Avoid these Four Common Online Marketing Mistakes by Iris Dorbian (included Janet O. Penn)

If there’s one thing that Gene Sower, president of Samson Media, finds frustrating it’s meeting with small business clients who are short-sighted when it comes to online marketing.

 

“I’ve had clients who’ve approached me and the first thing they want to talk about is the color of their web pages,” says Sower, whose Montclair, N.J.-based firm provides online marketing and website services. “I ask them, ‘Okay, but what do you want the website to do?' I try to get them to think of their website as more than a brochure.”

 

Sower says he has made it his mission to help clients with their online marketing by actively blogging about issues he feels are relevant to the subject. For example, he recently posted about the cost-effectiveness of using a template design for a client site versus an original design. Because the latter is often more expensive, Sower maintains that money earmarked for a customized web design would be better spent on a SEO or pay-per-click advertising campaign.

 

Read on to find out the most common online marketing missteps and how you can avoid them.

 

Mistake #1: Not allocating enough money
Just because it’s online, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t spend any money. Sure, you might derive some leads or pique the attention of a few prospects from a clever (and free) Twitter or Facebook initiative. However, these results could be short-term and middling when compared to the reach of a well-executed and strategic long-range online marketing campaign.

 

Says Sower: “Clients think that social media can drive all of their leads and new business when it’s just unrealistic. A lot of what I tell people is that you have to allot some money to marketing—whether it’s PR, advertising, or search engine optimization.”

 

Julie Davis, director of marketing and development for TotalHousehold, a two-year old Danbury, Conn.-based online marketplace that connects homeowners with qualified contractors, echoes Sower’s sentiment.

 

“When you’re looking to save money, you still need to go with reputable companies and the best plans rather than the cheapest plans,” explains Davis.

 

To prove her point, Davis cites how TotalHousehold recently selected PR Underground, which posts press releases online, for their weekly PR needs as opposed to the far more expensive PR Web.

 

“We do a weekly giveaway on our site and for $29 a week, we can generate a press release [via PR Underground],” says Davis. “If we used PR Web, which we do for bigger releases, it would be hundreds of dollars.”

 

Mistake #2: Doing it yourself
Some small business owners might think that if they take an hour-long seminar on online marketing or read a book on the subject they might be prepared to go the DIY route. Although it is possible that some business owners might excel in blogging or sending out e-newsletters, for example, most will not be skilled enough to launch a comprehensive online marketing campaign that will bring results. To get the ROI you desire, you must make an investment.

 

Janet O. Penn, managing director of Janet Penn Consulting, a seven-year-old internet marketing consulting firm in Fairfield, NJ, urges small business owners to steer clear of the DIY approach.

 

“A lot of times when someone starts their own business, they do it because they have a particular talent, such as making jewelry,” she says. “Their area of expertise is providing that service and they should concentrate on doing that. It’s not prudent or even a good business model to have people thinking they can do it themselves.”

 

Penn brushes aside the notion that it’s in her best interest to take this approach. “The lay person might be aware of Google’s changing algorithms but they don’t really understand what that means,” she explains. “There are so many critical strategies and business practices that are changing. If you aren’t spending a minimum of one to two hours every day just observing and understanding all of those changes, such as how to optimize a Pinterest post, you’re going to be left behind.”

 

Penn often counsels small business owners to allocate some funding to hire a marketing professional, even if it’s on a part-time or contractor basis. This allows busy entrepreneurs to tap into the expertise of marketing professional who can evaluate what needs to be done to have a solid and effective online strategy.

 

Mistake #3: Staying static with your website
Not too long ago, having a website, which listed the services of your small business and included a gallery of portfolio photos and contact information, might have sufficed. But in this social media era where information is constantly streamed to the masses, that is no longer practical. If you want to reach a target demographic or get more leads, you will need to be more proactive with your online marketing.

