Holistic Technology Enabled Internet Marketing Solutions

Turkeys are thawing, pies are baking, people are traveling and it is a time to be thankful. Thankful for health, family, friends and everything else in your world. So how about a little time to reflect on your internet marketing strategy and how well you are doing! Grab a cup of cider and let’s talk about some changes in your marketing that you should be proud of!

7 Changes in Your Internet Marketing That You Should Be Thankful For

1. Increased site traffic – This is s big one! Compare your website visits from last year to this year. Are they up? Then you should be thankful! That means more people are searching for you, coming to your site from social media, reacting to traditional marketing campaigns and, all-in-all, experiencing your company and wanting to learn more.
2. Blog subscribers – If you have a blog, how many more subscribers have you got over the last year? I think many of us will see that more people are subscribing to our blog. Check your RSS counts and the number of people who signed up to have your blog sent to their email. If you have more subscribers this year than last that means people like what you have to say and they are finding it valuable.
3. Social Media Presence – Take a few minutes to appreciate any positive changes you see in your social media presence. Are your pages getting more subscribers? Are people interacting with your content more on social networks? Are you getting more inbound traffic to your site from social media sites? Social media is where your next customers and your current customers already are. You should be proud that you are engaging with them and that you can see results from the time and effort you are putting in.
4. Lower bounce rate – Your bounce rate tells you the number of people that came to your site and left right away. If your bounce rate is lowering it is a good indicator that you are being found for the right search terms, you are providing the information people are looking for and that people find your website engaging. Those are all good things to be striving for with your website content.
5. Mobile traffic – We have been talking a lot about mobile and that is because more and more people are accessing the web on-the-go from their smartphones. Hopefully by now you have addressed how your site looks in mobile browsers and fixed any snafus you came across. Now that your site is tuned up for mobile visitors, you should notice more engagement from your mobile site visitors!
6. Increased pages per visit – Take stock of the stickiness of your site. Once people come to your site, see if they are sticking around to get more information. See if a person who lands on your products pages ends up reading a few blog posts or poking around in your About Us section.
7. Goal completions – Creating goals for your site makes analyzing trends on your website easy to get in a moments notice. Set up goals for clear paths and conversions you hope you are getting from your site visitors. Adding a value to those conversions also helps you value to those web visits. More goal completions mean your site is performing the way you had hoped and you should be especially thankful for that!

So this holiday when we are thankful for all we have we should spend a little time being thankful for what we have accomplished with our hard work. By regularly maintaining your website you will see that the conversions, inbound traffic and stickiness of your site continues to grow.

Are there any other internet marketing efforts you are extra proud of this Thanksgiving? Did you close more business from LinkedIn? Did you start a blog? Have you picked away at an editorial calendar that helped you organize your content? Tell us we would love to hear what has worked for you this year!

A couple of months ago we posted about authorship markup and what it means to B2Bs. When you are searching online for something, a particular author can be attributed to their published content. The title of the content shows up, along with the link, date, and meta description just like the other search results but what makes it stand out is the inclusion of the author’s name and photo.

A person is more likely to end up clicking on a search result that has an image, especially if they recognize the person. Not only will this attract more people to click on the results it will also give that author more authority compared to the other results on that page.

New and Improved Look!

Authorship just got better.

We had given instructions in the previous post about how to go about implementing authorship markup with your content. But Google just made this so much easier for us to link ourselves to the content that we publish around the web.

The idea behind simplifying this process is that, in many cases, our email address is associated with the content that gets published. What Google did was allow you to verify your email address in your Google+ profile so that any content you write that is also associated with that email address gets attributed back to you as the author. Genius! (And so much easier/quicker than before!)

Check out this blog posted by Google that explains step-by-step how to set up authorship using just your email. In addition to simplifying the process they also explained that they have improved the look of your authorship. Now, the authorship includes your Circle Count, an option to “Add to Circles,” and Comments.

These updates will eventually change the way we search. We will be more likely to interact with content published by someone we recognize or that a friend has recommended. The additional author information makes us feel that the content is more reputable than the others which makes us value and trust that content over other content that isn’t attributed to the author.

Google+ announced on Monday that they are now allowing businesses and brands to create their Google+ pages. For information on Google+ for business, please see the list of resources below.

What I want to talk about is the importance of claiming your business name on sites like Google+. Like many of you, the launch of Google+ makes me anxious – another presence to manage, create content for and try to build an online community on.

No one is sure what will become of Google+, if it will defeat Facebook or exactly how it is going to relate to search results. What we do know is that they sure are going to try and with the forces of Google behind them, there will be some impact.

