Social Media Does Not Stand Alone

One thing that many businesses today don’t realize when they start a social media marketing campaign is that social media does not stand alone. You can use it to interact with your clients, but you still need other, content-based points of contact. Social media campaigns can be a great supplement for email marketing campaigns, routine blog posts, press releases and other content relative to your business. But using social media to the exclusion of these other marketing tools will cost you money and business. The right marketing plan features a combination of channels.

Good Content Makes Your Website More Visible

Good content makes your website more visible. You can Tweet about your content; you can link to it on Facebook and Google+. If it’s really good, other people will link to it and share it with their friends. That’s how things go viral. But all the social media efforts in the world are futile if you don’t have good content that people *want* to read and share.

Boost Your Search Engine Results

SEO is a constantly-evolving field. The SEO practices of a few years ago, such as keyword stuffing and link-farming, won’t get you anywhere today – and can even get your site blacklisted. Instead, search engines today are looking for content relative to your business that naturally ranks for certain keywords. Good content writers have been practicing organic SEO all along, and that’s now what search engines are looking for.

Adding content on a regular basis boosts your search engine rankings. It expands the potential keyword basis that users can use to find your site. And good, high-quality content will get linked to by people who want to share it – increasing your site’s authority and boosting your search engine results. Good content is the new SEO hotness.

Consider Your Content an Investment

I see more and more businesses looking to churn out cheap content for something like $1 to $3 per 500-word article. For that price, what you’re most likely to get is something cut-and-pasted from somewhere else. You might get articles spun using article spinning software, but they won’t read naturally and probably won’t offer anything to readers. I have two words for businesses looking to go the cheap route: don’t bother. You won’t boost your site ranking or attract users with crappy content, and you can get your site blacklisted from Google for duplicating content.

Instead, think of your content as an investment. If you spend more money up front for high-quality, original content – you’ll organically boost your search engine results, give users a reason to stick around your site and share your content, and establish your authority in your field. This is an argument I’ve been making in favor of high-quality content for years; but the search ranking algorithms are finally catching up with me.

Think of the money you spend on good content as an investment for your business – and watch the dividends pile up as you expand your customer base and increase your sales.

1. Email

Email marketing has been around for a long time, and many businesses now eschew it as old news. It may not be new or exciting, but it remains one of the most effective forms of contact. Effective email campaigns to opt-in email addresses continue to produce higher conversation rates than any other marketing technique. All you need to do is give people a good reason to opt-in, create effective messages that target your audience and send them out at the appropriate intervals.

2. Social Media

Social media was the new hotness a year or two ago, but now it’s become an accepted part of many businesses’ online presence. If you’re a major player, it’s surprising to find that you don’t have a Twitter account or Facebook page, and more and more businesses are now adding Google+ and LinkedIn, too. Effectively utilizing social media can be a great tool for drastically expanding your scope. But social media requires a lot of up-front time investment, and the return on the investment for most businesses is not proportional to the resources that go into this marketing avenue. This is one of those things that you should maintain because clients expect you to, but in general you’ll find more bang for your marketing buck elsewhere.

3. Article Marketing

Article marketing involves submitting articles relative to your field of expertise to article directory websites. Popular article marketing sites include eZine Articles, Hub Pages, Squidoo – more than a hundred article directories exist, some of which have a unique style and flare, and others are little more than link-building directories. Article marketing can provide you with inbound links and improve your SEO. However, avoid spamming article marketing sites, as Google frowns upon duplicate content. If your article shows up in a hundred different places, your article marketing efforts can actually hurt your website’s reputation.

4. Press Release Marketing

Press release marketing functions much like article marketing. You can submit your press release to one of many press release directory services, or submit it directly to various news services. In an ideal world, a major news service will take your press release and run with it, providing you exposure to thousands of new viewers. But doing press release marketing right takes an experienced professional; too many press releases read like an ad for the company, and don’t get picked up by news services.

5. Landing Pages

A landing page, or lead capture page, is designed to get your audience to take some action; typically to sign up for an email campaign or create an account. A landing page should always have a clear call to action, and many businesses customize a landing page for a specific traffic source – making it easy to see which traffic source results in the largest number of people responding to your call to action, and also making the landing page more effective because it’s tailored to a specific source and audience.

6. SEO

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of taking a website and optimizing it to rank highly in specifically-tailored search results. SEO may include internal HTML and code tweaks, content changes designed to target specific keywords, and website structure changes. Effective SEO boosts the page rank of your site for certain keywords, and makes it easier for your customers to find you in a Web search.

7. Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a type of internet marketing designed to increase traffic as a result of paid search engine placement. SEM techniques may include contextual advertising, paid placement and paid inclusion. SEM for a niche site may be relatively inexpensive and effective, but it’s difficult to compete in SEM for popular, high-demand keywords.

