Wellness Obsession

Time after time, when I discuss the search and social media based opportunities for companies to reach new customers and achieve other online communications goals, it comes down to content.  Most companies understand the need to have a web presence and publish some kind of web site. For many, the creation of a web site is a one time event with minimal updates. Marketing budgets are tight and companies are frugal. For the most part, updates and new content on many web sites are limited to news, an occasional press release or product announcement. Site owners are happy with the design and employees are happy they don’t need to come up with new content. IT staff do whatever they can to minimize site maintenance (which often means shortcuts or templatization that makes page level editing difficult). Essentially, this kind of web site with static content is a tombstone when it comes to being a search marketing asset. When suggesting the need for new content, many web site owners either cringe at the idea, imagining resource issues, or they pay lip service and make a commitment that turns out to be a fraction of what the web marketing agency has in mind.   The importance of shifting from a dead end web site to becoming a content publisher (and promoter) is critical for any company that has customers and competitors active online. When a company marketer says this, “We don’t have anything new to publish.” it’s pretty much a death sentence for the web site.  Businesses that are actually involved with meeting the needs of their customers, that take the time to learn pain points and solutions, that innovate, that participate in their industry or community, have plenty of reasons and content to publish. It’s an important mind shift, which is why I used the stark title, Content or Die.  If the people responsible for the success of a company web site don’t have the resources or skills to make the shift from tombstone web site to active content marketing, the options are: hire people (internal or outside consultant) that can champion, implement and manage the change or get existing staff educated on to do so. Or things could remain as they are. Traffic dwindling, inquiries drying up and desperation. When presented with a reasonable argument, most business web site owners will agree that content creation and promotion makes sense.  The more useful web pages that are published, the more there is for others to link to them and to show up in relevant search results. This can easily be demonstrated by showing how the competition is dominating the search results. Additionally, more search traffic means more data to analyze in terms of conversion optimization and the creation of new content to meet customer needs as they move through the site and into the sales pipeline. These benefits are not realized over night. It takes a commitment, a plan, education and a bit of faith. The question is, “How bad does it have to get for a company to change?”. I challenge companies that are seeing declines in their organic search based traffic to re-evaluate their web marketing strategy. Where does content creation AND promotion fit?  Are you SURE the content you’re creating is achieving the maximum possible effect?  How much content is enough? How will you manage content? How will you promote it? How will you plan the editorial of  content to be as efficient and productive as possible?   Are you measuring customer interactions with your content ON and OFF the site? What feedback mechanisms are in place for your content creators to know what’s working and what’s not? How can multiple departments responsible for creating content work together?  How can you make the corporate approval process more productive and less like a stranglehold on your content publishing plans?  How are you measuring up to competitor content strategies? What content strategy is reasonable given current resources but IMPACTFUL enough to give you a competitive edge? I also challenge companies that are starting new web sites to take a fresh look at the content component of their web marketing strategy. Don’t make your fancy, flashy web site a tombstone for search marketing. Assess the landscape in your topical category and identify what kind of content structures, topics and audiences make the most sense for your own editorial plans. What will distinguish you from the competition? What are the most cost effective, yet high impact investments you can make to reach content marketing goals? What technologies will help your content creation, management and promotion yield the best possible results? How has your company and web site have addressed these challenges? Is your company a tombstone web site? What objections are keeping you from making these changes?

