To get targeted traffic to your website or blog is the heart and soul of Internet Marketing. More targeted website visitors means there are more people who can learn about your site and the services that you offer. Social Media Marketing is a powerful way and method to bring more interested prospects to your online profile. It has been proven that you can increase your ROI by implementing the right social media strategies for your business.

How can your business use social media effectively and to what standards? Businesses needs to build credibility and trust by offering value and interacting with people. This doesn’t mean one way conversations, it means discussions. So how to get started using this marketing medium?

Targeting

Social media websites (Web 2.0), blogs and forums are generally category specific on a subject. Participate and be active on these sites related to your industry and niche. This will increase your online visibility. This can be a great method in obtaining targeted customers as you are directly communicating with them.

Participate

Be an active participant in selected social network communities. Be involved and post regularly. Interact with others in the community and become known. If you don’t have time for direct participation, find someone in your organization that will take this on. This is very important.

Blogging

My favourite. A blog is an essential tool for any business participating in social media. Write interesting topics that will interest your ideal targeted customer. Write fresh, original and important content and you will attract attention and links from other blogs.

Links

Links from social media websites and blogs can be very valuable in building your website search rankings. Original posts serves as link-bait which will drive your search rankings higher.

Authority

By participating and interacting in forums and social networking sites, you will build a reputation as an expert in your field. People like to do business with people they know and respect.

There is no correct way to make use of social media. The key is to get involved and network with other. This will pay dividends to your business with increased visitors, prospects and customers.

Usually the challenge with local small business websites is obtaining targeted traffic to their online profile. A website is a powerful business tool and if used and optimized correctly, can generate sales and leads.

Why do you want a simple online brochure of your company when your website can do so much more? More and more businesses are realising this and the days are over by just having a simple about us and contact page on your website.

Your website can produce a high ROI (return on investment) but to achieve that goal and if you are a small business, there are ways that you can accomplish that.

Find below a couple of steps you can do to drive local targeted traffic to your website.

Organic SEO

Optimize your website to be search engine friendly. Use primary keywords mixed in with the city, neighborhood, community and local names it falls in. Include your address and phone number with your area code in your contact page. These are all ways users search for local businesses.

Google local search

Google local listings appear along with a map (for some countries this is not activated yet) at the top of the Google’s search results when people search for local businesses or services. You can add your business listing on Google for free by entering your details on the Google Local Business Center.

Facebook

Create a Facebook page for your small business and encourage your customer to join your group. You can then reach your customers via your Facebook page and you can advertise your services, specials, etc on this page. Encourage your customers to leave reviews about you on your Facebook page.

Radio advertisements

Place online radio advertisements with a service like TargetSpot. The nice thing about these online radio stations is that you can add geo-tagging to your advertisements.

Local search

Add your business to local search engines and business directories. Most of these websites allows you to advertise with an advertisement for a reasonable monthly fee.

Blogging

Create a blog that deals with the services or products your business specializes in and reference your location on it regularly. The key here is the create local content that is interesting to your targeted customer and that uses community, local town names in their searches. A blog can also be a powerful business influencer to establish yourself as the expert in your field. This can also help your business becoming more visible online.

Google Adwords

Use Google adwords and insert keywords with city and/or state added to the beginning or end. Use the state or city terms prominently in the ad to get a higher click thru rate.

All these steps falls under the internet marketing umbrella for your website to increase your visibility local and international. If you have any questions regarding the steps explained in this post or if you would like more information to make your website more visible locally, leave a comment below.

Many people and businesses believe that social media marketing is a fast, cheap and easy way to internet marketing with all the hype in the online world. Even though Social Media Marketing (SMM) is the new frontier in online marketing, it has been around for a while now but it has only received major exposure in the last couple of years.

Everyone including small businesses wants to be part of this social media phenomenon but unfortunately with any new technologies and trends, misunderstandings are bound to be found.

Find some information regarding social media marketing below.

Social media marketing is free and cheap

Social media tools are free to use but to properly implement them onto a website marketing campaign that is effective, can get expensive. A website marketing campaign that is successful requires a dedicated team of professionals with the experience on how to accomplish this.

It is easy

Social media marketing isn’t easy. It takes time, commitment and patience. To get the best results from social media, it should be integrated into a strategic website marketing plan. It usually requires work to be done each day to reach slow gains. Results can be tracked and monitored. Often the time and dedication spent on social media marketing out weights what your returns will be.