8. Inbound Linking

Inbound linking is an online marketing technique that has a couple of benefits; effective inbound linking can increase your page rank, and it also makes it easier for your customers to find you. Inbound linking can be achieved in a variety of ways; through posting responses in forums related to your product or service; through paid inbound linking services and through things like guest blogging and other exchange-type interactions. It’s important to keep in mind that if you pay for an inbound linking service, the wrong link-building program can hurt your page results, and even get you banned from Google; we’ll explore this further when we talk about Black Hat marketing techniques a bit later.

9. Affiliate, Reseller and Associate Programs

These programs are designed to incentivize the promotion of your site or services. Reseller programs make it easy for people to sell your products for you in return for a cut, while affiliate and associate programs incentivize people to drive traffic to your site. These programs are underutilized in online marketing, and have substantial benefits to the right business models.

10. Contests and Giveaways

Contests and giveaways are a great way to spread the word about your company and drastically increase your potential audience in a short time. Targeted contests and giveaways, such as gift cards for your business or products that you sell, can generate a smaller pool of well-qualified leads, while more generalized contests and giveaways, like iPad giveaways, can help you expand your reach but fewer of the leads will be qualified.

11. Blogging

Blogging is a great way to build an online presence, establish authority and credibility, and expand your SEO. But blogging tends to yield slow results, and it can take months of steady blogging before you gain traction. Generally, scheduled, routine blogging forms the backbone for SEO; it’s an integral part of a marketing plan but doesn’t necessarily yield high conversion from the blog itself. Unusual or highly controversial blog posts, however, have the opportunity to be picked up and shared on sites like reddit that can get your content in front of thousands, tens of thousands or even millions of viewers.

12. Video Marketing

Video marketing, when done well, can be extremely effective. Video is the most socially-shared content on the Web, and video marketing can dramatically increase your reach and audience. If a video goes viral, you could be looking at hundreds of thousands or even millions of hits in a matter of days. Poor video marketing, though, doesn’t contribute to your reach, and can actually hurt your business.

13. Podcasting

Podcasting is another avenue you can use to reach out to your potential audience. Like blogging, podcasting provides you an opportunity to establish authority and credibility, and can help draw potential audience members. But podcasting represents a significant time investment, and should only be undertaken under certain business models and with very clearly defined goals and scope.

Ultimately, these tools can help any business reach a wider audience, and should form the core of your marketing platform. The right combination of tools in the right proportions varies depending on your business, but an experienced marketing professional can help you explore which tools are right for you.

Home Page

Every website needs a great home page. Your home page should quickly and easily convey to your clients what your company does or offers. It also helps if your home page gives them an idea of what your website provides; be it just info, or a chance to purchase products or services. If you have a sales-oriented business, your home page should contain one or more calls to action. A way to capture customer data is also a great feature on a home page. Many businesses now prominently feature links to their social media presence on their home pages, too.

About Page

The About page should tell your clients about your company. When was it founded, how many employees, your company mission, any special credentials you boast – give your clients an opportunity to get to know you. This is also a great page to differentiate yourself from your competitors by highlighting relevant education areas, experiences or other unique factors that demonstrate to your customers why they should choose you.

Contact Page

A contact page providing all the methods to contact your company is vital to a good website. Provide phone number, fax number, email addresses, physical addresses – whatever contact information you want your customers to have. If you’ve got a store or physical location, make sure to list the address, and driving instructions or a link to Google Maps can be a nice touch. List hours of operation, any special contact information your customers should have to reach a particular department, etc. – and possibly a form for contacting you via the site.

Make it as easy and painless as possible for your customers to reach you, or else you WILL lose sales. Making this information easy to access also demonstrates a willingness to interface with your clients, making you seem more reputable and open to contact with your customers.

Products or Services Pages

If your business offers products or services, your website should contain pages talking about these services. Website design is extremely diverse, so there are a number of ways to handle your product or service descriptions. If you offer multiple products or services, and you want your website to help sell, describe each of them fully. If you just want your website to serve as a Web presence, it’s ok to simply list products and services and hope for customer contact – but generally, the more information a customer has, the better.

Design for Readability and Ease of Navigation

Readability and ease of navigation are VITAL factors when you’re designing a website. Some companies favor unique designs that the client will find eye-catching or memorable, but the craziest designs are often difficult to navigate or hard to read. Make sure the relevant content is in an easy-to-read font and color on an easy-to-read background. You WANT your customers to get information from your page. You WANT them to stick around and read it. You won’t get that if customers can’t read your page in the first place, or if they can’t figure out where to click to get where they want to go.

There’s a lot more to say about what goes into a good website design – both in terms of content and the design itself. But it’s easier to discuss on a one-on-one basis, so feel free to contact me if you have questions or want a review of your site!

Next week, I’m going to share with you one of my client intake marketing worksheets, so you can start to think about your marketing plan. This worksheet includes some questions you’ll need to answer before you hire a professional to help you, or if you intend to do the marketing yourself.

Bending the Grammar Rules
As much as it makes me cringe, sometimes I intentionally choose to end a sentence with a preposition or start a sentence with a word like “but” or “and.” Realistically, while these things are grammar no-nos, they’re also indicative of the way people talk. Most people don’t speak in proper grammar. When you’re trying to reach a working-class audience, you may be better off to bend the grammar rules and write like people talk – not like grammar says you should write.