 

“Everybody these days is a content creator,” says Sower. “The new marketing is about sharing your knowledge and expertise with the people you’re trying to attract. You can no longer have a static brochure website. You have to have some kind of blogging component where you’re able to put up timely content that will be able to attract people to your business. This will not only give you something to disseminate through social media, but it will also help your search engine optimization because the search engines are always looking for sites that are being updated on a constant basis.”

 

Mistake #4: Not properly evaluating your online marketing needs
Believe it or not, not every small business needs online marketing. “It is fashionable, yes,” says Helena Zakmane, a marketing professional whose broad range of experience includes running her own small consulting firm as well as working for international companies. “But by no means is it necessary for everyone.”

 

For instance, Zakmane recalls advising a client—an apartment cleaning business—to forgo social media outreach in favor of direct mail in their city. “Not having a sufficient advertising budget made it practically impossible for them to reach their audience via social media channels,” explains Zakmane. “It's also hard to imagine someone following a cleaning company’s Facebook page.” 

The lesson learned: take a good look at the business you’re in before committing funds to an online marketing campaign. Just because many businesses are doing it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right for you.

Whether it’s to increase sales or elevate your company’s profile in a saturated marketplace, including online marketing in an advertising campaign can be an effective and efficient strategy to reach new and existing customers.

© Copyright 2014 Bank of America Corporation.

20 Of The BEST Calls To Action by Brooke Ballard

You can’t talk content marketing, strategy or return on investment (ROI) without mentioning CALLS TO ACTION.

 

You’ll find these little beckoning words on websites and billboards, ads and posts, blog articles and marketing materials. So what exactly are calls to action (CTAs)?

BusinessDictionary.com defines a call-to-action as,

“Words that urge the reader, listener, or viewer of a sales promotion message to take an immediate action, such as, “Write Now,” “Call Now,” or (on Internet) “Click Here.” A retail advertisement or commercial without a call-to-action is considered incomplete and ineffective.”

I’m constantly looking for effective and innovative CTAs, because let’s face it, “Click Here!” gets old after a while.

So, I’ve compiled a list of some smart and savvy CTAs just for you. Thank me later!

THE BEST CALLS TO ACTION I’VE SEEN

Here are twenty of the BEST CTAs I’ve seen, accompanied with tips or [LINK] – meaning that is the link placement for the user to complete the CTA and visit your content/blog/event/site/etc..

1. Grab Yours Now –> [LINK] (yep, it had that little arrow leading me right to the link)
2. Will You Be There? [LINK]
3. Hope To See You Soon! [LINK]
4. Please Share With Your Friends And Fans: [LINK]
5. What Are Your Thoughts On This (Topic)? [LINK]
6. How Would You Handle ______?  [LINK] (asking for responses; tie it in with your topic)
7. Read This Post: [LINK]
8. Have You Ever ______? (enticing comments or engagement)
9. What’s YOUR Favorite ______? [LINK] (tie it in with your topic)
10. This Article Will Teach You How To ______: [LINK]
11. YES or NO? ____________ (see example below from Amy Porterfield)
    
12. Seriously, SIGN UP! You’ve Got Nothing To Lose: [LINK]
13. Save Your Seat! [LINK]
14. Limited Seating Available: [LINK]
15. View This _____ To Learn How To ______: [LINK]
16. Want A Sneak Peek At ______? [LINK]
17. QUICK QUESTION: Do You Prefer A, B, Or C? (enticing comments or engagement)
18. You Don’t Want To Miss _______! [LINK]
19. This Is THE Solution For ______: [LINK]
20. This List Is Filled With Resources For ______: [LINK]

WHY ALL OF YOUR CONTENT SHOULD COME WITH A CTA

Whether it’s an ad, blog post, tweet, or update, each piece of your content marketing should have quantifiable goals. What are you hoping to accomplish? What do you want the reader to do?
Without this critical step, you’re using the loathed (by me, anyway) “post and pray” method – which is fruitless when trying to measure ROI. If you’re a real marketer looking for real results, you will have a goal in mind for your content. And with it, some sort of call-to-action. Slapping a post on Facebook and waiting for ‘likes’ is SO 2010!

