So why did Google buy Zagat? Simple, it’s a feature rich platform that includes reviews and group deals. More importantly, though, Zagat has a huge data set of reviews and already has a strong offline presence.

It’s clear that the acquisition is smart for Google, but what does it mean for your small business?

Table of Contents Local Marketing is Becoming More Relevant Reviews are Important: Convince Your Customers Integrating Offline and Online Marketing Next Steps..

Local Marketing is Becoming More Relevant

Reaching consumers that matter has always been a priority. Historically, it was difficult to reach these specific people online because businesses have always had to compete with global brands.

Previously, Google didn’t prioritize local searchers compared to other searches. Now, it’s able to identify and return local businesses for relevant search (example: searching for “plumbers in nyc”).

This means that business owners need to work to optimize their site and convey to Google what their businesses do and where they do it.

Businesses are able to reach local consumers with more accuracy, making local marketing and SEO more important than ever before.

Reviews are Important: Convince Your Customers

Before the acquisition of Zagat, Google has had and continues to leverage their Business Pages. These are pages you create for your local business that aggregates information and reviews from around the web.

The more reviews a business has, the higher the business ranks and the more visibility it has in search results.

With the addition of Zagat, reviews are now more important than ever before. Google has deeper access to Zagat reviews and data now. It also has the ability to tap into a community of people that actively review restaurants and places, further increasing their ability to leverage user reviews.

The value of a customer review has just increased, meaning businesses must invest more time and energy in convincing their customers to share their thoughts. Customer service, a good product, and employees that care are now even more important aspects of a business’ online strategy.

Integrating Offline and Online Marketing

Zagat’s power in the offline world translated well into the online world. Similarly, businesses now have to identify how they can convince offline users to interact with their businesses online.

It’s not as simple as it seems, having a customer go home (after interacting with your business) and go to your website or place page can be an obstacle. Finding simple ways to incentivize this action is important.

One simple strategy is including a call to action on all fliers, cards, and receipts, inviting users to visit your page and leave a review. The reminder is enough for some customers to go and write a review.

Next Steps…

Google’s acquisition of Zagat is following a trend of local consumers looking for local businesses; your strategy must mirror this trend.

Aside from including calls to action on marketing materials, find opportunities to make it easy for customers to leave reviews.

One way to do it is to invest in an iPad or two and create a review kiosk. Ask customers, that have had a good experience of interacting with an employee, to write a review on the spot. Most people won’t do it, but enough will to make the reviews start to add up.

credit: Bouncepad

Another way to build reviews is to just ask for it. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of closing every positive customer service conversation with, “We hope we’ve been able to help you solve your problem quickly. If you have a moment, we’d truly appreciate it if you can review our business on Zagat!”.

Similar to link building, soon you’ll be hearing about review building. This Zagat buyout has definitely signaled that Google will be taking reviews more seriously than ever before.

However you decide to increase the number of reviews your business has, it’s fairly clear that it’s going to be an important small business strategy. Definitely, start thinking about it right away…

Have you noticed that certain things have convinced customers to review your business more often than now? What are you doing to generate online reviews? Leave a comment and share your thoughts!

Instead of giving you yet another strategy or theory, let’s talk about some tactics you can put in place today. The following are specific campaigns that can be setup today, to increase your visibility online.

Table of Contents

• Small Business Website
• Client Newsletter
• LinkedIn Community
• FourSquare Special
• Google Places Page

Small Business Website

The first place to start is with a small business website. This is where you should focus most of your attention.

There are four different media types: owned media, earned media, paid media, and shared media. Your small business website is important because it’s the focus of your online “earned media”.

In the past, launching a business website was difficult. Now, thanks to WordPress and a few themes, you can do it on your own in an afternoon.

I highly recommend using Page.ly to get your WordPress site up and running. For most small businesses, their platform will handle all the traffic at a relatively cheap price.

Then head over to WooThemes, StudioPress, or Thesis and find a theme you like. Something professional and simple, you won’t need to do much. The goal is to just have a simple to use and informative website.

Once you’ve chosen and installed the theme, do the basic WordPress setup (or refer to this post “The Ultimate Resource for Successful Small Business Websites”).

Then, choose a static page as your homepage (this is where you’ll put the basic information about your business) and create an About and Contact page. Once you have these three pages setup, you’ve got a basic yet effective small business website.

If you want to be more advanced, don’t hesitate to create a Blog page and begin posting your own content. Maintaining a business blog is an extremely effective way to build traffic and visibility to your business website, but that’s a topic for another post.

Client Newsletter

The business website gives you visibility online, it’s the platform from which others can learn about the business and its offerings. The next step is to connect with and contact these potential consumers.

When most business owners hear “connect with consumers” they instantly think of social media, the new buzz word. Instead, I’m talking about email.

Email can be an extremely effective tool for reaching potential new leads and for turning customers into repeat buyers.

I use MailChimp to power all my email newsletters. Readers can submit their email in my newsletter form and I email them weekly with recommended links.

Figure out what your consumers could want and use your newsletter to keep in touch with them. By being in their inbox, you stay top of mind.

LinkedIn Group

Professional businesses, such as consulting companies, should make full use of LinkedIn. The LinkedIn community is a great way to reach professionals or to highlight your business as an expert in a field.

LinkedIn offers users the ability to created “Groups” that others can join and interact in. These allow you to connect with potential customers and speak with them directly.

For example, a friend of mine owns a wedding planning firm that caters to wealthier individuals. She realized that LinkedIn would be a great place to reach the exact demographic she’s targeting (wealthy professionals that are too busy to plan their own wedding).

On LinkedIn she created a group for her company where she helps answer basic questions wedding questions. She’s found that by showing what she knows, more people are likely to become customers.

It’s easy to start a LinkedIn Group. You can learn more about creating one here.

FourSquare Special

Small businesses that have a physical location and a need to drive traffic in-store can test the effectiveness of FourSquare and their specials program. The FourSquare program works better for stores that cater to a younger, more technologically advanced, crowd.

Start by first claiming your business on FourSquare and taking control of your store page. Track how often customers check-in to your stores.

If users are actively checking-in to your store your business may be a good match for a “Special”.

However, if your customers don’t really use FourSquare you can try to keep calls-to-action around the store and track its impact.

Once enough customers are checking-in you can use their self-serve platform to schedule “Specials” to drive more foot-traffic.

Look to setup “Specials” that requires customers to bring their friends such as the “Friends” or “Swarm” special. The goal is to incentivize your current customers to spread the word about your business.

You can learn more about using FourSquare and their specials here.

Google Places Page

Local businesses that want to generate more leads or reach consumers in a specific geographic area can use Google Places to highlight their business.

One of the best ways to reach customers is through search engines. People turn to search engines to research vendors and find answers to their problems. If you’re able to solve their problem, then you have a new customer.

Google Place pages are great because they allow small businesses to appear with a Google Map result when people are searching for answers.

For example, search for a “NYC Plumber” in Google. You’ll notice that many of the results have a corresponding “Place Page”. These pages give the businesses an added boost in online visibility.

The most effective way to leverage a Google Place Page is to fill out as much information as possible and request your favorite customers to leave a review. The goal is to have an informational, highly reviews Google Place Page.

Get started by setting up your Google Place Page here.

Final Thoughts

Small business owners have nearly hundred of different options for marketing their business online. There’s social media, paid acquisition, optimizing your business website, and even offline integrations.

Instead of wasting your time learning new theories, look for strategies that you can execute right away.

Don’t forget what Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory”.

How are you putting your marketing to work? What strategies have you executed that have worked well for you? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

I’m always looking for new ways to increase my subscription rate and I found a great way to do it thanks to Derek Halpern and Pat Flynn.

Recently, Pat hosted an interview with Derek on his blog “Smart Passive Income” (brand marketers take note, you learn the most from affiliates and passive income marketers) where they talked about email conversions and building your list.

They talked about some strategies that I really liked and have already put in place on this site. So let’s start by explaining what the strategy was and then exactly how to put it in place.

Table of Contents

• The Strategy
• Recommended Tools
• Newsletter Forms After Posts
• Using a Shortcode

The Strategy

During the interview, Derek and Pat talk about specific conversion points – points at which users are most likely to subscribe to your email list. The two conversion points that stood out to me were: at the end of individual blog posts and multiple points through long page resources.

If you look at the bottom of this post, you’ll see the subscription form. You’ll also see the form multiple times throughout my “Getting Started” article.

I’ve seen that both perform extremely well. Instead of getting a new subscriber every few days, I’m getting new sign ups daily. The site’s conversion rate has gone up considerably.

The strategy definitely works. So now, let’s take a look at how you can execute it. Let’s see how you can easily add the forms to the bottom of your posts and then create a shortcode to easily embed forms into your pages.

Recommend Tools

There are a few tools I specifically use. You don’t have to use them, but the tutorial below assumes you do. As the title suggests, you’ll have to be on the WordPress CMS.

Genesis – The first tool is the Genesis Framework. This blog is powered by the Genesis Framework, a WordPress theme that is very easily customized. I highlight this because the tutorial edits the “function.php” file in your child theme. Thesis users should have the ability to do the same, but check your hooks.

If you’re not sure how to hook into WordPress, make sure you ask someone for help. Obviously, backup your theme and WordPress installation before any heavy lifting.

Wufoo – The second tool I use (and swear by) is Wufoo form builder. I honestly love the system and although at first I thought it a luxury, it’s been a huge help and time saver. It’s great to easily be able to create subscription forms, contact forms, and surveys.

It’s not an overly expensive tool, but it offers some great reporting and hooks into a number of 3rd party applications such as FreshBooks, High Rise, and our third tool, MailChimp.

MailChimp – Some people swear by Aweber, but I love MailChimp. The interface is clean, it’s user friendly, and it works extremely well. The analytics are great and I’ve never had any issues with my email delivery. Both my weekly email and email updates are powered by MailChimp.

Like I said before, you don’t have to use these tools. I’ve just found that they make my life a hell of a lot easier. If you don’t use Wufoo, you’ll get your subscription forms directly from MailChimp or Aweber (or whoever you use for your email list).

Once you’re all set with your list service, the next step is to start embedding the forms.

Newsletter Forms After Posts

The first form we’ll start with is the form directly at the end of the post. I’ll show you how to actually hook into the area after the post and add your form – once it’s there, you’ll be able to style it however you like.

Start by opening your “functions.php” file in your Genesis child theme. This is where you’re able to edit and customize your theme. We’re using a child theme so not to actually edit the Genesis frame work. (Click here to learn more about Child Themes).

In your “functions.php” file, add the code shown below. Change “|Embed Form|” to the code from either Wufoo, or your mail delivery system. You can download the code here.

The above code tells WordPress to add the HTML in the function whenever a single post is shown. The location it’s added is controlled by the theme. In this instance we’re hooking into “genesis_after_post_content” – a hook in the Genesis theme that displays right after the post content.

Once the box is being displayed, edit the Child Theme’s CSS to display the form how you want it to.

Using a Shortcode

The next conversion point that I thought was really smart, was within actual articles.

For example, on my Getting Started page I have 3 calls to action to join the newsletter. Here’s a screenshot of the forms on that page:

When I added the forms, I really didn’t want to include the HTML for the form and the box three times – it would really make the page code messy within WordPress.

Instead of actually typing in the HTML, I used a functionality provided by WordPress called shortcodes. This allows me to add predefined HTML to an article by just adding [shortcode-name]SOME TEXT[/shortcode-name].

In my function, I define the shortcode name to be “form” and use the “SOME TEXT” to be the call to action. Below is the code I include in function.php to define the shortcode. You can download the code here.

Once your short code is all setup, you’ll be able to easily and quickly embed your form into any blog post or page.

Final Thoughts

It’s easy to think of new places to add subscription forms, but the actual coding isn’t always simple. Thanks to the different hooks in the Genesis theme and WordPress short codes, it’s a little bit easier.

Hopefully this tutorial helped you add newsletter forms throughout your site. Please leave a comment and let me know if it worked for you. Also, don’t forget to share any other conversion points you’ve found that work!

Mobile applications segment data, users, and technology. History has taught us that technology wants to converge and that segments break down over time.

The future of the mobile web is the perfect browser; a single application that performs all the functions you already use – creating a single standard regardless of what phone, operating system, or provider your have.

Table of Contents

• The Mobile Problem
• The True Mobile Solution

The Mobile Application Problem

The mobile web is the newest of technological mediums and businesses are just starting to understand how to use it.

The medium is interesting because it can survive isolated from other technology channels. We’ve seen startups that are wholly mobile applications (Instagram is one); startups that only require a user have a data plan and compatible phone.

Herein lies the problem. Technology tends to converge overtime, bring platforms and applications together. The idea is that technology evolves towards one device, one application.

The mobile phone and tablet is proof of the theory. We’ve brought TV and computing power to the phone. Similarly, you see TV and phones converge onto your computers (Hulu and Google Voice).

Mobile web access hasn’t followed the same route. Instead we’re forced to use multiple applications to perform mobile functions. This means that data doesn’t flow between applications easily – the portability of data is nonexistent.

If mobile applications segment users and we know that technology follows a trend of convergence, then it’s fairly safe to say that something will happen to applications to allow for a standard.

There are two apparent outcomes. The first is the creation of a standard for applications across phones, allowing people to easily use an application whether on an Android or iPhone. The second is the creation of a browser feature set that allows content and site users the ability to mimic application functionality.

The True Mobile Solution

While people worry about the next great application, I’m worried about the next great mobile browser and mobile website.

True mobile disruption will come from a single application framework, instead of another application that performs a single function well.

We have applications that hook into location data, camera’s, and contact lists; but no application allows you to do that cross platform.

