When Google is the front door, the side door, the hidden key under the mat, the cash register, the finder of everything we ever lost, and everything we wished we’d lost, what comes next? When everyone is a newspaper, a magazine, a TV station, a radio station, a conference, a curator, an educator, a business owner, a shopkeeper, what do we have? When you and I are the creators, the consumers, and the collaborators of this media, what does this mean to us?Social media business strategy and more – chrisbrogan.com, Nov 2008

You should read the whole article.

Social media provides new tools for business to interact directly with their customer base.  This may be a good thing or a bad thing – that depends on your business and how good your product is.

The fear from businesses may be that they receive some bad reviews on their product or services.  This is a fear of all businesses. In most cases you are trying to provide the best product or service possible and even though you care what your customers think, you don’t want your potential customers to view any negative feedback.

This poses a dilema, to have the best product you must solicite feedback.  You can do this privately through e-Survey software such as ratepoint.com. Social Media now provides a tool and people will use it whether or not you decide to listen.  With blogs, Facebook, and other mediums to rate your product or just chat about your product, some may already be providing useful nuggets of information; yet you aren’t listening.

I encourage you to take heed of these networks and watch your brand and your customer base, they are out there and they can provide you with valuable feedback.  Feedback that will ultimately increase the quality of your product, if you choose to listen.

Social Media allows you to interact with your customers as well.  If someone posts a negative comment, use that same medium to post any changes or updates that others reading the post may be interested in.

For example:

If someone posts a message stating that your Support department is taking too long to respond back to email, even though in your auto-responder you qualify that they will hear back within 24 hours (for example).  You could first contact that client and make sure their needs are taken care of – win them back.  And then post a message stating that you have changed the email auto-responder to give a more accurate response time (or you removed the time altogether).  In addition, you have implemented a Forum that will allow customers to post their questions, your support team to respond to their questions, and everything is archived for future users who may have the same answer.

Here is an article in regards to replacing that un-godly plastic clam-shell packaging that is almost impossible to open without scissors, and then once you have it open the edges become fatal weapons.

Listen to your customers, they are talking about your product.  Don’t fear feedback, embrace it and use the Internet to communicate with your clients.

Congratulations David Plouffe (Campaign Manager for Barack Obama’s Presidential Election Campaign)…

Your campaign was quite slick.  You utilized technology, you utilized manpower, you have created a new template for Presidential elections.  All future election campaigns will be held to a new standard and level of utilizing technology…long gone is the old way of campaigning.

Between the Obama Girl, Facebook ads, and an iPhone application, you took advantage of the Internet as a communication tool and you captured a generation and communicated with them at their level.  And yes, I know Obama Girl was not part of your campgain strategy, or was she?

People-Press.org provides the following statistics…

The internet is living up to its potential as a major source for news about the presidential campaign. Nearly a quarter of Americans (24%) say they regularly learn something about the campaign from the internet, almost double the percentage from a comparable point in the 2004 campaign (13%).

Moreover, the internet has now become a leading source of campaign news for young people and the role of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook is a notable part of the story. Fully 42% of those ages 18 to 29 say they regularly learn about the campaign from the internet, the highest percentage for any news source. In January 2004, just 20% of young people said they routinely got campaign news from the internet.

Once again, congratulations…see you on Facebook.

An added FYI – I just setup our Wordpress > Twitter plugin and it works great.  Easy too.  Took < 3 minutes.

You can see it work here:

http://twitter.com/arifgan

Social Networking can be a pain.  I mean, you have a blog, you have a twitter account, Facebook, LinkedIn, and a myriad of other accounts.  There are tools out there to allow you to aggregate all of the data but what about syndication?

Well, that is the brilliance of RSS.  Here’s a quick video about RSS feeds and what they are:

Here are 2 tools that will help you tie your social networks together:

1. Wordpress just announced a LinkedIn plugin.  Now, you can link up your Wordpress blog to LinkedIn so anything you post on your Wordpress blog will automatically be syndicated to LinkedIn.

Here is a quick video:

There are also a few others tools out there to keep you connected.

2. Here is a tool for connecting Wordpress to twitter…as you post on your blog, this little plugin can automatically create a tinyurl and post it to your twitter feed. Which can then be broadcast via text messaging, etc.

Click here for a twitter plugin for wordpress with tinyurl API support.  It sounds tough to install, but it’s easy

Thanks to OpenSocial…Social Networks are merging together…but it’s also another way for Google to track you down.

A piece of interesting data so you can see how Search Engines interact with one another.

I ran across a cool tool that I wanted to share with you guys:

It’s a little button you put on your site that someone can click on and share your site with their friends and colleagues.  Pretty easy to install as well.

Basic Features:

» Easy Bookmarking & Sharing
» Spreads Your Content
» Removes Clutter
» Fast and Reliable
» Easily Customizable
» For Websites and Blogs
» Completely Free
» Customizable (with your logo, service list, colors, etc.)

Get free statistics about how your content is shared and spread by your users:

» Most Popular Content
» Where Your Content is Sent
» Trends Over Time
» Geographic Breakdown

It’s easy enough for a beginnier and flexible enough for a pro.  Try it out.

Arif Gangji
Neon Rain Interactive
www.neonrain.com
Web Design – Application Development – SEO SMO SEM – Email Marketing

Search Engine Optimization is the process of gaining higher ranking in the result set of a Search Engine search.  Now for that to make sense, let’s do some defining of terms and processes.

Here’s the quick and dirty…

A Web site is born
You’ve just started a business and need to put your web site up.  Well, the first thing you will do is figure out your focus.  This usually comes from the products or services you sell, or the demographic of the clients you are servicing.

