Novel Social Media Concept for 2011: Content is Still King

The social media wave continued to grow in 2010, expanding and receiving a huge amount of attention from the media and web marketing professionals. Hollywood even got into the act with a movie on Facebook, a sure sign that public interest is peaking.


Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and many other social media sites, apps and tools gained visitors and have proliferated, chasing both B-to-C consumers and (not in-coincidently) rather large pools of venture capital funds salivating to get into the social media game. One can predict a Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest struggle in the next few years involving social media ventures, search engines and email services as visitor behaviors and usage evolve. We've been there before with Web 1.0 and 2.0. Social media giant Facebook is beginning to tower amongst the others in the emerging social media marketing landscape... rivaling and in some ways challenging the search engine giant Google. Linkedin is revolutionizing how we conduct person-to-person introductions, prospecting and business communication. Twitter has established a unique niche, with no competitors in sight.


But what does this mean to technical and industrial B-to-B marketers? While Social Media is growing in importance and is the popular hot topic of the day, Search Engine Marketing continues to matter, churning out vast numbers of valuable business leads. If you are marketing to engineers, scientists, managers, executives and other decision makers and professionals, webpage content is still king, no matter where you put it. These high value prospective clients don't use Facebook or Twitter to do research and find potential vendors... they use Google or Bing.


Search Engine Optimization, SEO, is fundamental to successful lead generation. What is SEO, but great content on a great webpage, on a great website? Have that great content well-linked both inside and outside of a website, keep the content fresh. By adding a modest Paid Search campaign to the mix one can achieve amazing commercial success.


It's perfectly OK to develop a rational Social Media B-to-B presence in 2011, just don't forget search engine content optimization on company websites.

December is a perfect time for SEO updates.

For B-to-B search engine marketing, taking advantage of the relatively quiet period during the last two weeks of December is an excellent time to update and revise your webpages for search engine optimization.

Global business activity drops significantly during late December, and the Christmas and New Year holidays. Take advantage of this seasonal lull by reviewing your webpages, refresh and optimize them, with an eye towards improving and maintaining your valuable and coveted search engine rankings for next year.

Jumping on this task now gives the search engine bots more time to re-index your pages, and hopefully have your webpages placed into an improved position for key search terms when your customers come back to work in January.

If you want blazing B-to-B success in early January, start now. Waiting until Monday morning on January 3 to apply SEO to your webpages is too late. Start now, for success later.

Search Engine Ranking Nirvana: A Transitory State of Bliss.

Achieving smashing success with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a great feeling... enjoy it while it lasts, because SEO is a variable treadmill and if one doesn't keep running, organic search ranking results can fall fast and deep. Break out the champagne when you win but don't drink the whole bottle... you need to keep your wits about you. It's a tough SEO world out there!

I  recently enjoyed a grand slam success in SEO on Google. I hit a Trifecta + Bonus... an almost mythologically rare result in Google organic searchdom. Out of over 4,300,000 indexed webpages for an important search term, my related webpages from one website scored 1st, 2nd, and 3rd for organic search. An allied blog I run scored at 4th place. So I acheived 1,2,3,4 for organic search... very nice and exceedingly valuable. To hedge it all, I ran an Adword which ranked 2nd  for paid search ads. So I dominated 5 of the top 6 search engine marketing positions for that search term. In other words, I OWNED that search term on Google. It was MINE.

The short search term discussed above has high strategic value for the business... we cannot accept anything else but a high ranking in Google search.

I continue to dominate that search result today, but the ultra-perfect 1,2,3,4 + 2 result above was from last week, great for bragging rights but of no use today. My reality is what is going on now. And sure enough, this week Google took me down a notch and removed one of my 3 ranked webpages, but graciously allowed me to keep the 1st and 2nd ranked pages plus the blog at 3rd place. Why? Who knows? I can only speculate and take SEO action. The good news is that I still "own" that search at the 1,2 and 3 spots, out of 4.3 million potential competitors. My ad is also now number one, with no changes made to PPC. Now I'm at 1,2,3, + 1.