The whole point of Social Media Marketing is to brand yourself as the expert in your field and business. It is all about building your trust and credibility. The more you give, the more you will get.

There’s only young people on Social media sites

Young people might have been the original originators of this field, but it is now being used by all age groups. Each social media community has it’s own demographic profile. Research which communities you would like to join, or create your own one.

Social Media can hurt my business

Many people and companies are afraid to participate in social media for the fear of the negative reaction they might receive if they mess up. Conversations will take place online about your company or brand with or without you. It is more risky to not be involved in the social media world and talk about your business.

Social Media Marketing is all about placing adds on Facebook

This is called “paid advertising” to place advertisements on Facebook. Social media marketing is about about engaging and interacting with targeted audiences. By placing banner ads (same as the advertisements in a printed magazine) doesn’t guarantee targeted users will be viewing it. Engaging in social media is to inspire trust and to show your business is credible and trustworthy.

How can I measure social media marketing?

With proper social media optimization (SMO), social media marketing can be very effective in improving search engine optimization for your business. You can receive better organic search engine results that will bring more traffic to your website – more leads and more sales.

Can I measure social media statistics?

There’s many social media monitoring tools and methods to measure the impact of your social media campaign. You can find tools to measure the amount of your business name being mentioned, comments about your business, number of friends and fans and the number of visitors that you received to your website from social media sites.

Social Media Marketing is here to stay. If you require any additional information regarding this next step in internet marketing contact us.

If you have a website you most likely have one common need and that is more website traffic – either unique or returning visitors. Your website may look the best and professional, but if no one knows including the search engines about your online presence, it is considered useless.

If your website is in this boat, there’s two things you can do:

• On page SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – Optimize your website for the search engines.
• Add a blog to your website with an RSS feed to broadcast your message to the web.

If you use these two simple strategies of SEO together with blog marketing, you can definitely increase your search engine rankings

On page SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Search engine optimization is all about the improvement of the traffic to your website from search engines. By choosing targeted keywords and keyword phrases that your ideal customers are actually searching for on the search engines is the basis for search engine optimization – anyway you look at it. This is the most critical and the first step that will determine if your Search engine optimization efforts will turn into business or sales leads. You can assign more than four keywords and keyword phrases to each page that you want to optimize – depending on the content.

The on page Search engine optimization requires text that the search engines can index. There’s no limit to the number of words that you can use on each page but to be obvious – more content = more words for the search engines to index. Use the keywords and keyword phrases you have selected about 1-2 times in the first paragraph of your content page. Search engines tends to give higher importance to the content found at the beginning than the end. Use your keywords and keyword phrases in your page headlines with <h1>, <h2>,<h3> tags and in bulleted lists as well as hyperlinks.

Off page SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

To have a separate blog that links to your website can quickly produce high value links (backlinks) that the search engines will recognize. You can either setup a blog on a dedicated domain or on a subdomain of your main domain eg http://blog.yourwebsite.com.  By adding a blog to your website domain you are adding value to the whole domain and if you add your blog on a separate dedicated domain, you are providing backlinks to your website from a different domain.

By using the keywords and keyword phrases you have chosen as a guide, write a minimum of 3 blog postings each week. When you create a blog posting, use your keywords and keyword phrases in the blog title and in the content of the blog postings.  Link these keywords to the most relevant page on your website. Because of RSS (Real Simple Syndication), the search engines and blog aggregators will quickly detect your links and that you have new content available.  This can help your search engine rankings.

The methods above describes the way of using on page Search Engine Optimization together with blog marketing.  This is a powerful method to increase your search engine rankings.

This is my 4th day in the UK and I am in my second day of training WSI Internet Consultants on Digital Marketing brand strategies here in Birmingham.

The training covers digital marketing brand strategies and local media websites. One of the key findings we uncovered is that Public relations companies need to move their businesses online. I have come across a number of Public relations companies recently who have asked me how they can integrate blogging into their services mix.

This post is really just a test to see if we can get indexed by Google within a couple of hours for the keywords : Digital Marketing brand strategies, Birmingham, West Midlands.

I will publish this post live around 08h45 and we will see how many visitors get to the blog withing two minutes.

