Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

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What’s Your Content Strategy for 2011?

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011
A content strategy is fast becoming more and more essential in today’s marketing arena.
With competition and noise increasing in the marketplace, especially online, unique content is the key to standing out from your competitors in the ever-changing digital landscape.
This landscape is changing with channels of communication between customers, products, services and companies blending together in the form of online content, social media and new PR, whilst the host is most likely to be the web, whether through a computer or a mobile platform.
By changing your business to becoming a trusted source of information and content you are stepping into the realm of attraction marketing rather than the outdated ‘push marketing’ strategy that has increasing limitations.
Your content, if planned out well, can be stretched by re-using a message and syndicating it through different media channels. For example a podcast can be transcribed to be a whitepaper or report, as well as re-purposed to be a blog post, article or press release.
SEO benefits
Content has high SEO benefits as well. These days SEO is not just about tweaking your website so it can be picked up by the search engines, but also the content you distribute through other platforms such as Press Release sites, Remote Blogs, Social Media, Video and Podcast platforms, which can all appear in search engine results as well.
Integrating the social web is a key part of any content strategy and by creating content that answers questions your prospects are searching for, you can engage much quicker with that prospect.
According to Covario’s study, 2011 The Year of Facebook, using social media to organically build backlinks will be a mainstream strategy in 2011.
Whatever the platform ‘valuable non-sales like content’ on the subject of your market is essential to build trust and rapport with your audience.
A content strategy is fast becoming more and more essential in today’s marketing arena. With competition and noise increasing in the marketplace, especially online, unique content is the key to standing out from your competitors in the ever-changing digital landscape. This landscape is changing with channels of communication between customers, products, services and companies blending together in the form of online content, social media and new PR, whilst the host is most likely to be the web, whether through a computer or a mobile platform. By changing your business to becoming a trusted source of information and content you are stepping into the realm of attraction marketing rather than the outdated ‘push marketing’ strategy that has increasing limitations. Your content, if planned out well, can be stretched by re-using a message and syndicating it through different media channels. For example a podcast can be transcribed to be a whitepaper or report, as well as re-purposed to be a blog post, article or press release. SEO benefits Content has high SEO benefits as well. These days SEO is not just about tweaking your website so it can be picked up by the search engines, but also the content you distribute through other platforms such as Press Release sites, Remote Blogs, Social Media, Video and Podcast platforms, which can all appear in search engine results as well. Integrating the social web is a key part of any content strategy and by creating content that answers questions your prospects are searching for, you can engage much quicker with that prospect. According to Covario’s study, 2011 The Year of Facebook, using social media to organically build backlinks will be a mainstream strategy in 2011. Whatever the platform ‘valuable non-sales like content’ on the subject of your market is essential to build trust and rapport with your audience.

