Combining SEO and Social Media

Good article today from MarketingSherpa Combine SEO and Social Media to Generate Web Leads: 5 Steps, which discusses blending social media with SEO to increase site traffic and leads.

Adding blogs to your website (hanging off your corporate domain) will increase the likelihood that your copy will get searched and found, thus bringing traffic in, and gaining increased organic lift for your overall website.

Wordtracker and Google Keyword Tool

As part of an SEO strategy (which is a traffic building and ultimately lead gen strategy), you're hopefully looking closely at your title, description and meta keywords to ensure that your site is fully optimized for organic site indexing.

Two indispensable tools (one free, one $59 after free 7 day trial) I use for helping to figure out keywords are:

• Google Keyword Tool: This FREE tool from Google allows you to plug in current keywords you're using (or considering) and provides keyword ideas right back to you. Simply enter your keywords (one per line) as words or phrases in the data field, hit the Get Keyword Ideas button, and after a few seconds Google provides you with related keyword terms. In addition, Google also provides local search volume figures for each word/s, global monthly search volume and the competition for these words with other advertiser. Neat stuff -- and free!
• Wordtracker: WT is one of many keyword research tools out there that I find works very well and is relatively inexpensive. Similar to the Google tool you type in your keywords and phrases and Wordtracker provides back other keywords that are most relevant to your business. In my opinion it provides a 'deeper dive" than Google as well as being able to see search rankings in engines other than Google's. It's quick and easy and can help you find some golden keyword nuggets that perhaps your competition hasn't found yet
  

Article Marketing

Working closely with a few clients these past few weeks and just now coming back up for air (and some new blog posts)...

I was reminded recently that in the search for low-cost ways to market your company and brand, one area many companies overlook is article marketing. There are a number of online article aggregators like eZine, GoArticles and Articlesbase who are constantly on the lookout for viable content and are FREE to upload your stories. In turn it is free for people to download or link to your articles thus making your message available to a wide audience of readers. You'd probably be surprised how many companies/publishers look to these sites to provide them w/free, useful content that they in turn can use to power their own sites.

It's simple and quick to sign up for these sites and upload your stories. When you create your profile upon initial sign-up, you provide your name, a short bio, the article copy, a category and usually a sub-category. Preview, edit, submit, you're done.

This is an especially low-cost way to leverage existing articles, assets, copy that exists in your corporate silos and get some additional site traffic and brand building for your company and its' products. Give it shot...

Continuum vs Breadth Offers

I've written quite a bit about how a one-size-fits-all offer simply will not prove effective in marketing to an extended decision chain. By that I mean a single offer (or if you prefer a 'Call-to-action') generally cannot speak to the pain points/interests of a C-level exec, VP, Dir, Manager and Analyst in total, as well as specific offers created for each target could (most especially as they progress thru the marketing funnel). I've run a number of tests that show conversions rise when offers are built that address specific target concerns or charters.

With that in mind, start your offer development strategy by considering not only who the target is and what's top of mind for them, but also where the target is in the marketing funnel.

There are circumstances when offers can be consolidated between more closely-related targets, say C-level and VP-level targets. These types of offers, called breadth offers, are broader in scope and are designed to speak to a wider swath of people in the decision chain (while being cost efficient to the overall program). These offers are usually top-of-funnel assets that speak to more general issues relating to business issues, problems, challenges and would be of interest to a cross-over collection of individuals in the decision chain. They're specific enough to create sufficient awareness to prompt the collection of profile information at the initial stages of when an organization is vetting and researching an idea or product.

However as each target's interests (and their responsibilities) become more specific as the entire decision chain progresses thru the funnel, continuum offers support a multi-touch, lead nurturing model by providing progressively detailed and highly targeted content needed to attract, satisfy and advance individual targets from touchpoint to touchpoint. Continuum offers provide coordinated incentives for deeper engagement and mutually satisfying funnel progress, ensuring that each interaction you have with these decsion makers meets their need to seek more relevant information relative to their own roles and responsibilties to the overall decision.

Quick Tips to Improve Your Site's Organic Search Rankings

Chatted with a couple companies recently who both were not taking full advantage of a few simple steps to drastically help improve their search rankings for their company website:

• For your home page code, turn your attention from meta tags for keywords and concentrate more on what your title and meta tag description says. Remember that these days Google pays less and less attention to meta tag keywords due to the spamming and keyword stuffing companies have done to try to improve their search rankings.

• Keywords found in the Meta TITLE Tag have highest ranking/indexing value with most search engines; they should contain the MOST important searchable keywords or #1 most common search phrase that people would use to find your type of solution (‘Find updated drivers’?) Use a 60 character limit as some search engines will only display a maximum of 60 characters of text for a TITLE in their search results
• The META Description Tag should contain a brief description of what can be found on the current web page and be 150 characters or less in length (there's a 150 character limit b/c some search engines only list 150 in their result).
• Remember to sync your meta tags to your page copy as best you can. Aim for 7-10% density in your site copy for best results
• Use keyword, link and page graders from companies like HubSpot to see which words are ranking highest, then optimize your site accordingly

Turn-key Online Communities

I chatted last week with Dan Ziman, marketing director with Lithium Technologies. There are now a number of interesting companies like Lithium (Helpstream, Jive, Telligent among others) that offer various iterations of social network software that can build your online community very quickly and at a reasonable cost.

Lithium for instance offers (in a SAAS model) a number of integrated, social technology products including forums, blogs, chat rooms and idea exchanges that power online customer communities for both large and small businesses. In Lithium's words these products 'inspire customers to share knowledge, connect with each other, and connect with the enterprise, thus providing a unique method for companies to identify, engage, and understand customers. As a result, businesses measurably improve their marketing and sales, accelerate innovation, and increase customer satisfaction.'

Helpstream, Jive, Telligent and others provide their own types of collaboration software, community software, and social networking software solutions that allow companies to develop an almost instantaneous community presence and build from there. If you're seeking to build out your online community and wondering where to start, check out these vendors to see if perhaps that might be a viable way for you to get the ball rolling.

Social Media as a Listening Platform

Much has been written about the importance of including social media in your marketing strategy and the types of activities that you can and should begin to explore. Perhaps one aspect of social marketing that might get short shrift is what Dave Evans of ClickZ writes about today in Get Started With Social Media -- leveraging social media as a listening platform.

There may in fact be greater merit right now to setting up your online community with blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook et. al. as more listening and feedback outposts than as platforms for outbound marketing. If you remember from past posts I've written, I'm not sure if outbound marketing/messaging has yet found its' ideal niche in social media marketing (SMM). What social media can do right now is help form the foundation of an inbound marketing strategy, where you make available your intellectual capital, your ideas and solutions for solving business challenges and allow prospects and customers to find your brilliance rather than your going out and hunting them. By becoming a thought leader on specific business problems and best practices you gain much more credibility amongst your intended targets.

Part of that inbound strategy includes using social media as the true interactive medium that it is. And that means listening to all that is written about your company, your brand and your competitors. Social media is an outstanding marketing research tool. Just as important as providing your thinking and ideas online is the response to those ideas that you receive. It provides you with an ongoing dialogue with your constituents, to have a conversation, giving them the ability to express their likes and dislikes, what their needs, opinions, complaints are. How they like to be communicated to. It enables you to share, learn, better engage. Ultimately it gives you a deeper understanding and stronger bond w/your targets and helps guide and inform your own product/solution development.