Then the crunch time is when we do a search for our post title to see if we get a first page ranking for these terms.

I will let you know what happens, as this is always an interesting exercise as it opens our minds to other search engine marketing techniques.

The first thing I do is explain blogging and sometimes I have to answer the question, ” what is blogging?”

In the past I have written a couple of articles on the importance why businesses should partake in social media for their company.

The main focus point of social media is not to increase sales even though it could be one of your objectives, but to increase your visibility and credibility by participating in conversation online. The sales will follow after you have established yourself as the expert in your industry. What a mouthful!!! If done correctly and the effort is put into it, the sales will follow. Social media takes time and dedication.

Social Media is all about building relationship and to become more visible online. You can also build trust and credibility by participating in social media. Be the expert in your field. Find below a couple of advantages of Social Media.

Social media lasts longer than traditional media

Social media can attract and hold the attention of targeted users via social networks. Usually these users have grown numb to traditional marketing and advertising where you do not force participation. With social media you are engaging your consumers in a way that encourages trust and increases message retention.

It is viral

Social media is viral and can reach wide targeted audiences in a short amount of time with the least costs involved than traditional marketing. This is a substantial opportunity and threat for communications professionals. While this can reap tremendous growth if used and implemented correctly, it can also have negative viral outcome for businesses that aren’t properly prepared to deal with it.

It is interactive

Through the use of social media, businesses can now communicate and get immediate feedback from users and customers encouraging a process of dialogue between all the parties. Enabling comments on a blog can result in a positive impact for many businesses to gain valuable customer feedback from their industry.

Increased visibility

Social media holds a favourable position for visibility as it has been blended into our daily online lives. What is the first thing you do when you go online? Go on Twitter? Facebook?

Social media has its advantages and at the same time, if done incorrectly, could also have its disadvantages. Contact us if you require additional information regarding the advantages of social media and social media marketing (SMM) or leave a comment below.

Social networking on the web is like contained versions of the blogosphere.  People join social networks and create profiles on them to build a network and community by connecting with friends and business contacts.  They can also invite their personal friends to join their community.

Social network communities retains the interests of their members by being useful to them.  Some of the popular social networks provides services that’s entertaining as well.  These services can also help you expand your network and business services.  Facebook, for instance, allows members to create and customize (HTML customization with the addition of FBML) personal or business fan pages on a specific topic or niche.  You can link blog posts, videos, information and even music to these fan pages.  Have a look at our fan page, it is very new but you will get the idea – Facebook Fan Page

To get back to the topic – why would you use a social network?

• To keep in touch with friends and family;
• Professional networking services;
• The sharing of knowledge and information;
• Socializing with colleagues;
• Sales and business leads;
• Recruitment;

The social networking tools available online can be great business influencers and they can help to establish yourself as an expert in your field and niche.  With correct social media optimization, you can increase your visibility and gain trust and credibility that can ultimately provide you with sales and business leads.  The main focus point of using social networks shouldn’t be to increase sales but to build good relationships.  The sales will follow if done correctly.

Find below some information on a few popular social networks you can join to start building your communities.

Facebook

Who doesn’t know what Facebook is?  Facebook was started in 2007 by US colleges and became available for public use in the UK.  The popularity of Facebook quickly rocketed. A big part of Facebook’s success is its creators decision to “open up” and allow anyone to develop applications to run on Facebook – without charging them.

This has seen Facebook users able to play each other at Scrabble and Chess, compare each others tastes and send “virtual gifts” to your friends.  Everyday new applications springs up on Facebook and many are developed for entertainment purposes only.

URL: http://www.facebook.com
Membership: free

MySpace

MySpace gained a lot of its popularity around its music services.  There’s over three million bands and musicians registered on it to attract a fan base from the 200 million registered accounts.  According to Hitwise, in September 2006 MySpace was the 8th largest traffic source to HMV.co.uk – more even than the MSN search engine.

URL: http://www.myspace.com
Membership: free

LinkedIn

The most grown up of the popular social networks is LinkedIn which allows users to build there business and professional contacts into an online network.  It has been criticised for not being open enough and for charging for too many of its services – but next to Facebook it is still the most popular online social network among people aged 25 and over.

The great success of Facebook could be a challenge to LinkedIn’s closed approach in the future.

