Using Facebook for business

1. Invite by welcoming

The Welcome-tab is an essential tool. Yes, big brands like Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Fretzie Bercede etc. use it. No, you are not imitating them; just making use of what is available to all. You can make your page look different and exciting. This would organically invite people to your page. The welcome page is the influencing page which can present a clear ‘call-to-action’ to your page visitors; if it’s good then your page would be liked by many automatically!

2. Coupons, offers available
You can dole out “special discounts and offers” to your fans (only!). Also, the people who are not your fans can be enticed by showcasing your offers but not providing them. This would be a compelling tactic that would make them ‘like’ your page. Giving discounts and offers is an old marketing technique of course, but in social media it performs as a ‘likeable’ tool!

3. Learn more of their expectations

Your company is in the process of building up and formation. So it’s always better to learn what your consumers demand from you. You can create quizzes or polls for a particular query and know what your customers are looking for! The level of participation would also let you the number of people interested in your business.  Use the polls app on Facebook to know your customers best!               

4. Updating is crucial

Your page needs to be updated regularly. Make activity on your page, keep it going! Update about the customer-friendly stuff your company just created, the deals happening etc. Share as much as possible! Let them know your company works just like the large busy industry. Make an impression.

 

5. Yes, you’re answerable!

You owe responses to all the comments by your fans. If you are responding well, your customers would certainly feel they have a space in your business. Respond them positively and be transparent. Further, accept criticism since they’re the experiencers of your products. They know the faults best. Accept it and correct it abidingly. Respect the complaints by your ROIs.

Social Media - New Age Marketing

In the good old days customers would communicate with you via letter, phone or in person. Today things are very different. Now they can send you a tweet, post a comment on your blog or leave you a message on Facebook.

In the past if someone was unhappy with your service the 'bad press' was usually limited to a few of their friends and family (unless it was seriously bad service and the wrote to the Editor of your local paper). Now a single tweet or Facebook message could potentially be seen by millions.

Now, more than ever, you must have procedures in place to deal with social media communications. You have to think about how you will monitor them, how you will respond to both positive and negative comments and how you'll interact with your audience.

Enhancing your online reputation is essential in todays transparent culture. Here are 3 easy things you can do to make sure your company holds its head up high and shines.

1. Thank you

Manners cost nothing and a simple 'thank you' can be a very powerful tool.

When a follower retweets you, leaves a comment on your blog or sends a referral to you, thank them. It doesn't take a lot of effort and shows that you are listening and that you care about your customers. And in the eyes of your customers, that translates into the image of a company they want to do business with.

But you don't just have to keep an eye on your social media platforms. There are many other ways you can be talked about online so it's important to monitor the internet to find out what's being said. There are a number of tools out there such as Google Alerts which will email Google results based on your query or topic:




Using these tools will help you keep track of what people are saying about you online so you can see how your brand is perceived and, as a customer service tool, enables you to solve issues quickly before they get out of hand.

2. Blogging

Loads of people blog so that should tell you its a valuable tool to use within your business.

Not only does it allow you to own more of the web, it also is a great way to add value to your customer relationships because you can offer them tips and advice that will make their lives easier. Plus it will help position you as an expert in your field which is always good.

But the trick is to ensure you write stuff your readers want to learn about. If you are a building firm and blog about holidays, you're not going to be adding value. But if you wrote about important issues in your trade, design ideas etc., you would create a connection with your readers and inspire them to make the most of their homes.

Take this blog for example, as an online marketing manager I not only write about marketing but also general marketing issues, social media, seo etc., which are all topics business owners find useful. Therefore not only do I get traffic to my website, the people that come also find the experience useful.

3. Focus on benefits

Whenever you write about your products or services, always focus on your customer; why they will benefit from it. By writing for them you are showing that you understand what's important to them and want to help them achieve that.

Showing that kind of connection will identify you as a company that cares about its customers and not just its profits. And let's face it, you tend to buy from people you like and trust. So if you come across as arrogant people aren't going to buy from you.

When marketing your business it's all too easy to get wrapped up in it and lose sight of what's really important – your customers.

Make sure they are at the forefront of everything you do because without them you don't have a business.

Interact with them, thank them and go out of your way to make sure they are happy. Use social media to your advantage.

Twitter versus Facebook

Twitter Aggressively Expands Strategy, Should Facebook Be Worried?

Let me preface this by saying that in the end, this is not just about Facebook and Twitter. Both companies provide services and features that overlap with plenty of other players out there - companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and others. We tend to think about Facebook and Twitter, however, as the frontrunners when it comes to social networking.