Imagine the Mint application loading on your phone when you go to Mint.com. Want easy access to it? Just bookmark it to your homescreen.

When you start thinking of the mobile browser as the container for an application, things start to suddenly make more sense.

Final Thoughts

The mobile web and how we interact with it will converge, just like every other technology we use. The question is, who will create the ultimate mobile browser?

What do you think the future of the mobile web is? Do you think mobile websites will become more important? Do you think mobile applications will always be around? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Generally, before I decide to go to a conference it has to fulfill a few criteria. Either it has to be extremely small and advanced (think BlueGlass Marketing Conferences) or it has to be a conference with a huge networking opportunity (the summit falls into this category).

What is the Social Media Summit

The Corporate Social Media Summit is a social media conference exclusively for corporate marketers. It’s a great place to meet new people and learn from others dealing with the same obstacles you are.

The agenda is compelling and the list of attendees is extremely impressive.

If you want to meet some great people and learn social media best practices, definitely consider attending the summit.

Who’s Attending the Summit

There’s an amazing list of people attending the summit. Here’s who’ll be speaking and some of the companies that’ll be represented.

• The Coca-Cola Company, Director of Digital Communications, Ashley Brown
• Best Buy, Director and Social Media Leader, Gina Debogovich
• American Express OPEN, Vice-President Social Media, Laura Fink
• Dell, Head of Social Media and Corporate Reputation Management, Richard Binhammer
• AT&T, Executive Director of Digital and Social Media, Christopher Baccus
• OfficeMax, Vice President , Mark Andeer
• Webtrends, Chief Marketing Officer, Hope Frank
• Aflac, Director, New Media, James Wisdom
• WWE, Vice President – Interactive Content Production, Mark Keys
• Ogilvy, SVP, Global Strategy & Marketing, Rohit Bhargava

More Information:

The Agenda

• Improve customer retention through more comprehensive and advanced engagement strategies
• Leverage social media for better customer care and to humanize your brand
• How to ensure that you can use what you hear to drive brand strategy
• Lay the groundwork for future success: Where to embed social media at your company
• Avoid hot water: Design and implement guidelines for employee social media activity
• What can you get out of it? Should you bother? Should not having a store preclude you from using location?
• Multiple Identities: How to handle multiple social media while maintaining brand identity and unity
• A look at the personnel: The best model for organising social media expertise at your company
• Find the diamonds in the rough: How to collect the right data for your company to drive your social media strategy
• What is ‘social media ROI’ – and how does it apply to you?
• Turn followers into dollars: How to find the path from ‘likes’ to your bottom line

Attending the Summit

• Where: The Helmsley Hotel, New York City
• When: 21 – 22 June 2011
• Price: Premium passes are $2,000 and standard passes are $1,800
• Register now!

The team behind the Corporate Social Media Summit have given me a promotion code that gives you 10% off the ticket price. When you’re signing up just use the code “SAMIR10″ for the discount.

If you decide to attend, leave a comment and let me know! I’d love to meet you! Did you go to the Summit last year? What did you think and how’d I miss you? Leave a comment and let me know.

This is a post by Samir Balwani – Online Marketing and Digital Communications

Would you leave your stores’ windows shattered? Why do the same for your website? The following are 7 really easy and often overlooked fixes you can implement on your website to fix it up.

• Make Your Navigation Easy
• Create a Portal Homepage
• Build a Contact Form
• Update Your Blog Often
• Tell Your Story on an About Page
• Add Informative Title Tags
• Get Rid of the Flash Intro!

Make Your Navigation Easy

The most important aspect of a website is the site navigation. How do I get from one page to another? If your site is confusing to navigate, you won’t even get a chance to convince them to stay.

Making it easy to go from one page to another is important. First focus on your main navigation, then make sure you have other navigation points throughout the site.

The two biggest opportunities for this is in your main navigation and then in sidebar through modules that list “Most Popular” or “Related” articles. If you don’t have articles it would be good to make sure people can find important resources or pages quickly.

The best way to check your site navigation is to watch people use your site.

Ask them to find directions to your store or a specific product on your site. Watch how they use your site – do they get lost? Are they using the back button a lot? These are indicators that your navigation needs to be rethought.

Create a Portal Homepage

It’s common for a site’s homepage to receive the most traffic compared to the rest of the site. This is where you get a chance to make your first impression as people are introduced to your brand.

It’s important to clearly define your value proposition and make it easy for people to go deeper into your website.

Your homepage should act as a portal driving people to other pages, with an emphasis on pages you’ve decided are goals. Highlight popular products and content so users can quickly find stuff others have liked.

Reduce the number of decisions users have to make and recommend next steps for them.

Build a Contact Form

As you start to build interest in your website and brand, more people will have questions. Having a contact form makes it easy for people to contact you and connect with the brand through email.

But why use a contact form instead of just an email? Two reasons. The first is spam. Posting your email address is a sure-fire way to start receiving spam. Secondly, contact forms can easily route emails to the right person.

For example, create a check box for “Press Inquiries”. That way you know when journalists are reaching out to you. Another option could be “Need More Information About Your Product” – this way you know when people check this option they’re interested in your product and are potential consumers.

Driving traffic to your contact page and then quickly segmenting the leads makes an efficient process for taking potential customers and turning them into paying customers.

Update Your Blog Often

Search engines and people love websites that are updated often. Having a blog makes this process really easy.

A brand blog is an extremely powerful tool for marketing your business online. It grows an online readership, builds thought-leadership, and cements your reputation in the industry.

If you don’t have a blog already, it’s really simple to add one. Check out WordPress as a free blogging solution that can easily be added to your current website.

Tell Your Story on an About Page

Every business has a story behind them. How were you created? What are you great at? What makes you different than anyone else?

It’s important to make sure you tell this story and no page is better than your “About” page. Make it easy for consumers to learn more about who you are and what makes you tick. It will make them feel more invested in you and more connected.

Also, creating a clear “About” page ensures consumers know exactly what you’re selling and what services you offer. You never know who might become paying a customer, if only they knew that you offer the service they need.

Add Informative Title Tags

These fix is a technical one. When you create a webpage you’re given the option of adding code that defines some “meta” information. This information includes the title, description, and important keywords for the page.

The title or title tag is an extremely important “meta” tag. Google uses the title tag to determine what the page is about. In regards to your website homepage, it will use the title tag to really learn what your business is about.

The tag is also displayed in Google’s search results and also as the headline when people share your content on Facebook or on Twitter. It’s important to make sure you clearly define the title tag and that each page has a unique title.

Make it easy for people to know exactly what they’ll find on your page by looking at the title. This will ensure people actually click on the link and read your content. Without a title, the link and headline may have nothing to do with the content actually on the page.

Get Rid of the Flash Intro!

Sometimes business owners enter a mindset where they believe that similar to their stores, their websites should guide consumers through an experience. The truth is that online consumers just want to get to the information or products they need as quickly as possible.

The flash intro is one of the least effective ways to ingrain users into your brand experience. It can be intrusive and generally annoying. The flash intro and splash video is concerned to be an outdated web tactic.

Aside from turning off consumers, the flash intro and overall use of flash can hurt your rankings in search engines.

Flash is cheaper to use when building websites, which is why many developers turn to it. However, a well-built WordPress site will be more visible in search engines and reach more consumers. Don’t take the shortcut, build a website and plan for continue growth.

Final Thoughts

When reviewing the effectiveness of your website, the single most important thing to keep in mind is – how are people finding the information they need and do we answer all their questions. Do you have the content people want to read? Are you making it easy for them to find you online?

Small business websites come in many different forms and shapes. None-the-less they all perform the same function – increase the brand reach and impact the business’ bottom line.

What fixes have you found to make the largest impacts? What have you changed that you were happiest about? Let us know what you did! Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Your business website, tends to fall into both categories – they can take a lot of time and money investment, but tend to pay huge dividends when implemented correctly.

To make sure your business is getting the most out of it’s website, it’s important to identify key metrics and create a simple system for tracking them. I really recommend using Google Analytics; it’s a free tool that’s easy to use and install.

I’ll assume you’ve already installed it and are collecting data. If you’re not sure how to get started with Google Analytics, definitely check out their site here.

Once you have Google Analytics installed, you’ll begin collecting data about your website. Now we have to identify what your goals are and outline important metrics to track.

• Define Your Goals
• Absolute Unique Visitors
• Pageviews
• Brand Related Keywords
• Number of Referring Sites
• Completed Goals
• Using Custom Reports

Define Your Goals

The first and most important step is actually outlining your goals. Depending on how you have monetized your website, your goals will be different. At this point, it’s important to be blatantly honest with yourself. Answer the question: “What makes us money?”

It might be one of the following:

• Advertising impressions
• Contact form completions for new leads
• Visits to directions pages for new customers
• Online product sales
• Overall increase in branding and reach

After you identify which is most important to you and which really impacts your business, you’ll be ready to determine which metrics to track and which act as indicators of success.

We’ll go through each metric, giving you an understanding of what each measures and then close with a simple way to track everything.

Absolute Unique Visitors

The first metric we’ll look at is “Absolute Unique Visitors”. It’s an important metric because it gives you a count of how many unique people visited your website in the time period.

Google defines the metric as:

Unique Visitors represents the number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to your website over the course of a specified time period. A Unique Visitor is determined using cookies.

It’s relevant to marketers because it outlines how many people were introduced to your brand. It outlines exactly how many people visited your website.

If your goal is to increase your branding and reach this is a priority metric. For everyone else, it’s still an important metric to track since increasing consumers interacting with your brand is always a goal.

Pageviews

The pageview metric is important for businesses that make money from advertising. Most advertisers buy ads based on an impression basis, meaning they pay for the number of times the ad is viewed.

Increasing the number of pageviews a site gets, allows a business to increase the number of impressions without having to increase the amount of unique visitors it receives.

Google defines the metric as:

A pageview is an instance of a page being loaded by a browser.
Google Analytics logs a pageview each time the tracking code is executed. This can be an HTML or similar page with tracking code being loaded by a browser, or a call to _trackPageview() to simulate a pageview.

Online stores may find this metric important too, because it could mean that consumers are browsing products. However, if you have a high number of pageviews and a low number of goals completed, it may mean that consumers are getting lost in your site.

Although not a priority for most businesses, it’s a god metric to track and keep an eye on.

Completed Goals

Google gives you the ability to actually define goal pages. For example, thank you pages once people checkout and buy your product.

Another potential goal page is something like your “Directions” pages or “Contact Us”. It lets you track how many people visit these pages.

Goals are an extremely powerful tool that can be both basic and more advanced. The advanced version includes using goal funnels to outline individual steps you want users to take. Google will then track these and tell you how people are completed your goals and where they’re leaving your site.

If you want to implement goals in your analytics account, definitely check out this great post.

Once you have goals setup, you’ll be able to identify which marketing channels are lucrative for you and what has been working. On it’s own it offers little information (you should know when you make a sale or get someone contacting you), but when cross-referenced across other data it gives great insight in your consumers.

Brand Related Keywords

So far we’ve been looking at direct metrics and not indirect indicators. The number of branded keywords that drove traffic to your business site is an extremely powerful indicator of your brand strength.

Increase branded keywords shows increased brand awareness and increased brand recall. It’s fairly intuitive to realize that that more people searching for your brand, the more people must have been introduced to it.

Public relations campaigns, contests, and advertising campaigns will impact this indicator. If you see a sudden increase in number of branded keywords, it may be one of the above.

Number of Referring Sites

Another great indicator to consider is the number of sites that referred traffic to you. This is a great indicator of the effectiveness of your PR and promotions.

The more people hear about you, the more newsworthy you are, the more people will link to you and drive traffic to your site.

It’s important to take note of both the number of referring sites and the value of individual referring sites. Obviously having the Huffingtonpost or NY Times link to you is extremely valuable.

Using Custom Reports

Since we’re tracking a number of things and some of them are more important to us than others, the generic reports Google allows us to view may not be a perfect fit. Instead, we can use the Custom Reports to create a single table that outlines all the information we need.

One report that is useful for tracking individual marketing channels is to outline unique visits, pageviews, and goals compared to each traffic medium. This lets you identify if organic traffic or referral traffic is more valuable to you.

Custom reports can be used to track and compile data from a number of metrics. However, it makes it difficult to track the number of branded keywords and number of referring sites. These are both two numbers that only appear in the generic reports Google creates.

Once you know which reports you want, one great trick is to have Google email you PDF versions of the reports. This makes it easy to receive weekly updates without having to log into Google Analytics to check your site’s performance.

Final Thoughts

Finding the right metrics for your website tends to be the most difficult part of measuring success. There are a number of tools available to actually measure growth and track data – Google Analytics being our favorite.

However, once you have the data it’s a matter of making sense of it. The more you know, the more informed your decisions and actions will be. So how are you making the most of the data you have available?

What custom reports have you setup that you liked? What analytics packages have you found that work well? What don’t you like about Google Analytics?

• Defining the Marketing Plan Audit
• The Specifics: What’s Covered
• Reasons for Performing a Marketing Audit
• Outlining the Audit
• Elements of a Good Audit

Defining the Marketing Plan Audit

The marketing plan audit is a document or presentation that thoroughly reviews exactly what your business is currently doing and recommends how to better the strategy.

It is a way for businesses to formally have someone review what their marketing plans are and outline changes. A marketing consultant gives the experienced outside in look many businesses need.

credit

The audit can be either general, reviewing every aspect of a business, or it can be more focused towards specific topics such as online marketing or email marketing.

At the end of the day, a marketing audit clearly defines what you’re doing that works, what you’re doing that doesn’t work, and how to fix your marketing plan.