Go figure. Rankings can change quickly, never take them for granted.

For best results, one must remain alert and vigilant with SEO... total victory today can disintegrate into future disaster tomorrow if a well performing webpage for a competitive search term is neglected.

Every day is an adventure with SEO and Search Engine Marketing. SEO is kind of like a horse race. Make sure you're not betting on "Three Legged Wonder", hoping it wins the race. The Google Search Gods can be capricious... changing, advancing, and demolishing search results on what seems like a whim... using their inscrutable, dynamic and logical search algorithm. Good SEO, relevant content, and constant care and attention to your webpages will greatly help in achieving top rankings.

Is Search Engine Marketing Tactical or Strategic?

Rhetorical Marketing Questions of the day:

Is search engine marketing a tactical or strategic marketing tool? Yes.
Is search engine marketing transactional or relationship (branding)? Yes.


OK, the best answer is "All of the above". 


B-to-B Search engine marketing is a fantastic way to generate leads for specific projects and business opportunities, and it acts as an ever-present branding tactic. SEM is both Tactical and Strategic... both goals can be applied to paid and organic search campaigns. 


In effect, SEM can target and pull in leads for every stage of the buying decision process... attraction, features, benefits, solutions. 


Webpages and Paid Search ads can target the potential customer across the entire buying process, including:


1. Getting their attention. Simple awareness. Uncovering a prospective client need. The prospect is thinking about thinking about buying.

"You have a problem" or "hey, we exist!", "We offer a product or service you are pondering or considering" etc.


2. Researching options. Competitive research. The Prospect is thinking about buying.  


"How our product or service, and features and benefits, meet your needs", "why our offerings are better for you than alternatives" etc.


3. First Contact. Getting the lead, or inducing a call-to-action. The prospect is going to buy from someone, it may as well be us. 


"Solve your problem now", "We have a solution to your problem", "We offer that niche specialized product or service you are looking for" etc.


Understanding the market I am targeting and the issues they face, for which my company can provide help and services is key to how I approach the use of webpages, search terms, campaigns and ad filters.


Since people search in a huge variety of ways, a particular search term used in a campaign may be attracting people who come from many or even all phases of lead generation development... from those just beginning to search and those about ready to make a decision to contact a business. 


To accommodate these different visitors who have different agendas, a landing page must be focused but also have a little something for everyone who visits the page.... appropriate content with links to 'learn more' related pages, a call-to-action, and a look and feel which invites the visitor to stay in the site and explore - - or better yet - - contact you, no matter what stage of the process they are in.


An intelligent and aggressive approach to organic and paid search engine marketing allows both tactical and strategic marketing. 


Thus, transactional marketing campaigns that target niche services, products, markets, fragmented markets and micro markets are very effective and profitable. 


For building reputation, awareness and branding, creating more branding focused campaigns to promote and support broad and key brand name related searches is helpful. Web analytics can help measure the quality and performance of such campaigns.


Targeting the customer awareness, research, competitive comparisons and call-to-action phases of the potential customer base will power greater lead generation to feed the B-to-B sales funnel. Webpages that "sell" in professional way help throughout the entire lead gen process. 


Just like a top performing sales representative, a B-toB website should be able to conduct consultative selling along every customer decision phase, in order to engage and keep the quality visitor, and encourage them to take the logical step of contacting your company to buy/investigate your goods and services. 


Best Regards;       Erik Holladay

Promoting a new online business on a limited budget.

Getting leads and promoting your business with a limited ad budget.

So you're launching a new small online business, and you have limited promotional funds. Promotion is vital to your new business, because it leads to lead generation which leads to customers which leads to revenue and profits.

The Gift which keeps on Giving:
Search Engine Success will Drive Growth 24/7/365.

My advice is fairly simple, and it doesn't cost a lot of money... if you do it right... just some quality thinking, actions and some of your time.