Can Twitter give Facebook a run for its money? Tell us what you think.

It would appear that Twitter is getting more serious about competing with Facebook. Obviously there has been a lot of overlap between the two social networks (though neither actually likes to be called "social network"), but Twitter is getting a lot more aggressive in its strategy.

Facebook has certainly become a lot more Twitter-like over the years, particularly with its news feed feature, but Twitter has done little to become more Facebook-like. However, this week alone, Twitter has launched the new "follow" button which can already be seen right alongside the Facebook "like" button on many sites. It has also announced a new photo upload feature and search revamp to make results more relevant - both things Facebook offers.



There are way more people using Facebook than Twitter, but Twitter use is growing. A new report from Pew Internet finds that 13% of adult Internet users have used Twitter (up from 8% in November 2010), and that Twitter use is spreading to a wider range of ages. Those between the ages of 25 and 44 have experienced notable adoption growth since late 2010, though the younger the generation, it appears, the greater the adoption.
Facebook and Twitter both serve as online IDs, providing log-in integration on numerous web properties, and ID is really what it's all about. Google wants to be the ID too, and former CEO Eric Schmidt has been talking about the company's shortcomings in this department this week.

Watch to see how the online ID and mobile payments elements of our lives merge in the future (an area where Google is making bold moves with Google Wallet). This is another potential area where Facebook and Twitter could clash down the line (again, putting aside the rest of the players for a minute). Facebook already has its Facebook Credits. But Twitter for payments? Well, there's already TwitPay (which Eric Schmidt has reportedly invested in). And let's not forget that the recently returned co-founder Jack Dorsey does also run Square (which recently unveiled a very interesting way of paying with its card case). Things are moving much quicker and more aggressively at Twitter since his return. They've already got the ID part. It doesn't sound out of the realm of possibility for Twitter to get into payments does it?

Facebook wants to be considered more of a journalist tool and resource for news in general. It certainly can be both, but the mainstream news media is sure all over Twitter (and Twitter is all over the mainstream media). Twitter, and its more public nature simply seems to attract more of the breaking news - not only from actual journalists, but from citizens. This is nothing new, but it's one area where Twitter has an edge over Facebook.

Twitter is also making more moves in the monetization area. In fact, just this week, the company acquired two thirds of the AdGrok team to add to its revenue engineering team. Ironically, the other third went to Facebook.

Facebook Pay Per Click - Set up tips...

Getting started advertising on Facebook
 Set up a simple Facebook ad to promote it. Low campaign budget is recommended $10 – 20 per day and a low cost per click. Put the click budget way lower than what Facebook recommend (ignore the warning that the bid is too low). If you do not get any clicks then bump up the clicks to the next bracket.

CPC versus CPM?
Initially CPC (cost per click) is better to test the campaign and then roll out to CPM (cost per thousand impressions) as you know your metrics.

High CTR
The goal is to get at least  .30 CTR (click through rate).  Whilst the average  CTR is .03 Jen thinks a high CTR will lead to success for distribution.  Use images every time. Eye contact is important.

Use pictures
Get a picture of a happy smiling women (from the waist up) who is looking you in the eye. If that happy smiling is doing something that relates to the product that can be great for CTR.  Amateur photos showing the thing that you are selling work really well.

Add text to images
Get photoshop, Gimp or snagit to add text to the photo. You can put text in images to extend the headline. This really helps when you advertise a fan page. Use a matching font to the headline to give it the appearance of being  a longer headline.

Drive Traffic internally a fan Page or externally?
If you have a custom fan page you can send them there. If the fan page is bland or auto-posted then you should send traffic offsite. Engage people or lose them. If you are going to send them to a website you can squeeze emails and you can also do that on Facebook now.

Targeting
Google and Facebook are very different. Before you create your ad you should have a great list of all you competitors and targeted people who your customer will be following. Pay particular attention to the demographics of your market. Ads should target your ideal client is massive detail according to country, state, gender, marital status, school, suburb, fans and job. The insights section of your fan page will tell you who is visiting.

Ninja Targeting Secret
You can bid on competitors names as an interest (if they are there) in the like section and it will show when people visit there. This is seriously like a stalker ad with social proof mice in. Under Jens guidance I tested this for my latest SilverCircle mastermind round and my ad followed people who were interested in me for about 35,000 impressions.

Managing other peoples accounts
We at Scream Media manage other peoples accounts because it is much easier for them than setting up Facebook aid advertising from scratch. Putting through many thousands of dollar a day takes a risk tolerance and watchful eye.  Some clients use a paid service on a start stop basis so that the market can ramp up promotions.