Building Rapport by Speaking the Language
Sociologically speaking, people are more likely to trust people who come from a similar background. For example, if you’re a college-educated Ph.D., you’re going to speak differently than a high-school-educated blue-collar worker. The blue-collar worker is more likely to trust someone who speaks like him, because that implies the person came from a similar background and shares a similar set of values, world views and beliefs. The college-educated Ph.D. who speaks like one will encounter resistance among the blue-collar crowd; particularly on a subconscious level; because they do not come from similar backgrounds. The blue-collar worker doesn’t identify with the Ph.D. and feel that they share similar values, etc.

Bottom line? If you’re talking to a blue-collar worker, you’ll automatically be more effective if you speak like a blue-collar worker. The same thing holds true in reverse. If you’re writing for a highly-educated audience, you’d better make sure your grammar is correct and minimize the use of colloquialisms. A highly-educated audience is less likely to trust and identify with a source that doesn’t sound professional and educated, even if just on a subconscious level.

Match your tone and language to your audience. The most effective messages are typically the messages that the audience feels come from “one of their own.” Sound like a member of your audience, and you build an automatic connection and rapport. This is one of the keys to great writing versus good writing, and writers who can master this have an extremely valuable skill at their disposal.

Target Your Audience
This redesign goes back to one of the principals of marketing that I convey to my clients over and over again: target your audience. A fun website is useless if your target audience can’t easily find the information they need, or if they’re expecting to see a more professional website. This year in particular has been a good year for me in terms of building my client base and reaching out to new businesses, and I wanted them to see me as the professional that I am – which meant scrapping the “fun” website that didn’t really provide the first impression that I want my potential clients to have.

Make Information Easy to Find
I think my new website design makes information easier for potential clients to find. I’ve eliminated clutter and reduced scrolling to make most of the relevant information visible when people first view the page. The navigation menu is horizontal instead of vertical, which reduces the amount of space required for the header and gives up valuable screen real estate to the text that conveys my message to clients. The boxes at the bottom of each page highlight important information, and many of them lead through to related pages within my site.

Building a New Website Enables Me to Utilize Good Business Practices
I write SEO content for many of my clients, and building a new website has enabled me to better integrate SEO into my design and page text. I’ve also improved the scannability of my site by breaking up information into easy-to-digest pieces, and making it easy to find the relevant information that clients seek. My new site design reflects the image that I want my clients to have of me and my business: the image of a business professional who has worked with many clients to improve their copy, internal documentation and Web writing and boost their business.

My grandpa had a saying that he used to tell me when he was doing something he didn’t want me to do: “Do as I say, not as I do.” I strive to be a professional who can lead by example. I don’t want to tell my clients how to succeed in copy and on the Web – I want to show my clients how to run a good business and hold myself to the same standards.

So enjoy the site redesign, and look for some exciting updates in the not-too-distant future regarding training opportunities, classes and new publications!

Email Marketing Tools

Email marketing is a very popular online marketing tool. Email marketing works just like traditional mail marketing, except the product is delivered directly to your client’s email inbox. Email marketing can get unwieldy without the right tools. Use an email marketing program, such as Constant Contact, to manage your email marketing campaign. Tools like Constant Contact enable you to create custom, branded templates, create and manage email lists, and track your results to evaluate the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Web Tracking Tools

In order to effectively judge the success of your online marketing campaigns, you need to utilize Web analytics tools that provide you with detailed results. Google Analytics is one option for measuring your website’s performance, and Google Analytics conveniently integrates with Google AdWords to evaluate the effectiveness of your AdWords campaigns. You can also use third-party tracking tools, such as Mint.

SEO Tools

SEO tools run the gamut from HTML checkers to keyword search tools to spider simulators, and everything in between. For simple SEO, you can use keyword search tools yourself to generate high-converting keywords for your niche. Google AdWords: Keyword Tool is a free tool that can help you select appropriate primary and alternate keywords. If you want a more comprehensive range of SEO tools, SEO Chat has a great selection of SEO tools to cover practically every SEO need. SEO Chat’s tools include SEO calculators, page rank checkers, ROI calculators, and a range of other tools to enable you to tweak every aspect of your site’s SEO.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is a fairly new trend, but one that’s growing exponentially. Businesses can utilize existing social media platforms as a valuable advertising and marketing tool. I’m writing a series of articles on effectively utilizing social media marketing, which includes an overview of social media marketing as well as individual articles geared toward how to utilize specific platforms. You can utilize various aggregators and plugins to integrate your social media marketing with existing marketing campaigns and platforms.

Interactive Content Marketing

Interactive content is a way for you to communicate directly with your clients. Interactive content includes things like turning comments into content, as well as things like featuring multimedia content on your website. Video and audio are far more valuable than simple text content, and provide another reason for your readers to visit your website. In online marketing, qualified traffic is the key to conversion, so featuring interactive content on your website gets you one step closer to improving your business.