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Twitter for Businesses – Best Practices for a Positive Corporate Presence

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Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

Twitter Marketing

Despite the naysayers, there is tremendous value in using Twitter.

For businesses, Twitter marketing is a chance to connect with prospects and current customers in a unique way – and in a way that these important audiences are used to communicating.

Whether you use Twitter for business or not, there are some basic Twitter tips that can make your social media presence more relevant and successful:

twitter profile Twitter for Businesses – Best Practices for a Positive Corporate Presence

What Does Your Twitter Profile Look Like?

Your profile is your first key to legitimacy – Using your company logo, company colors, linking to your company site and just having a completed (and branded) Twitter profile can go a long way toward verifying your legitimacy.

Put a name to your Twitter face – Companies don’t Tweet, but people do. Your followers (who are also your customers and potential customers) deserve to know the name behind your Twitter marketing. It adds credibility and personality to your presence.

Make Twitter a true piece of your business – If you use Twitter for business, then make it feel like a part of your businesses. Link to your Twitter business account from logical pages on your corporate website (news page, contact page, etc.).

Humans Tweet, so be human– I cringe when I see corporate Twitter accounts with nothing but news releases, re-tweets and links to company web pages. Humans engage in conversations, and this carried over to Twitter, as well. Come to Twitter with a sense of humor, or at the very least, understanding the “social” part of social media. Your experience (and that of your followers) will be better for it.

ironman2 twitter Twitter for Businesses – Best Practices for a Positive Corporate Presence

Iron Man 2 Twitter Account

I think we’re past the conversation where we talk about Twitter “possibly” being good for business. There are enough examples of large and small companies with a Twitter business account making a huge impact to make that conversation a waste of time.

The real conversation should be about your business – and Twitter for businesses in general. Will you use Twitter marketing to enhance your business presence, your customer service and your brand?  My Twitter tips above are just the start to a positive Twitter presence.

Do you have a Twitter business account already? Are you seeing success by using it? If you need any further insight on the topic, you know where to find me.

Categories : Branding, Social Media, Twitter
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From AdWords to Landing Page – Get The Click, Get The Conversion

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Monday, May 10th, 2010

Best Landing Page Practices

The best landing pages are exactly that – landing pages.

Not your home page, not your contact page, but a customized page that makes the same offer you’ve made in your AdWords campaign.

Think about it like this: If someone sees an ad for Product A in your AdWords campaign and the ad sends them to your home page, which sells Product A through Z, how likely are they to still buy Product A?

Not very likely.

So, your AdWords landing page must first meet the initial expectation of prospects – that it make the same offer as the ad they clicked on – and no other offers.

Some other things that will contribute to better conversion rates include:

How clear you make the value of your offer. Don’t leave it up to your prospect to determine if your offer is of value to them. Tell them the value in a way that is clear, concise and reasonable.

How easy you make it for your prospects to take action. For example, don’t create a form that asks for information you don’t really need. If you’re offering an e-book, you don’t need a physical address, so don’t ask for it.

How you make prospects feel at ease over giving you their personal information. Tell people their information is safe with you. It only takes a sentence, but can make a huge difference. Don’t overlook this factor.

I see people make a lot of the same mistakes over-and-over when it comes to landing pages. Here are a few of the common ones that you should look out for:

Not Using a Landing Page at All
This one may seem obvious to some, but I still see it far too often. In the vast majority of cases cases, you can’t realistically carry an offer from AdWords to your home page. There are too many competing offers, links and other things to distract your visitor from your original offer.

Making Too Many Offers
I’ve seen people try to use the same landing page for multiple offers in the name of saving money. Unfortunately, the opposite is true – they lose money. They lose money on the designer they hired to create the page and they lose money on clicks they’ve paid for in AdWords.

Landing Page Design That Confuses Prospects
When you pay a professional to design an AdWords landing page, it can be easy for that designer to get too creative and over-design your page.

I can’t tell you how important it is to have a proper landing page for visitors who come to your site from Google. Landing pages that are well-designed and have appropriate offers and calls to action will always have better results.

If you have any questions, I’m here to help. Whether you have a landing page you want reviewed, or you just need some help figuring out the best way to design your AdWords landing page, I can guide you through the process and get you from click to conversion in no time.

Below is a 60 minute presentation by the great people at Marketing Experiments about landing pages and how clarity trumps persuasion.  Mandarich.com is a certified landing page company by marketing experiments.  I highly recommend their scientific approach to online marketing.

clarity trumps persuasion From AdWords to Landing Page – Get The Click, Get The Conversion

Categories : Landing Pages, Pay Per Click
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PPC Management vs. SEO Management – The Budget Numbers Don’t Lie

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Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

I was reading some interesting facts the other day about spending habits of companies when it comes to PPC management spending versus organic SEO spending.

To sum it up, SEO accounts for 75% of all search traffic, but only accounts for roughly 15% of search engine marketing (SEM) budgets.

On the other hand, PPC campaigns and PPC management accounts for 80% of SEM budgets, but produces less than 25% of search traffic.

ppc seo PPC Management vs. SEO Management – The Budget Numbers Don’t Lie

So, why the disparity between the two SEM efforts?