Pausing Ads versus stopping them
Facebook is a fully manually approved ‘self serve’ pay per click engine. You will get different results for the same ad. The ad inventory draws from different ‘buckets’ and this means that you may get good or bad impressions. You have to test it.
Conversion tracking

If the only traffic is Facebook – you can easily see the results you are getting from Facebook. It is ideal to use a service like Tracking 202 to see which group of people are buying from you. Invest the time to setup a proper tracking campaign and you will get the results. We prefer statcounter for this

Time of day tips
The vast majority of traffic for most campaigns is prior to lunch. It seems not every worker is working! Get your campaigns running early in the day for the best results. Remember to test.

The Social Media Landscape

Facebook

Wikipedia says: Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves.

Facts:
• More than 250 million active users
• More than 120 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day
• More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college
• The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older
• About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States

Scream Media  uses Facebook to connect fans to our products and brand. When we do a media campaign we use our main Kodak Facebook presence to increase its audience base. If we created different Facebook pages for each campaign it would dilute our message and work against building a core fan-base.

Twitter
Wikipedia says: “Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications.
Facts:
• 72.5% of the 44 million Twitter users joined during the first five months of 2009
• 93.6% of users have less than 100 followers, while 92.4% follow less than 100 people
• More than 50% of all updates are published using tools, mobile and Web-based, other than Twitter.com. TweetDeck is the most popular non-Twitter.com tool with 19.7% market share.
• There are more women on Twitter (53%) than men (47%)
• Twitter age demographic (% of total) Ages: 25-34 - 20%, 35-49 - 42%, 55+ - 17%

For your business, you can use it to quickly share information with people interested in your company, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other people who care about your company. As an individual user, you can use Twitter to tell a company, or anyone else, that you’ve had a great, or disappointing, experience with their business, offer product ideas, and learn about great offers.

How to promote new content on your website

You now have a finished piece of content on your website. How can one go about getting the most visitors to the new piece? Having faith that users will magically gravitate to your new page is extremely optimistic. The following contains 5 actionable tips for marketing your website content.
Pretend it’s for Print
It all starts with the quality of your content. Treat the piece that your writing as if it’s not easily changed after you’ve put it out there. Publishing content on the web has made us all a bit lazy with this. Knowing that we can just go back to fix or tidy up after the fact puts a little less pressure on us to produce perfect content. Remember that people are taking time out of their lives to focus their attention on you. Make it worthwhile.
A Dash of SEO with that Please
After you’re happy with the content take a once over for the search engines. Don’t bastardize it. But if you want to get the most long term exposure for your content try to align your web page’s message with your website’s search engine optimization strategy.
You could adjust:
-Your page title and meta description. Remember that these are the only two elements that search engine users see on search results pages. Try to have it read like a newspaper headline.
-The name of your post. If you can have good keywords here by all means do so.
-The permalink. Adjust your URL to be relevant to your content, keep it void of unnecessary words like “and, the, or” and include keywords.
-Your on-page headlines and actual copy. Skim through all of this for keyword opportunities that will ADD to the quality of your piece.
Just make sure that you are covering your bases seo-wise. If you set up your page properly you will give your writing every chance possible to be picked up by search engines down the road.
Remember Email Marketing?
If you’ve built an email list over the years then send out a quick campaign about the article. I wouldn’t suggest that you copy all of your post content into the email. I would use the email as a teaser. Give the email recipients reason to visit your website and read it there. My reasoning for this is that there are many more viral opportunities if the content is digested on your website vs in the email itself. Be sure to give enough useful information in the email itself though. This way if they don’t click through they wont feel their time has been wasted.
Feed the Birds
After you’ve done this go share your post on your favorite Social Media Channels like Facebook and Twitter. Be careful not to sound too sales-like here. People can get easily turned off by this. Ask for reciprocal links in a non demanding way. Saying things like “The most brilliant post on widgets EVER!” will get you no-where fast. If a comment is left make it a priority to respond.
Make it Easy to Share
Be sure that you give your readers every chance possible to share your content with their tribe. This is where the real potential of Social Media Marketing begins to shine. Someone sharing your post with all of their community has just exponentially increased your articles reach. It’s free marketing! Most content management systems have ways to add this functionality to your posts and if you aren’t using a CMS it’s not hard to hand code.

Social Media Platforms

Social Media platformsA core component of formulating a social media marketing plan is to understand the ins-and-outs of each of the major social platforms so you can create relevant strategies and tactics around each one. The following outline will help you determine which profiles should be incorporated into your social media marketing plan.