So is using, “Click Here” for every, single CTA.

Courtesy of Steemfeed

Site Redesign: Avoid These Mistakes by Level343

Undertaking a redesign is usually a pretty big project. In addition to the actual design work, there are so many little details related to SEO and marketing that you need to consider.

To help you out, here are some of the common problems you want to avoid:

Don’t forget to add your Analytics code to the new site. You don’t want to lose crucial data by forgetting to add the code. From time to time, Google updates the format of the code/scripting, so ensure you have the most recent code. Use the same account you’ve always used, you don’t want to lose the history.

Most designers use some method of stopping the engines from spidering the work in progress. That is a great idea but it can kill your traffic if you forget to remove it when the site goes live. Check pages for tags blocking the engines and check your robots.txt file.

Keep your server clean.

Don’t forget to clean the old files off your server when the new site is live. You don’t want to lose them, so ensure you back it up somewhere. If you are going to leave it on the server, put it all in a sub-directory and ensure the engines do not spider that directory. You don’t want to create duplicate content.

Don’t forget to closely track your Webmaster Tools and Analytics after a redesign. You want to look for 404 errors and you want to keep an eye on your conversion rate. If it plummets after a redesign, you want to catch it quickly and work to restore it. If there is a conversion problem after a redesign, you should look at the pages that aren’t performing as well (Google Analytics should give you that data) and compare the old page to the new. Try to find elements on the old page that you think could have been responsible for the higher rate and implement those elements into the new site. New isn’t always better and sometimes a marriage between new and old is what works best.

Don’t forget to thoroughly test before you go live. Test all links, forms, buttons and scripts. A new look isn’t worth much if your visitors can’t do the things they need to do on your site.

Ensure you create a comprehensive mapping of old pages to new pages if the URLs are changing. You need to set up 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new ones so you don’t lose traffic.

Before you get started, spend time planning the new site. It’s going to be time well spent, I promise. Why go through all the effort and cost of a redesign if you aren’t going to ensure everything is set up properly? Plan your site structure to ensure you have all the pages you need and to ensure it’s all organized logically and cleanly. This will be beneficial for the engines and for your site visitors. You don’t want anything to be more than 1-2 clicks from the homepage.

Remember, appearance matters but so does content. Most people only think about the visuals when they redesign, but it’s actually a great time to update and refresh your content too.

If your developer was working with any scripting in the design and development process, ensure test pages aren’t left on the server. They create “gaps” in your security that could cause your site to be compromised.

If you are using WordPress, ensure all plugins are current and create a plan to keep them current. Old plugins are a major security risk.

If during the redesign you are cleaning up scripts and moving them to external files, be sure to test all functionality related to the scripting.

Often WordPress has a few different themes sitting in there, even though you are only using one a t time. Unused themes and plugins (inactive plugins) do create serious problems with security and could cause a breach. It’s so easy to add themes and plugins when you need them, so get in the habit of keeping your WP installation clean and add only items you plan to use.

Don’t forget about Terms of Service and privacy pages. They may not be sexy, but they are needed and it’s nice if they match the vibe of the site, so ensure they get redesigned too (or added if you never had them).

Don’t forget social buttons. If your old site didn’t have social buttons implemented yet, you want to ensure you have them added to the new site.

Don’t add content just for the sake of adding content but if you notice in your planning stages that you are not covering information that you should be, it’s a great time to introduce new pages.

If possible, go with search engine friendly file names on the new site.

Don’t forget to include any credibility factors (logos of associations, details on awards and accolades etc).

Avoid “Coming Soon” pages. If the content isn’t ready to go, don’t link to the page yet.

Custom 404 pages are a must!

Create a strong, custom 404 page (that is optimized).

If you address and phone number aren’t prominent (in text format, not images), get that changed. It’s a simple fundamental that should be in place.

Consider mobile when you redesign your site. Even if you don’t have responsive design or a fully mobile version of your site, you can still design it to be more “mobile friendly”.