The Specifics: What’s Covered

The general marketing audits should cover a number of topics and review each marketing channel. Thorough audits are useful, because they let you determine how things work together.

Owned Media
The first step is to start with owned media. This includes the brand’s website, newsletter, and any other medium the business can control. Note, that I don’t include social media in this bucket.

The audit should review and determine the effectiveness of the owned media. It should look at website optimizations, branding, and usability. How is the brand positioning itself online?

Earned Media
The second part should include an in-depth review of types of press coverage the business receives.

Sometimes the auditor will look to the business to help compile this information and also explain how the press opportunities arose.

The section should close with either opportunities for the business, outlets to consider, or tools to help create a sustainable PR process.

Paid Media
Not every small business invests in paid advertising, however it can be an effective tool to boost awareness of the company. The audit should review the current advertising strategy and determine whether the money and resources could be better allocated

It should also identify potential advertising partners and help outline the value of the ads.

If the business is not currently spending money on advertising, the audit should recommend ways to leverage this marketing medium.

Shared Media
The shared media marketing channel includes all social media profiles, including a Facebook fan page and Twitter profile. The audit should look at these profiles and determine how they fit in with the entire marketing strategy.

It should review the branding of these pages, effectiveness, and overall goals. After outlining all relevant information, it should recommend social profiles to manage, tools to use, and how to measure results.

Human Resources
The often-overlooked aspect of a marketing audit is the resources section, specifically the human resources. Since an audit simply delivers a preponderance of information, businesses sometimes need to either hire an employee or reach out to a third party to implement many of the recommendations.

Sometimes, a business will have the bandwidth to apply an audit’s action plan to practice. However, if it cannot, the audit should outline what is needed and where to find the right people.

Reasons for Performing a Marketing Audit

Now that we know what exactly they are and what they cover, we still have to answer the question: how do they help?

Most small business owners lead by gut, anecdotally, and base decision on what they think is right. Audits, on the other hand, lay out all the factual information and data. It shows how the business is marketing itself and organizes a large amount of information.

Once organized, the audit allows business leaders to make more informed decisions based on feedback from an expert. The audit gives you a run down of everything that’s happening and a third party view of what you should be doing. Think about it as a fresh set of eyes on that math word problem you couldn’t solve.

Outlining an Audit

Often, audits are delivered as documents – a text that might be 50 pages that outlines all the data. It’s an inefficient way to deliver the information and, more often than not, ends up in the trash since no one wants to read a book.

We deliver audits a little different than many others. Our marketing plan reviews are delivered as slides that tell a story.

An audit should be easy to read and execute. Long documents are not conducive to skimming and hardly ever illustrate what needs to be done and how. Instead, presentation slides can be bullet points with an image that not only tell you what to do, but also show you.

Here’s an example of an audit we’ve done in the past:

Elements of a Good Audit

Most marketing consultants offer auditing services, its usually one of the most cost effective ways to make major impacts in your marketing strategies. The following are a few points that set aside a good audit from a great audit.

Step by Step and Thorough
Obviously the first element is that the audit should be thorough and simple to follow. If it doesn’t fulfill this requirement, it’s not really a true audit.

It should review each aspect of your marketing plan, step by step to ensure it doesn’t leave anything out. A marketing audit that doesn’t flow and doesn’t touch on every aspect of the business is only partially done.

Actionable Next Steps
Since it’s so important that the recommendations and changes in the audit be implemented, the document should close with a list of next steps. So you have all this information and recommendations, now what?

Now only should the audit have next steps, but also help you get to a place where you can start check marking off specific tasks. Does the audit recommend tools? Does it tell you where to go to get more information? Do you feel prepared to make changes to your marketing plan?

Easy to Understand
Audits need to be easy to understand. Not all audits are presented. In fact we pride ourselves on how easy our audits are to read that we simply deliver a final product, saving our clients’ time and money.

When the audit doesn’t include industry jargon or over complex ideas, it’s easy to refer back to it when in need. The easier an audit is to read, the more likely the lessons are to be understood and implemented.

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An effective audit will be easily understood and implemented; otherwise it was a waste of time.

Offers Explanations
The old adage that you can give a man a fish or you can teach him to fish holds true in audits as well. Each audit should act as a lesson, identifying problems and explaining why the recommended changes are important.

Audits that answer “why” not only explain the importance of updating the marketing plan based on the audits recommendations, but it allows you to understand the changes and ensures they don’t happen again.

Final Thoughts

I think the audit is literally one of the single most important aspects of any marketing strategy. If you want to work together or want advice for your business, I always start with an audit. It’s the most effective way to learn about the business and determine the optimal marketing strategy.

I look at audits like answering a word problem. Without knowing all the information in the word problem, you can’t even begin to answer the question.

What do you think? Have you ever ordered an audit for your business marketing? Was it helpful? Leave a comment and let us know.

Want to order an audit of your business? Check out our marketing plan audits here.

We already see major brands integrating bloggers into their new PR strategies, treating them equivalent to major media. Consider TechCrunch and Mashable, both high value earned media targets for tech related businesses.

In aggregate, a number of smaller blogs can command the same audience as major publishers. It’s the reason blog networks were born, to leverage the audience of multiple sites to create one huge audience.

PR experts leverage this opportunity to connect with a number of smaller blogs, to get their message out. The advantage to this strategy is that, given the manpower, the likelihood for success can be better by reaching out to multiple small blogs versus one large media outlet.

Most major media outlets are difficult to convince to cover a small business and sometimes even a large brand. They require some kind of hook, something truly newsworthy, or something special.

With smaller bloggers, however, the PR moment can be a lot smaller. Depending on the niche, a basic contest or in-depth article can be enough to justify coverage from smaller sites.

Realizing that connecting with small, targeted, blogs can still achieve the audience size you hope to is the first step. Let’s start to dig deeper by first looking at why businesses should start a blogger outreach program.

There are a number of reasons for reaching out to bloggers, some touch upon increasing the value of your website’s search engine optimizations and others are about increasing your brand’s visibility.

Building Links to High Value Content

When search engines rank the importance of a page compared to its competitors, it looks to a number of metrics. Some of these elements are on-site, the way your site is coded, and some are off-site, how people interact with your website.

One of the most important elements in off-site search engine optimization (SEO), is the inbound link. To search engines, when someone links to your website they see this as a thumbs up, a vote, for your content. The more people that “vote”, through links, for your content – the more important Google considers it.

Because of this value of links, befriend the people that can vote for, by linking to it, seems a natural strategic advantage.

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Make friends with relevant bloggers, connect with them, and inform them of new content or campaigns your business is doing. This kind of outreach has valuable impact on your authority in search engines like Google.

Increasing Visibility within an Industry

Just as important as visibility in search engines, is visibility among consumers. The idea of branding is not new, but using bloggers in a strategy is. There are two ways to build brand visibility through bloggers: guest posting and outreach.

Guest posting is the act of writing articles to be published on a blog you don’t own. For example, sometimes, I guest post on Mashable or ReadWriteWeb. This increased my online presence and grew my personal brand.

Outreach on the other hand, is similar to link building, but instead of focusing on having the blogger link to your site, it focuses on just getting a blogger to write about you. This could mean, gifting product, giving insider information, or any other type of exclusive access, so the blogger dedicates an entire post to your business.

Convincing bloggers to cover your business requires some ingenuity and hard work, but coverage from bloggers acts as a testimonial for you and your business.

Consumers trust their favorite bloggers (as a blogger, I’m invested in making sure my readers, you, trust what I say and that my reputation stays strong) and as an extension may trust the businesses bloggers cover.

Creating Relationships and Friendships

Finally, an often-overlooked yet just as important aspect of blogger outreach is the relationships you make. Bloggers are influencers, thought-leaders, and popular people in their industries. They reach their readers and community on a personal level, compared to journalists who usually reach their readers through the publisher brand.

Befriending a blogger means befriending their community as well. Having access to this network means your next event, sale, or promotion has a community within easy reach.

It’s fairly clear the importance of partaking in blogger outreach and connecting with these bloggers. For small businesses, the impact a blogger outreach program can have can be the same as a traditional PR program.

Business owners are busy, so although blogger outreach may be inexpensive, for some it means either hiring a community manager or adding the community manager responsibilities to an employee.

Community managers are invaluable; they are a supplement to your PR person. They should work with PR and marketing to grow the brand’s network and continually engage with the online bloggers.

The Optimal Community Manager

Generally, the community manager should be someone that lives and breathes your brand; someone who’s exciting to be around and easy to talk to. It’s all about being personable and fun.

Don’t skimp on a community manager, when you hire one, look for a full-time person. I repeat, this is not a position for a part-time employee or intern. Your community manager will be creating relationships and making first impressions for your business – give them the respect and attention you give your best sales person.

Finding a good community manager is not always easy; one place to start is the online job boards at sites like Mashable, Marketing Pilgrim, or ProBlogger. Another place to look is bloggers in your industry. Hiring a blogger means hiring their community and their network, sometimes it’s the easiest way to get a passionate community manager.

Once your resources are in place, it’s up to them to start doing the outreach and creating the relationships. Being organized, at this point, is of utmost importance.

Organization is important because there are hundreds of blogs and only so much time. Outlining an outreach list lets you easily determine how to allocate your resources to reach the most bloggers and create the largest impact.

Important Information

When creating your outreach list, you’ll obviously want to include the blog title, URL, blogger’s name, and contact information.

Aside from the basics, however, you should also include notes on previous conversations, important information on the blogger, and also some information about their blog.

What kind of writing do they do? What do they truly dislike? How amiable are they to working with you?

Overtime you’ll begin to learn whom your favorite bloggers are and you’ll be able to create tiered lists.

Identifying Valuable Targets

Once you have a template for information you want to include in your outreach list, it is time to actually start filling it out and finding high value bloggers.

With the number of bloggers, you would think it would be easy to find hundreds of relevant ones for you to reach out to. In some industries, this may be the case. However, you’ll quickly realize that there are really only a handful of professional and effective blogs in each industry.

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Two places to start the search for valuable blogs are in the DMOZ Directory and Alltop. DMOZ is a hand-edited directory that is broken out by topic. It is considered the top directory and Google imports the data to populate their own directory.

Alltop is a user suggested outline of blogs by topic. It’s great for finding not only the largest blogs, but some smaller and newer bloggers as well.

These two are great starting points. The rest of the list comes from reading your original blogs and seeing whom they interact with and link to.

As you become more ingrained in the online community, you’ll begin to know who the new players are and which bloggers receive the most attention.

Outreach is a game of numbers and patience. The bigger your outreach lists the more likelihood for success. However, building large lists takes time.

Surprisingly, the easiest part of outreach is the actually outreach. Most people are afraid of reaching out to bloggers because you hear the horror stories of bloggers that have posted bad pitches. It’s true, we hate bad pitches, but it’s only because a good pitch is so simple to make.

Treat bloggers like your friend, write short personable but professional emails that are tailored to us. Bloggers are not low class journalists; we appreciate the same respect and time you afford a journalist.

Please don’t send a blogger a basic press release – these get spammed or junked instantly. Send an email that outlines important information that is easily skimmed.

Although it seems scary to pitch bloggers, don’t forget that bloggers need brand contact as much as businesses need blogger contact. Brands can give bloggers exclusive access, information about upcoming events, and promotions to gift their readers.

Good blogger outreach programs create symbiotic relationships that help both the blogger and the business.

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Final Thoughts

The impact a good blogger outreach program can have is multifaceted and immense. It affects search engine optimization, branding, and the business’ online reputation.

It’s an extremely powerful tool and gives a great competitive advantage. It’s simple to start and relatively inexpensive to excel at.

Have you ever created a blogger outreach program or campaign for your business? Whose responsibility is it to connect with bloggers? Have a favorite outreach letter? Share it with us and let us know!

Blogger Outreach Guide: How to Get Started is a post by Samir Balwani – Online Marketing and Digital Communications

Most businesses ignore the idea of culture because it can be a difficult strategy to execute. Small businesses depend tend to mold themselves based on the personality of the owner, whereas most larger brands are too bureaucratic to create a consistent corporate culture.

Nonetheless, there are a number of ways to inspire a successful business culture. Let’s begin by first exploring a few noteworthy business cultures and explaining what makes them exceptional.

• Case Study: Zappos
• Opportunities to Define Your Business Culture
• Understanding Why Culture Sells
• Indicators of a Positive Culture

One of the most well known corporate cultures’ is Zappos. It’s one that’s known to generate revenue and good will from consumers.

Here’s an example of the appreciation consumers have shown towards Zappos:

When I came home this last time, I had an email from Zappos asking about the shoes, since they hadn’t received them. I was just back and not ready to deal with that, so I replied that my mom had died but that I’d send the shoes as soon as I could. They emailed back that they had arranged with UPS to pick up the shoes, so I wouldn’t have to take the time to do it myself. I was so touched. That’s going against corporate policy.

Yesterday, when I came home from town, a florist delivery man was just leaving. It was a beautiful arrangement in a basket with white lilies and roses and carnations. Big and lush and fragrant. I opened the card, and it was from Zappos. I burst into tears. I’m a sucker for kindness, and if that isn’t one of the nicest things I’ve ever had happen to me, I don’t know what is.

Credit: Consumerist

What Zappos Does Well

Zappos invests in its employees and puts customer service above profits. Put simply, happy employees means happy customers. When a customer interacts with an employee who loves their job, the customer tends to love the company – happiness is contagious.

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Likewise, when employees are taught that customer service trumps all, they find ways to make customers happy. Without loyal consumers, people that love what you do, you won’t create a single brand enthusiasts.

