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It is difficult to ignore the impact that social media marketing is having on brands and business when even your cereal packet has a “Follow us on Facebook” message on the side. And yet, many businesses seem to be struggling with how to actually deploy an effective strategy.
One of the joys of social media is that it need not be expensive. What may prove costly if you get it right is the human resource that you will need to throw at the project, but if you are getting it right, then the returns will more than support that extra resource.
An important point to bear in mind is that you can dip your toe into social, without spending a huge amount, and dabble until you find what best suits you and your target audience. Whilst there are now two major social networking sites – Facebook and Google+ – G+ is still in field trial and businesses are being actively discouraged from signing up yet.
So, you should get a presence on Facebook, which can simply be the default business Fan Page or you can set up a group to attract a community of interest. Alongside this, you should also have a blog which should sit within your website but which may be hosted elsewhere eg Wordpress.com, blogger.com. You should also have both a photo account eg on Flickr.com and a video account on Youtube.com, and it may be an idea to have a Tumblr.com account too. LinkedIn.com is the business social network and a profile for both individuals and the business is a wise idea too. And of course, you should also be on Twitter.com
Now, do not reel backwards in horror at the implied amount of work this seems to create. The truth is that using some of the nifty tools now available, you can automate the vast majority of the work required to keep all of these up to date.
For instance, if you upload a video, you can also share this with just one click to your Facebook fan page. Twitter and your blog can easily feed any posts automatically direct to Facebook if you link those accounts. You can link your Twitter account directly to LinkedIn.com to make sure all of your tweets are fed automatically there, or you can choose which tweets go to LinkedIn simply by adding #in to the ones you wish to appear on LinkedIn.
So, it need not be a huge effort to suddenly become active on a number of the most popular social networks.
It is vital to remember that the key word though is “social” and broadcasting only is not viewed well by the audience. You must converse and begin dialogues. This can become time-consuming,but by limiting dialogue to those who are asking questions which may help you create an FAQ for your products to add content to your website, or to answer customer support questions, you can make best use of the time you do spend conversing with your friends and followers. Who you are, of course, endeavouring to convert into customers.
If you are nervous about dipping your toe into the water in the company name, get accustomed to the feel of the social media world by starting a personal account and experimenting. Once you are comfortable and can see ways in which the business can benefit, mastered the automation, and tracked down some of those within your sector or niche who may be able to assist in reaching the widest audience, you can open accounts in the business name.
Social media marketing is not going to go away and as reliance on traditional SEO and PPC beings to wane, it is wise to keep up with the crowd or find yourself drowning whilst you learn as your competitors steam ahead.
Once upon a time, the sites you visited were held on your computer, and could only be shared by cutting and pasting the link. Then, along came social bookmarks, with sites such as Delicious, Digg, Stumbleupon allowing you to share your bookmarks with a private or public audience.
Now, we are entering the next phase, which could be seen to be a natural progression from social search engines, where users provide the answers to your search ‘research’, through social bookmarks, to actually making your clickstream live and open to anyone who you choose to see it. In other words, you would be making your history file visible on the Net.
For some, this may seem to be a step too far, but there will be many who have nothing to hide and are more than happy for the world to see exactly what it is they are finding interesting. It could become a useful method of saving your History in the cloud. Another place where this could prove useful is for collaboration on projects, so that each person working on a project can share all of their research findings from surfing.
For internet marketing agencies and businesses, it is yet another place to be listed to help provide backlinks to sites. However, at this stage, when such sites are very new to the market, the quality and authority of such links is still debatable.
Sites such as voyurl, sitesimon and the soon to be launched discovrme all permit the user to choose how much of their surfing history, in real time, they wish to be shared, and with whom.
Voyurl addresses the privacy issues on its front page and its likely that many would have concerns about enabling such a tool or app in their browser, and the benefits of doing so. However, as users have become seemingly even less concerned about privacy online – e.g. posting photos that normally they would not have wanted printing let alone publishing, or sharing intimate details of their lives with relative strangers, such as relationship status – perhaps publishing your clickstream will become less of a concern.
Businesses wishing to show their network that they are actively interested in what those people following them are doing, talking about etc, could publish their clickstream to help add a layer of personality to the company – a human side, if you wish. However, the resources required to deliver this level of interaction with customers or audience could prove difficult to justify to the budget department unless it can be translated into increased brand awareness or sales.
One place it could be useful would be as an automated mechanism to record all sites visited during, for instance, a linking strategy exercise, particularly as the majority of sites which offer this ‘live history’ service also seem to offer the chance to review sites visited, make notes, and so on.