1. Get Found on Organic Search Engine Results:

This means you need to rank on Google and BING and other search engines. Your website and webpages must be SEO friendly and content must be focused and relevant to your target market. If your business is local, then make sure your content references location. Sign up with Google for free local listings. Get quality websites to link to you if possible and avoid black-hat tactics. Then monitor results and keep trying if your pages are not showing up on page one search results for search terms you want. Benchmark against webpages that rank higher than yours, and make an effort to understand what needs to be done to raise your own page ranking. Organic Search success takes time and persistence but can yield huge rewards for your business. 

Target local search results for maximum success, especially if your business is targeting a geographic area like a city, county, or neighborhood.  

Cost: FREE (not including initial website development and content management costs)

2. Take Advantage of Social Media:
Social Media is evolving and growing quickly, and is another powerful tool... if used wisely. Social Media takes time and effort to make an impact. Understand your target market and gear your efforts to get their attention. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and others offer free ways to establish your brand and service. You can also run ads. Focus on getting these social media sites linked with your main website and blogs. Add social 'share' and 'follow' buttons on your web and blog pages. Then promote the sites and gain friends, contacts, follwers, etc. Patience is important with Social Media as progress can be slow and even random, but when you hit critical mass it will directly benefit your business. Go easy on propaganda and overt promotion or you'll lose your audience. You're enticing visitors to visit your business website, the sell should be professional and low-key.

Cost: Mostly Free

3. Blogs:
They are mini-websites and they are free, and they are powerful. They can easily rocket to high rankings in organic search if the topic and niche is focused. Create niche blogs that feed to your main website and each other. Each blog should be unique on the topics and subjects they cover... and ideally done in a professional  and neutral manner - - content should attract readers, and don't subject them to 'advertorials'. Cross-Link your main website to this 'solar system' of blogs which orbit your main site. 

Cost: FREE

4. Paid Search Ads:

OK, this is not free, but it can be very effective and cheap! Open up Google Adwords and BING paid search accounts. Focus on your key search terms and try them out in very focused campaigns and ad-groups. You can limit your daily spend, you have total control of your costs. You can limit the campaigns to specific locations - - geographical areas, even cities, and languages, time-zones, etc. Paid search can cost you just a dollar a day if you  want. But results are immediate and help fill gaps in your organic search results. Display ads on 3rd party websites broaden your ad reach by a large amount.... and your added costs can be just pennies a click. With Google, you will also get FREE access to Google Analytics, which when loaded on your main website can provide you great visitor tracking, search term research, understanding and insight into your website.

Cost: You Decide


5. Email:
Use of email to qualified and targeted individuals, when done professionally, can produce another stream of leads and business. To avoid spamming issues, it is important to follow best practices, including clear opt-in and opt-out options. Segment your email lists so that you can better tailor your emails. Always include links back to your website and/or blogs. Clean up your email lists on a regular basis. Use a professional 3rd party email provider to send out the emails, such as Constant Contact, to help look professional, avoid being banned as spam by IT managers at your targeted companies. Review your email campaign stats to improve openings and click-throughs. Produce, or have produced for you, professional looking emails and newsletters in .html format which can survive various email server filters and format compatibility issues. Avoid spam-like behavior at all costs.
Cost: Variable


These five tactics; organic search, social media, blogs, paid search, and email, can bring very lucrative results to even the smallest online business with the smallest marketing and promotional budget. If used together in one cohesive strategy, the positive impact on your business can dramatic.


Regards; Erik Holladay

Content is Still King - - Social Media Doesn't Change That.

Content is Still King - - A Classic Truth Worth Repeating.


Just like a whipped coffee latte, a foamy ice cold beer or a towering root beer float, to capture the maximum value in Social Media, one has to dig below the marketing 'froth' and 'fizz' to find the ultimate reward... Social Media Lead Generation.

Yesterday I attended a web marketing conference in Houston put on by the Online Marketing Institute. Social Media Marketing was emphasized, rightfully so, as the number of people using Social Media platforms explodes in the USA and the world. I came to learn more about applying social media tactics to my business.