Facebook

• Community mindset: connect
• Primary demographic: 25 to 45
• Ideal fit for: entertainment, lifestyle brands, and non-profits
• Biggest opportunity: using ads to build fans
• Biggest challenge: few appreciate Facebook advertising
• Metrics: fans, comments, likes, wall posts
• Helpful tools: Lexicon, ad interface, applications, analytics, connect, etc.

MySpace

• Community mindset: connect
• Primary demographic: 15 to 25
• Ideal fit for: music and entertainment
• Biggest opportunity: providing music samples
• Biggest challenges: noisy; losing market share quickly
• Metrics: friends, favorites, groups, impressions
• Helpful tools: Open Platform, MyApps, MySpace Toolbox

LinkedIn

• Community mindset: connect
• Primary demographic: 35 to 55
• Ideal fit for: service providers, industry associations
• Biggest opportunity: creating thought leadership via Q&A and Groups
• Biggest challenge: time commitment
• Metrics: profile connections, best answers, group members, discussions
• Helpful tools: Applications, Salesforce plug-in

Blogs

• Community mindset: create
• Primary demographic: 35 to 55
• Ideal fit for: technology
• Biggest opportunity: develop thought-leadership
• Biggest challenge: requires significant resources over time
• Metrics: feed subscribers, comments, Technorati score, pingbacks, inbound links, visibility in search engines
• Helpful tools: WordPress plug-ins

Twitter

• Community mindset: create (microblogging)
• Primary demographic: 35 to 45
• Ideal fit for: service industry
• Biggest opportunity: customer service, consumer insight, sales and marketing
• Biggest challenges: noisy; reliability issues; platform limitations
• Metrics: followers, @ replies, retweets, direct messages, custom hashtags
• Helpful tools: BingTweets, TweetBeep, TweetDeck, HootSuite, CoTweet, Mr. Tweet, Twitalyzer, blog plug-ins

YouTube

• Community mindset: vote
• Primary demographic: 25 to 45
• Ideal fit for: big brands and entertainment
• Biggest opportunity: creating viral content
• Biggest challenges: noise; conversions
• Metrics: views, comments, subscribers, ratings
• Helpful tools: TubeMogul, YouTube Insight

Who's Linking to your Website?

Linking is the mechanism that connects all the pages on the Internet. You've got links throughout your web site to let people navigate their way around. You may have links going out to other web sites that you think will be useful for your visitors. And hopefully you have links coming into your web site from independent sources.

All types of links can impact your search engine optimization results, helping determine where your web site shows up online. Though the hardest to control, inbound links pointing to your site can make the biggest impact.

At its most basic, the concept is that if several high-quality sites are linking to your web site, then Google and other search engines figure your site must be a popular, valuable resource - and they will be more likely to show it higher in their search results. In effect, your site receives "link juice" from other web pages that link to it.

However, it's not enough to secure a couple links and then sit still. The Google PageRank (Scream Media has a home page rank of 4/10) algorithm looks at the pattern of links to your site as they build over time.

Building the right kind of links can bring a major payoff, while a wrong turn could get you penalized - and the Google Sandbox is not easy to dig out of.

Armed with a bit of knowledge and some creativity, you can build up valuable incoming links naturally and powerfully, avoiding the traps that plague amateurs.

Spice Up Your Links With Some Variety

There are all kinds of link farming schemes to grow links, and you need to run the other way from these. This is also called reciprocal linking, where you exchange links with other web sites that will then link to you on a mass scale. Warning: Google is onto this.

While it's perfectly advantageous to link to high-quality sites that also link to you, the key here is to cultivate a natural mix of links over time.

Is it natural to suddenly have 100 links pointing to your site, all with the same text? Of course not. When people link to you naturally, they might use your business name (SEO Advantage) or some variation on a descriptive phrase (search optimization company). If too many similar links exist, it can signal that those links were generated artificially and potentially result in penalties.

Also consider which pages on your site inbound links point to. Your home page is probably going to get the most, but it's natural to have links pointing to specific pages inside your web site, too. Cultivate links to your services, your blog, your news pages, your articles, etc., to help those pages get indexed and build their own PageRank. Called deep links, these can help bolster your site's overall performance. 

Some links also carry a title tag, which is indicated in the source code. This is a little too technical to go into detail here, but if you can influence this you'll want both the link text and title to vary a bit among the links pointing to your site. Once again, the key is to grow your links in a natural pattern.