And lastly, ensure your new site is properly optimized and you have an XML sitemap in place.

If you haven’t done a redesign in a while, it may be time. Don’t stress, just keep a check list of all the items and nothing will slip through the cracks.

By: Level343 is an international SEO and content marketing company based in San Francisco, California

Need help with Managing YOUR website?

Contact us and visit: http://www.janetpennconsulting.com/website_design.html

 

How To Really Use Twitter Hashtags by Jessica Davis

Twitter users originally used hashtags to categorize and identify their tweets. It became so popular that Twitter decided to integrate it into their platform and improve upon it.

Hashtags are now used to categorize tweets, to help twitter users find tweets on certain topics, and to identify trending themes. They are also a great way to get your tweets noticed.

If you didn't know yet, a hashtag is a word or phrase that is written without any spaces and prefixed with a '#' symbol. Like so: #example

With hashtags used in almost every tweet how do you make sure your tweets stand out? Here are a few tips on using hashtags in your tweets to catch fellow tweeters attention.

Follow Basic Hashtag Etiquettes

Don't use more than two, maybe three, hashtags per tweet as it can make your tweet seem spammy.

It is understandable that you want your tweet to show up in as many search results as possible on Twitter but your tweet will have little value if you use up most of the 140 characters for hashtags.

Also, you need to use hashtags that are relevant to your tweet. There may be trending hashtags and you may want to use them badly in your tweet but you will end up annoying your followers and other Twitter users with unrelated tweets.

Use Hashtags That Are Obvious

Sometimes Twitter users end up abbreviating names and using them as hashtags but the abbreviation may not always be understandable. As a result, numerous tweets often get published on the same topic but the hashtags never trend as people end up using variations of the hashtag in their tweets.

Create and use hashtags that are easy to understand so that anyone else tweeting on the same topic can understand and use your hashtag easily.

To make your hashtags more comprehensible avoid writing the whole hashtag in lower case. Use upper case characters to give more sense to your hashtag. Example: #BigEvent

Find The Right Hashtags

Sometimes it is best to use an existing hashtag instead of creating your own hashtag and waiting for it to trend. Finding trending topics is a difficult task even for long-time Twitter users.

Twitter does display the most popular hashtags but how do you find the hashtags that are just beginning to trend?

Some of the most popular tools to identify trending hashtags:

Twubs

What the Trend

Hashtags.org

Track Hashtags

Tracking hashtags can help you find and choose which hashtag to use in your tweet.

Tracking a hashtag can give you an idea of how popular the hashtag will be and there are various tools that help track hashtags.

Real time tracking is offered by these tools:

Twitterfall

Monitter

Be Consistent

Hashtags are best used when promoting events, conferences, etc. Many events take place every month or year; using the same hashtag for every instance of the event is a great way to build a buzz around events. Take for example #SXSW, which represents South by Southwest Interactive, Film and Music Festival that takes place every year. The organizers use the same hashtag every year and it creates a lot of buzz almost instantly.

Use the hashtag that you have chosen for your event on other social media platforms too. Although hashtags may not mean much on every site it will help people identify your hashtag when they log into Twitter.

Remind followers about your event by using the hashtag frequently in your tweets.

Use Hashtags Offline

Hashtags are universally recognizable and smart companies are using them off the web too.

Using hashtags in print advertising will make people want to get on Twitter and find the hashtag.

Some hashtags have even been painted on the pitch by sports teams so that even people watching the sporting event on their televisions will be aware of the hashtag.

Create Q&A Sessions

Hashtags are a great way for users to ask you questions and it is one of the easiest ways to build a buzz around your brand. Many celebrities and famous personalities have used hashtags to answer questions from fans and answering questions hardly takes any effort or time. Users can ask you questions by using the designated hashtag in their tweets and you can use the hashtag to find their questions.