It remains to be seen what internet marketing uses such services can be put to as they mature in 2011.
Businesses may be struggling to keep up with all the new developments on smartphones, but it seems that users are making more and more use of mobile apps and mobile search. Foursquare’s 3.0 launch with an estimated 35,000 new users per day, the use of previews in Google mobile search, and the slew of tablets that are hitting the market in 2011 (Blackberry PlayBook, Samsung Galazy, iPad2, Motorla Xoom etc) are all indications of the fact that mobile marketing – in the most general sense of the term ‘mobile’ – is here to stay.
Smartphones and tablets have now blurred the distinction between computers and mobile devices, and it is becoming imperative for businesses to ensure that their websites are accessible from as many devices as possible. Make your site impossible to access over a limited data mobile connection, or too expensive, and you will only lose traffic.
However, there is more to mobile marketing than just ensuring accessibility. You also need to look at the potentials offered to your business using that in-built capacity that mobile devices offer – a means to pinpoint a user’s present location.
Businesses will need to keep abreast of new applications and take advantage of opportunities to market directly to people within the vicinity or locality. Whilst there are already applications which use mobile geolocation such as Foursquare, Gowalla and so on, it is likely that Google will move into this space with customised searches based on known information about the user eg surfing activities, searches, previous locations, check-ins to FourSquare indicating which particular coffee bar a user likes, tweets and other user-generated content, social bookmarks, etc.
It may not be a simple task to include the business listing on every directory, app, guide, but this should become part of the linking strategy as mobile marketing actively seeks to use one of the key benefits of mobile technology – the ability to locate the user in real-time. As mobile devices increase in number, and become even more of a must-have than they are at present, mobile networks will also evolve to the next generation of technologies which permit faster and more reliable data transfer. This in itself will encourage wider use of mobile devices and the development cycle will continue apace.
Presuming that mobile marketing is an ‘immature marketplace’ because of the lack of mobile marketing to mobile phones is foolish. It is already apparent that on devices such as the iPad and the tablets which will hit the mass market this year is now maturing rapidly, and your business needs to be aware of the opportunities that are already present for you to reap the benefits from.
Google is getting serious about monetising YouTube by creating a partner program called YouTube Next which will help content creators to access revenue potential. It is this creation of business models from users’ hard work that has helped Google become the global phenomenon it is today.
YouTube Next follows the acquisition of Next New Networks – a video creation company who have amassed over 6million followers in 4 short years, and who created two of the biggest videos on YouTube during 2010. The partner program will bring expertise and funding to those who are serious about video as a revenue stream.
YouTube reports on its blog that there are now hundreds of partners making 6 figure sums in revenue share each year, but obviously the number making thousands of dollars will affect Google’s potential revenue from YouTube. Increasing the number of partners who are creating video content that appeals to the masses will bring YouTube into the market to challenge cable and TV companies.
Video is a valuable and proven weapon to add to the internet marketing arsenal for any company, and having access to professionals, expertise, funding and equipment through the YouTube Next program could mean a win-win all round.
Whilst this program is to be welcomed, internet marketing agencies should help clients to create video in the meantime. Video clips can feature in the first page of the SERPs for highly competitive terms where organic results may struggle. Even a video made by amateurs can feature in the SERPS, but it is worth considering the value of being able to get a top 10 SERP listing and consider using professionals to make your video for you.
The YouTube Next program should bring tools and guidance to those on whom Google relies – the users. Funding programs, seminars and access to video-making experts should all help create great content, and increase your chance of being able to earn money by featuring on YouTube, as well as gaining exposure for your brand and company.
On May 25th 2011, the EU will be implementing a new online privacy directive which will affect how businesses use cookies, headers and similar systems to track user behaviour and gather information. Behavioural advertising has attracted serious criticism, and this directive from the EU dictates that “explicit consent” must be obtained where privacy of a user are concerned. Other countries are looking at “Do Not Track” in different ways.
The Internet Advertising Bureau UK specific site has been set up to help both users and businesses understand behavioural advertising. However, the UK guidelines being created by the DCMS (Department of Culture, Media and Sport) are still being drawn up and look unlikely to be ready by the deadline of May 25th.
Users can already prevent cookies (which are a small, simple text file) being tracked or installed on their computers; however, cookies are often used to remember log ins and other personal data which makes accessing a frequently visited website easier.