But I also heard confirmation that what was true 3 years ago, 6 years ago, 9 years ago, is true today: Your Content Matters. Content is Still King. Without good Content on your websites and company blogs, all your Social Media tools and all your efforts will disappoint, or worse, backfire. Good Content that works for your business is needed before going 'crazy' with Facebook or Twitter.

And Blogs? They are, according to the experts I heard on Social Media yesterday, your most effective Social Media lead generation tool. Good old-fashioned, taken-for-granted, Blogs... your 'mini-websites'.

Social Media tactics will be very important to your success, but pay attention to your content... it is the foundation which will drive your success. Social Media should orbit your content like the planets around the sun.

I picked up great information at the OMI conference. The presenters were informative across all subjects. For me SEO and Usability were very useful. And there was considerable expertise on ideas and best practices for Facebook, Twitter, Blogs etc. Observations and predictions were made that Social Media will "change the world", "destroy traditional institutional hierarchies", and cause "marketing mayhem". Social media trends will accelerate as further adoption of mobile smart phone and 'tablet' technologies continues, and people under the age of 25 ("digital natives") move into the work force. I'm going to apply what we learned yesterday... to better exploit today's world and prepare for tomorrow's.

But I will remember this basic, classic, truth: Content is King. To which can be added: Company websites and blogs are the most important "Social Media" platform assets we have.

Regards; Erik Holladay

Learn more about Social Media, Web Marketing and applying it to your business:
Arnie Kuenn, President, Vertical Measures
Brad Kleinman, President, eMarketing Techniques
Thanh Nguyen, Senior Usability Engineer, BusinessOnline
Maria Pergolino, Director of Marketing, Marketo

Are You a (Marketing) Secret Weapon?

Be a Marketing Secret Weapon:

Be a Marketing Secret Weapon.

No matter what size your company, if you want to use web marketing to promote your business become a "Secret Weapon". 


I've been called a marketing and business development "Secret Weapon" many times by divisional senior and executive management. To be so described is an honor and a validation of the work I do. But what actions, exactly, am I taking which cause my activities to be associated with "secret" and "weapon"? 


The Secret of the Secret Weapon:
The real secret is using Search Engine Marketing effectively. Organic and Paid Search (Google, Bing) are my primary weapons of choice for lead generation and customer research, validation and 'mind-share'. Wielding this powerful marketing technique brings a tremendous combination of high-quality and high-volume lead generation to a B-to-B business, no matter how big the business is, no matter how small. 


When used with focused, pragmatic, expertise, attention to detail, and consistent follow-through, search engine marketing can literally transform your company or business unit's fortunes. Your main competition may never be aware, understand, nor appreciate how you did it, making your marketing success a stealthy "secret". 


The world is full of potential quality customers looking for solutions which your business offers. Those people go to Google or Bing to start researching. Write concise and precise content that is relevant to your target markets, with a goal to rank high in organic search. You need to be there when they start looking! 


In essence, this is the true "secret" of a marketing "Secret Weapon"... be there, at the right time, the right place, with the right message.


Targeting profitable service niches with organic and paid search, applying long-tail search principles, geo-targeting and language targeting is easy if you have search engine marketing expertise and tools. Do these things well, do them consistently, and you will likely see success. Depending upon the target market, a dependable tsunami of high-value leads can land at your door.... business enquiries that don't reach your competitors. You attracted the potential client's attention and made a positive impression, so they contacted you first.


There are other useful lead-gen marketing tactics, such as brochures, trade shows, advertising, email campaigns, physical mailers, and social media. But the superior business results, reach, and lower costs gained from search engine marketing dwarf all those other options, based upon my experience with technical B-to-B lead generation. If done right, search engine results keep coming, as search engine marketing works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, across industries, markets, nations, languages and cultures... always 'on-demand' for prospective customers and always certified 'spam-free'.


Every great Secret Weapon has a visionary who predicted its future. For search engine marketing, that visionary for me is Seth Godin. Seth's then radical but now classic book Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers became a prime inspiration for my priority focus on search engine marketing. History has proven me right, overcoming skeptics over and over again. And I thank my competitors who still don't get it... read my blog A Thank You Note to My Competitors .