Jessica Davis is a Senior Copywriter with Godot Media – a leading content writing services company. She works closely with other article writers at Godot, creating engaging content for the company's clients. Her other interests, besides content and social media marketing, are technology, sports and fashion.http://www.searchenginepeople.com

Need help with Optimizing YOUR social media marketing?

Contact us and visit: http://www.janetpennconsulting.com/social_mediamarketing.html

Jill Whalen's SEO Tools and Extensions...

By Jill Whalen

I am not a big tool user in general. By that I mean the types of tools that supposedly help you "optimize" your website. There is no perfect page for SEO purposes, so in my opinion any tool that claims to give you information such as how many words you need here or there is simply wrong.

What most of those tools do is look at the top 10 ranking sites for a specific keyword phrase and then take averages of how many words they have in the Title tags, within the content, etc. Which to me is just silly. An average doesn't tell you anything. One page might have 1,000 words and another might have 50, but the average is then in the 500 range. That certainly doesn't mean that if you create your page to have 500 words it will somehow magically rank well.

SEO is more about fixing technical issues (which some tools can certainly help with), and it's about being sure you're using words that your target audience uses. And these days, in the wake of Panda and Penguin, it's also about diagnosing bad links and other things that may be bringing your site rankings down. Online tools can certainly help with all those things.

Keep in mind that I generally only do SEO site audit reports, and high-level SEO consulting and training (as opposed to rolling up my sleeves and actually doing the SEO for clients). So I may be missing some that I previously used. Please note that while I assume that the Google tools I'm mentioning are obvious, they're so integral to my work that I'd be remiss not to mention them.

Here are the tools I use regularly to help with my SEO consulting services:

Google Analytics
Most critical tool at all, it diagnoses lost traffic for site audits, and of course is used to measure success. Especially helpful when combined with custom reports, dashboards, and advanced segments.

Google Webmaster Tools
Everyone with a website today needs to be signed up here. It offers tons of useful information, but basically it helps diagnose website problems and provides messages directly from Google if a site has a major issue or penalty.

Screaming Frog
This tool sends a spider out to sites and compiles a nice spreadsheet report on the pages. It shows you Title tags, URLs, Meta Descriptions, Canonical tags, etc. Plus, it tells you about pages that may have 404 errors, redirects, and lots of other things. I usually use this when I'm starting a new site review because it helps me get an overall feel for the site and quickly shows me any major technical issues. (And I just love the tool's name.)

Rex Swain's HTTP Header Viewer
This one is good for seeing what sort of redirect any page may have. For SEO purposes we like to see 301 redirects rather than 302s or any other kind. It will also show if there are multiple redirects for any URL.

Ahrefs
This is a great tool for learning about any website's backlinks. You can get a lot of that also from Google Webmaster Tools these days, but I often find different ones showing up in Ahrefs that I may not have seen in GWT. Plus, you can learn about the backlinks of competitor sites. I mainly use it to see if the website I'm reviewing has a lot of spammy links. It's especially helpful if the site has received an unnatural links warning in the GWT account. It's a great way to see the distribution of anchor text as well. This tool also has a spidering component similar to ScreamingFrog mentioned above.

Google Keywords ToolThis is pretty much the only tool I use or recommend for doing keyword research. Use it to learn about the types of phrases your target audience uses at Google when they're looking for what you offer on your website.

Google Drive
This is not so much an SEO tool as it is a way to have all my files synced across all of my computers and devices. Drive makes it easy for me to review a website and have my report in progress anytime and anywhere I need it. It also enabled me to buy an inexpensive Chromebook as my traveling laptop. All the tools and programs I use are online, so with my documents and files safely tucked away in Google Drive I'm totally in the cloud.

Toogl
This is a project timer that I've been using lately. I like to keep track of how much time I spend on any client work so that I have a good idea of how to price similar jobs in the future. I've used a variety of timers in the past, but this one has become a favorite because it syncs up "in the cloud" so I can access it using any device.