Getting More From Your Google Maps Profile This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Mobile and desktop surfers alike are turning to Google Maps to find local and sometimes nearby businesses. Optimizing your web pages for local search has become an extremely important part of the local marketing mix. Claiming and building strong profiles in the local search directories is another must for the new local search habits. Today’s post and accompanying video explains a bit of tweak that I suggest can make your Google Maps profile even more local search term friendly. As shown in the video above, once you claim your Google Maps Profile (Go to the Google Local Business Center ) you have the freedom to do lots of customization, including customizing the very important “category” listings, which Google relies very heavily upon to determine when to show your profile. You must choose one category suggested by Google, but are free to add up to four more that can contain city names as part of the category. In my opinion, Las Vegas plumber is a much stronger local category than just plumber. Watch this quick video and then go strengthen up your profile Related Posts: Adding YouTube Video to your Google Local profile Google Adds Wonderwheel Search Results Option More Local Marketing Tools from Google Some Video Thoughts on Social Media TweetDeck Adds Lists and LinkedIn Like this post? Share it with others

Google Local Storm is Brewing This content from: Duct Tape Marketing I’m out in Las Vegas at CES giving a couple talks on social media for AMEX OPEN and one of the big topics is Google’s new Nexus One phone . While it is a bit interesting that they’ve jumped into yet another market, I think the message that’s getting lost in a great deal of their recent moves is the way they are setting up to take over local advertising, marketing and search. I’m working on a series of posts on this topic (small business better get good at local search or prepare to disappear.) and the recent holiday visit from my college and just out of college age kids reinforced what’s going on with local search and Google. By the way, when I say local search I mean when someone is trying to find a business online in their town. When twenty somethings want to find something they often go to one of two sources – in this order 1) They fire up a mobile browser, plug in “dentist” and call the closest pin drop or 2) they ask a close friend. Understand that neither of these methods involves advertising, marketing or even search for that matter. No Yellow book, no print ad, no SEO – it’s becoming very much about showing up on the local search map. (I understand that this is a new form of SEO, but you better get your arms around it if you are either an SEO provider or small business.) Case in point – Google announce yesterday another feature making local search even easier (only on new iPhones and Android phones for now) The feature is called “ near me now ” – you can read Google’s near me now announcement here. Click to enlarge the images If you’ve given Google permission to use your phone’s current location (under settings link) when you use your mobile browser you will see a new link under the Google search button that says: current city Near me now. If you click that you will get a menu of common places such as coffee and bars and the ability to click on one and find all the places in Google local nearest you now. Pretty darn easy way to drive business isn’t it? Well, if anyone thinks Google put the Yellow book directories out of business just for sport, think again. This is the total domination of local search for ad money coming soon storm. Get in the storm shelter while it’s cheap! More to come on this. Related Posts: Google Adds Local Search to Mobile Phones Google Local Finally Adds Ability To List Your Local Business The World Is Local The Local Search War Just Got Interesting Google Maps expands local view Like this post? Share it with others

Welcome to the first BIGLIST review of SEM and SEO blogs for 2010!  What a year it will be. We reviewed hundreds of marketing blogs in 2009 and well over a thousand since we started the original list. Today’s BIGLIST update focuses on a few local search marketing blogs we’ve recently discovered. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and we know online marketers already like the BIGLIST of online marketing blogs reviews. Expand2Web Blog – The design winner for this BIGLIST Update Local SEM Blog Edition goes to Expand3Web by Don Campbell. This blog offers a rich mix of WordPress and Local search marketing advice as well as how to screencasts & videos as well as a podcast. And now on to the other Local Search Marketing additions to TopRank’s BIGLIST this week: GEO Local SEO - Steve Hatcher aka Stever recently branched out from his main blog to this new local SEO focused blog that offers specific, firsthand and actionable tips for local search marketing. The first posts focus on Google Local & Maps and promises to cover “just about anything pertaining to local web marketing”. Optimized! – Mary Bowling  is an experienced online marketer who writes for a Local Search Marketing column for ClickZ. She’s also blogged her observations and insights about a range of SEO topics and of course, local SEM since December 2007. Mihmorandum – David Mihm is a well known local search marketer and designer out of Portland that blogs about his involvement in the search marketing industry and offers opinions and observations of what small businesses should know about local SEO. This blog is well worth adding to your RSS reader. Local Search Simplified – Shagun Vatsa is a consultant in Toronto and with her blog, she focuses on adding value to tried and tested online marketing strategies and offering quality advice on how small businesses can leverage local search, Google maps, SEO and SEM. Local Search Optimization – Netherlands based Martijn Beijk blogs about local search optimization, Universal search, mobile, Google’s Local Business Center and location-based services.  He also reviews tools, which is handy and a definitive guide to KML and sitemaps for SEO. Search Marketing Insights – Dev Basu is another Toronto based search marketer and he promises “no BS marketing strategies for small and big biz alike”. He writes about local search, small business marketing, online yellow pages and social media. He also writes about industry involvement such as speaking at conferences like Search Engine Strategies. For reference, here are a few Local Search Marketing Blogs already included in TopRank’s BIGLIST: Small Business SEM by Matt McGee Screenwerk – Greg Sterling Local SEO Guide by Andrew Shotland Kelsey Group Blog Understanding Google Maps & Local Search by Mike Blumenthal Local MN Blog by Paul Jahn If you’ve been included in the BIGLIST of SEM Blogs, then be sure to add some BIGLIST Badge flair to your blog. What Local search engine marketing or online marketing blogs would you add to BIGLIST? BIGLIST Development Note: We’ve been working to develop a more effective and interesting way to organize and manage the BIGLIST of marketing blogs, which will offer categorization, sorting and ranking as well as many other pieces of information about each blog. The all new BIGLIST will launch in February 2010.