Not Every Link Carries The Same Value

Links from popular, established web sites usually carry the greatest value. That's because they have high PageRank from plenty of other people already linking to them. A link from CNN.com, for example, will carry much more weight than a link from a free press release distribution site that few people know of. No-follow tags are the bane of naive link builders. It's tempting to think you can just link to pages on your site from your Twitter tweets, Facebook and other social media applications. However, many of these sites as well as online ads and also some directories employ "no follow" tags that prevent the search engines from following a link to your site. In this case, it's as if the link doesn't exist in the eyes of the search engines. (That doesn't mean the links aren't valuable to people who find you and follow the link, it's just not helping your web site show up in Google.) 

So, How Can A Business Build Incoming Links Naturally?

The mix of links created out on the web pointing back at your web site should avoid skewing toward any particular type. A good mix that you can influence may include:

• Directories - Professional organizations, online communities and forums, business directories, etc. can all potentially provide good links to your site. There are several premium directories that are staples in an SEO firm's link building toolkit, like DMOZ.org. Keep in mind that your listing itself should be optimized in order to reap the full link juice benefits.

• Press Releases - Writing and submitting press releases online can help you get your news in front of more people and build links to your site. (Be sure to use best practices for writing and evaluate carefully your outlets for good links).

• Blogs - Link to relevant pages on your site from your blog. Build relationships online with other bloggers, too, and they may want to link back to you! Active blogs with high visibility and large followings are going to be your best bet, but you can mix it up over time targeting lesser known bloggers, too. Keep in mind that as other sites grow in PageRank, the value passed to your site will also grow.

• Create Some Link Bait - Make sure your content is so fascinating or funny that people will want to tell others about it. This is the ultimate for building naturally growing incoming links but of course hard to do.

A sample schedule could mean every month you líst your site in two good dírectories, link to interior site pages from a couple relevant posts in your blog, distribute one press release to news sites, and write one great article that other people may want to link to and then let them know about it.

A word about selecting outlets is in order, too. You'll need to carefully assess each place you target in order to determine the link value they can pass onto you. For example, different press release submission sites and directories can give you a wide variety in link value. This can be time-consuming to determine but worth it when your site's PageRank starts to climb.Want to know more about how Scream Media can build links for you? Contact us today on 021 5590800.

Marketing your Website on Facebook

Here’s 11 things about Facebook that you need to know:

1. 350 Million Global Users, and Counting
Facebook announced recently that they had passed 350 million members, making Facebook the third-largest country in the world, if it was a country. (perhaps that’s their end-game, joining the UN and raising an army?)

2. 100 Million U.S. Users
Sure, Facebook is strong around-the-world (Canada has the highest penetration rate), but nearly 1/3 of all Facebookers are here in the U.S. You may have heard of a TV show called American Idol. On a good night, it averages 20 million viewers. Facebook has 100 million American members. Hmmm.
3. Average Facebook User Spends 55 Minutes Per Day
Nearly one hour per day, per user. That’s a lot of Facebook time. How can your company grab a bit of consumer attention? This data is based on Facebook’s own published stats, covered by Inside Facebook.
4. Nearly 80,000 sites using Facebook Connect
Connect is the Facebook initiative that has the greatest long-range impact. By integrating Facebook closely, sites are making our personal social graphs truly portable. Instead of having to go to Facebook and other sites to visit our friends, they travel with us online (and in our pockets via mobile devices), always there to provide advice or commentary. Even Yahoo! and MySpace are rolling out deep Facebook integrations.
This of course makes Facebook the central hub of not just social media, but the Web (which is why Google is scrambling to catch up after their competing Google Connect fell flat).
5. Facebook Fan Box Becoming Pervasive
Perhaps the least powerful, but most prevalent flavor of Facebook Connect is Facebook Fan Box, a simple tool for enabling your Web site visitors, YouTube video watchers, or email newsletter recipients to become a fan of your brand – without even having to go to Facebook.
6. Average Facebook User Has 130 Friends
Will Facebook users continue to add more friends at a rapid pace? It depends upon how they view their Facebook connections. 130 friends almost bumps up against Dunbar’s Number of 150 – the theoretical maximum number of actual friend relationships you can sustain, according to British scientist Robin Dunbar.
If Facebook continues to revolve around relationships that you actually possess in three-dimensions – people you “actually” know, then the addition of bunches of new friends may slow considerably. But, if Facebook makes the leap to tie people together more casually (like Twitter), average friend counts could rise dramatically.
7. Average Facebook User Fans 2 Pages per Month
If you think tons of your customers should become fans of your company’s Facebook page, you might want to recalibrate your expectations. The average Facebook user “fans” only 2 new pages per month. That’s not a lot , considering how many brands, causes, and organizations we come into contact with on a regular basis.
If you’re going to make growth of your Facebook fan base a key part of your social media strategy, you must create a clear rationale for why consumers should participate with you.
You also might consider a robust, organized approach for promoting your Facebook fan page.
8. Only 4% of Pages Have 10,000 or More Fans