The data harvesting by advertisers though is the main one that the new directive is targeting, and many users are likely to find that as the directive bites, websites are going to need to get permission to track data, even if that is purely for a log in. This could mean that websites resort to using pop-up windows to get that consent, and many users surf the internet with pop-ups blocked, either by their browser or using a Pop-up Blocker.
Having to provide consent for every website you visit could prove to be a massive headache for users, but a momentary boon for advertisers, who may decide to use pop-up windows to capture the attention of users during the first few months of this directive.
The browser developers started to react to consumer feelings about behavioural ads and privacy long before the potential Do Not Track laws, so Firefox has a plug-in that allows users to surf the Net in relative privacy, and Google has announced a Chrome extension. However, there are multiple ways to track user data, and even as the browsers and regulations attempt to tackle the problem, it is likely that new and novel ways around the laws and software are developed. After all, it is this information which is so valuable to advertisers, and many consumers do not actually mind their behaviour being tracked as it results in more relevant ads and content being served up.
For any business which collects data about user behaviour, now is the time to start considering how you will get consent from each user who visits your website, and how you will resolve the technical issues of implementing the directive. Or to start complaining about a Policy Directive which could do more harm than good to the online industry in Europe.
For marketers and internet marketing companies, it will be important to understand the regulations, and ensure that all clients are aware of the directive and are adhering to it. Complaints about websites which are flouting the directive could mean penalties, but for now at least, attempts to conform with the policy may mean that any judgement is less harsh until the DCMS guidelines are in place. Or until it is hopefully overturned, or becomes a far more sensible piece of legislation.
The uses of Twitter are many and varied: to broadcast, to research, to keep up with breaking news, to converse, as a CRM tool, for feedback, for help, and of course, to follow. This article looks at how to network with Twitter, and some of the tools that are available to do so. However, as a disclaimer, each day hundreds of new Twitter tools are launched, and a hefty number of Twitter tools disappear, so be warned: do not become too reliant on any single tool when conducting internet marketing using Twitter.
The value of Twitter as a means to network has been proven. Networking though means linking up with people, creating relationships, sharing, conversing, and not just seeing how many followers you can get overnight as Charlie Sheen recently has.
To network effectively online, just as in real life, means getting to know your network circle and understanding the value and place each person has within it. Therefore, it is actually better to start small, and stay reasonably small. Recent research shows that most people can only cope with between 100 and 230 ‘friends’ (Dunbar’s Number) and for the purpose of networking, rather than brand building, this would seem a figure that could actually bring valuable results rather than overload.
Interestingly, this smaller network can be seen in apps such as Path, which is limited to 50 of your closest friends and family, highlighting the belief that smaller networks are often more manageable, and bring more value.
Consider why you want to network on Twitter. If it is to find potential business leads, then you need to find those within your industry, be they suppliers or likely customers. If it is to network within your industry, or to learn more about a specific sector, then you need to find those who are viewed as an authority.
Search using keywords within Twitter, and if you know of any conferences or events, search for any hashtags for that event. The most vocal people following an event on Twitter are usually heavily networked within the sector, both on and offline.
Use Twiangulate.com to find followers and mutual friends of authority people. You can also generate maps showing how everyone connects, and these show how many people each user is connected to.
Twellow.com is a great yellow pages that allows you to search by keywords, and lists users found by the number of followers. It also offers a wide variety of related categories to search through. (You can also add 2000 characters of extended bio which many businesses will find extremely useful.)
Use Google and Bing to find the latest updates by users who may interest you and don’t forget the real-time search within Twitter
Once you have started creating your network, you need to regularly check what people within your network are saying, doing and thinking. The point of networking is that it must be interactive, so follow links posted by those within your network, comment on their tweets, get into conversation, share information.
If your network starts to become too big, or it takes too much time to monitor all that is going on, be ruthless and crop people who are less active, or whose posts do not interest you all of the time. By keeping your network tight, you will gain more from it. Work on the “small is beautiful” axiom.
2011 is looking to be the year that Google and other search engines stamp hard on some of the more unsavoury search engine marketing practises that have been seen in use, even by famous brands. The latest update (Google Panda) has seen many of the low quality and spammy sites targeted, and it is likely that one of the next targets will be low quality links that offer little value to website visitors.
How do you set up a link building programme that will ensure that your site does not fall victim to future Google updates? Whilst link building may seem a black art, it isn’t and working in tandem with your search marketing agency, you can create links that will offer long-term value to your SEO efforts, as well as to your site visitors.