Small Businesses Will Simply Become More Naturally Social This content from: Duct Tape Marketing This past year brands large and small rushed head on into social media marketing. They had to learn about all things Twitter, hire social media consultants and create special social media metrics and budgets. Now that hype surrounding the next new thing has settled a bit, businesses are coming around to the understanding that social media isn’t a department or separate marketing tactic. In fact, It’s not so much a tool as it is a behavior. And as such it can and should permeate the whole of the business. Trapping social media engagement in the marketing department and demanding a tradition ROI measurement structure is a mistake. Social media activity and behavior can help facilitate communication and connection with your entire collaboration universe: prospects, customers, suppliers, partners, and employees and as such should be freed from the limited thinking. I’m not saying you shouldn’t demand a return on anything you do, but I am suggesting that you explode the notion of social media as one segment of one department. My guess is the most successful small business will simply become more naturally social. Here are few ways social media behavior is applied throughout. Hiring – LinkedIn is the one the leading tools used by organizations these days to find job candidates. Scanning social media participation of prospective hires is a great way to access their social skills and (one of my new favorite terms thanks to Tara Hunt @missrogue) wuffie factor – a bit of a social media graph that can demonstrate what one values. Training – Using social bookmarking tools like delicious or Instapaper you can easily create reading lists of information your entire team, customers in various industry segments or strategic partners should read to learn and grow. Awareness – Social media has become a tremendous lead generation tool when used as a way to create awareness about valuable, education based content. Facebook Ads , for example are a great tool to employ to point out your upcoming webinars. Public Relations – One of the best ways to achieve media coverage these days is to build relationships with journalists using social media tools. Most every journalist has a blog, leave comments and participate in their conversation. Create a Twitter List of key journalists for your industry. Create Google Alerts for those same journalists and start building relationships – that’s how you get covered Referrals – Giving and receiving referrals was, is and remains the first and ultimate social behavior. Making a referral publicly, in a forum like Biznik , is a great way to demonstrate your belief in the power of giving. Reading and leaving ratings and reviews on sites like Yelp! is another great way to start the referral machine. Strategic Partners – Finding strategic partners to work on projects or simply share the work of marketing to a target group is a great strategy empowered through social media tools. You can easily find businesses to connect with through networks like OpenForum or LinkedIn and then use a tool like MeetUp to co-host an event. (Disclosure: I am a contributor to OpenForum.) Internal News – Using a tool like Yammer , Posterous , or even well formed hashtags on Twitter is a great way to communicate with a team and highlight content that should be seen by that team. Setting up RSS feeds and alerts for brand, industry and competitive mentions is another simple way to make sure everyone knows what’s going on and being said. Lead Conversion – Adding a customer or prospect’s social activity to a CRM record through tools such as ACT! 2010 or Batchbook is a great way to discover the wants, needs, interests and challenges they face. Carefully reviewing that information can lead to ways to deepen relationships and even uncover unmet needs. It’s funny how often we sell something our existing customers are asking for but didn’t we had! Customer Service – Countless organizations have turned to Twitter as way a to communicate with customers in need of some help. I think the serving of customers in public offers a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate how well you take care of business. Research – I get great information every time I ask a question on LinkedIn or put up a quick Involver application poll on Facebook. The speed of this kind of research and the conversations that can erupt offer incredible opportunities to learn and connect. Inspiration – This one can be hard for some get their head around, but I can’t tell you how ofter I’ve turned to my RSS reader to find inspiration for an idea, content, and even just as a way to regain my focus. In fact here’s my list of 10 places (mostly social) I turn to for content inspiration. SEO – In case you haven’t heard, social media and SEO are pretty much hitched. Simply building profiles in communities such as TED or BusinessWeek Exchange can help you claim search real estate and provide those valuable links back to your primary web site. Testing – I’ve seen authors test book titles, businesses test pricing and logo designs, and professionals test various service offerings in Facebook and Twitter. The immediate and often quite informed feedback of a carefully built social network is an extremely useful tool. Sourcing – Has anyone used XYZ software? I need a good WordPress designer. These kinds of requests go out all day long in social networks and have become one of the primary ways I make buying decision and hire professionals for projects. Help Desk – Social network communities can provide incredible amounts of help for the most specific kinds of challenges. Let’s say you can’t make a computer network