These are your keywords. Keywords define your site.  Now, sometimes keywords are setup in the META tags of a site, but sometimes the keywords are just generated from the content you’ve created.  Mostly likely, it’s the content that defines your site more so than the keywords.  Although, keywords are very important, so don’t neglect them.

A Search Engine finds out you exist
One way or another, A Search Engine will figure out you exist. You either submitted your site directly to an engine or you posted a comment in a blog with your URL…either way, the engine will see that there’s fresh meat out there and they will send their bots and spiders.

Bots and Spiders – no, that’s not my Halloween costume
Bots and Spiders are what Search Engines send through the Internet to scavenge your site.  These “Spiders” will “crawl the net” and index your content, and various other pieces of data.  They are the ones that check to see if content has been updated or not and will check your relevancy, etc.

Weights and Value
Each time a spider indexes your pages, they will rank you and provide a weight as to the value of your content.  This is the secret sauce for most Search Engines.  If you were to figure out what algorithms they use to figure out weights and value, you could trick them into putting you up top on any keyword you wanted.  It’s assumed that no one person at any company (Google, Yahoo, MSN), has that information; different departments share pieces of the algorithm so that it can’t be stolen.  In some cases, the Search Engine will also change this weighting system which may been after a change, that your site will jump up or drop down in rank just based on how they are looking at your site now.

A user is on the prowl
Now, we have a user on a Search Engine who puts in a keyword they are wanting to find a relevant site for. They type in their keywords and hit search, the Search Engine now goes through it’s database of indexed content and displays results for what they think is the most relevant web site to satisfy the users query.

This is based on data and content saved by the Spiders when they visited your site.

Now, the difference between SEO and SEM:

1. SEO is the process of making changes to your site so that the Spiders will give you a better weight and value based on what you’ve done internally. This means you’ll organically move up the Search Engine Results list.  When you think SEO, think slow, steady, and long-term.

2. SEM can sometimes include SEO, but mainly it’s the process of paying for clicks or “Pay Per Click (PPC)”, paid inclusion, or paid placement, where you are buying clicks. If you pay G
oogle, Yahoo, or MSN for a sponsored link…you’ll show up at the top or the right side but you’ll pay each time someone clicks on your link.

In some people’s definition, SEM can also mean Search Engine Marketer, which is a person or group that provides Search Engine Optimization (Organic), Pay Per Click Management, Social Media Optimization, and other Internet Marketing Techniques.

Hopefully you learned something…we’d love to get your comments!

Cheers,

Arif Gangji
Neon Rain Interactive
www.neonrain.com
Web Design – Application Development – SEO SMO SEM – Email Marketing

I’m kidding…you actually want to be very selective when creating a title for each page of your web site.

1. It has to be relevant to the page…Make sure all of your pages do not have the same title tag.

2. It helps users distinguish between browser windows or tabs.

3. It may or may not help Search Engines determine what your site is about, the content will end up speaking for itself.

So here are a few guidlines:

1. Google.com truncates the title tag in search results to 66 characters.

2. Yahoo.com truncates the title tag in search results to 68 characters.

3. Ask.com truncates the title tag in search results to 68 characters.

4. MSN.com truncates the title tag in search results to 66 characters.

So, better to be safe than sorry…keep it at 66 characters or less.  Get your keywords in there but don’t stuff it like a turkey!

If you aren’t familiar with Inbound marketing, it’s the notion that instead of going out and trying to grab potential clients, you just make sure you have good exposure, and when that potential client is ready they will come to you.

Well, it works…but why?

The client has already chosen to contact you, they’ve made a determination in their minds stating that you are already one of the candidates even if they haven’t spoken to you yet.

Sharpecopy.com defines a qualified lead as someone who meets the following criteria:

• Need: They need your product or service
• Authority: They have the authority to buy
• Budget: They have the budget to buy
• Readiness: They are ready to buy now

Now lets look at a ‘typical’ direct mail campgaign…again the numbers are from sharpecopy.com:

Here’s how you calculate your Cost Per Qualified Lead.

Number of pieces mailed (for example): 10,000
Response rate: 1%
Number of inquiries: 100
Number that you manage to reach by phone to qualify: 70
Cost of qualifying by phone, per inquiry: $30
Number who turn out to be qualified leads (20%): 14
Total cost of qualifying ($30 X 70): $2,100
Campaign cost of $10,000 + phone qualifying cost = $12,200
Total cost of $12,200 divided by 14 qualified leads = $871.42

In other words, you must spend $871.42 to attract each lead who needs your product or service, can afford it, has authority to buy, and is ready to buy now.

Staggering to say the least…especially if you are just starting out.  And if your product doesn’t sell for $871 or more, you actually lost money.

Now, with Inbound marketing, you are only focusing on the leads that are already fairly qualified, now you are just developing a lead.

Imagine shifting the focus online…integrating online marketing, Internet marketing, INBOUND MARKETING with your other efforts.

You are now building an online reputation – this is killer for those possibly interested in your product, let reviews, posts, and blogs online pre-sell your service or product for you.

You are also catching the lead when they are looking, instead of bugging them 7 times with a postcard to hopefully stick in their minds, they find you when they need you.

Mediapost.com states the following:

Not all leads are created equal.  To illustrate this point, which lead generation program is more appealing? Would you prefer 1,000 anonymous email addresses where you eventually determine only ten to be good prospects? Or would you like one that delivers 100 leads, each of whom is an ideal prospect?

The answer is obvious, but the trick is how to find those 100 prospects without wasting time sorting through thousands of anonymous and irrelevant respondents.

Are you starting to get the point?

Inbound Marketing through Internet Marketing brings customers to you…

Now get out there and build your online presence