The above is a simple overview of the business culture and how it can impact a company. Before we delve deeper, let’s define what business culture is and identify specific moments where it can be molded.

It’s easy to say that you need an inspiration culture, but how do you make it happen? It’s not as simple as saying you’ve done it, the change usually comes from the top down. The executive level personality definitely trickles down and makes the difference.

Don’t believe me? Think about the last time the owner of a small business wasn’t in the office. Did the tone change? Did people work less? It’s the presence and personality of the owner that defines how the company will act.

Hiring Process

This is the first place where your culture is defined. How you hire people and the questions you ask, lay the foundation for molding your interview. When you meet with prospective employees, is the focus on creativity and innovation? Or, are you looking for someone to simply fill a role?

Although the culture starts at the top, ultimately the culture is your employees. Some can evolve and shift their outlook to excel within a culture of customer service and innovation, but many times it means re-hiring and finding the right people.

Company Atmosphere

Another aspect of your business that can define the company culture is the “atmosphere”. This includes office ambiance, decorations, events, and overall feel.

Do people feel excited to come to work? Is there noise, are people talking? Or, is it quiet and are people afraid of expressing themselves?

Creating an atmosphere of fun and excitement means happier employees. This joy and loyalty, translates to their communications with clients and customers. Wouldn’t you rather a happy employee interact with your consumers, instead of one that’s pissed off?

Empowering Employees

One of the hardest strategies to implement, when re-aligning a corporate culture, is the idea of empowering employees. Most businesses are afraid of giving employees leeway when it comes to deciding on gifting, discounts, and other courtesy programs.

The truth of the matter is that, the number of people that abuse these systems is a lot less important than the amount of goodwill accrued by empowering employees with these options.

In other words, it’s generally better for a business to trust its employees to make intelligent decisions in regards to gifting and discounts. If you hired correctly, your employees should love the business and be loyal. They won’t steal or unnecessarily give out discounts.

Without the tools to focus on customer service, your employees will be handicapped when trying to shift the culture. It’s all about promising to make every single consumer happy and empowering your employees to fulfill that promise.

At the end of the day, changing a business culture to be more focused on customer service can be risky. It involves major changes in atmosphere, business processes, and sometimes requires re-hires. So, why do it? How does it affect the bottom line?

Honestly, there’s no way to say that changing your culture will net a 20% increase in sales. But, one of the largest trends in consumerism is an anti-corporate ideal. People are tired of K-Mart and Walmart, they want smaller businesses that care about them.

Armed with this knowledge, knowing that the trend is moving towards smaller – more customer service oriented – businesses, it seems intuitive that your business should embrace this culture change.

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Aside from the changes in consumer behavior, good customer service is a marketing moment. The Internet has made it so easy for people to share great customer service stories, creating live testimonials for your business.

It’s in every businesses best interest to invest in great customer service to maximize the number of marketing moments they create.

Measuring the success of a cultural shift is difficult since there aren’t true quantitative metrics; culture is qualitative to begin with. Instead, we look for indicators to determine if we’re achieving the results we need.

Note that it’s important not to mold your corporate culture to be a copy of someone like Zappos. Successful business cultures, like personalities, are unique and exciting. They define who you are.

Unrequested Positive Testimonials

The first and most telling indicator of a successful business culture is random positive testimonials. Few things are more amazing than a customer telling you how great your business is and what you mean to them.

Exciting Company Atmosphere

Another indicator is company excitement. Have your employees added their unique personality to their desks? Have you empowered them to bring their personality to the office and add to the company culture?

Making your employees feel invested in the company makes adoption of the company culture easier and more complete.

Exceptional Dedication and Loyalty

It’s one thing to be dedicated to the job and another to be dedicated to the company. Employees that love what they do are more productive and caring than their counterparts. If your business culture doesn’t inspire loyalty among your employees, how can it be expected to create loyal consumers?

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Final Thoughts

We’ve gone through the era of online marketing and social media, we’re on the verge of a period where company culture will be scrutinized. How we interact as a company and how we define our business personality will drive our success as consumers become more sophisticated.

How are you shifting your company culture? What have you seen that has worked? Leave a comment and let us know about your experiences!

Business Culture that Inspires Your Consumers is a post by Samir Balwani – Online Marketing and Digital Communications

It’s not easy, because ambassadors don’t always make themselves known and even once you know whom they are, it isn’t always as easy as just asking for their help.

To make sure we’re effective in how we connect with influencers and inspire our ambassadors, let’s look at the strategy in a step-by-step basis.

• Identifying Ambassadors
• Key Components of Influencers
• Listing Your Influencers
• Creating an Inspirational Culture
• Making Your Business Personable
• Getting Started with a Strategy
• Creating an “Inspiration” Budget
• Outlining a Timeline
• Empowering Brand Ambassadors
• Executing Your Strategy

We’ll begin by first identifying the influencers and the elements that define a good ambassador. After that, we’ll review how to make your business something people want to share and spread. How do you make your brand inspire its consumers, without you doing anything?

Once we have the foundation in place, we’ll begin outlining some tactics that will help find and empower your ambassadors.

Finally, I’ll share some advice and tips for executing an ambassador program – things to keep in mind and pitfalls to avoid.

Before we can engage influencers we need to identify them. Who are our brand ambassadors? Let’s define exactly what a brand ambassador is.

Brand ambassadors are loyal customers that have access to and influence other groups of people.

For example, a brand ambassador could be a mayor, party planner, or any other popular person that also happens to be a loyal consumer.

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Look for customers that happen to work in an industry that requires networking, making friends, or happen to be business owners themselves. These people tend to have large networks and friends groups, both offline and online.

Aside from having access to a large network of friends, ambassadors must be loyal consumers. They should be excited about your business, have had great service, and truly inspire their friends to use your services.

We know that there are really two major components to influencers: having a large network and being loyal consumers. Beyond these two, there are other aspects of a good influencer.

Optimal influencers will reach your core demographic. It does no good to have an ambassador that tells men about your nail salon. Instead, make sure the people you identify as ambassadors are in touch with potential consumers.

Secondly, look for ambassadors that are technically savvy – those that have a Facebook, Twitter, or check into Foursquare in your store. Generally, these influencers have already translated their offline network into an online one.

Lastly, look for consumers that recommend things to you! Influencers have the habit of giving tips, knowing the best place to eat, and sharing information. It’s these people; the ones that already share everything that businesses should want to tap.

It’s always best to be organized, so I like to create an influencer list in excel or Google Documents.

Outline the person’s name, contact information, your last interaction with them, birthday, and other important notes. Sometimes, I like to also add a “rank” column where I score people from 1 to 10. This list should be your influencers rolodex.

When starting my influencer list, I ask business owners to just outline the customers they remember. Usually, as an owner, you’ll know your potential influencers.

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Begin with a larger list and then start whittling it down. The list should definitely grow and change over time. It’s a living document that will need to be updated as your ambassadors move on and change.

Once you know who your ambassadors are, you need to give them something to share. This is what separates businesses that master word of mouth marketing, versus those that just try.

The single most important thing to remember – people talk about businesses that have a culture that gives them something to talk about.

Think about that for a minute. Of your friends, who do you remember the most? It’s the ones that are the nicest, the ones that go out on a limb for you, or the ones you can really count on. It’s their personality that keeps them top of mind and makes you want to continue being friends with them.

Similarly, for businesses, the brand’s culture is what leads people to remember and talk about you.

Consider Zappos and their culture of customer service, their brand identify and personality shines through everything they do. Everything from their CEO’s tweets to employee letters, their culture starts at the top and trickles down. It’s a culture that people want to talk about.

Don’t think about your business as a company. Look at it as a person, identify your business’ personality and ask yourself if you would want to be friends with your business.

Small businesses have an inherent advantage over large brands when talking about culture. Since small business owners are integral to the day to day running of the business, it’s their culture and their personality that the business takes on.

Identify how and when your personality can bleed into your business culture – make it a priority and teach your employees to mimic it.

You are what makes your business special. People don’t go to small diners because the food is cheaper or better than a chain – instead they go because they feel a personal connection with the owner, they trust the small business over a major brand, and they embrace the brand’s culture.

It’s important for you to highlight you and your culture. When your customers start to become part of the culture, you start growing brand ambassadors – you give your customers something to tell their friends about.

Laying the foundation is just the first step, how do we actually create a plan to inspire these ambassadors? We already know whom we want to inspire and we’ve created a culture people want to talk about – what’s next?

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The brand’s culture will have people talking about your business in passing, it will come up in conversation from time to time. But, that’s not what we’re after. We want to inspire people to make us the center of the conversation.

The best way to control the conversation and become what people talk about is by creating inspiring campaigns. We’ll need to do something that people will actually talk about. It’s here where online marketing meets digital PR.

The first step is to outline how much money you have to spare. It generally doesn’t have to be much, but obviously, the more the better. Depending on what you have available, you can determine how elaborate your strategy can be.

Have a few thousand dollars? Maybe it’s a small influencers dinner or coupons or some prizing.

Have a lot of money? Maybe you’re putting together expensive PR stunts, big parties, and huge contests.

Regardless, the money should be dedicated to being spent on items and events that inspire or drive people to talk about your company – it’s about creating PR moments that people will remember.

Plan to put away at least $2000 or $3000, plus some opportunity cost in prizes and coupons. You’ll need at least this much because you’ll need to create some offline events where influencers can come together and meet.

Once you’ve decided on a sum that you’re happy with putting aside, it’s time to set a roadmap. Plan and set tentative dates for each of your PR moments. You don’t need to know exactly what you want to do, but it’s best to have some deadlines and dates.

Look to find synergies between calendar dates and your business. If you’re a card or gift retailer, obviously Valentines day and the Holidays are important – you should definitely be doing something leading up to these dates.

Go through the calendar, based on your budget, build out how many PR moments you want to create. The timeline, budget, and influencers list are the most important organizational tools an outreach director or marketing expert can have. It keeps things simple and always gives you an action plan.

Now that we know what we’re doing and which campaigns we’re executing, the question left to answer is how do we get ambassadors to talk about them?

To answer that, let’s explore why people share things. More often than not, people share things because it makes them feel better. We share because we’re selfish, because we want to show that we’re in the know.

When convincing ambassadors to share content, it’s important to play on that feel – make them feel special.

How does this translate to strategy? When you’re having an event or coupon, keep it exclusive. Tell your ambassadors and allow them to invite 5 people. Give your influencers something special to share with their friends – make them look good and they’ll make you look good.

Similarly, you can do this with coupons. Instead of giving people 15% off, make a coupon that requires a friend to buy something too. How about 25% off both items when you buy with a friend?

Planning is easy, but executing is difficult. That’s why it’s important to make sure you
take your ideas and turn them into actionable strategies. What are a few tips for getting started?

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Start small and take it step by step. Big drastic changes always feel more daunting than smaller, step by step, tasks. When working with ambassadors and starting this projects, look for little things you can put in place first.

Begin by identifying five ambassadors and working with them. Over time, grow your community larger and larger.

By implementing your marketing campaign slowly, you keep yourself from being overwhelmed. Also, it gives you time to review key learnings and identify what works and what doesn’t work for your business.

Secondly, don’t worry about messing up or offending people. The current trends in marketing are all about personalizing your business and people make mistakes. Consumers are forgiving and understand when a business is trying something new.

That said, don’t be someone you aren’t. Your business personality and culture makes you unique, if you’re true to that your ambassadors will connect with you and your programs will be successful.

Final Thoughts

Small businesses can gain a lot by identifying their brand loyalist and turning them into brand ambassadors. Knowing who your VIPs are and making sure they’re happy, means in turn they’ll tell their friends. It’s the beginning to the viral growth everyone hopes for.

How do you get started with identifying brand ambassadors? What do you do to inspire them and make them share your business?

Inspiring Brand Ambassadors is a post by Samir Balwani – Online Marketing and Digital Communications

It is the only thing other than great content that can grow your blog, build your reputation, and make you stand out.

So what is this ingredient that I’m talking about? It’s your network, your group of friends, the colleagues you befriend.  

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We always talk about how building a blog community is important for getting retweets, comments, and readers. But, your core group of close friends will introduce new people to your work.

A smart blogger will befriend other bloggers and important industry leaders. These friends online are people you can work with, create partnerships with, and learn from.

Building a Network, The Basics

Building your network takes time. It’s all about identifying core leaders in your industry, and befriending them.

Thankfully, most people online are open to meeting new people. It’s just a matter of breaking the ice and taking that first step.

Using Your Blog

One way to make that initial connection is with your blog. If you’re trying to reach out to a prominent blogger or industry expert, write a post about them or their ideas.

Most bloggers look out for their mentions on the web. Just to make sure they saw the article, you can always email them and ask for their feedback. This gives you a reason for reaching out to them, sharing ideas, and building a relationship.

Sometimes it’s not enough to mention them or write about an idea. Another way to break the ice is to ask to interview the person for an article on your blog. Most people are happy to answer a few questions via email.

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Your blog can be your reason for reaching out to industry leaders. It’s a great tool for connecting you with others.

But, don’t forget to look at the community already built on your blog. Sometimes the right person is already reading your content. So how do you identify people to connect with from within your very own community?

Check Your Comments:

The very first place to check would be the comment sections. Most blogs have a group of readers that read every post, subscribe to the blog, and share their thoughts.

These commenters have already shown that they want to connect with you. They’ve taken the first step and reached out to you. It’s the perfect opportunity to connect with them.

Email popular commenters and discuss their thoughts. I’ve used ideas from comments as blog posts or as inspiration for ebooks. Share ideas and build the relationship. These are your core readers after all.

Who’s Active?