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Posted in Marketing |

7 ways to use Google Places for Local Marketing

Thursday, December 16th, 2010
Google Places, previously Google local, displays a listing for businesses with a physical location featuring maps, directions and other information for geographically influenced searches.
In the Google search engine results pages (SERPs) seven places are currently displayed along with a map on the right hand side.
With 20% of all searches for specific locations or businesses and Comscore estimating that 66%+ of local customers find businesses using local search – Google Places an ideal tool for local marketing to tap into.
• Local Map highlighting places now above sponsored ads on the right hand side
• Places appear above the organic listings and appear a lot bigger
• G Places is a more social offering with reviews and recommendations linking in with Google HotPot
Here’s 7 quick tips to using Google Places:
Claim Your Place
Google can automatically create places for businesses from information online directories, social networks and maps, so don’t be surprised if yours appears and be sure to claim it.
Business Information
Make sure you input correct consistent information such as your ‘official’ business name, business address, telephone number, website, operating hours and so forth. If your real business name is a bit obscure then add a keyword to help prospects understand what you do.
Take care over writing descriptions and keep the end user in mind as well as
Use all available media.
Places give you the option to add video and images. Use all the slots available if you can.
Categories
Use all the category options and several of the ones Google suggests. You have an opportunity to create your own keyword rich ones as well.
Coupons and Discounts
Why not use coupons and discounts to provide value and an incentive to visitors.
Citations
Citations are sources from outside of Google that provide information and details about your business.
Create your own citations by submitting to other local directories. The more of these you have, the more credibility your business has on a local marketing level.
Encourage reviews
Get as many as you can. Google aggregates reviews from many sites across the Internet. If customers aren’t biting then provide some kind of incentive or discount so they will review your business. It’s that important.
It is worth investing a bit of time in Google Places as this will yield dividends in terms of searches and enquiries for your business.
If you would like help optimising your Google Place feel free to Contact Us
google-placesGoogle Places, previously Google local, displays a listing for businesses with a physical location featuring maps, directions and other information for geographically influenced searches. In the Google search engine results pages (SERPs) seven places are currently displayed along with a map on the right hand side. 20% of all searches on Google by users are for specific locations or businesses and Comscore estimating that 66%+ of local customers find businesses using local search – Google Places an ideal tool for local marketing to tap into. • Local Map highlighting places now above sponsored ads on the right hand side • Places appear above the organic listings and appear a lot bigger • Google Places is a more social offering with reviews and recommendations linking in with Google HotPot Here’s 7 quick tips to using Google Places: Claim Your Place Google can automatically create places for businesses from information online directories, social networks and maps, so don’t be surprised if yours appears and be sure to claim it. Business Information Make sure you input correct consistent information such as your ‘official’ business name, business address, telephone number, website, operating hours and so forth. If your real business name is a bit obscure then add a keyword to help prospects understand what you do. Take care over writing descriptions and keep the end user in mind as well as Use all available media. Places give you the option to add video and images. Use all the slots available if you can. Categories Use all the category options and several of the ones Google suggests. You have an opportunity to create your own keyword rich ones as well. Coupons and Discounts Why not use coupons and discounts to provide value and an incentive to visitors. Citations Citations are sources from outside of Google that provide information and details about your business. Create your own citations by submitting to other local directories. The more of these you have, the more credibility your business has on a local marketing level. Encourage reviews Get as many as you can. Google aggregates reviews from many sites across the Internet. If customers aren’t biting then provide some kind of incentive or discount so they will review your business. It’s that important. It is worth investing a bit of time in Google Places as this will yield dividends in terms of searches and enquiries for your business. If you would like help optimising your Google Place feel free to Contact Us

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Posted in Marketing |

Why Start an Email Newsletter?

Monday, August 16th, 2010
newsQuite often this question comes up and is something we’d encourage business owners to seriously consider as part of their online marketing strategy. Email Newsletters compliment your website or blog nicely and can drive traffic back to them and help the longevity of your customer relationships. 1. If you engage with your email list (you are building an email list aren’t you?) and offer value to it you will build trust in your brand and services. 2. Your readers may not need your services today or tomorrow, but if you regularly touch bass with them, they WILL remember you when they need you! 3. It’s very inexpensive compared to printed newsletters or papers. You can reach thousands of subscribers for mere pence per person as opposed to taking on printing, posting and fulfilment costs. 4. Email newsletters encourage word-of-mouth advertising and make it easy for your subscribers to forward your email to others and also allows you to reach people you may not have reached any other way. 5. A good Email newsletter platform will provides track-able results giving you access to information such as who clicked what link, open rates and other really interesting data!

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Posted in Marketing |

Social Media Mistakes

Thursday, June 24th, 2010
Social Media and Social Networking can be great marketing tools for your business, but are you going about it in the right way? Here are just a few pointers. What’s Your Master plan? It is essential to have a plan before you start otherwise you will become rudderless and end of wasting a lot of time. Sit down and think through what you want to achieve with your social media message. Is it to raise your brand and business profile? Launch a new product or service? Establish yourself as an expert? Me Me Me! Your social media content is all based on YOU and YOUR BUSINESS and nothing else. Your followers might get irritated after a while and start to see your business in a negative way, especially if you’re just trying to sell. Be Social Interacting, sharing and connecting with others online is what social media is all about rather than being a broadcast system! Auto Messaging People follow you because you have something of interest to say. An automatic message saying ‘ thanks for following’ holds no real value and is just another tweet to delete. Because it is auto-generated it doesn’t appear to be genuine. Overposting Sometimes you see people have tweeted a message 8 times in a row and it doesn’t look good at all. Try to spread out your messages evenly. You bang out the same tweet/message again and again or just post one after the other. This just looks like you’re contaminating the feed.

