Thursday, 14 July 2011

  • Is Your Business Website Visible Online?

     

     

    A ‘How To’ Guide to Using Social Media and Search Engine Marketing to Get Found on the World Wide Web

    PART 1: Social Marketing Introduction

    Millions upon millions of people around the world use the Internet every second of every day. The World Wide Web has fundamentally changed the way in which we interact with each other on a social level and with our colleagues, bosses and clients in the professional arena. It has also revolutionized the way the modern business appeals to its target audience and this is primarily because the Internet enables people like you and me to search for any product (from a garden hose to a high performance sports car) or service, be it a dentist or a hairdresser, simply by clicking through the virtual pages of this truly fathomless ocean of information.

    Before the age of Information Technology, you would have to physically sift through the tissue-thin pages of some yellowed directory book for names, phone numbers and addresses. That or rely on the advice of a friend or a family member. Now, you are but a matter of mouse clicks away from not just the first, for example, florist it took you ages to find, but the best and closest florist to your doorstep! With a staggering 75% of all people globally going online to find information about the products and services they need, one thing has become exceedingly lucid about modern marketing principles: if you’re not visible online, then you are losing out on an incredible amount of business! Just ask the social marketing agency: all of these potential customers are hopping and skipping into your competition’s virtual retail store!

    Social Media and Social Marketing Advertising: The Importance of Getting Found

    With the uncompromised accessibility of the Internet, competition between businesses for this online visibility has become fierce, which means that strategies such as social media and social marketing have become indispensible. Without the right tools, strategies and investment of time and money, you may as well gift-wrap and hand all those potential customers over to your competition. So, what does all of this really mean and how can you, the business owner, increase the online visibility of your brand name and identity using social marketing?

    There are three areas on the Internet that are important to target when designing an effective social media and social marketing campaign:

    1. Search Engines: While this term may sound alien to you, you actually use them every time you browse the World Wide Web and are perhaps better known as Google, Yahoo! and MSN, amongst others.

    2. Social Marketing in the Blogosphere: The realm dedicated to the written opinion and worded experience! Sites for social marketing include Blogger, WordPress and Bloggit.

    3. Social Marketing in Social Media: The array of websites dedicated to promoting social interaction and media sharing (video, audio, photo, etc.), such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, YouTube and the 500+ more.

    ‘Being visible online’ means that the people who are searching for the products or services you sell must be able to find you in one or more of the above-mentioned spheres of the Internet. And when it comes to social marketing, the more the better!

    Social Media and Social Marketing: Getting Found Online

    It is the chief aim of any business website – with effective social marketing strategies in place – to provide information about the company, its brand name and identity, as well as its products and services. All of this information is presented in an engaging and attractive way so that web users will become convinced that they have found what they were originally looking for; not just the particular product or service itself, but a business brand they are willing to trust. So, how are all these potential customers supposed to find your website amongst the millions of companies and enterprises that sell similar, if not the same products and services? That’s where social marketing comes in!

    Stay tuned for the next informative article in the series, PART 2: Getting Found on the Internet: A ‘How To’ Guide to Using Search Engines.

Monday, 18 April 2011

  • Social Media Marketing Service: The Statistics and Potential for Commercial Exposure

    Social Media Marketing Service: The World-Wide Explosion

     

    The past decade has seen the monumental explosion of Social Media Marketing Service websites onto the Internet. From Facebook, Twitter and MySpace to YouTube, Bebo and Hi5; the number of Social Media Marketing Service websites on the Internet is truly astounding and they are connecting people from every single city, country and continent on the globe. There is quite literally no limit to the reach of the Internet and this has facilitated immense social interaction. People can keep up to date with hundreds of friends, engage in conversation, share pictures, videos and music and reconnect with friends that they have long lost contact with. Where distances, obstacles and oceans once came in the way of communication and sharing, there are now literally hundreds of Social Media Marketing Service websites making connection and reconnection possible in a way like never before.

