Online Marketing Blog

While traveling recently in New Zealand and a short stay in Sydney, Australia I shot a few videos offering social media marketing tips. Check them out below and you can also view many other tips videos and interviews we’ve done with search and social media marketing experts on the  TopRank Online Marketing YouTube Channel.

Tips on Social Media ROI from Sydney Australia near the famous Opera House & Sydney Harbour Bridge. Sorry about the wind, it messed with the audio a bit. I need to get a Zi8 and a microphone!

Common B2B Facebook Myths from Rangitoto Island, off Auckland, New Zealand. (From an old Army bunker near the mouth of a 600 year old volcano actually)

Photo credit: timtak via Flickr

Social Commerce is a very hot topic right now with numerous blog posts, articles and even a few events focused on ecommerce and social media.

Adding ecommerce functionality to social sites is something that I’ve wondered about for quite a while:

“What I’d like to see more of is the availability of basic ecommerce functions as plug ‘n play options with major blog software packages. Blogs are good for business, big and small and I think there’s a lot of opportunity for business and value for consumers with ecommerce blogs.” Dec 28, 2005.

Too bad I wasn’t more of an advocate for social commerce since, but then again, consumers haven’t really responded well to shopping implementations with social media sites until recently, if at all.

Demystifying better social media marketing often starts with doing a better job of connecting with customers. But how can you connect with customers if you don’t know who they are?

Do you know who your customers are? Do you know what they search for and talk about on social networks? What influences them to buy or to recommend things to others?

While I’m pretty sure an entire book or two could be written about the details behind the art and science of developing personas and profiles, here are a few quick tips you can implement right now to get started.

As I’ve been able to travel and meet marketers all over the U.S. and in other countries, I am always interested in learning how companies are viewing the value of their social media efforts.

Marketing investments should be predicated by more than chasing the competition, satisfying someone’s ego or acting solely on a gut feeling. A good handle on goals, resources and target audience help determine strategy and tactics as well as how outcomes are measured. This is the case with even the most fundamental of marketing programs. With that kind of basic framework, implementing and measuring value from social media shouldn’t be that different.

Because so much actual marketing is tactical, many companies see social media simply as another of those tactics and evaluate one-off promotional efforts for ROI without considering the bigger picture. It’s very much a situation of not seeing the forest for the trees.

We’ve established the value of content marketing here through many different posts. Most of the focus has been on creating value from content at the top of the funnel in a buying cycle. That’s where a lot of marketing dollars are focused and it’s an area of focus for the consulting offered by many online marketing agencies.

Content is the source of why search engines exist and therefore, essential for any discussion of SEO. Content is also the means through which brands engage customers on the social web through helpful information, resources, advertorial and even entertainment.

Another perspective to consider is that when brands and individuals share information on social networks and media sharing sites the outcome is content. There are many ways to be more effective with social content creation, sharing and engagement that marketers are not taking advantage of.

With the rise of smart phone use in the US, (Google Android and iPhone are currently reporting roughly 500,000 activations a day ) it’s more important than ever to have your Google places listing up to speed because when people use voice search on  Android phones, the first results they see are from Google local.

Let’s start with a few facts. Did you know that;

• 73% of all online activity is related to local content (Google)
• 82% of local searchers follow up with a phone call or show up on your doorstep (TMP/comScore)
• 66% of Americans use local search to find local businesses (comScore)

While taking a short flight from Auckland to Queenstown, NZ I was thinking about the role of content as a tool of persuasion. Let me know what you think:

In every marketplace, when something new like technology comes along that requires a change in behavior, there’s a fairly predictable range of responses. Based on original research represented by Everett Rogers Technology Adoption Lifecycle that means: Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority and Laggards.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

I think there are some interesting implications for content and storytelling when it comes to influence on adoption of technology.

Let’s say you have an objective of persuading a group of potential customers to adopt a certain technology for marketing.  One of the first steps is to profile those potential customers in terms of demographics and behaviors. A few key questions to be answered:

Yesterday in Auckland, NZ I gave an all day workshop to 150 marketing and communications professionals on Social Media Content Marketing & Strategy at Social Media Junction.  I’m used to giving workshops to 20-30 people so it was an interesting and enjoyable experience with such a large group. (Thanks to Bullet PR staff who are amazing).

One of the questions that came up was whether B2B companies are successfully using Facebook Fan pages.  I shared a few of our client Fan pages like Marketo & McKesson Medical Imaging (forgetting to mention our own completely) but wanted to share a few more examples here.

While it’s true that the most popular Facebook Fan Pages are for consumer products and brands like Coca Cola (18.2m Fans), Starbucks (17.5m Fans) and Oreo (14.1m Fans), there are many B2B companies successfully using Facebook to engage with prospects, customers and employees. Here are a few good examples:

We all have email, yet our inboxes are often overloaded. RSS is great, but some are letting RSS take a back seat as they are to busy on social networks.

Where is everyone? They seem to be on Twitter and Facebook.

Twitter and Facebook are two of the fastest growing sites on the internet which makes them two of the biggest networks that your blog should be promoting its content.

The easiest way to do that is to set up your blog with its own Twitter profile and Facebook page.

One of the biggest reasons is for branding. Most people know that protecting the brand is very important. You own the domain, you have the legal rights to the name, so why don’t you have the Twitter profile and Facebook page too? The last thing you want is to try to register your brand only to find out someone has already taken it.

How would you rate your content marketing efforts? How well are you incorporating SEO and Social Media? If you’re not sure or need to improve, read on.

We’re big fans of content marketing as you probably know and there’s a presentation on Content Marketing Optimization that I’ve been doing at search conferences lately (SES SF, SES CHI, Pubcon and soon SES London) that has evolved each time I give it. See the bottom of this post for an embedded copy of the latest version from Pubcon.

While there are an increasing number of definitions of what content marketing is, I tend to prefer:

Content Marketing: Aligning customer and brand objectives through content.

While the primary platforms for our application of this definition are online and more specifically, through search, social, online PR, email and certain kinds of advertising, I think a timelessly relevant definition needs to be general.

In the world of online marketing, search and social media are evolving at an incredible pace.

Consider these stats: Google sites handle about 88 billion queries a month but did you know, twitter is approaching 20 billion?

Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year and Hitwise has reported that Facebook tops Google in weekly web traffic.

Social media is hot, but is by no means mutually exclusive of search. Search has expanded beyond Google and marketers must now consider other search channels such as internal Facebook search and mobile search as channels where customers are looking.

Note from Lee: Content is royalty in the online marketing world whether it’s for search, social or email. Copywriting skills are essential for effective content and provide marketers a distinct, competitive advantage. I’ve asked one of our Account Managers, Ken Horst, to check out a SEO copywriting course to share with our readers. Please welcome him in his first post to Online Marketing Blog.

Like many experienced online marketers, I’ve been writing copy for websites and blogs for many years.  But like any good internet marketer, I’m always looking for ways to improve my skills.  Recently I came across a course on SEO copywriting that caught my fancy and it offers certification.  Two things I’m interested in, becoming a better writer and getting transferable credit for doing so! I started the SEO Copywriting course about a month ago and this is a review of my experience so far.