Aside from comments I also keep a list of active readers. By active readers I mean people that retweet my articles, share them on Facebook, or bloggers that link to mine.

If someone stands out or says something that piques my interest, I’ll reach out to them. This list allows me to filter all my readers to only those that are interested in what I say and are spreading my content.

These are my brand evangelist and people I should connect with.

Can I Contact You?

We’ve already talked about reaching out to others, but can people contact you? An often overlooked element of the successful blog is the contact form.

If you’re running WordPress you have a number of options to make it easy for people to get in touch with you. I personally use Wufoo, because it creates beautiful forms and integrates with a number of tools. It’s a paid service that I think is worth it.

Regardless of how you create your contact page, it should your social media profiles, your contact form, an address, and maybe a Google Voice number.

Treat messages as conversions and attempt to increase the number of people reaching out to you. The more people that want to connect with you, the bigger your network grows.

What About Social Media?

Have a Twitter account? What about Facebook? These networks make it easy to contact people and even identify who you should contact.

Each social media site you have a profile is an opportunity for someone to reach out to you. It’s also an easy option for you to connect with someone else.

If you’re trying to figure out whom to reach out to in the first place, social media can make that easier.

For those with a Facebook fan page, go through some of your fans. Do you share a high number of mutual friends? Maybe you should connect. Is there an industry leader on your page? This could be a good way to reach out to them.

It’s important to recognize that social media can open up a number of opportunities for building your network. It also makes it easy to maintain and communicate with people.

Final Thoughts

Being afraid to connect with people can kill your chances of success online. If you disregard others in your industry or act like they don’t matter, you isolate yourself and set yourself up for failure.

Make friends and be a part of the community. Don’t forget the adage: “success comes to those that surround themselves with success”. How are you surrounding yourself with success?

With the advent of social media, finding connections and building relationships is becoming easier. So what tools can we use to make our search more efficient and quicker?

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1: Email

The first is Email. Nothing beats its power. It’s ubiquitous and almost everyone has an email address now.

It’s also a great way to connect with someone without interrupting their life. They can respond to you at their convenience.

Use email to reach out to people for the first time. It’s an initial connection tool.

2: Instant Messenger

Instant is awesome, instant messenger is awesomer.

I love instant messenger because it lets me to talk to multiple people at once. It’s great for keeping in touch with people as I work, read, or watch TV.

Have a quick question? You’ll probably get an answer if you ask me on IM. Bypass the pleasantries and chat when you can. The ease of interacting on Instant Messenger is what makes it so attractive.

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3: Twitter

A public instant messenger / email hybrid, Twitter changed how we connect with people.

It’s useful for meeting new people because you’re able to create an open account where you share your thoughts. It’s nice because people can DM you to talk in private and build the relationship.

I like Twitter because it makes keeping in touch with people easy. As I share links and tell people what I’m doing, chances are someone I know will reply or comment on my updates.

Also, it helps me identify people that I want to reach out to. Someone keeps replying to my tweets? Retweeting me? Commenting on what I say? This is someone I’ll want to keep in touch with.

4: Facebook

Facebook is the ultimate online network. It’s a site where you’re able to clearly visualize your connections and friends.

Use private messages or write on people’s public walls to keep in touch with people. With the rumors of a possible “email client” Facebook might become a true networking monster.

Business owners should watch their Facebook fan pages for potential fans to befriend. Is someone continually sharing your status updates? Leaving meaningful comments? Introducing their friends? That’s your brand evangelist, someone you want to take care of.

(I’m including LinkedIn, MySpace, etc, etc here as social networking. They’re all great tools for meeting and maintaining new connections.)

5: Forums

Most people don’t consider forums to be a networking tool. But, if you’re active enough a forum can become a great networking opportunity.

A forum is no more than a group of people interested in a specific topic. Find a forum that is related to your niche and you’e got a huge group of people interested in what you do. It’s from this community that you’re able to identify people to network with.

Use private messages to connect with others. Forums are Web 1.0′s version of social networks, but are still a very effective way to find new people.

6: Comments

Another often overlooked networking opportunity is blog comments. Leaving smart, well-thought out comments can be an extremely powerful way to connect with other bloggers. Bloggers notice frequent commenters and recognize their importance to the blog.

Sharing your insights, thoughts, and ideas is a great way to start a relationship. I personally reach out to frequent commenters and get great ideas from them. I also tend to invite them to try new resources I’ve put together or ebooks I’m writing.

Most bloggers recognize their community leaders and work hard to build relationships with them.

7: Your Blog

Finally, why aren’t you using your blog to network? It’s one of the most powerful networking tools available to you.

As an active blogger, you should be able to identify your own industry leaders. Reach out to these leaders and invite them to your blog, share your articles with them, interview them, and write about them. These are all great ways to break the ice and get that initial contact.

You don’t always have to reach out to people, you should also make it easy for people to contact you. Create a “Contact” page with all you information. Don’t want to be spammed? Instead of sharing your email address, use a contact form.

Let your website be your hub for getting in touch with you. Use it to convince people that they should want to network with you.

Final Thoughts

Online marketing is not only social media, branding, and search engine optimizations. It’s going beyond these tactics and strategies, to really being part of your niche and industry.

Find a way to bring smart people together, connect with them, and surround yourself with success. Use online tools to do it effectively and efficiently. If you do this, the opportunities can be endless.

How are you networking with people online? Do you have a success story where you made a friend online? Leave a comment, share you story, and let’s all connect.

7 Online Tools to Supercharge Your Networking is a post by Samir Balwani – Online Marketing and Digital Communications

Generally, the naïve social media marketer is hoping that the community on Facebook and Twitter is large enough that it will include people interested in every niche. But, it’s not that simple.

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To be effective, it’s important to find an active community, not just a group of consumers. You need to find loyal consumers and reach them where they spend the most time, not necessarily Facebook.

Who Are You Reaching?

The first step is to figure out who your main consumers are. You need to determine the exact demographic you want to target.

Go through your sales records and try to find your largest customers. Make a list of who they are and then try to figure out their age, wealth, gender, marital status, location, and any other information you can compile.

Once you know who is most likely to buy your product, you can take the next step and determine what social networks are best for you.

Finding Your Consumers

There are three things to keep in mind when trying to find consumers online. You have to first use intuition to build a list of sites. Then refine the list and finally test if it works.

If you have a blog or website, check the website logs to see how people found your website. Create a list of the most popular social networks that appear in those logs.

For those without a website, start by searching Google for communities or social networks in your niche. Create a Facebook page to start and ask the community on Facebook if there is another social network you should check out. Your consumers will want to help you find them.

Once you have a list of social media, the next step is to remove extra sites. The number of sites you remove is dependent on the amount of resources you have. If you’re able to be active on 4 social media sites, then keep the top 4 sites.

To determine which ones you keep and which you remove, refer to the sites ad planning script or media kits. Media kits are free and you can request one from the site. They tend to be located online just search for “advertising” on the page. You can also use Quantcast to determine a site’s demographic make-up. Quantcast is a free service that estimates traffic volume and user information for a specific site.

Facebook is a great example of a site that has a built in ad planning script. The Facebook ad planner allows you to target ads by interest, allowing companies to determine the size of their community on the site. Instead of buying ads with this information, you can use it to determine if you want to engage this social network or not.

Based on the data you compile you should be able to determine the social networks you want to focus on.

Reaching Your Customers

Finally, you’ll want to create full profiles for each of the sites you want to focus on. Be sure to include a picture and to fill out all the information. Don’t forget to add things like an address, phone number, email, and store hours.

The more information you give your consumers the more they will trust you.

Social networks can be used to connect with consumers. Invite your loyal customers to friend your profile. Use this as a hub to update your customers on the latest news and discounts. Give your fans a reason to spread your content and to talk about you.

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On social sharing sites you’re able to share content to drive traffic to your site. Be sure to share your content as well as other industry content. Becoming a part of the community can make your business popular and introduce you to new consumers.

The famous quote that said successful business is all about “location location location” holds true even online. Make sure that you’re not only in front of the demographic most likely to buy your product, but that you also increase your reach to new consumers. That is what makes a campaign great.

How have you found social networks for your niche? What’s your favorite social media platform? Leave a comment and let us know.

Are Your Social Media Profiles Reaching the Right People? is a post by Samir Balwani – Online Marketing and Digital Communications

There are so many people I consider friends, but have never met. We chat online, we work together, and help each other out. It’s all made possible because of the Internet.

Some of my most profitable partnerships have happened because of the networking I’ve done online.

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What is Networking?

So what exactly do I mean by networking? Think about it like going to an awesome party and being the center of attention, shaking hands, making friends.

The web is a giant party. It’s easy to make friends and grow connections because most people are looking to just that. In the end it’s up to you to make it happen.

Don’t get caught in the trap of fake networking. Effective networking isn’t simply telling everyone to fan your Facebook page or follow you on Twitter.

True networking is about building a relationship. Sharing important information, chatting, and talking. It’s a time commitment, but it pays off in the long run.

The Power of a Strong Network

Those without a strong network are at a disadvantage. It doesn’t matter if your writing is amazing or your videos are awesome; if others don’t help you promote your content, no one is going to see it.

Friends read friends’ blogs. We share content that our friends’ write, and we link to our friends’ articles. It might seem unfair, but the truth is that there is so much information online, we’re forced to use a “friend” as a filter for content.

Also, building a group of colleagues in similar niches opens up the possibility of creating partnerships. Creating products together allows the leveraging of a larger community, different view points, and more content. Partnerships benefit everyone.

Finding the Right People…

Finding the right people to network with is almost an art as much as it is a science. Optimally, you’re looking for people that compliment you. Whether you have complimentary work ethics, niches, or personalities.

For instance, imagine I own a computer repair store. I probably want to look for people who sell computers. We share the same demographic but offer two different services.
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Making the Connection

Don’t hesitate to reach out to people. We want to connect with you. Meeting new people is half the fun of working online.

If you write a blog, you want to build relationships with the people that comment often, those that engage you. These are your champions and it’s only fair to reward them.

Not only that, but these are your consumers. Talking to them, befriending them lets you understand what your consumers want.

Sometimes the best way to connect is through email. If you wrote something interesting you think I’ll like? Contact me.

Another idea is to invite the person you want to network with to do an interview, guest post, or some other cool project.

Regardless, the most important thing to remember is to be friendly and respect the person’s time.

Social media has given us so many more venues to connect with people. Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn (among others) have made it so easy to message, fan, follow, mention, and direct message people. Take advantage of this new medium to make new friends and find new partners.

If you’ve made the connection and it’s time to take it to the next level, there are few better ways than conferences. It’s here where you get to meet people face to face.

For some, online is just not enough and meeting offline allows your relationship to grow. Use these offline networking events to power your online community.
Building an online network can be one of the most powerful tools at your disposal. It’s great to have a group of colleagues and friends you both respect and can count on. It’s these people that will push you to succeed and champion your cause.

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How are you building your network? Are you already party of one?

The Importance of Networking Online is a post by Samir Balwani – Online Marketing and Digital Communications

The problem is that when businesses decide against creating an online presence, they miss out on a huge opportunity. Consumers are searching for businesses in their area and need answers to their questions.

The remedy for small businesses is to start with the website. Forget about trying to be super advanced – let’s start with the very basics, the foundation to online marketing.  

Businesses need to make sure their websites are their storefront; that it invites consumers to become paying customers.

In this digital age, there’s no excuse for not having a business website. Having a website means businesses can capture leads, sell product, and increase their reach.

Just think about it, everyday consumers around you are turning to “Google” to find people to fix their problems – problems you can fix. Will they find your website and your company?

Let’s look at how you can get started with creating a small business website that can generate more leads, drive traffic to your stores, and stimulate word of mouth marketing.

Whether you already have a website or are starting from scratch, the first step is collecting all the information – the true secret to online marketing success is being organized.

Make sure you have a domain name registered. You can register a domain name from GoDaddy.

The domain name should be your business name. Try to keep it as short as possible. If your business is already taken, try adding your city or state at the end.

For example, Carmine’s uses http://carminesnyc.com/. Remember you want to keep it as simple and memorable as possible. If possible, don’t use numbers or hyphens and stick to .coms.

Once you have your domain name, you’ll need hosting – the actual servers that store your website.

This website is hosted by MediaTemple, but there are a number of options. Other hosts to consider are HostGator or RackSpace.

With this foundation setup, you’ll have access to the domain and hosting – giving you access to setting up your website.

Regardless of whether you plan to setup your website yourself, or to hire a developer to create your website, be sure to read this entire article.

When talking to developers, the more specific you are with what you need, the more likely you are to get a website you’re happy with and one that fulfills the needs of your business.

One of the costliest mistakes a business makes is the use of flat pages instead of a content management system for their website.

If your developer tells you that it will take development time to add a new page or to edit content on a page, they’re using flat pages. This means that each page you see has been hand-coded, an extremely inefficient way to create and display a website.

The best way to create a website, is to use a content management system. The system is loaded onto your server and allows you to edit content, add new pages, and make basic changes without needing a developer.

I recommend using WordPress for basic business websites and blogs, but you should also explore Drupal, Joomla, and Typepad. Each of these are great content management systems and are the backbone of a number of professional websites.

Once you decide on a content management system, either your or your developer will have to install the system on your server and create a theme for the website.

Installing most content management systems are extremely simple to install and there are a number of tutorials on how to install the systems. For example, you can watch these videos to install WordPress.

The theme defines what your website will look like, make sure it looks good and follows best practices. Some businesses will pay professional designers to create a custom theme for them. The cheaper route is to either buy a premium theme or to use a free one.