If your Facebook fan page is a bit of a ghost town, you’re not alone. A fantastic study by Sysomos of 600,000 Facebook fan pages shows that only 4% of pages have 10,000 or more fans – and only .76% have 100,000 or more.
That’s why it is so critical to focus your Facebook strategy on activating the fans you have, not just collecting fans like baseball cards.
9. Wall Posts Don’t Impact Popularity
The Sysomos study also found very little correlation between how frequently the Facebook page admin posted to the wall, and total number of fans. However – and this is important – there is a strong correlation between amount of other content (notes, links, photos, videos) and number of fans.
Thus, if you want to grow your Facebook fan base, it is imperative that you move beyond simple Wall posts and add photos, videos, links and other content.
10. Customized News Feed
Facebook’s recent move to an algorithm-driven news feed means that just because someone is your fan, does not mean they will see your wall posts or status updates (true for both individuals, and brands). Instead, the default news feed is now comprised of content that Facebook thinks you’ll like, based on your interactions with content from that author in the past, and interactions by your friends with that content.
This puts a tremendous premium on posting engaging content that will get comments and likes and shares. If you’re not paying attention to your content engagement scores within your Facebook analytics, start doing so now, and testing content types to see what works best for your brand.
11. Real-time Search Changes the Game
Facebook is now making most content available publicly, unless you tell them not to via your privacy settings. Twitter opened their data stream to anyone (not just big developers). Google and Bing are incorporating this data into search results, in real-time.
This has tremendous implications for search engine optimization and reputation management, since a negative status update about your brand might now show up on the first page of Google search results for your company name (at least temporarily). The shakeout is still happening, but someone in your company needs to be on top of real-time search. Today.
Facebook may not be the ideal environment for every social media initiative, but its huge size forces you to at least consider participating – regardless of what type of business you run. Conversely, some brands are putting an awful lot of eggs in the Facebook basket, which is perhaps justifiable based on the facts above.

Marketing your Website

Web 2.0 and Social Media

Only a few years ago, social media was something most people thought of as a tool for teenagers and college students. That has changed. Facebook now has more than 80 million active users and the fastest growing demographic of Facebook users is the over-25 age group.

If that didn't make you sit up and take note, it should have. Your customers and potential customers probably have a computer and probably have high speed Internet access. And if they are not already using social media of some kind, just give it a few months. They will be.

Think you are immune? How did you access this article? There is a good chance you came to it online. The communication mogul of the 21st century is the World Wide Web and the tools that make it work have advanced so much in such a short time that the buzz is now about Web 2.0.

What is Web 2.0? No, you don't need to throw out your year-old computer or buy new software. Web 2.0 really relates to the growing trend to make the web more interactive, collaborative, innovative, and social.

If you favor relationship marketing over the hard sell, then this is good news for you. The growth of interactive social vehicles on the Web supports anyone who prefers their marketing to be personal. Blogs, wikis, business-oriented media sites, and social networking sites allow relationship oriented business people to potentially touch exponentially more people than any community networking event could. Why? Because they not only have the power of the World Wide Web and its spider web of connections behind them, but they are structured to make viral contact more than a concept.

Blogging
If you have a product, service, or interest about which you are passionate, there may be no easier way to connect with potential customers, colleagues, and others who need what you have or know than through blogging.

If the idea of creating a blog makes your palms sweat, fear not. Not only are blogs easier than ever to set up (even a complete amateur can create one in a few minutes these days), but you may not need to create one - at least not immediately.


Comment on Existing Blogs

Do an Internet search of key words relating to your interest. Let's say you are an Audiologist. Do a search using words like "blogs about hearing loss" and go exploring. Read what is being posted. Submit comments. If this feels a bit foreign to you, think of it exactly as you would if you were at a face-to-face networking event chatting with folks. It is really an online way of doing just that. The difference is that you will potentially be touching many more people, including potential customers. Be a frequent visitor to sites that are related to your professional expertise and you may find yourself becoming the go-to person for those in need of that expertise.

Create A Blog

Consider starting a blog, too. It hasn't ever been easier to create a blog. Both Wordpress (www.wordpress.com) and Blogger (www.blogger.com) provide free blogging that is so easy to set up, you can do it in less time than you can eat lunch. By creating a blog, you have the option to introduce the subjects you want to address the concerns of your clients and potential clients. If you are an Audiologist, that might include information on advances in the area of implanted auditory prostheses, tools for addressing hearing loss amongst baby boomers, hearing screening protocols for newborns and school-aged children ... or virtually any other area of the field.

