’t read that many characters. Incorporate a specific benefit for readers. Why should they care? Why should they open your emails? What’s in it for them? Also, don’t forget to include your brand in your email campaign. Capitalize and punctuate carefully.

Layout of Email Marketing

Business to Consumer

1. Use a newsletter layout.

Incorporate equal images to text, i.e., lifestyle shots, product shots, etc. Remember, 60% of email readers view with images ON.

Business to Business

1. Use a card layout with ALL or mostly text.

2. Give facts about the product/service.

3. Have a clear call to action.

Note: Most business to business email readers view emails with images OFF. If images are off, type out your business name. Make sure your brand is present by including a description for an image; make it a clickable link. Also, add to Safe Sender List.

FYI: The text version is viewed by 15% of your list.

4. Place important links at the top. Include an engaging message before the links. Shorten the link it it’s too long.

FYI: Smartphones now show HTML emails.

LESS IS MORE! 15-20 SECONDS IS SPENT ON A CLICKED MESSAGE

LIMIT YOUR NEWSLETTER OR CARD 3 TO 5 TOPICS

5. Use power words such as New, Introducing, Save, Discover, Results, Top-Notch, etc.

6. Avoid weak words such as Maybe, Hope, Try, Wish, Perhaps, etc.

FYI: Assist email readers with scanning your emails. Be mindful of bullet points, whitespace, bold headlines, keywords and columns.

Calls of Actions … What’s the Objective?

• What’s the next step?
• What’s in it for them?
• What do you want the reader to do?

BE DIRECT AND SPECIFIC BY USING WORDS SUCH AS:

BUY NOW … LOYAL CUSTOMERS … LEARN MORE (Include multiple links for newer relationships)

Effective Calls of Actions

• Direct readers to the correct landing page by including the proper link.
• Typically, the home page isn’t appropriate.
• Use Readable URLs … must be a legitimate URL.

Insert a video in your Email because this increases click through rate by 300%.

Note: The video doesn’t have to be yours. It could be a video that compliments your business/industry.

Other

1. Include share buttons such as social media, forward to friends, etc.

2. Include a JOIN MY MAILING LIST button which makes it easier for people to join your list.

3. Preview emails BEFORE you send them out.

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