We know the basics of getting started, but let’s take a deeper look into actually planning the website. It’s important to outline how we want the website to look like, the layout, and what the user experience will be.

The best way to plan the site is to break it into 4 steps: design, pillar content, layout, and goals.

Design

Consumers have become more sophisticated in what they expect from a website. The look and feel must be professional and the site must be easily usable.

Start by choosing a color scheme that is easy on the eye. If you have trouble choosing colors that go well together, you should check out Adobe Kuler or Colourlovers for inspiration or for a palette you like.

Once you have a good color scheme, add your logo to the site. Be sure to use a high-resolution image, so your logo looks crisp and clean. High-resolution logos have filenames that end with .jpg or .png and are generally large files. If you’re not sure, ask a designer to help you update your logo.

When you’re designing your website and deciding on elements to include on the pages, make sure to stay away from the following.

These elements are generally decided to be against best practices and tend to annoy casual visitors:

• Flash websites
• Auto-starting sound
• Auto-starting video
• Splash pages

Your website is like your online business card. The more professional a website, the more professional your business looks. The more people like your website, the more likely consumers are to use your business.

Make sure to invest in your design and ask for help if you’re not sure. Don’t forget to look at other great sites for inspiration.

Pillar Content

Online, content is king. Consumers will visit your website in hopes of finding specific content and will find your website from content included in Google.

Small businesses should make sure they include at least the following pages:

• About – this page highlights who you are, what you do, and where to find you
• Contact – include a contact form, phone number, address, and general ways people can reach out to you
• Services (Consulting / Services specific businesses) – in-depth review of what services you offer and how people can get your services
• Press and Awards – have you been in the press? Have you received any awards? Outline them here, and also include a section for journalists that are looking to contact you.

Small businesses with a blog, will want to make sure to write specific in-depth articles.

These pillar articles are the ones that are high value articles that consumers are willing to spread and other bloggers will link to. For example, this article is considered a pillar article.

Layout

After you outline what content you want on your website, you have to decide how it will be laid out. The idea is that your navigation will take you to specific important pages, and then articles will be organized in categories.

The layout will be slightly different depending on whether the business has a blog or not. Obviously, this is isn’t the only way to lay out a website, but in general these are two effective ways to outline your website.

Without a blog:

With a blog:

Goals

Now that the foundation is set: you know what your design will be, what content to include, and how the site will be laid out – start considering your goals and how you’ll measure them.

What are you trying to achieve with your website? Are you trying to:

• Introduce users to your retail stores?
• Sell product online?
• Generate leads and contacts?
• Increase the reach of your brand?
• Become thought leaders in your field?

There are any number of goals a business website could fulfill. You need to figure out what you want from your site, and make sure to emphasize those aspects.

For example, if you’re trying to build leads and new clients – you’ll want to make it very clear how consumers can do that. You can do this by putting a large button on the top of your site that tells consumers how to contact you or you can offer something for free to convince visitors to fill out your form or call you.

Your goals will drive and complete your website. As a small business, resources are tight and everything you do should be related to your goals. Don’t invest in unnecessary bells and whistles unless you know that they will explicitly fulfill a step bringing you closer to your goal.

It’s difficult to generalize a small business website, because each industry tends to require something different. To help make it more clear on how your business should setup a website, the following outlines the specific goals, content, extras, and layout for websites based on their industry.

Businesses that are centered on delivering services or consulting with other businesses, creating a professional website should be a priority. These businesses excel when positioned as thought-leaders and best in class.

Goals:
The main goal for services and consulting businesses is to generate new leads. These type of businesses can gain a lot from having a blog that increase traffic to the website and further reinforce the business’ expertise.

Pillar Content:
The most important page that a services business can have is the contact page. Make it easy for readers to find this page and get in contact with you.

Also make sure to have an about page, that highlights who you are and who the customer will be working with. Show that you have experience and are good at what you do.

The services page makes it easy for readers to see exactly what you do and how you can help them. Use testimonials on this page to highlight previous clients and how you’ve helped other clients.

Finally, be sure to have a press and awards page. Being included in major newspapers and receiving awards, increases the trust consumers have in your business. Building trust, makes it more likely a consumer will contact your firm and become a lead.

Extras:
As I said before, a blog that portrays the business’ expertise is extremely important for service-oriented businesses.

Online content organized on a blog, gives consumers a way to try out the business without becoming a client. If I like what I see on the blog, I’m more likely to reach out to the business to have them help me with my exact problem.

Lawyers have already realized the power of the web, as most already have a website. However, many of the sites tend to be hastily created and in poor form.

Goals:
Similar to service businesses, law firms need to convey expertise in their field and make it easy for consumers to find where they are and how to contact them.

Pillar Content:
These websites should include the basic pages:

• About
• Services
• Contact

Additionally, the page’s contact form should highlight the “Free Consultation” that most lawyers offer. Law firms must reduce obstacles for consumers to contact that business, and also gives readers an incentive to reach out.

More than ever, people are using the Internet to find homes online. They search for realtors and their inventory to find the home of their dreams.

Goals:
Realty sites have two major goals:

• To introduce new consumers to their homes
• To convince consumers to sell their homes through the realtor

Pillar Content:
Aside from the regular page – realtor information, services the realty offers, and how to contact the realty – these businesses need extra systems that organize and display home listings.

The home listing should highlight featured homes and give important information about each. It’s important to organize the homes based on location and ensure that it’s search engine friendly so consumers can find the homes through Google.

Secondly, realtors should focus on creating a blog where they can highlight and outline their ideas for how to sell homes. Show how you can do something special and that you’re great as selling homes, and I’ll be more interested in listing my home through you.

Think about how often you’re not sure where you want to go to eat, so you search online for restaurants in your area. Restaurant owners want a prominent position in search results and want to be the website consumers visit.

Goals:
Restaurant owners have a number of goals for their website. Generally they want:

• Consumers to find their restaurant and visit
• Order food for delivery online
• Make a reservation online

Pillar Content:
The most basic website should at least include background information about the restaurant. It should include:

• Type of food
• Locations
• Hours
• Contact information

However, as websites become more sophisticated, consumers expect more from restaurant than just the basics. For example, most people want to see a menu and prices.

Advanced restaurants should definitely include:

• An online menu for consumers
• Online ordering and reservations
• Integration with review sites such as Yelp or Zagat
• Upcoming events
• Google maps and directions

Some restaurants will even include a blog that highlights the food and events – capturing consumers that are looking for specific things.

For example, imagine a restaurant publishes a “Halloween Wrap-Up” of their awesome Halloween party. Next year, when I’m looking for Halloween parties to attending, I might see the post and go to the restaurant.

Restaurants have so much content they can create and post. The more information posted online, the more likely people are to commit to visiting the restaurant.

Retailers have begun to follow the online trend and have started building websites that highlight their stores. The advent of mobile and location based social media has made it imperative that local retailers have a digital presence.

Goals:
Generally, the goal for local retailers is simple – get more people in the front door and out with a product.

Advanced retailers may have an e-commerce division and in this case have the goal of selling products online.

Pillar Content:
Similar to the others, the basic pages – an about page, contact information, and address – is important.

However, beyond that local stores will want to include information on upcoming events. These give consumers a reason to visit the store and a way to sneak onto a consumer’s calendar.

Secondly, if you offer coupons, be sure to post them on your website. If you have a blog, each coupon or deal could be a post. These coupons can be a great way to convince consumers to use you over your competitors.

Finally, let consumers check out your inventory online and learn more about your products.

If you’re not e-commerce enabled, show featured products instead of your entire inventory. Invite consumers to come to the store and try out the products before they buy – you have the advantage of touch and feel over ecommerce only stores.

E-commerce enabled retailers should be sure to organize the products in a natural way and allow users to rate and review each. Be sure to highlight shipping information and customer service – consumers are afraid of making the wrong decision, so be sure to alleviate their fears as much as possible

Consumers want to be fully informed before they buy. The more information you give them, the more likely they are to buy from you.

No matter how much content you have and how great your website looks, if it isn’t optimized for search engines – no one will be able to find the website.

Although, search engine optimization can get very complicated and most strategies need to be customized based on the business, there are some basics that every website should have.

Targeted Pages

The first step is creating individual pages of content that search engines can show consumers when they’re searching for something.

Determine important things that consumers might search for and create specific pages for this important information.

Be sure to only create pages within reason that have a large amount of content. Creating too many targeted pages can be seen as spam and Google may penalize your site.

Permalinks Setup

Once you have your pages setup, the next step is to create search friendly URLs. Depending on the CMS you’re using, the process is slightly different.

WordPress users can setup their permalinks in the administrative panel. Drupal and Joomla users should check the CMS documentation to determine how to create “pretty URLs”.

The default permalink setup for many sites includes the use of variables and numbers.

For example, WordPress displays URLs as – http://example.com/?p=N – this URL offers search engines and users no information about the page.

Instead, edit the permalink to include the post and page name to change the URL to http://example.com/contact. Now search engines and users know to expect the contact information on this page.

Keyword Relevant Categories

Small businesses that decide to have a blog will be given the chance to create categories, to organize their posts.

Categories give search engines a great way to organize content and better understand what the website covers.

When deciding on category names, make sure they are relevant and include important keywords.

For example, if your restaurant is hosting events for Halloween, Valentines Day, Christmas, and other holidays – create a category “Holiday Events” that organizes all the event wrap-ups.

Categories are like chapters for your blog, make them inclusive and few. If I read your categories list, I should quickly understand what your business does and what your blog covers.

Title Tags and Descriptions

One of the most important elements of search engine optimization is the title tag. The title tag is exactly what it sounds like, the title of the page.

For most blog posts, the title of the page will be the title of the post. Advanced users can tweak the title tag slightly to target different keywords than the ones found in the post headline.

The title tag is most important on the site’s homepage. Since the homepage is the most authoritative page, it’s here you can target high value keywords.

For example, a toy store in long island could define its title tag as “StoreName – A Toy Store in Long Island”.

Learn more about search results page and meta tags here

WordPress users can easily define the title tag of the homepage and each individual post by installing a number of plugins. One that I recommend is All-In-One-SEO. It offers a number of options for editing important meta information on each page.

Address and Phone Number

An often overlooked optimization for local businesses is the inclusion of an address and phone number in the website footer. This means including the address and phone number on every page.

The reason for this is because search engine will use the address to target local searchers. If your website has a Florida address and phone number, search engines will consider your website relevant to Floridians searching for your service.

Google Maps Integrations

Another way to signal your store’s location to Google is by integrating the Google Map into your directions.

You can easily grab the map of your business from Google Maps

The next step to creating an effective small business website is to optimize its social media integrations.

There are specific steps businesses should follow when creating a website to ensure consumers can easily find a brand’s social media profiles. If you’re spending time interacting with your consumers, don’t hide the profiles from them.

Link Social Media Profiles:

Start by prominently linking to the social media profiles. Although it may seem basic, many businesses forget to highlight their social media presence.

It can be frustrating to look for a brand’s Twitter account and not be able to find it. Make sure it’s easy for consumers to find your profiles and make a long lasting connection with your business.

Linking social media profiles and your website allows consumers to flow from one to the other. Drive loyal consumers from you website to your social media profiles, and new consumers from your social media profiles to your website.

Creating a direct link between your social media profiles and website offers a secondary positive, it signals to search engines that the profiles, website, and business are connected.

What this means, is that when someone searches your business in Google – the return will include your official social media profiles, over fake ones or irrelevant accounts.

Linking social media profiles and the business website is a simple easy win that can have major impacts in both social media and search engine optimization.

Integrate Widgets

Some businesses will want to include more functionality, beyond that of a simple link. Thankfully, social media profiles make it easy to include their widgets onto a business website.

Widgets are simple to use embedded elements that allow you to extend the functionality from one site onto your own site.

For example, one widget many businesses embed is the Facebook Like Box. This box allows businesses to integrate the latest updates, a snapshot of fans, and the like button for the business fan page on the business website.

The Facebook Like Box is an extremely powerful tool for building fan on a business fan page, because it allows consumers to like the page without ever leaving the business website.

Another widget to consider adding is the Twitter Widget. This widget allows you to highlight the business Twitter account as well as a sampling of previous tweets.

Of course, even beyond just Twitter and Facebook there are other widgets. Delicious offers a widget that shows the stats of a user, how many friends they have, how many sites they’ve saved, and how popular they are. Digg offers a widget that shows which stories from the site are currently trending on the popular social news site.

Using widgets can be powerful, but be sure not to over do it. Widgets can increase how long a page takes to load and severely clutter the look and feel of a site.

Only embed widgets that are valuable and fulfill a goal. Unless the functionality is absolutely needed, defer to using a simple link.

Using the API

Another rising trend in social media is the use of an API or Application Programming
Interface.

API’s are powerful because they allow you to extend the functionality and information from a social media platform directly onto your website.

Two well-known social media APIs are Facebook Connect and Twitter @Anywhere.

The use of an API is for advanced users and those with specific goals in mind. Some of the functionalities these APIs afford are:

• Comments and login with Facebook and Twitter credentials
• Integrate Facebook information in web applications
• Follow a Twitter user without leaving a website
• See Twitter profile information by hovering over a username

If you’re interested in learning more about the API, you can check out Facebook Connect’s documentation and http://dev.twitter.com/anywhere/begin.

Online, content is king. Websites that are continually adding new content, tend to grow at a better rate compared to static websites.

Businesses tend to grow their website by adding a blog, which lets them build content and grow traffic online.

Content is so important because each published article acts as a new entry point for consumers. The more entry points you have, the more likely you are to introduce your business to new leads.

Maximizing the effectiveness of your online content means following a strategy and taking the publishing of content seriously.