connect. One tweet can provide the answer. Let’s say you need some Photoshop tips, a quick trip to the Behance Network will likely turn up dozens of design software resources. Brainstorming – When I’m wrestling with an idea for an article, book or strategy I’ll often put some form of the idea out for discussion on Twitter and engage some really smart people who follow me in discussions that can lead to some pretty interesting validation or other conclusions. It’s a fascinating process. Of course you can also create public Mindmeister mind maps and draw in even more brainstorming collaboration with employees, customers and partners. What ways have you found to apply social behavior to your organization? Image credit: vbsouthern Related Posts: 7 Simple Truths of Social Media Marketing 5 Tips for Getting More From Your Blog 2008 will be the year of the personalized social business network Is networking online really that different? The Ultimate Social Marketing Question Like this post? Share it with others

What Small Business Needs to Do to Get Ready for Mobile Marketing Now This content from: Duct Tape Marketing We’ve been talking about the coming of mobile marketing for a long time now. I remember talking about it when I was doing work for one of first PCS carriers, Aerial Communications (now owned by T-Mobile), back in 1995 of so. Mobile marketing has taken far longer to evolve than people imagined, but I believe we are on the doorstep of an evolution in marketing that will rival social media in terms of impact. First off, what is mobile marketing really? To me it’s not a hot trend driven by some new killer technology so much as a realization of the fact that more people have mobile devices than land lines and those devices have evolved to contain the power of usability of multiple devices, including desktop computers. According to industry source dotMobi four mobile devices are purchased today for every personal computer purchased. My current mobile device is a phone, email client, web browser, digital camera, video camera, digital recorder, music player, alarm clock, navigation system, compass, calendar, to-do list, flashlight, book reader, hard drive, guitar tuner, and four-track recorder. People are using mobile devices for everything, including surfing and shopping for local businesses, products, and services. Marketers must now come to grips with the inclusion of this device as one of the considerations whether it’s to broadcast or be found. In this coming year the buzz around mobile marketing will get very strong as big brands rush to create text coupons, iPhone apps, and offerings based on your phone’s current location, but most small businesses can play in the mobile game by simply making these subtle changes. Read and learn The first step to getting involved in mobile marketing is getting educated. These sites are a great place to start. dotMobi – Mobile industry resource to promote the top level domain .mobi filled with great information and tools Alltop Mobile – List of the leading blogs covering all things mobile Mobile Marketer Magazine – Publication dedicated to industry coverage Kim Dushinski’s Mobile Marketing Handbook – Great book and web site covering mobile marketing from a user and provider point of view Search Engines Bookmark the mobile versions of the major search engines and start learning how differently they return and display search results. This is an important area as mobile SEO will differ for now from traditional SEO and understanding the differences is a part of the game. Google Mobile Blog Yahoo Mobile Bing for Mobile Analytics Mobile marketing may be more important to some industries or target market demographics initially than others. Restaurants and anyone trying to attract customers under 30, for example, have better jump in with both feet, but eventually the local accounting firm will need to master mobile marketing as well. One of the first steps is to get a sense of how many people today are visiting and viewing your web sites using a mobile device. There are many things that can be done to address the needs of this audience once you start to learn about them. Mobile web analytics packages have become popular in recent years. Google Analytics – This free tool does the job to some degree if you set-up a customer segment for a list of mobile browsers or screen resolutions associated with mobile devices Mobilytics is a free tool that can track mobile site traffic and web application usage. Bango – a paid tool that boasts the best accuracy and is a leader in this rather new field Mobile Friendly Sites While mobile coupons and location based offers may seem far off for your local small business, the fact that a growing percentage of web surfers use their mobile devices to view your web site is here today. Creating a mobile version of your web site must become a priority. There are a number of ways to address this task. You can work with a designer to create a smaller, simpler site that involves mobile standards or you can employ one of the growing number of bridge tools that can convert your site. For now, the mobile site converter tools look very promising as a way to get a mobile version of your site immediately and also include some of the necessary SEO, sitemaps and analytics at the same time. MoFuse – this paid service can convert your entire site and put it on a custom domain such as m.ducttapemarketing.com. The good news is that you can get your blog converted for free. MOBIFY – Another converter that offers a nice list of features for a monthly fee EverywhereIGo – Nice set of features including form building and SMS functionality WordPress Mobile Pack – Plugin that offers mobile functions for