If you don’t have a content strategy yet for Google+ or know how you are going to integrate it into your other marketing efforts, it is still important to grab your business name on Google+ page for branding purposes. This is also important for other popular social media sites you may not be participating on yet.

At this time, anyone can create a business page for anything they want without proof that that are associated with that URL or entity. Big brands will soon have a verification process but for many of us that will not apply. So in theory, anyone can set up a page under your business name and URL. I doubt it will turn into the Wild West but it makes sense to protect your brand before an issue arises.

We probably have all heard by now the struggles some businesses have had getting control of Facebook pages and Twitter accounts set up by a fan, an enemy or a rogue employee. Let’s not let that happen with Google+ too. Setting up a Google+ business page takes a matter of seconds. Trying to reclaim your business name by complaining to Google or the page creator could take hours, days, or even months.

Not ready to fully participate yet?

If you are not ready to participate on Google+ yet, that is fine. Set up your page, fill in the fields allotted and let it rest until you are ready.

Depending on your corporate voice you could:

• Leave a first status update that you set up the page but are working on the best way to use this new space
• Update your status with other ways people can currently connect with you
• Post links of some of your best older content from your site or blog that could use new eyeballs etc.

There are plenty of options on how to start your Google+ strategy but the first and most important thing is claim your space and protect your brand. Also, with Google+ brand pages you can create multiple pages. If you have a popular event, product or service that should stand alone from your business page – you should claim that too.

Resources on Google+ for businesses:

• Upcoming Hall Webinar – What are Businesses Supposed to do with Google+?
• Search Engine Land – Google+ Pages Now Open For Businesses, Brands, Places & More
• Google Blog – Google+ Pages: connect with all the things you care about
• Mashable – Google+ Launches Branded Pages
• SocialFresh – How To Create A New Google+ Page And Connect It To Google Search

Photo credit: Elke.Fleing

The other night I got to go speak to a great group of Credit Unions about Social Media Best Practices. As I was preparing my presentation, I was happy to find that there is a specific TweetChat exclusively for Credit Unions looking to use social media. What a cool way to connect with your peers on a topic and learn from each other!

If you are not familiar, a TweetChat is usually an organized regular event. The participants have a determined time to ‘meet’ on Twitter and discuss a certain topic. To mark their conversations, they use a hashtag. What you have is a large group chat and you can discuss your topic in real time with people from all over the world.

Why would you want to participate in a Tweet Chat?

1. Network with people like you all over the world – You can attend a Tweet Chat from anywhere. In your specific industry, you may have very different needs, customers, challenges and opportunities. Sometimes the most helpful ideas come from people who understand where you are coming from the best.
2. Establish yourself as an expert and build your network – An idea that may seem obvious to you could have been bogging someone else down for months. Share your experiences with your peers and establish yourself as an expert.
3. Get traffic to your blog and/or website – As you are meeting all these new people on Twitter, you can refer them to blog posts or services you provide around the topic you as a group are discussing. Also, just by networking with new people, you will generate some interest and traffic as they take a look to see who you are and what you are up to.
4. Get more qualified followers – If Twitter is merely a numbers game for you, you are probably not using it to it’s full potential. How many followers you have isn’t as important as WHO those followers are. By participating in a TweetChat, you will meet real people who share your interests, work in your industry, are experienced Twitter users and it will, in turn, boost your number of quality followers.

Participating in a TweetChat

Tweet chats can be whenever. Most are set to particular days and times of the week. Some have the same moderator each week while others cycle through guest moderators for a different feel each chat. Most TweetChats run about one hour.

So how do you find a good TweetChat for you? There is a pretty reliable schedule of TweetChats that you can refer to. Once you try one out, you may find others people like to recommend specifically for the topic you are most interested in.

Where to start?

Some of the more popular business TweetChats are:

• #blogchat, Sundays 9P EST – all about blogging. Mack Collier brings in some great guest moderators. This is a very popular one so be prepared to read a lot of tweets.
• #smallbizchat, Wednesdays 8P EST – for small businesses and startups.
• #B2Bchat, Thursdays 8P EST – a chat specifically for those of us in B2B industries.
• #LeadershipChat, Tuesdays 9P EST – leadership themed.

Some of these chats are more popular than others and keeping up can seem overwhelming. To keep up with a TweetChat you can either just use a Twitter search or if it is a popular one, use the service TweetChat to keep up with rapid tweets.

The first few times may seem a little odd but once you get into the swing of things you will really come to appreciate some of the conversations you have and people you ‘meet’. If you don’t feel like you have anything to say, feel free to linger in a chat until you do. As with all of your social media marketing and content – make sure when you participate you are adding value to the conversation!

Photo credit: opensourceway