Creating an Editorial Calendar

One of best ways to ensure the effective growth of your website is to create a publishing schedule. Most bloggers work to update a few times a week if not a few times a day.

Small businesses, on the other hand, need not update their blogs so often. If you update your blog with new content once a week or even twice a week, consider that an effective strategy.

Targeting Valuable Traffic

Most businesses never rank for more than just their company name in Google. This means that when consumers search for your services in your area, they’re never introduced to your business.

Search engines look for targeted, topic centric articles to rank in search results pages for high-value competitive keywords.

For example, if I search for “wedding bouquets”, Google is less likely to display an individual florist. However, if the florist had a blog and had written an article about “The Best Wedding Bouquets”, Google may consider that content worthy to display.

Without high-quality content, businesses are hard-pressed to capture searchers from complimentary keywords.

Example Stories

Sometimes it’s more useful to give examples of stories that would help a business grow its online business.

If you had a restaurant and needed to grow your catering business, writing blog posts highlighting important things to keep in mind when catering a party offers value to readers and shows potential consumers that you’re thorough and know what to look for when you cater a party.

Service providers can use their content to highlight their expertise and make it clear that they’re a though leader in their industry. An example would be a lawyer giving their point of view on a recent ruling and explaining how it could affect the average person.

Someone searching for basic information might find the article, and contact the lawyer to get a more personalized point of view or for a consultation.

There are a number of tools small businesses can turn to, to help build their website and track its performance.

Rackspace Hosting / MediaTemple

The first thing you’ll need to invest in is hosting for your website, the vendor that will actually keep the servers that store your website. It’s important to find a reliable host, since they’re the ones that will make sure your website is up and accessible.

Two companies I recommend when looking for a host are Rackspace and MediaTemple. Our “Pro Services” utilizes Rackspace Cloud Hosting for all of our client sites. But, I’ve used and still use MediaTemple for some of my websites and have been happy with the results.

Check out both potential hosts and see which fits your parameters – Rackspace Hosting, Rackspace Cloud Hosting, MediaTemple.

WordPress

Once you have your hosting and servers setup, the next step is actually having a website. The old way of creating a website was to host individual pages. Now, however, we have more sophisticated systems including the WordPress CMS.

WordPress makes it easy to create professional websites. The WordPress system makes it simple for even non-technical users to publish and edit new content. Best of all, the WordPress software is free.

Note that there are many premium extensions to WordPress, specifically themes and plugins, which may be worthy investments depending on your usage.

Google Analytics

Businesses that want to track the return on their website will need to install an analytics package. Thankfully, Google offers Google Analytics as a free product that Google users can add to their site.

The installation of Google Analytics is simple and requires the inclusion of a snippet of code into the website.

Using the analytics package, business owners can track the number of visitors to their website, where they came from, how long they browsed, and what they did on the site.

This data can be useful for identifying what content works, what keywords are driving traffic, and how consumers are interacting with your website. If you learn that specific topics are driving valuable leads, then you can continue publishing content that touches upon the topic.

Raven Tools

Those that want to take Google Analytics one step further can invest in Raven Tools, a marketing analytics suite, that tracks how well a website ranks in search engines and integrates with Google Analytics.

Raven Tools allows business owners to identify high value keywords to target with content and determine the amounts of traffic specific keywords are driving.

For the more advanced and analytical business owner, Raven Tools is a great tool to track ROI and overall effectiveness of a website. It’s a tool I personally use and love.

MailChimp

Many business owners are told about the value of email marketing, but are unsure how to get started. It’s true that creating and managing an email newsletter can be a time intensive task, however MailChimp tries to make it easier.

MailChimp collects user information and gives users a portal to send email from. If you’re a subscriber of my newsletter, you’re receiving an email from MailChimp.

I’ve created the theme and saved it in MailChimp. Every time I write a new email, I’m able to import my theme and create the campaign.

MailChimp also gives me in-depth reporting so I know who is opening my emails and how effective they are. Based on this data, I can continue emails that drive traffic or make sales, and discontinue emails that lead to users unsubscribing.

The small business website acts as the company’s online storefront and is really one of the most important aspects of a business’ online presence. So many businesses are forgoing the care and maintenance of their websites and instead focusing on social media – a major problem in my eyes.

Without an effective website, the support and community grown through social media may not convert into true consumers. The website gives consumers an outlet to learn more about the business and be immersed in the company experience.

Invest in your website like you would invest in your physical store.

What do you think is important when it comes to a small business website? How would you get started? What systems have you used that have worked? Do you have a tool or workflow you recommend?

The Ultimate Resource for Successful Small Business Websites is a post by Samir Balwani – Online Marketing and Digital Communications

The allure of social media has made brands throw out any semblance of a strategy and have just jumped in. Instead, brands should take a moment to consider your long term digital strategy.

If you’re not sure what a possible workflow should look like – I’ve outlined three steps to digital maturity below. Each step explains what should be happening across each individual media type.

When going through the outline, you’ll see me refer to owned media, shared media, paid media, and earned media. I define each as:

• Owned media is the brand website and blog, media the brand has direct control over.
• Shared media includes brand social media platform and profiles.
• Paid media is all online advertising.
• Earned media includes press coverage, viral buzz, and online word of mouth.

The First Step

Assuming your brand is just getting started, the first step can be the hardest. It involves a huge investment of time and money, but it is totally worth it. The impact of an online marketing campaign can be tremendous, especially as more and more consumers become digitally savvy.

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Owned Media:
The first step for owned media is creating a branded website and blog.

The website should have all the brand information, an about section and contact section for interacting directly with consumers. The blog acts as a platform for the brand to publish content and continue to grow the website.

During the creation of the website, be sure to connect with an SEO agency or consultant. These specialized consultants will explain how to best build your website to adhere to search engine best practices and make sure the brand doesn’t miss any keyword opportunities.

The SEO firm should also consult on the editorial calendar for the brand blog to create an effective content generation system. They should highlight the best way to structure content for search effectiveness.

Paid Media:
Once the website is built and deployed, the brand will need a comprehensive advertising campaign to build interest and counteract the low SEO authority. To do this the brand should invest in a display advertising plan that builds brand familiarity with the core demographic.

Search engine marketing (adwords, etc.) should be used to “buy” keywords on search engines.

The SEM campaign should be split into 10% / 90%. 10% of the budget should be allocated to identifying optimal keywords for SEO, meaning keywords that do well and may be captured organically. 90% of the budget should be used to drive traffic and conversions.

Earned Media:
Finally, for the first step, earned media can be important. Use the blog to post content that can be spread via online word of mouth marketing. Infographics, controversial articles, and interesting information tend to build online buzz and increase brand familiarity.

Also, be sure that your PR team is pitching online news outlets and bloggers. Editorial coverage can increase the brands authority and quickly build traffic.

The Next Step

Once the brand has built an optimized brand website and blog, has a consistent content schedule, is becoming a familiar brand online, and is getting consisten PR coverage – it’s one step closer to online maturity. The next step is building a more advance online presence.

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Owned Media
At this point the brand’s owned media platforms – the website and blog – should consistently be building web traffic.

It’s important to begin a regular reporting schedule that tracks visits, goals completed, and high impact keywords (which keywords are driving visitors and sales). This intelligence should guide the editorial content and more importantly any future micro-sites.

Micro-sites can be an effective tool for building and capturing online visitors without impacting the brand website.

Identify important information and brand messaging that is robust enough to become a micro-site. Build and deploy micro-sites for promotions and informational messaging.

Be careful to only build micro-sites when they’re warranted – otherwise you may find yourself losing equity from your own main website.

Paid Media:
As your brand website begins to grow in authority, organic traffic will increase and you’ll be able to lower your online ad spending.

Once you see a plateua in branded searches to your website, lower your display advertising budget from an introduction branding to a maintenance.

At this point you’ve saurated the marketing with your advertising, you just want to continue to stay top of mind – a less aggressive media plan will work.

Continue to use SEM to drive traffic from keywords not captured by the brand website and blog – as long as they are relevant and have good return.

For high value SEO keywords, driving terms that are extremely lucrative, continue to use SEM. High rankings and an SEM buy can ensure maximum capturing of online visitors.

Earned Media:
In conjunction with branded micro-sites, create PR opportunities or stunts to get online coverage. Your micro sites and brand website should integrate with any offline PR opportunities and events.

At this point integration between online and offline PR is extremely important.

Shared Media:
Now that the owned media is fully optimized and strong, we can invest in shared media. Investing in shared media too early can mean that potentially your social media platforms will outpace your owned media, a potentially serious problem.

Start by building and deploying a Facebook fan page, twitter account, and any other relevant profiles.

For the Facebook fan page, create a custom landing tab.

Build a custom background for your Twitter account.

Finally, figure out an editorial and messaging strategy for your shared media platforms.

You should be able to answer the questions:

• How will these work together?
• What is their individual goals?
• How much am I willing to invest in them?
• How am I measuring and claiming success?

Reaching Maturity:

Before a brand can be considered mature online, the business must be fulfilling the following.

• It must have a sophisticated integrated reporting schedule that includes SEO impact, shared media values, buzz metrics, paid marketing, and branding.
• The website and brand blog should be effective and optimized. It should be able to maintain and launch a network of micro-sites depending on promotions and opportunities.
• The brand should be familiar and receive consistent PR coverage.
• The SEM campaign should be ROI positive and the website should rank for high value SEO keywords.
• A community should be building on any shared media platforms.

Owned Media:
Since the owned media platform should be built and fully optimized, all that is left is optimizations on the content. The editorial calendar should begin to incorporate multiple media types, including video and podcasts. Articles should be targeted to drive sales, capture SEO keywords, or build community.

The brand should also create a dedicated “Connect” landing page, to help consumers find and connect with the brands social media profiles. This page should be referenced in any ads that are meant to build brand community.

Finally, a comprehensive newsletter list should be created that offers consumers insider information and deals. Newsletters are important because they can act as direct response vessels for surveys, consumer intelligence, and even sales.

Paid Media:
Once the “Connect” landing page is built, the display media plan should include driving traffic to that page. The page should be conversion tested to ensure that consumers are interacting with the brand and joining the community.

The SEM expenditures should continue and be further refined. At this point, with the amount of intelligence collected, the SEM program should consistently be ROI positive.

Earned Media:
The PR team should continue to build online and offline interest in the brand, reaching out to relevant journalist and bloggers with information. Whenever an event, promotion, or stunt is to be created – shared media platforms should be integrated. PR events are effective share points and community building tools.

Shared Media:
The shared media profiles and online community should be growing at this point. Now is the time to consider each social media platform as a potential communications vessel. Create an integrated messaging strategy and define potential goals and tonality for each platform.

Begin to use promotions, giveaways, and contests to build the online community and drive traffic back to the brand’s owned media.

Finally, be sure to integrate any offline events, advertising, and promotions with the social media platforms to increase the reach and effectiveness of these events.

After Maturity

Once each system is working in concert like a well-oiled machine, brands should look to optimizing and identifying efficiencies. You have the system in place, now is the time to make it better. Also, it doesn’t stop here.

Continually audit and review your digital marketing strategy to ensure that things are working and that you’ve begun taking advantage of new and upcoming platforms.

For example, once an online presence is matured it may be time to consider a mobile marketing integration.

The work of a digital marketing strategist never ends, there are always changes and optimizations to be done. The above outline should give you a place to start and give a general roadmap.

The Graphical Timeline

Is this how you imagine your digital strategy? What did you do differently? Would this work for your brand?

The Three Phases of a Successful Online Marketing Strategy is a post by Samir Balwani – Online Marketing and Digital Communications

I put together an outline that gives you an idea of how much a social media hub can cost.

A few things we’re assuming. The first being that your social media hub has a blog of some sort and uses WordPress as the CMS (I like WordPress because it’s simple, search friendly, and easily customizable). Secondly, we’re assuming that you have no in-house resources and everything is being outsourced.

Hosting and Installation

The first thing you’ll have to do is figure out where your hub will be hosted, what servers it will live on. Thankfully, it’s pretty easy since Worpdress offers VIP hosting for large businesses.

If you have a large brand that will get a lot of traffic, VIP hosting is great because it can handles a lot of visitors. The cost is pretty expensive though. There is a $1500 setup fee, followed by a $500 monthly fee.

An alternative is to use a hosting service like Hostgator or MediaTemple. This blog is hosted by MediaTemple for a monthly cost of $30. I’ve been happy with it and love the 24/7 customer service.

Generally, most hosts will help you install WordPress or have a one-click installation solution.

Design

Once you know where your social media hub lives, you need to make it look pretty. If you have an internal art director, this might be easy since they can dictate look and feel. If not, you’ll be at the mercy of your designers and developers, don’t skimp here.

Generally, a custom WordPress theme can range anywhere from $3000 to $10000+. The reason why the range is so large is because it depends on exactly what you want.

Things that might increase the cost include: who you are (big brands will pay more), custom post-types (images instead of text), advanced integrations (connecting the blog to your CRM or aggregating social media platforms into the feed).

If you’re looking for a great designer definitely check out Circ.us. I’ve worked with them in the past and love what they can do – want someone to project manage and consult on the process? Let’s talk! If you have a company you recommend, definitely leave a comment and share their info.

Advanced Integrations

Now that the basics are in place, the next step is integrating our social media profiles to create a real social media hub.

Integrations can be as simple as creating a call to action to connect the blog and social media through a basic link. This integration is extremely simple and should already be part of your design cost.

More advanced integrations can become expensive. An example would be adding Facebook connect so users can comment using their Facebook account or using Buddypress to create your own social network. Either way, depending on how imaginative you can be – set aside another $5000 for the bells and whistles.