     

    Social Media Marketing Service: The Statistics

     

    Social media essentially refers to the myriad of Internet-based sites that facilitate and promote social interaction and networking. In order to truly appreciate the marketing power of social media, one need only consider the following statistics:

     

    • 75% of the global consumers who go online visit Social Media Marketing Service websites.
    • This figure has increased by a massive 24% since last year.
    • Each visitor spends approximately 66% more time on Social Media Marketing Service websites than the previous year (from 3 hours per day to 6.5!)
    • 22% of the all human time is spent browsing Social Media Marketing Service websites.
    • In July of this year (2010), Facebook announced over 500,000,000 (million) users.
    • LinkedIn currently has 60 million subscribers, which increased by 5 million in just 2 months.
    • Twitter has 110 million users
    • Myspace has 57 million users in the United States alone
    • Yelp sees over 30 million viewers per month
    • Tagged  has 100 million registered users.

     

    So, what does this all mean? Social media has captivated the world’s attention and the number of users and time spent per day by each user is only increasing with each passing month. And what does this mean for business?

     

    Social Media Marketing Service

     

    The explosion of Social Media Marketing Service websites on the Internet and the vast number of people who subscribe to any of the hundreds out there has provided businesses of all sizes with an incredible opportunity to cash in on the exposure they can afford. Consider Facebook; one of the biggest of all the social networking sites to exist in the virtual domain. Facebook has over 500 million active viewers: subscribers who login and spend time on the site every day. The business that has visibility on Facebook is therefore being seen by tens, if not hundreds of millions of users on a daily basis. It is this potential for incredible exposure and the subsequent accumulation of leads that has made social media the new medium for modern marketing and advertising. The statistics have spoken: the business that does not make the jump into social media as a means for spreading their brand image and name will literally be left in the dust of its competitors.

     

    As a demonstration of WorldClass Search Engine Marketing, we have created a network of "Squeeze Page Websites" which are designed to provide WorldClass Search Engine Ranking for a Primary Keyword. Each individual Squeeze Website has been designed to be search engine optimized for one primary keyword.


    These are brand new websites without any history, no backlinks yet and are completely fresh from an SEO perspective. We will periodically update this report to show progress in terms of search engine ranking.



    WWW.WORLDCLASSSOCIALMEDIAMARKETING.COM (keyword “social media marketing”)



    WWW.WORLDCLASSSOCIALMEDIAMARKETINGAGENCY.COM (keyword “social media marketing agency”)



    WWW.WORLDCLASSSOCIALMEDIAMARKETINGSERVICE.COM (keyword “social media marketing service”)



    WWW.WORLDCLASSSOCIALMEDIAOPTIMIZATION.COM (keyword “social media optimization”)



    WWW.SOCIAL-MEDIA-GURU.COM (keyword “social media guru”)



    WWW.WORLDCLASSSOCIALNETWORKGURU.COM (keyword “social network guru”)



    WWW.SOCIAL-MEDIA-BROADCASTING.COM (keyword “social media broadcasting”)



    WWW.WORLDCLASSSOCIALMARKETINGAGENCY.COM (keyword “social marketing agency”)



    WWW.SOCIALNETWORKBRANDMANAGEMENT.COM (keyword “social network brand management”)



    WWW.AUTOMATED-SOCIAL-MEDIA.COM (keyword “automated social media”)



    WWW.WORLDCLASSWEIGHTLOSS.COM (keyword "weight loss")



    WWW.GOOGLOPOLY.COM (keyword "googlopoly")



    WWW.SOCIALNETGURU.COM (keyword "social net guru")



    WWW.WORLDCLASSWEBAGENCY.COM (keyword "worldclass web agency")




    If you'd like to talk with us about building you a network of WorldClass Social Media Marketing Squeeze Websites, please call 866.347.3321



    You can also send us an Email Inquiry

Friday, 03 September 2010

  • Social Media Marketing Automation - Get To Know 6 Biggest Myths & Realities

    There are many myths regarding social media marketing automation. Do you want to know the realities? If yes, then read the article and know the myths as well as realities.  

    If you are in the ‘Business to Consumer’ (b2C) marketing segment, social media marketing automation is a vital technique that you must be initiating to perk up your sales and generate more leads. It is the application of certain software to automate the social media marketing process such as customer data distribution, customer message broadcast, social media campaign management and more. However, despite its multi-tiered benefits, there are some rigid recurring myths associated with social media marketing automation.

    Sources revealed that only 10 percent of business to business companies, at present, incorporate social media marketing automation.  It is fairly logical to expect that most marketers are still planning the use of some kind of automation platform. Whatever be the reason, it is necessary for you to get updated with some of the myths related to such marketing.