WordPress blogs Tools like the ones listed above are a great solution right now, but I suspect, as mobile sites become the norm, web design firms and open source plugins will create mobile versions of sites as part of a standard package. Auto detection – A word about mobile domains. Once you create a mobile site with its own URL you will want to make sure your server determines when a mobile browser in visiting your primary site URL and automatically redirects it to your mobile site. This way you won’t need to promote two separate URLs. This is standard in most mobile site converters, but you may need to add some code to the head of your main site to facilitate this step. Here’s some bonus reading on Mobile Site Detection . Text Message Campaigns and Ads Text messages get read – depending on the source, research suggests it’s over 90%. So, at some point, small businesses will need to embrace text message (also called SMS) campaigns. This new frontier will eventually suffer fatigue in ways the email enjoys currently, but done right, it is a powerful new tool. One very simple principle to get started – this is not another broadcast channel, it’s a way to offer useful information to people who want to receive it. Choosing the right vendor and strategy is key to your success. Offering coupons, Text2Win, and SMS auto responder campaigns are a few simple ways to start building a Text Message database for future use. Clickatell – whole business communications solutions using SMS Mobivity - focuses on use of short code messaging – ie: Text DuctTape to win Mobireply – very simple text message auto-responder AdMob – offers mobile advertising opportunities for small businesses and web publishers Mobile Apps for Smallest Business Eventually you may feel the overwhelming need to create your very own mobile applications like those you see in the iTunes app store. You can hire a programmer to create a custom app or check out one of these low-cost simply builders. As users choose mobile apps over web based sites this is a tool that many businesses must consider even for content that is available on their main site. MotherApp Swebapps MobileAppLoader Local Directories One final thought and plea for you to get your company listed with the local search directories. A great deal of local search on the mobile device (ie: people looking for a local business to buy from) will happen around the local search directories that are powered with click to call, maps, directions, and coupons. This may be the highest priority if you haven’t yet claimed this real estate. Google Local Business Center Yahoo Local Bing Local Related Posts: The Mobile Phone as a Local Marketing Tool Mobile friendly blogs the easy way A Mobile Marketing Primer Google Adds Local Search to Mobile Phones R U Collecting Mobile Phone Numbers Yet? Like this post? Share it with others

Yourl Very Own Branded Link Shortener This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Google and Facebook both announced link shortening services this week – Google’s – goog.gl and Facebook’s fb.me (mostly used in twitter and mobile shares, but fb.me/ducttapemarketing takes you to my Fan page.) Link shorteners have been around for years, but they are certainly getting hot right now it appears. I think I first used one called TinyURL as far back as 2000. What these scripts do is take very long URL like this search string on small business marketing – http://www.google.com/search?q=smallbusiness+marketing&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a and allow you to turn it into something tidy and even memorable like this http://dtmcoach.com/smbizmarketing. The brevity required on Twitter spawned a host of these services for the very practical shorter links, but because link shorteners are redirection scripts, and they pass the visitor through a link, they can also provide a variety of tracking and analysis for what happens to that link. I use su.pr for instance to shorten links on Twitter, track and analyze, and tap into additional traffic from the tool’s sponsor StumbleUpon. Others commonly use Bit.ly and Ow.ly for the various features they offer. Since everyone is doing it, I thought I would let you know about a way to create your very own, branded link shortening service, giving you the ability to create links that support your brand while impressing all who come into contact with your short links. Here’s how you do it. 1) Get a really cool short URL (you can host it on any URL, but the idea is short – I have dtmcoach.com and duc.ttape.us for example) 2) You’ll need hosting – pretty much any host that could run a WordPress blog will do 3) Grab a free program called Yourl - read the installation instruction that come in the Readme.html file – the only real trick is a little bit of set-up in one file for the database (if you’ve set up a WordPress blog you’ll be familiar) 4) Check to make sure the setting for privacy is true and custom is true – you don’t want just anyone to create links using your brand, right? The custom setting allows you to create a word or phrase for your link so you can have /product vs. /ek3isk 5) Start creating links like dtmcoach.com/awesomeblog (that will bring you right back here) 6) View your dashboard to track and edit your links (Once you start putting this links out there you don’t want to change them) 7) Set-up the toolbar widget so you can create your URLs on the fly from any site or page you are visiting and easily submit to Twitter, Facebook or MySpace. Related Posts: Social Media Profiles as Tools for Links and Traffic Stay Out of The Bad Part of Town links for 2007-06-30 My Top 10 Google Search Shortcut Tips Buying links is unnatural Like this post? Share it with others