Consider treating your blog as an interactive newsletter. That is, write a blog post and email your list (clients, colleagues, friends, and others) that a new item has been posted. Tell them the subject of the post, give them a hyperlink to it, encourage them to leave a comment, and suggest that they let others know about your blog. Keep the discussion going when you get comments by responding to them.

What else can you do with your blog? Use it as a way to collect customer feedback. Do an informal survey. Add a link to an RSS feed service. Include an event calendar. The possibilities are endless. Keep your focus on fostering and nurturing relationships that will further your business in an organic way and always, always make sure your blog and website are linked.

Facebook and Its Relatives

Facebook is just one of the many social networking sites on the Internet. Other well known ones include Ning, MySpace, and LinkedIn. Some sites, like Facebook and MySpace, have a broad focus. Others, like the business-focused LinkedIn, are specific in focus. What they all provide is the chance to touch more people than you could ever touch by yourself, no matter how many networking groups you belong to.

Some sites, like Facebook, provide the option to add a customized page you can use to promote a business. Facebook, Ning, LinkedIn, and other sites also allow the creation of groups (such as groups focused on the field of audiology). By joining these groups, you connect with a virtual network of colleagues. You also become more visible to potential clients who need your services.

And You Don't Have to Drive to an Event

Not only does Web 2.0 impact the possibilities for relationship marketing in the 21st century, but it allows you do it from your office or home instead of attending meetings and events. Time is precious, fuel is expensive, and the options for networking are many. By spending just a bit of that precious time and only enough juice to power your Internet connection, you can market your business, deepen your relationships with clients and colleagues, and reach potential customers who might not find you otherwise.

Of course, like all relationship marketing, it takes good will, time, and a great product or service to win customers. But your customers are out there - and they are probably online right now.

The 2010 New Year Checklist for Your Business

Every year here at H2L Online Marketing we make it a point to come up with a list of 10 things you need to be thinking about in the new year. They may be related to marketing, or running your business overall, and they’re usually something we relate to things we have to do in our own business.
1. Use “Cause Marketing” – This is the year that you should identify your business with a worthy cause and either donate a percentage of profits to it or contribute to it in some way. And if profits or hard cash don’t fit, consider donating employee time. Then in your marketing campaigns, your marketing materials and sales pitches you should talk about what you’re doing and why it’s important to you. Your prospects and customers increasingly want to do business with a business that cares and has moral obligations, and they’re looking for you to let them know how you fit the bill.
2. Use Social Media with Email Marketing - Finally get your act together with social media this year. Start with Twitter and Facebook, dont forget as part of our SEO service we do this for you. Then set your goals on how many Twitter followers your business will get or how many Facebook fans you’ll attract. Make sure you tell your email marketing recipients to follow you when you send out a campaign. And don’t forget to post your links to your email campaigns in your Twitter account and Facebook pages and ask people to join your email list. All of these marketing vehicles work really well together and feed off of each other. 3. Think SEO – Make a point of checking your SEO ranking with EVERY piece of content you add to your site, Think position, think search when writing articles or content for your site. H2L offers content writing for SEO at a very affordable rate.
4. Make This the Year of Customer Service - People talk about companies that listen to them and that treat them well so you’ll want to go above and beyond with customer service this year. This is especially true since companies like Facebook and Twitter are taking off and becoming a platform for people to tell the world how they feel…about you. This might be the year you get your customer data all in one place so it’s easy to find a customer when they call. 
5. Cut Costs - Keep cutting costs because we’re still in the economic weeds. Look at your top spending categories and see if there’s money to be saved. Is your rent too high? If you’ve got a number of years left on it you might call your landlord and ask if you can renegotiate “stepped” payments. Ask for a discount this year and tell them in the future years you’re willing to pay at bit more per square foot. If you’re spending too much on shipping, start calling other providers to see if they’re competitive. Doing things like this in January will add up for the rest of the year and help you to profitability.
6. Listen to Your Customers - Listen and watch what your customers are saying about you. Sign up for Google Alerts with your company name as a keyword, but also with your competitor’s names so you can see what is being published about them as well. Sign up for a free TweetDeck account and do the same. You’ll see what people on Twitter are saying about your company, your competition and even your industry, up-to-the minute for an unlimited number of keywords. Then chime in to the conversation and address the issue or try to get a new customer. Word to the wise: make sure you’re transparent with who you are, you don’t want to “hide” as someone else, tell them you’re with your company and you want to help out or answer any questions.
7. Find New Customers, Inexpensively - Google is where people go these days to find businesses they’re looking for. So set up or build on your Google Adwords pay-per-click efforts. If you don’t know where to start with Google try our PPC service, we manage your account through our Google Professional account.
8. Build Your Email List - Offer your clients a free sign up on your site to your monthly newsletter.
9. Hire People Who Care – If you’re lucky enough to be hiring for your business, this should be the year where you have an ample choice of people who need to work to choose from, so it’s your pick. Make sure you select people who have the same passion as you do, and people that fit into your business culture like a glove. Make sure you ask the questions that count; you want someone who can handle situations, someone who can communicate and someone who you trust. Don’t settle for second best, your customers will notice.
10. Embrace Word of Mouth – At H2L Online Marketing over 50% of the people who sign up for our service hear about  us through “Word of Mouth” . In 2010 you’ll really need to take a good look at what you’re doing to spur word of mouth. As noted here, customer service is important, the quality of your product or service is important and the entire customer experience is important in order for word of mouth to start. 
2010 is poised to be a great year for growing your small business. Good luck with your venture, and remember we are here to help.