    Let’s have a quick look –

    Myth 1: You require dedicated employees to attain the most from social media marketing.

    Reality is: Prior to initiating social media marketing automation, you strongly require transforming your business. The first thing that you need to do is to put your attention on your customer’s buying process rather than the sales process. In fact, it must start from top down and must involve both sales departments & marketing. Be ready and experimental with team performance and, if necessary, re-shuffle. Employment of additional people may not be necessary. The moment your systems get in place, social media marketing automation can curtail your staffs’ precious time and gear up their productivity level. Automating a recurring task like tracking ‘events’ or ‘webinars’ instead of delivering messages manually will save a lot of your marketing members’ time, which can be productively used in other marketing efforts.

    Myth 2: Social Media Marketing automation software is expensive.

    Reality is: In order to enhance marketing effectiveness, a strategy must be initiated to fully distribute your message across hundreds of social media websites. Frankly speaking, the top automation social media marketing software seems more cost-effective than what is expected, especially when some related high cost factors are taken into consideration. Some of the high cost factors include-

    time consuming repetitive tasks performed by the marketing team

    Excessive time spent by the sales representatives in chasing bad leads

    Lost opportunities as your dormant leads purchase product / service from your close competitors

    Myth 3: It is tough to learn Social Media Marketing Automation

    Reality is: In order to make your social media marketing automation a successful one, you need to take into account your customer’s buying mechanism. Consider what serves as a superior lead for your sales team and build up relevant content for nurturing leads. This process, no doubt, can be tricky and can invite multiple debates. However, the moment an agreement is set on how to achieve leads, the following things become much simpler than the ‘hyped’ discussions and debates on business process:

    What campaigns should be followed?

    How to manage the participants of an event?

    What is the process of implementing social media marketing automation program?  

    Myth 4: As there is email blaster, there is no need for social media marketing automation software.

    Reality is: With every passing day, the email campaigning response rates are dropping rapidly. As per the ‘Epsilon Q4 2009 Email Trends & Benchmark reports’, the response rates of consumers average only 22 percent. Mind you, if you fail to understand your buyer’s preference and repeatedly send them content which are irrelevant to them, they will surely neglect your message and might flag you as spam.

    Thus, the only way to increase your targeted customer’s response rate is through social media marketing automation platform. This platform will help you to better understand online behavior of your target customer and thus you will be able to send more targeted content to your buyers. This will definitely gear up response rate of your customers.

    Myth 5: Social Media Marketing automation is already included in the existing CRM or ‘Customer Relationship Management’

    Reality is: It has been found that many CRMs include fundamental emailing features and some even include process workflow. However, none of these platforms have that depth to understand the characteristic traits or behavior of your target buyer. Hence, delivery of automated social media marketing messages that are irrelevant to your buyer’s choice, taste and preference will only annoy him / her, instead of converting to business. Social Media Marketing automation allows you to understand the buyer’s accurate interest areas, which ensures you to send the appropriate content at appropriate time. The moment a buyer shows sincere interest in your products and services, you can use your unique selling proposition to convert them to business. You can integrate the social media  marketing automation with your existing CRM platform of your sales team and thus your sales team won’t need to change their system of lead tracking.

    Myth 6: There is no harm in using my existing process for another year because it is working fine.

    Reality is: As per “DemandGen Report”, social media marketing automation is turning out to be an essential investment in the year 2010 for leading B2B companies. This development can be attributed to two factors:

    Mounting up of pressure for demonstrating ROI

    Fall in rate of response of the buyers to untargeted mass communications

    Remember, at the end of the day, the smart prospect to engage customer is through pertinent, reliable and rich content. Here, if you don’t highlight the buyers’ concern and send them the suitable information relating to purchasing decisions, there is always a chance of thing getting messed up. There is a fair chance that your competitors have already started to adopt marketing automation for their business, ahead of yours, to gauge the consumer behavior more accurately. Thus, don’t delay in taking the right decision now; otherwise it will be too late for you to regain the lost opportunities.

    Hence, it can be said that social media marketing automation will definitely help a B2B marketer in understanding the needs and preferences of target customers in a better manner. This will help them to provide more customer-centric marketing process, which will in turn help the B2B organizations to get more leads and businesses.