For many search marketing agencies, brought in to offer their expertise to help your website attract visitors, knowing your competitors or those within your industry or sector who have authority can be quite difficult. In this, you can help out by listing all those who are competitive, and those who are complementary to your business. The search agency can then target these to establish valuable links.
Competitors are obvious, but sometimes those who are complementary may not be quite so apparent. It may be a supplier, agent, customer, directory used by your sector, magazine or trade publication, exhibition or conference which can offer a quality link to you.
Links may take a different form than the good old anchor text-heavy, blue URL we are accustomed to seeing. The link could take the form of an ad, a tweet, an article about your company or a product, it could be a short video that features your URL within the clip. Think out of the box when seeking quality links.
Broken links are likely to be more heavily penalised this year too, as offering your website visitors a link to a 404 page means that you are not regularly monitoring what you are linking to. This also applies to your backlinks (i.e. those who link to you). Long-established links on external sites may lead to a 404 on your own site, particularly after a site redesign, so you should check all links back to your site are working as often as possible.
Also, are those backlinks pointing to the most appropriate content on your site? You may have updated your content, added new content or products, or added an exciting extra like a video or podcast, so if you think a link on an external site could be pointing to a more relevant or fresh item of content, contact the webmaster and suggest the change. This is also a good opportunity to offer reciprocal links if you feel the site is of value to your users.
Check all your links open in new tabs or windows. This is such an elemental mistake, but so many sites are still sending visitors away with this simple to rectify error.
Keep up to date with changes in your industry sector through news, trends, articles, blog posts, and social media, such as Twitter. The best links you will get will be when you post up to date, quality content. By knowing what is happening within your own industry, you could easily become one of the authoritative sources of information if you regular offer opinions, news, reviews, reports, white papers, and webinars.
Implementing all of the above during 2011 will help to bring traffic to your website, as well as creating a valuable resource for your visitors, and feeding the search engines what they are looking for when ranking the top sites for your keywords and phrases.
As more brands and businesses are creating mini-sites eg Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn pages etc, it is interesting to see which sites are being promoted on TV, in magazines and on billboards. Should you be promoting your Facebook page above your main website?
This is very obvious with programmes such as those which make up ITV Daytime, which regularly promote the Facebook pages above the key domain of itv.com. Is this a wise move? Surely all this is doing is spreading your potential audience around a number of mini-sites?
It is noticeable that the number of fans to the mini-sites is a mere fraction of those you would expect for a brand such as ITV, and whilst it may bring eyeballs to the wall of the mini-site, it is surely the comprehensive information on the main website that users should be directed to?
For brands who sell online, this dilution of the brand can only mean one thing – a reduction in sales. If all that matters is brand recognition and awareness then the Facebook page is valid, but directing traffic to the Facebook page before the main domain can only be detrimental. Unless, however, you are using Facebook credits. TimeWarner has recently adopted this sales technique, allowing people to pay using Facebook Credits and download movies.
However, many companies have not adopted Facebook credits, and one would ask why any company would give away a slice of their profits to the social networking site when they could retain a far higher percentage of the sales simply by directing users to the main website.
So, a better strategy would be to direct all advertising and promotion (including internet marketing) to the main domain, and then make the Follow us on Twitter or Like us on Facebook a prominent feature of every page of your main domain. For instance, ITV has introduced ITV Connect, which shows on a single page how to interact with each different programme, or genre such as sport.
Making it a simple task for anyone interested in your social media output to follow you means you should get the best of both worlds.
March 2011 saw Fan Pages changing to a new look, and a new name – Facebook Pages. These now look very similar to a personal page, and include the 5 photos across the top of the page. Whilst this can be changed to be a banner instead of individual photos, with a little creativity you can make these five photos much more eye-catching – giving your internet marketing an added level of personalisation in the process. In addition to this, you can now change your profile picture to a video rather than a static image. Here’s how…
1) Changing the five profile pics
As you can see, now instead of random photos from your photo albums, you can create exciting photos that reflect your business brand and purpose.
You will need a photo or image that is 692 pixels wide and a photo editing program that will allow you to crop photos. These instructions will create the second of the two examples so that the left hand edge of your photo will be your profile image, rather than an individual photo.
To create your profile pic, you will need to crop an image that is 180 pixels wide and 540 pixels high, starting from the left hand edge.
Then you need to create the five remaining images from your photo. You need to start the crop for these next pictures 20 pixels below the top of the image, because the profile pic has an additional 20 pixels. Crop an image from the right hand edge that is 492 wide by 68 pixels high. This should leave 20 pixels of unused photo between the profile pic and this crop.