Secret Weapons require quality craftsmanship and engineering to make them a success. Here is where your Webmaster comes in. Your webmaster is literally your Secret Weapon mechanic and right-hand man. To win at search engine marketing, your Website must be designed to be friendly for search engines, with an easy to use content management system. Follow best practices for web-design and navigation. The entire site should be extremely friendly and usable for prospective clients.

Search Engine Marketing is Industrial Strength Lead Generation (Or Should Be). 

Meet Your USA Adwords Competition: All 1,500,000 of them.

Google ads used by 1.5M US marketers, websites.
Google's Internet advertising network attracts more than 1.5 million US marketers, websites.  

Associated Press, Tuesday May 25, 2010 

So, now you know. A lot of people are using Adwords in the USA for lead generation, sales and branding. And many of them want the same search terms you want.

With Adwords and other paid search tools like BING, your real competition isn't just your real direct and indirect competitors for goods and services in your markets. Not at all. When it comes to paid search, especially Adwords, your ads appear and compete in a vast, virtual universe where competition for your search terms and keywords can be intense and costly.

Companies in entirely different markets with completely different target audiences can target the same keywords you want. For example, the search term "Lab" can mean many different things - - R&D laboratory, clinical laboratory, math class, puppy dog, etc.? Very broad terms, if used, mean that you'll compete against many others and attract many clicks from casual or confused visitors who will not be your customers.

This ad 'clutter' and 'noise' can frustrate your efforts to reach your audience, unless you take intelligent steps to focus on your market niches and filter out the rest. There are many resources to help you acheive this and reduce or even eliminate competition for money-making search terms. These include using negative search terms, long-tail search phrases, avoiding search terms that are too broad, use of technical vocabulary, selective ad showing by schedule, location and language, analytics and more.

Useful Research and Article on the Value of Google Result Positioning

This is great information for people who strive for Search Engine Optimization. If your using Search Engines for lead generation these two articles are a must read!

1. The Value of Google Result Positioning:

"How much is the top spot on Google actually worth? According to data from the Chitika network, it’s worth a ton – double the traffic of the #2 spot, to be precise."

http://chitika.com/research/2010/the-value-of-google-result-positioning/

Daniel Ruby, Research Director, Online Insights, Chitika, Inc.

Search Engine Watch article: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/100525-160427.

A special thanks to Brian Geddes of  http://www.bgtheory.com/ for posting this valuable information on LinkedIn. By the way, Brian teaches an excellent set of classes devoted to advanced Adwords training. If you can ever take one of his classes, I highly recommend it. http://www.linkedin.com/in/ewhisper

Take Advantage of Google Adwords Local Search Features

Google has added some very useful campaign setting options for localized ad targeting. This can be effective for campaigns where you want only local leads. "Local" targeting can be as large as a country or state, or as small as a town or city.

I'm using both local and multinational campaigns (where appropriate, as I run global campaigns which target multiple countries), but one local search option that really caught my eye is the "Phone Extensions" feature in the "Ad Extensions" section of each Adwords campaign settings page.

With "Phone Extensions", you can add a 'click to call' feature for smart phone users. As more and more people use their smart phones for web browsing, our search engine marketing efforts need to be in synch with this trend.

Depending upon how your campaigns are set up (Country, State, City), Google allows you to list a local telephone number a visitor simply has to click on their smartphone to call you with a business leads.

Directions are straightforward:

1. Go to your Campaign Settings page.

2. Go to Ad Extensions   >   then go to Phone Extensions.

3. See "Display click-to-call phone number on iPhones and other mobile devices with full Internet browsers:"

Add Your Numeric Telephone Number Here.

Google allows only numeric number listings for now, no alpha 'vanity' alternatives allowed yet.
This works for me, as alpha phone listings can be irritating to the caller compared to simple numeric dialing.

I've just started to use this Phone Extension feature. It is best for targeted campaigns where one phone number can be listed. Like anything else with Adwords, it will take some time and experimentation to see if the new click-to-call helps bring in leads. I suspect it will.


Best Regards;

Erik Holladay