Content Creation

The vessel has been created and it is beautiful. The time has come to fill it. This means creating content, images, and videos. Some of this can be done by your current staff, but at some point you’ll need to grow. Maintaining an effective social media hub requires a lot of content and means the brand needs to think as a publisher.

One way to do that is to outsource a lot of the content to freelance copywriters. You’ll probably pay around $100 per article, with a chance for better rates from volume.

Those that are really serious about their content might pull out all the stops and hire an editorial team. Some brands are hiring editors, photographers, and writers. They are creating editorial calendars and treating their hubs as branded magazines.

This strategy is extremely effective, but also expensive. I can’t really give you an estimated cost for this, since it really depends on who you hire. Suffice it to say, you’ll be spending at least $50k a year.

Consultation and Advice

Getting your social media hub up and running is only half the battle. Now you need to figure out what you want to do with it and make sure you’re getting the most from it. To do this, you’ll need help in two aspect: digital communications and search engine optimizations (SEO).

A digital communications agency (PR firm or social media agency) should help you create your editorial calendar and identify content that resonates with your community. You’ll also want them to work with your SEO agency to create metrics to monitor and identify campaign optimizations.

The second area, SEO, is an extremely important aspect. Most design and development firms understand the basics, but only a specialized SEO consultant can ensure your site is capturing all the potential search volume.

Generally, you can expect to pay at least $3000 a month for digital communications consulting and another $3000 a month for SEO consulting. It’s important to note that your SEO firm can and should help during the development phase of your hub. Also, there are many marketing and PR firms that are capable of doing both – recommending a digital strategy and making SEO recommendations.

Upkeep and Maintenance

Once everything is set and going along, it’s important to continue optimizing the site and maintaining the hub. Every few months, WordPress updates their software and should be updated on your installation.

The blog software is easy to update, but depending on the customization, themes, or plugins might need to be updated as well. In an instance like that, the developer would have to update their code as WordPress is updated.

Generally, upkeep and maintenance shouldn’t be very expensive, possibly another $500/month.

Total Budget Breakdown

WordPress VIP Hosting Initial Cost: $1500
Design and Installation: $5000
Advanced Integrations: $5000
SEO Consultation (3 Months): $3000 x 3
Communications Consulting (3 Months): $3000 x 3
Original Content Creation: $3000
Total Initial Cost: $38,000

VIP Hosting Monthly: $500
Monthly Maintenance: $500
Content Creation: $5000
Total Monthly Cost: $6000

What are your thoughts on the budget breakdown? Does this fall within your budgeting? Has your brand blog / hub been able to recoup this type of expenditure online? Are you tracking the ROI on your blog?

Budgeting a Brand’s Social Media Hub is a post by Samir Balwani – Online Marketing and Digital Communications

Some tactics are easier to execute over others, but in the end it’s important to build a hub that is not only functional, but also sticky. The following recommendations should help you start thinking about potential integrations and strategies for your branded hub.

Supercharged Blog

Don’t let your hub be static. A never changing social media hub is a waste of resources. Your hub needs to be continually updated and offer users a reason to come back often.

Invest in content. Hire a copywriter or in-house publishing team to make sure your hub is continually updated with branded content. Users should expect to learn about your brand from your social media hub instead of anywhere else.

Example: Skype

Skype created a great blog network that includes different blogs for different topics. The blogs are broken out to include topics such as security, brand updates, and developer notes. The content keeps consumers informed and positions Skype as a thought leader in their industry.

Facebook Connect

Want to take advantage of Facebook’s 500 million users? Use Facebook connect to allow users to share stories and leave comments with their Facebook info.

Deeper integrations allow for the recommendations of gifts, articles, and products based on their social profile. Show consumers what their friends liked and turn your social media hub into a social proof machine.

Example: Levi’s

Levi’s did a great job of integrating Facebook connect with their products so friend’s can recommend products on the Levi’s site itself. They created the “Friend’s Store” as a supporting shop to their regular catalog.

Integrated Social Profiles

In its simplest form, your social media hub should at least link to all of the brands social media profiles. For many, this alone might be enough. For others, it might worth doing an advanced integration.

For example, some social media hubs aggregate messaging from all profiles onto one page. Others aggregate updates into the sidebar. Depending on your design and ultimate goals, these techniques might work for your blog too.

Example: H&M

H&M created a social media room, which aggregates social media mentions on their site. The page creates a self-updating social media presence that requires little resources from the staff (aside from possible moderation of what can show up). The only downside to the H&M blog is that it currently does not archive posts on the H&M site and therefor increase the number of pages the site has – a big missed opportunity.

Newsletter Subscriptions

Although social media is the darling child of online marketing, email is not a medium to scoff at. Email marketing is an extremely effective form of communications and a great way to drive consumer interaction.

Marketers consider list building, adding email subscribers, an extremely important aspect of online marketing. Adding a sign up form or newsletter page to your social media hub makes it easy for consumers to connect via email.

Example: Smucker’s

Smucker’s has created a specific landing page for their newsletter. Consumers are able to sign up and learn more about their promotions and new products. Optimally, a link to this page would be included along side their content and recipes.

Social Media Policy

An often overlooked aspect of a social media strategy is the social media policy. The policy should outline how you will engage users online, what the community is allowed to do, and what information you will collect.

The social media policy is important because it can save the brand from a potential backlash. Imagine a situation where a comment is moderated and the author begins to vocally complain. A well written social media policy gives the brand cover when explaining moderation.

Connect Your Products

If you have an online shop or sell products online, it’s important to integrate the product pages with your social media hub.

There are a few ways you can connect your product pages with the social media hub. For example, display popular products in the sidebar. Another way to highlight products, is by ending each post with a profile of products mentioned (think crunchbase).

Overtime your social media hub will begin to grow traffic as it grows content. It’s up to you to funnel that traffic to social media profiles and your products.

Example: Blendtec

Blendtec is known for their “Will it Blend” campaign, a video series that highlights their blender attempting to blend random objects. The campaign is great because it clearly shows the power of the Blendtec blender and integrates the product into their social media content. Also, the Blendtec store and other important pages are included in the “Will it Blend” sidebar.

Live Chats / Streaming Video

Static content can be boring. Sometimes you have to talk directly with your brand’s community. One great way to do just that is with a regularly schedule live chat.

There are a number of services you can use to host your chats and many of them let you embed them on your blog. Ustream and tinychat are two such services.

Make sure to keep them regularly scheduled so people know when they’ll happen and tune in every time.

Final Thoughts

It’s not enough to just have a social media hub, you must grow it and make it an online destination in its own right. Connecting it with social media profiles, creating a content strategy, and doing something different will make your hub stand out.

What does your hub look like? What have you done to make yourself different? What do you have planned for your site?

Maximizing Your Social Media Hub is a post by Samir Balwani – Online Marketing and Digital Communications

Here’s what I think will both happen and be important for businesses owners and brand marketers.

• Offline Mobile Marketing will Grow
• Social Media will Mature
• Increased Importance of SEO
• More Small Businesses will Invest Online
• Metrics and Measurements will Increase
• Tracking will Become More Difficult
• Publishers will Increase Focus Online, and Struggle
• Brands will Minimize Social Platforms and Invest in Websites
• E-commerce will Become More Intelligent
• Offline and Online Advertising will Merge
• Convergence will be One Step Closer

It’s pretty clear that mobile marketing will be extremely important. Foursquare has been a great indicator of mobile marketing’s power.

Mobile marketing growing is not the trend I’m excited about though. I’m more excited about how it will continue to be integrated with offline marketing.

As much as I dislike it, Facebook Places is in an opportune position with the release of Facebook Points. It won’t be long before we see fully integrated loyalty programs for check-ins that become Facebook Points which consumers can use to buy product or get discounts.

The integration of the mobile world and the offline world (think Coca-Cola in Israel) will be huge. The ability to integrate consumer credits cards, cheap RFID chips, and more dependence on mobile phones will drive this trend.

We say this almost every year, but it’s finally reached a tipping point. Major brands have embraced the value of social media and the online world. Businesses across the board have realized its importance and have pledged significant resources to the new media medium.

Watch for an increased adoption of corporate blogs and dependence on riskier online marketing plans (I say risky in the sense that brands will begin to slowly move away from the tight lipped corporate culture, to a more consumer friendly culture). Social media will drive businesses to re-think their culture and create a shift in how we do business and how we present ourselves.

Maturity does not increase use of social media, simply more effective and intelligent usage. We’ll see less wastage and more businesses asking the question “Why”.

It’s easy to look at major brand websites and see that most have little to no interest in optimizing their sites for search. Many are created in Flash, ignore coding best practices, and are confusing even for humans.

Businesses are beginning to realize the important of optimizing their websites for search engines. There are too many consumers searching for specific products for businesses to ignore them.

Small businesses, especially, gain an advantage by having an optimized website. Online, small businesses and major brands, are on equal footing – a well optimized small business website has the opportunity to perform better than some major brand websites.

I alluded to it before – small businesses have realized the advantage the Internet gives them and are investing in it. The ability to connect with consumers directly without high prices (think cable television ads) is an appealing proposition for many business owners.

Online marketing is no longer a risk; instead it’s becoming a necessity. The ROI can be measured and when done correctly can be phenomenal. Also, year-by-year, business owners have grown to be more and more tech savvy, recognizing the power of the Internet and investing in it.

The trend has continued and 2011 will be no different. We’ll see a continued increase in online investments with small businesses paying closer attention to their website realizing their sites are their online storefronts.

As more people begin giving online marketing their full focus (no longer experimenting), there will be a renewed focus on metrics. The idea that certain things are not measurable will no longer be accepted; instead people will demand metrics and measurable achievements.

Already, in 2010, we noticed a growth in online marketing metrics theory and strategies; in 2011 this trend will continue. We’ve become more sophisticated in our marketing models and are looking at new indicators to track success.

As more monitoring tools appear and more data becomes available, we’ll be able to more clearly track and define what’s working and what isn’t.

Even though I say tracking and measurements will increase, there is a potential obstacle to the trend. Government has shown an interest in reducing the ability for publishers to track and measure consumers online.

Consumers fear a lack of privacy online, an idea that already doesn’t exist, and never will, and government may over-react.  Curbing publishers’ ability to track and understand consumers could hurt online marketing as a whole. When it comes to measuring results, we may be pushed away from strict metrics and be forced to use the same guestimates we already do for traditional media.

Not to be left behind we’ll see more traditional publishers begin focusing online, realizing that traditional media is too expensive to be sustainable. Print publications have already moved online, but in 2011 we’ll see a true focus given to the web property – they won’t be portals for subscribing to the print publication.

I say they’ll still struggle because most print publishers fail to realize that moving online is not as simple as re-investing into your website. It’s a culture shift from print to real-time writing.

Publishing on the web is extremely different than publishing in print – two different strategies that take time to learn. 2011 will be the year publishers truly realize this difference and will either evolve or become extinct.

As brands become more mature in the way they interact with consumers online, they’ll also mature where they interact with consumers. Instead of focusing on creating the optimal social media profiles, businesses will begin to strengthen their website’s integrations with social media features.

Businesses will realize that by integrating the features of a social media site, they’re able to connect with consumers without giving up the analytics and control of branding.

Watch for increase integrations with Facebook connect and Twitter @anywhere. These social media API’s help business websites merge seamlessly with social media.

How we buy products online continue to grow more sophisticated. E-commerce site have collected data by letting consumers like and dislike products, leave comments, and even rate the shipping. Using the data, sites are able to create algorithms to recommend products, based on what we looked at previously.

In the next year, expect ecommerce sites to become even more intelligent. Social media sites allow us to compile large amounts of data to find and present products that solve problems for consumers.

Instead of having to search for a wrench on Amazon – the site may be intelligent enough to recognize that I just Googled how to fix my sink and recommend wrenches that would help with my product. Ecommerce that is predictive and targeted is something we’ll see in 2011.

I spoke previously about mobile marketing and offline merging, bridging the gap for marketers. The same holds true for advertisers.

Google has already shown that advertisers will be able to buy billboards through Google’s Adword system. Similarly, we’re seeing the same system for TV ads and soon enough radio ads as well.

The basic trend here is that we’ll be able to easily bid and manage our offline advertising through online systems – introducing new people to advertising they were previously exempt from.

The second trend here is much more subtle. It relates to the actual ad itself. In 2011, we’ll begin to see more and more websites begin to be added to advertisements.

I propose that in 2011, brands will begin integrating their TV ads with customized landing pages. No more will we see a brand homepage, but instead a relevant information page.

The integration of online and offline is something that already happens, to a lesser degree, in 2011 it’ll be done intelligently and effectively – instead of as an after-thought.

Technological convergence states that one-day technology, our multiple devices, will come together. The theory states that in the future we’ll only have one device, to do everything. It’s already prominent, as we see the adoption of tablets increase and processing power becoming more mobile.

The next age of convergence will come from the web converging with our TVs. We already see this phenomenon with Google TV and Apple TV, a trend that will only continue to grow.

It won’t be long before our tablets are our computers, our TV’s, our phones and anything else we may need.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I think 2011 will be a truly exciting time. There’s a lot happening and so many changes in technology. We’re on the brink of major adoption of social technology, businesses giving renewed attention to technology, and the potential for major break through in tracking and measuring marketing actions.

If you’re an online marketer, brand manager, or even small business owner, 2011 will not be an era where you continue doing what has worked. 2011 will be a year of risks and trying new things. It will force people to rethink how they reach consumers and what they think is important or effective.

That’s what I think, what about you? What are you anticipating in 2011? I’d love to hear your thoughts, so please leave a comment and share!