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media |

The Changing Face of Online Search and SEO

Thursday, February 25th, 2010
The world of Internet search is changing fast, especially the world of Google search. You may have noticed when doing searches that there are a lot real-time results such as Twitter, Facebook and other social network content, although Google can only index status updates from Facebook Pages – which are “for organisations, businesses, celebrities, and bands to broadcast great information to fans in an official, public manner.” Bing have a deal in place with Facebook that goes further, indexing individuals’ status updates which have been set to public and Yahoo! have also started to integrate Tweet content.

search2-feb10

Another big change on Google is the personalised search. This had an effect if you were logged into your gmail or any other Google account, but now you don’t have to be logged in. This means individuals will see an increasingly different result to another individual. This isn’t great news for those concerned with SEO as you no longer know where your website will rank. When a result has been clicked a number of times, then that site will start to appear higher up in the search rankings for that visitor. Personalised search is nothing new. It all started in 2004  with a beta release through Google labs allowed users to refine search results based on their interests. Then, in mid-April, 2005, Google rolled out its search history feature called “My Search History.” This kept track of all the users’ searches and every page that they viewed from the search results. This time Google required users to have an active Google account. The process has been refined along the way climaxing with the recent change. Personalised search involves many, many factors.  Among them are:
  • Geo-graphic factors (local top-level domain, IP address and query analysis)
  • Technical factors such as browser, OS capabilities, cookies and toolbars)
  • Time of day, time of year and other historical data
  • Behavioural query history, interaction with search engine result pages and interactions with advertising and surfing habits).
So what actions can be taken in regards to personalised search? Well best SEO practices still stand and these factors have become more important: Factors such as demogaphics, keyword/phrase targeting strategies, quality content, search result conversion, freshness, site useability, social bookmarks, and analytics will all have an impact on your SERPS. Practically this means:
  • Get to know and research your audience and give them the (great) content they want
  • Titles and Snippets that are compelling will attract a better click through rate which will in turn help these sites/pages rank better
  • Make social bookmarking available and easy to do on your website
  • Google Analytics will help in measuring both paid and organic traffic flows
  • A logical navigation and architecture for a quality end user experience
Google Caffeine Google also recently introduced Google Caffeine which ranks pages faster, giving you quicker results. And your page load times will now be a factor in ranking on Google. Simply put, the slower a page loads, the lower it will be ranked. Google describes Caffeine as: “a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.” Of course this all has implications for your search engine optimisation and your online business strategy and something to be well aware of! :-)

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media |

Is your Business taking full advantage of Video Marketing?

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
Video is the one element of the Internet that has everyone’s attention. A majority of Internet users watch video as a preferred choice and it is an area that holds many advantages for small and medium businesses, whatever your business is. 82% of people in the US watched an average of 9.7 hours of online video in August 2009 with consumption in the UK just as high (source *comscore) We recently helped an International Restaurant Chain deliver video by email for their latest offers and events which had great feedback and a very high open rate.
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The advantages? Firstly video allows viewers to see you and connect with you as a person and works much better than words on a page and provokes a much better result. It can also be syndicated across many different video platforms, giving you additional search engine results whereby your video thumbnail may appear in the middle of search results which makes it an altogether much more tempting option to click as opposed to all those word based results. There are over 75 million videos on YouTube with around 150k being added every day. And did you know YouTube is now the #2 search engine used after Google? Google, closely followed by other search engines, integrated their databases several years ago to include video, images and news in what was called universal search. Another great use of video for your business is video testimonials. A very powerful trust factor and a lot more convincing than text quotes, video testimonials can convey great endorsements from your customers and clients.

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