    After going through this entire article, you now know the realities regarding the various aspects of social media marketing automation. Social Media Marketing automation will help you to know your customers’ behavior in a better manner and thus enable you to catch their imagination in a more targeted way. So, make the right decision at the right time and increase your sales by opting for Social Media Marketing Automation.

Wednesday, 30 June 2010

  • Social Media – Are Agencies Prepared to Meet Future Challenges of Marketing?

    Social Media has come up as a major marketing requirement for most businesses. However, are existing agencies really equipped and prepared to meet this emerging new distribution channel? A recent survey was conducted by TNS Media Intelligence about whether agencies are ready to deal with social media marketing.

    Clients from New York and around the country are emphasizing more and more about the need for their agency to provide expertise regarding Social Media Marketing. However, according to a survey it has been revealed that agencies are not properly equipped in helping their clients in the social media space.

    A polling survey was conducted by TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony in order to gauge the rate of success of various marketers in the social media space. In this survey, more than 60 marketers across 3 countries (U.K., France and North America) were polled. The polling survey of TNS asked these marketing professionals about the ability of their agencies in helping their clients in social media space. The result published by TNS says that “"Agencies don't get it”. 

    One of the main complaints of the New York based clients about their agencies (including public relations, creative, media, design and others) is that social media (such as blogs) are treated by the agencies as typical traditional media. These agencies have miniscule hands-on experience and practical skills on social media networking, video sharing, etc. 

    One of the marketing specialists of FedEx, Bryan Simkins, has told TNS that traditional Advertisement agencies can merely contribute to social media marketing. This is due to the fact that these Ad agencies are driven by their respective compensation models, which are appropriate for closed media. However, these compensation models are ineffective in case of open media and consequently the traditional Ad agencies can only nominally help their clients with social media marketing. 

    Social Media has brought about a paradigm shift in the concept of marketing. With every passing day, the popularity of this media is increasing by leaps and bounds. This is the reason why analysts have felt the necessity of highlighting the lack of properly skilled social media professionals at different agencies. In fact, a report published by Forrester Research has pointed out that most of the agencies are ill equipped in helping their clients in leveraging opportunities through community connections. Thus, these Ad agencies are not properly structured in accepting the marketing challenges of tomorrow. This has become a serious concern for the agencies because more and more of their clients are asking for social media marketing campaigns, but the agencies are not properly structured to meet their needs.

    It has been found that clients complain that the agencies sound good when they give presentations on social media. However, when it comes to the implementation of social media campaigns, a mismatch is taking place between marketer’s expectations and the daily management skills.

    According to Suzuki’s E-business Manager, Mr. David Harris, the existing partners of marketing don’t have a clear perception on social media. Thus, they tend to make grave mistakes when they try to apply old models of advertising and marketing to social media.

    The polling survey of TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony has also revealed the fact that 50% of the total sample of marketers have stressed on handling the social media efforts at executive level, through proper utilization of significant resources. Another 30 % of the surveyed marketers have regarded that the social media landscape is a “revolutionary opportunity.”

    Scott Wilder of Intuit has regarded social media as a Pandora’s Box, where consumers are relying more and more on word of mouth for evaluating products as well as companies.
     
    Social media can be utilized by the organizations for customer service, public relation and marketing. That’s why these organizations are finding it difficult to incorporate these new genres of communication tools in a specific division. 

    TNS’s Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer, Jim Nail, has predicted that lack of social media skills at various renowned agencies would create opportunities for new providers. Fila USA’s E-Marketing Manager, Carolyn Holliday, has stressed on the fact that it has become a necessity for companies to keep communicating with their customers, both potential as well as existing ones, in addition to regular practice of Ad placement. This is where prudent utilization of social media comes into play. Thus, opportunities galore for new providers in filling up the existing void of social media space.

    The goal for an automated social network is to give our clients the best automated social network marketing system on the planet. We give each client a unique username and password for their dedicated social network broadcast. We let our clients WRITE ONCE and then we PUBLISH GLOBALLY using our social network broadcasting service. Having a social networking broadcast system available to distribute your message across the SocialSphere once a week is a powerful new arrow in your quiver of marketing tools.