Chrome Extensions (Most if not all of these are likely available as Firefox extensions as well):

NoFollow
This is the BEST extension ever if you're an SEO! It outlines all links on a page that have the Nofollow attribute on them. But even better is that it pops up a little window if the page you're looking at has the Noindex tag on it. You wouldn't believe how many websites I find through this extension that are inadvertently blocking all search engines from being able to index them.

PageRank Status
This tool teaches you lots of things about a page, such as its Google Toolbar PageRank, the number of pages from the site that are indexed, a link to the page in the Wayback Machine (archive.org) and many other things. (This one will also highlight nofollow links.)

TagAssistant (by Google)
This one shows if there are any Google Analytics code errors on any given page. It can come in handy if a site appears to have lost traffic because sometimes traffic wasn't actually lost, but the Google Analytics code is missing from certain pages, or it's used incorrectly.

Awesome Screenshot (combined with Evernote)
I use Awesome Screenshot nearly every day while doing SEO site audits to quickly and easily show what's wrong with pages on a site. You can add arrows and words, draw circles around items, etc. I basically paste them all into Evernote along with my other notes of what's wrong with a site. Then I use those notes to compile my report.

Thanks, Jill!!!

Jill Whalen has been an SEO Consultant and the CEO of High Rankings, a Boston area SEO Company since 1995. Follow her on Twitter @JillWhalen

Why Blogging is The Lifeblood of a Business Website by Hamzah Qutub

Whatever social media geeks say about death of blogging with the rise of social media and microblogging sites such as Tumblr, Twitter etc, the fact is that Blogging remains one of the most reliable tools in the arsenal of a marketer. In earlier posts Benefits of Blogging and Why Blogging is an Important part of Inbound Marketing I’ve discussed the issue of business blogging. Other than SEO benefits a business website has a lot to gain if they have an active blog.

SEO Agencies: I regularly come across SEO and Online Marketing companies who are recommending blogging as a lead generation tool for their clients but their own blogs haven’t been updated for a blog time and then there are others in the business of Online Marketing who are blogging but without any strategy and just publishing self promoting posts and that too once or twice a month. This can be the thing which stops your prospects from becoming clients. After all if you are yourself not following the advice which you give to your clients and are being hypocrite than what reason they have to work with you?
Now first of all before starting a blog you must have an idea that how is this whole blog thing works. Blogging and particularly business blogging is not about promoting your products/services shamelessly, it’s about building relationships with your readers and solving their problems. Blogging itself can be a very effective tactic but if used in a wrong way it can destroy your brand.
Blogging is the process through which you can establish yourself as an authority in your field and drive more sales and traffic to your website.  By regularly publishing blog posts and guest blog posts you can share your knowledge of your subject with your readers. Blogging also has other benefits such as SEO, increased visibility.

Source: Hubspot
According to research conducted by Hubspot companies that blog 15 times or more get 5 times more traffic than companies that don’t blog.
According to the same survey of 7000 businesses conducted by Hubspot an average company will see 45% growth in traffic when increasing total blog articles from 11-20 to 21-50 articles.

The average company with 100 or more blog articles is more likely to experience continued lead growth. Companies with over 200 blog articles have 5 times the number of leads than those with 10 or fewer.
These are some of the benefits of blogging. Even after Panda and Penguin update by Google quantity is the deciding factor in Inbound Marketing. As a result more number of published blog posts directly translates into more website visitors, increased SERP rankings, higher number of leads and sales.

Time Constraint: Many companies complain that after all their work they don’t have enough time to maintain a blog or publish blog posts on a regular basis. You can solve this problem in two ways. First you can identify talent within your own organization and delegate them the responsibility to blog. You can work out a calendar where people from all departments of your organization will publish a blog post on a particular day of week.
Another option is to hire an outside consultant /agency to manage your blog on your behalf.  Many well known blogs are managed in this way. Ideally a company will provide you with a ghostwriter who will write blog articles for your blog but they will be published as articles written by you.

This post comes to you courtesy of www.Business2Community By Hamzah Qutub, Published April 22, 2013

Why You Should Blog!! Let us help!
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