URL: http://www.linkedin.com
membership: free and paid

Social networking is another form of social media and if optimized correctly as stated above, could result in huge benefits personally and for your business.

Rob has been a WSI Internet consultant for 3 years now and it just goes to show you what one can do when starting a WSI Internet Consult Franchise.

Just 3 years and he is up on stage teaching the rest of us on how to grow our businesses.

• How to leverage WSI Adworks to secure recurring revenue
• How to leverage Vertical markets

He shows us how to use the power of WSI Adworks for local search and get information such as date, time and a recording of the telephone conversation. A great way to measure customer acquisition..

I really wish we could get access to WSI Adworks in South Africa but it is only available in the USA & UK at present.

Once again we get the process that is shared in Search engine marketing, very valuable stuff.

7 Essentials of Search Campaigns

1. Setup
2. Budget
3. Text ad
4. Landing page
5. Reporting
6. Optimisation
7. Keywords

Another interesting point Rob brings to our attention is to partner with other web & graphic designers and helps them add value to their client base.

This is the classic term of “co-opertition” that i experienced during my corporate days.

Building sustainable secure recurring revenue by developing trust and credibility with clients

Thanks for another great presentation and sharing with us.

Peter Rees a UK WSI Internet Consultant shares his process on how to engage with large British companies on a consultancy role.

Peter comes from a strong IT consultant background and told us how he goes about researching and approaching these large companies.

His consulting revenue at least 5 fold and it’s all based on meeting regularly with with his client to guide them as their online marketing partner.

He used the words “We influence the direction of their online marketing initiatives.” This is a very important point that he raises as I have seen similar growth within my client base whenever I take the lead role and direct their online activities.

He shared the rest of his case studies and the monthly spend from them ranges from 280 pounds – 7,000 pounds.

In addition he shared his actual process of how to go about creating the audit and this just shows the value of attending these training sessions

One thing that he pointed out was that many of the websites were written in technical language and this was reflected in the high page bounce rate that he identified in the monthly reports.

The message here is that if you don’t measure you don’t manage, we’ve all heard that before.

His service covers:

• Reporting against KPIs
• Ad-hoc in depth analysis
• Managing Internet Marketing Campaigns
• Advising on SEO initiatives
• Advise on Social media

Analytics is the gold mine and you have to get hold of this information so that you can add value from the analysis.

Meeting regularly gives you the opportunity to help improve your client’s profile.

A great presentation and an inspiration to all of our WSI Internet Consultants

We have just opened our UK SMX Internet Marketing summit here at the Crowne Plaza in Birmingham.

Sophie Toms presents the benefits of using the Google content network to grow a business.

She presented how we can decide how we want to advertise our companies on relevant content networks that consist of 1000s of websites & blogs in the Google Network.

An interesting statistic is that the average purchaser makes over 12 searches before making an online purchase.

Content is a great way to compliment your search activity as it can deliver a good ROI for your business.

The content network can reach over 88% of the UK market.

Google also sells display & video ads on the content network. Businesses can hand pick the most relevant sites that allow you to target your market.

1) Handpick individual sites

2) Target a complete category

3) or contextual targeting

Use placement targeting to handpick individual sites or sections of sites that you want your ad to appear. Good for branding & awareness is what placement targeting can do for you.

Category targeting is where you advertise on specific broad range of sites like News, recruitment etc.

Contextual targeting is like an extension of search advertising

Visitors to content network websites can see ads that are relevant to your products and match the contents of the page.

Bidding can be done on cost per thousand, cost per click or cost per acquisition. With cost per acquisition you can set the maximum that you wish to pay to get a customer.

Sophie gave a great presentation on how WSI Internet Marketing consultants can use the content network most effectively.

She presented a step by step approach on how to use the Google Wonder wheel and the keyword tool to build your campaigns.

Success Reports:

• Average advertiser has an average of 4% lowers spend that just search
• Media advertisers see 25% more conversions when combining search & content network
• Advertisers are getting better conversion rates using the content network

Getting British Businesses online

There are over 1.5 m business that don’t have a website. Google is starting an initiative to get 100,000 businesses on line with a website.

In May there will be a “getting British online week” and Google will provide tools to get more out of their websites.

These are for the small SMEs who haven’t thought about getting online before.

The message is to get online for free and get up & running in 20 minutes.

A great presentation.