    ABOUT WWW.WORLDCLASSID.COM
    We are a strategic social media agency made up of social media engineers. We provide Strategic social media marketing and new online social media marketing. We are next generation search engine optimization known as social media optimization, using strategic social media broadcasting to provide online social media public relations.
    Contact Information:
    •    Lead Brand Manager
    •    WorldClass Brand Management
    •    1155 Camino del Mar, Suite 521
    •    Del Mar, California 92014
    •    http://www.WorldClassID.com 
    •    (+01) 760.445.3315
    (e) Contact@WorldClassID.com


  • IMPORTANCE OF KEYWORD SELECTION IN SOCIAL MEDIA

    Social Media Marketing and Social Media Optimization, as well as traditional Search Engine Marketing, are directly impacted by Keyword Selection.

    What most clients do not understand about online marketing, website construction, SEO or SMO is Keywords, more specifically Keyword Selection.  If we have a chance to, we will be glad to do an analysis of a prospective client’s website and see whether the keywords for which they rank actually have any value.  If the client doesn’t know anything about Keywords, then educating them is likely to identify the pain point they didn’t know existed.  Specifically, if they see a demonstration that they may be missing out on 80% of highly valuable target traffic (potential new business) for related keywords in their target audience…the awareness of losing that business should get their attention.

    Keyword Selection has become a combination of art and science, so in the following outline I will provide the fundamentals to give you a high level understanding of how sophisticated Keyword Selection has become.  Most people do not make appropriate keyword selections, so understanding this will help you guide discussions in the future.

    The Keyword Selection issue with respect to impact on search engine ranking is four-fold. 

    •    First is whether the keyword is considered a Root Keyword (also called a Primary Keyword) or whether it is a Keyword Stem (also called a Secondary Keyword). 
    •    Second is whether the keyword is “Global” or “Localized” and this means whether the keyword is geographically concentrated on the vicinity around the clients location, i.e. dental implants Houston.
    •    Third is the Keyword Value.  We want our clients to obtain search engine rank for 3 types of keywords, High-Value, Medium-Value, and Low-Value.  What you don’t want is to rank for keywords which have No-Value.
    •    Fourth is Keyword Length.  Root keywords are single words, like Dentist (very broad). Secondary Keywords include both Keyword Stems and Keyword Phrases (two or more words as part of the keyword). There are “short-tail keyword phrases” (two to four words in the keyword phrase, still fairly broad) and there are “long-tail keyword phrases” (very lengthy and detailed phrases which are highly specific, very narrow).  Long-tail keywords are typically competitive niche markets rather than the hugely competitive broad keywords

    So, here is the simple example for what all the above looks like:

    Root (Global) Keywords = dentist, dentistry, dental,
    Keyword Stems (Secondary, short-tail) = dentist office, dentistry practice, dental office
    Localized Root (Global) Keywords = dentist houston, dentistry houston, dental houston
    Localized Keyword Stems (Secondary, short-tail) = dentist office houston, dentistry practice houston, dental office houston
    Long-tail keyword phrase = small business dentist office providing top dentistry practice in houston

    Keywords in the above categories are further value gauged by some general “rule-of-thumb” benchmarks:

    1.    Number of Pages Indexed
    2.    Number of Monthly Searches
    3.    Average Cost per Click

    If you go to Google and search for “dentist” you will see that Google has indexed approximately 36,300,000 pages of content.

    In comparison, if you Google “dentist office houston” you will see that Google has indexed approximately 15,100,000 pages of content, less than half of “dentist” total pages indexed.  Further down is the long-tail keyword phrase “small business dentist office providing top dentistry practice in houston” which has approximately 6,620,000 pages indexed.

    The number of monthly searches done on any keyword of interest can be discovered at http://www.google.com/sktool.  If you go to that page and type in “dentist” you will see that 11,100,000 searches were done on that phrase last month.  The number of searches done last month for “dentist office” was 74,000 searches, and the “dentist office houston” phrase had ZERO searches last month.

    Obviously a website ranking in the first page of Google for “dentist” is going to have much larger traffic volume, but a dentist ranking for that root keyword globally may have patient inquiries from Boston even though his practice is in Houston.  A dentist may be able to claim “First Place Ranking” for “dentist office houston” but if no one is searching by that keyword phrase it has no value.

    Determining the most likely keyword phrases where you can economically afford to compete to drive the highest traffic is the real goal of Keyword Selection.

    Hope that helps lay a foundation, and please understand that there is TONS more detail below all this, so the importance of having a Strategic Keyword Selection process cannot be over emphasized.


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