Top Searches in South Africa for 2009

Google announces 2009 Search Trends for South Africa; sports, celebrities, politics and the recession top the 2009 list
2009 has been a year of change in South Africa and Google has shown that people having been using Google Search to keep abreast of the most interesting news and trends as well as their favourite websites.
As part of its year-end Zeitgeist trends results, which monitors search trends around the world, Google has released results of what South Africans have been searching for this year in the categories of politics, sport, celebrities and recession related queries.
In the political arena, some of the most popular searches included firebrand ANC Youth League President, Julius Malema, who pipped Helen Zille of the Democratic Alliance and Mvume Dandala of COPE as the third most searched for politician. Despite having a high volume of searches to his name, the Youth League president had to make way for his seniors, Jacob Zuma and Nelson Mandela who demonstrated their staying power by leading the rankings.
Former Springbok Joost van de Westhuizen had us all scrambling for our keyboards and heading for the Google search box when he released his biography. Joost’s relatively late entry into the gossip columns meant he was no match for perennial celebrity, DJ Sbu from youth radio station YFM who led the ‘most for searched for celebrity’ category.  He was followed by socialite Khanyisile Mbau.  Benoni-girl done good, Charlize Theron, was not to be outdone coming a close third in the rankings.
In the sports category, the Super 14 rugby was the most searched for item, followed closely by the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket, which was quite an achievement as the event was moved to South Africa from India at a late stage in the planning process.  Surprisingly, the Confederations Cup was fourth in the rankings despite it being a prelude to the 2010 World Cup, following the third placed Cape Argus cycle race.
This year's Zeitgeist also reflects important South African concerns, such as understanding how the recession has impacted the local economy.  In addition, recession-related keywords such as 'recession jokes' showed that not everyone was taking the recession so seriously. South African consumers have also adapted to the recession by being on the lookout for a good bargain, reflected increasing searches for goods in the second hand market on website such as Gumtree and Junkmail Cars.
H2L can assist you with your sites search needs, through correct use of keywords and meta tags. Take a look at our SEO packages.
This year's global fastest rising searches show interest across pop culture (with the King of Pop at the helm, followed by searches for movie New Moon and singer Lady Gaga), social networking sites and new technologies such as Windows 7 and Torpedo Gratis:
Global Fastest Rising Queries
1.michael jackson
2.facebook
3.tuenti
4.twitter
5.sanalika
6.new moon
7.lady gaga
8.windows 7
9.dantri.com.vn
10.torpedo gratis
 South Africa's Top Searches
Fastest rising
Most popular
Most searched for sports events
Most searched for politician
Most searched for celebs
Most searched recession queries
facebook login
facebook
super 14
nelson mandela
DJ Sbu
what is recession
gumtree cape town
yahoo
ipl
jacob zuma
Khanyi Mbau
credit crunch
efiling
games
cape argus
julius malema
Charlize Theron
surviving the recession
absa internet banking
lyrics
confederations cup
helen zille
Oscar Pistorius
double dip recession
yahoo mail
jobs
comrades marathon
robert mugabe
Gareth Cliff
technical recession
gmail.com
gumtree
currie cup
trevor manuel
Trevor Noah
recession cartoons
quotes
google
fa Cup
mvume mandela
Joost van der Westhuizen
recession over
twitter
gmail
british lions tour
jackie selebi
Nataniel
recession jokes
standard bank
news
absa premiership
patricia de lille