If you ask me, the popularity of PPC advertising over organic SEO is a carry-over from the belief that if you pay for advertising, people will look at it and buy from you. I also believe that people are drawn to the immediate results of PPC advertising and are turned off by the long-term commitment that comes with organic search marketing.

To me, both of these beliefs can cause a company to miss out on the real value and ROI that comes with organic search marketing.

Once you look deeper in to the benefits of organic search marketing and compare them to PPC advertising, I think you’ll realize that both should have a place in your SEM budget. The budget numbers, however, should reflect the ROI (or potential ROI) that each tactic can bring.

I’m obviously not telling you to cancel your PPC campaign. What I’m saying is that too many companies are focusing budget dollars on pay-per-click efforts when they should be prioritizing long-term organic search goals.

There’s enough proof out there to show us that while PPC marketing is effective, it’s not as effective as organic SEO efforts.

How is your SEM budget divided? What’s your rationale for it?

If you’re looking for advice on PPC management or other SEO efforts, you know where to find me.
If you enjoyed this post and found it valuable please Tweet it above.

Categories : Pay Per Click, SEO
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Online Video Marketing for Your Business

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Monday, May 3rd, 2010

It’s no big secret that video promotion is huge these days. Some videos on YouTube have been viewed millions of times by people around the globe.  Some videos are purely personal and aren’t part of an online video strategy, while others are part of a company’s online video marketing agenda – as can be the case with video such as Superbowl commercials.

The bottom line is that online video advertising works. And it works very well when you’re video is compelling and engaging.

So how can video promotion benefit you or your business? Easy. Get video in front of your prospects! Here’s a brief overview of the strategy and process:

Online Video Strategy Step 1 – Decide where you’ll host your video
The first thing you need to do before you even point your camera is decide where your videos will be hosted.

Now, unless you have some technical know-how when it comes to hosting and serving video, 3rd party video hosting (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) is likely your best option. For the sake of this post, I’m going to assume this is the way you’ll go.

Online Video Strategy Step 2 – Create your presence
One step many marketers miss is completing their entire YouTube profile. This means branding your channel as much as you can to match your brand. You want as much congruency as possible for people who may see your videos on the 3rd party’s site. YouTube makes it easy to change color scheme of your channel to match your online presence.

Also, when you create your account and begin uploading videos, complete all the information fields so search engines and visitors have as much information about your videos as possible. Ideally your videos will come up as search results in Google (for YouTube videos, at least).

Online Video Strategy Step 3 – Upload your videos

Video hosting sites like YouTube make it easy to upload video, but they also make it easy to control how and where that video content is delivered. For example, you might want to restrict people from viewing a particular video on YouTube.com, but allow them to view an embedded version on your site. You can make a video private, but still embed it in your website, making your site the only place that video can be seen. This is important for tracking and conversion purposes.

video websites Online Video Marketing for Your Business

Follow-up video promotion tip:

Surround your video with meaningful content.
This means writing complete descriptions for the video so that search engines have something to ‘see’ when they index your videos when they’re on YouTube. The same goes for embedding video on your site – be sure the page with the embedded video has a descriptive title and enough copy for search engines to figure out what the page is about – and index it accordingly.

With the right strategy and the right video, you can create a content-rich experience for visitors that engages them and guides them toward buying your products or services.

As always, I’m here to help with any online video marketing advice you need.  If you liked this post please ReTweet it up above!

Categories : Video Marketing
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Local Search Optimization for Your Business

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Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

If you’ve ever done a local business search on Google, you know the great opportunity that can be found at the top of the search results when business listings come up.



People looking for local businesses are typically drawn to the local results because they aren’t necessarily looking for a website, a blog or an article – they’re simply looking for information about a business: phone number, address, hours, parking info and maybe a few other details to help them make a decision of some sort. From the local search results, they can choose to click through to a company’s website.

So if the opportunity is great for searchers, you know the opportunity is even greater when YOUR business listing comes up.

But, what about those businesses that aren’t on Google Local Search? Are they missing out on qualified local customers who are searching based on keywords and geography?

They are. Businesses that aren’t part of Google’s local business search results are missing out on a huge (and mostly free) search marketing opportunity.  Sometimes companies don’t know the service exists, sometimes they do know, but they aren’t sure how getting into the business results works.

local search optimization Local Search Optimization for Your Business

So how does a company position itself to be part of these high-power Google results?

First of all, Google Local Search has recently changed its name to Google Places, and if it’s not part of your local search optimization efforts, it needs to be.

If you’re already familiar with Google’s local search capabilities, then you probably understand its importance and may even be part of their local business search services. Recently, Google has added some new features to the Google Places service. Here are a couple:

Service Areas – Got a business on wheels with no home base? Google allows this type of business to display the geographic area the business serves.

Ad Tags – Tag your local listing using ad tags to promotes coupons, and provide other beneficial information. (This is why I said “mostly free” above.)

Google has also taken the proactive step of letting you in on some traffic stats for your listing, including number of views, referring pages and keywords used to find your business.

If you’re uncertain about how to get yourself onto Google Places, there are businesses out there, like mine, who do this kind of thing for a living.  Being on Google Places is a ‘must’ for your local search optimization efforts, so if you have any questions about it, you know where to find me.

Categories : Local Search, SEO
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