You need to leave a 2 pixel gap between each photo, so crop five images each 96.8 x 68 pixels, leaving 2 pixels between each one. Once you have done this, all you need to do is upload the photos. The order in which you do so is important, so upload and tag your profile pic first, then furthest right image, and then work across to the one on the left of the 5 image strip.
If you do not have an image expert in house, there is now an app called picscatter which will do it all for you.
If you are feeling really adventurous, you can do a whole Facebook photo album hack as illustrated on Mashable
2) Make your profile pic a video
This is a development by Cisco and DDB Singapore to promote the Flip camera, but it adds a great extra to your Facebook Page and it’s very simple. There are two downsides – firstly, that only those with the FlipSG app will be able to see your video, and secondly an ad will be automatically posted to your wall once you upload a video.
Go the FlipyourProfile page, upload your video and Flip Your Page.
For many companies, maintaining a blog has proven to be hard work. There are far too many commercial blogs with tumbleweed blowing across the screen, with no posts often for weeks or even months. It is for this reason that many companies have turned to micro-blogging tools – 140 characters is much less onerous a task!
However, blogs should not be overlooked for their ability to generate long-term traffic which can help bring visitors to your site by often obscure routes that you may not have expected, or even paid for – through links on other blogs, in discussion forums, on Twitter etc. Therefore, corporates really need to get on the blogging bandwagon and blogs should be nurtured.
How do you create blog posts which attract readers whilst remaining easy to write in-house (or by guest bloggers or copywriters)?
Unless the subject matter is complex or technical, it is often better to write short blog posts than long ones. Many people find that lengthy sections of text are off-putting, and quite often will bookmark for reading at a time when they will have more time to absorb the content, and this often means that the post will be forgotten. Seth Godin has mastered the art of short blog posts, and become internationally renowned in the process.
Adding images to a blog post is always a good idea, even if it is simply a screenshot to illustrate a point, or to refer or accredit another website. Cartoons may suit your blog style and cartoonists can be found on the freelance sites, such as ifreelance.com, or through the search engines.
Some of the most popular blog posts are lists of points eg 11 Search Trends for 2011, or Five Handy Twitter Tips. These can be easy to put together as a blog post, and for a corporate blog, it could be as simple as “Five Things To Remember When Placing Your Order.”
Catchy headlines always help to attract a reader’s attention. You may not be a top headline creator, but potentially someone else in the office has this skill, so ask around. Look at popular blogs for headline ideas, and remember that your headlines are often used to create the filename for the URL of that post, which then can help with your SEO, so try to include keywords. You can also help to create a personality with your headlines, so whether you want to be formal or funny, your headlines will help set the scene for the type of visitor you wish to attract to your blog.
Capitalising The First Letter Of Each Word Of The Headline. This can be a matter of personal choice, but it does seem that capitalisation like this can help make any text more readable. Love it or loathe it, try it to see what effect it has on clickthrough rates before deciding one way or the other.
Blog posts that contain links imply that there is a level of authority and research behind the article, whether these are links to content within your site or external links. Obviously, links to your own blog will create more churn within the content on your own site, but by linking to further reading elsewhere you will often attract the writers of those articles or blog posts who may well return the favour with a reciprocal link, or even a comment on your site.
If you find that your blog has been referred to in someone else’s post, or with a trackback or pingback, it is always worth going to read what has been written and, where appropriate, make a comment. It may be that you can dd further information in the context of the post, reply to comments or just say thank you for the link. If you are lucky, you may be able to start a dialogue with the blog owner or the commentators, and some of these conversations can lead to offers to guest post, swap blog posts, or links on further sites.
Use your blog to promote your products and services, but without doing the ‘hard sell’. It may be that you reveal why you have developed a particular product i.e. in response to market research or consumer requests. Or you highlight the gap that the product or service is intended to fill, but from your consumer’s point of view rather than the benefits to your business. You may share some of your expertise or expand on an FAQ. Remember though that people are reading to discover what is in it for them (the WIIFM question – What’s In It For Me) so always write bearing that in mind.
Write a short excerpt or summary of longer blog posts so that your readers can discover within a single paragraph whether the post will be of interest to them. Respect for other people’s information overload is always important.
And bearing all the above in mind, make sure that you maximise each internet marketing opportunity by ensuring that your posts are promoted via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, within your own company, and to your customers and potential customers. A link on the front page of your site showing new content will always bring more readers.
