“How do I use social media as an online marketing tool for my company?”

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone who continuously talks about themselves? Of course you have. We all have. These one way conversations are quite the monologue and often leave the other party frustrated. I find myself tuning out to what that person is saying and just trying to find a “Pinter Pause”, or at least, a slight moment of silence to jump in with a few simple words. It’s quite annoying and leaves you feeling bored and frustrated.

As we get older we understand that it could be a personality flaw or just a lack of courtesy. And if we use the same comparison, with relation to traditional and online marketing, we are left with ineffective results. When we speak about Social Media we are not just tweeting our latest sale for products and service. Lord knows there are a ton of those out there within the now 10 billion tweets. These are the first ones we overlook as they offer no value.

So that leaves us with the open ended question, “How do I use social media as an online marketing tool for my company?”

And when I ask this question it has more to do with driving online traffic and capturing new leads. Social Media offers us the most advanced form of real time communication for us to speak with potential customers, clients, employees and the general public. But that is not the best part about it.

An effective Social Media campaign begins with listening to what is out there. What are people talking about? A quick search.twitter.com of your keywords and phrases produces results where you can listen to what type of chatter is occurring. Sales101 teaches us if you’re not listening then you’re not selling. Sales and Marketing are directly related to one another and this is no exception.

When we are delivered results the first instinct may be to hit up as many replies as possible for instant traffic. Oh wouldn’t that be nice? And in a sense, sure – it most certainly would. But, if it sounds to good to be true than it most likely is. Remember your reputation is always on the line. People are listening to your tweets and what you say is an impression that you may never have the chance to retract.

When we listen to what the community is speaking about we can become an active member with valuable replys or retweets. A good ratio for retweets vs. tweets about your self is 12:1. That means listen and reply naturally 12 times before you tweet yourself. This is an effective formula which leaves you looking like an expert by providing valuable content to the community and not just sending out tweet spam.

Labels: online marketing, seo

Do you have a hobby? Depending on the nature of your hobby, you probably notice people with different degrees of experience and talent. I attend Jiu-Jitsu classes in Berlin, New Jersey and observe the varying skill levels.

Search engine optimization and online marketing is very similar in regards to those with varying degrees of hands-on experience and efficiency. In Jiu-Jitsu, class attendance and training with experienced practitioners facilitates the attainment of higher-level belts. What warrants the competence level and ‘belt’ of an online marketing company or SEO practitioner?

The notion of assigning belts to SEO consulting services and online copywriting services seems novel and a bit humorous, yet the notion of perpetual learning and positive progression is one that deserves reverence and interest. How can an online practitioner evolve?

Read blogs
Hosting a library of books pertaining to a specific subject area is expected of all students, yet the blogosphere addresses news, tactics, and more on a general to time-specific platform. Reading on-topic blogs can help facilitate the knowledge of search engine optimization and online marketing. Gather RSS feeds from industry-respected bloggers.

I suggest:

SEOmoz
Search Engine Land
Daniel Scocco from Daily Blog Tips actually issued a post of ‘Top 25 SEO Blogs’. The post is over two-years old, yet remains a good piece of reference.

Attend conferences
Conferences are available for a Philadelphia SEO company to take advantage of. Check for upcoming conferences in your city. SES conferences are popular within the fields of SEO and search engine marketing. Conferences offer a setting to learn new information and to meet other professionals in the industry.

Extra practice
How much do you enjoy landing page optimization, social media consulting, SEO copywriting, or other online marketing initiative? Have you considered moonlighting in order to procure your skills and make extra income? Check sites such as Elance for those seeking the services reminiscent of an online marketing agency, yet will accept the services of a freelancing professional. The ‘extra’ practice can give you the added experience to accelerate your learning.

Shadowbox
The subtitle refers to the notion of perfecting your skills on your own. Danny Dover of SEOmoz constructed an excellent post a little while back referring to ways you can become a self-learned SEO professional using only thirty minutes of your time per session. It is essential to gather the basics from respected sources, learn what direction to proceed, and then do so at your own pace. Small and consistent dedication to your craft can definitely result in eventual success and a possible SEO black belt.

Labels: online marketing, philadelphia online marketing, search engine optimization, SEO Copywriting

We've all heard that content is the most important part of a website.   It has even been crowned "King".  We also know that if a website is difficult to find, it basically does not exist.

Hard To Find = Does Not Exist.

This is why Search Engine Optimization is so critical to your online marketing.

The Paradox:
While Humans ultimately buy the products and services offered on the web, those products and services would rarely be found or purchased if the robots didn't find and index them first.  So, do we design websites for the humans or the robots?

Option 1 - Design for Humans:
It's been proven through various forms of web usability testing and research that web users generally don't read our pages... they scan them.  In "Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability", author Steve Krug sums it up nicely:

When we're creating sites, we act as though people are going to pore over each page, reading our finely crafted text, figuring out how we've organized things, and weighing their options before deciding which links to click.

What they actually do most of the time (if we're lucky) is glance at each page, scan some of the text, and click on the first link that catches their interest or vaguely resembles the thing they're looking for.  There are usually large parts of the page that they don't even look at.

We're thinking "great literature" (or at least "product brochure"), while the user's reality is much closer to "billboard going by at 60 miles an hour."

There are a number of proven methods to entice humans to engage with our message.  The three main guidelines for writing for the web include the following:

1. Be Succinct.  Write no more than 50% of the amount of text used in print publications.
2. Write for Scannability.  Don't require users to read through dense copy, which on the web sounds like Charlie Brown's school teacher...  "Whah, whah, whah, whah, whah, whah".  Instead, write short paragraphs, subheadings, and bulleted lists.
3. Hire Professionals!  Good content requires a dedicated staff that knows how to write for the web and how to massage your content into your website design layout for optimal read... I mean... scannability.

Option 2 - Design for Robots:
In order to successfully get content in front of card-carrying humans (a.k.a. potential customers), websites need to be structured so they are easily indexed by search engine robots (a.k.a. crawlers, spiders).  Search Engine Optimization depends largely on keywords and key phrases, so writing keyword-rich copy is absolutely critical to increasing search engine rankings.

There are a number of proven methods to optimize web content for search engines.  The three main guidelines include the following:

1. Generate Keyword-Rich Copy.  Content needs to works well at delivering your message to your Human visitors, while making your targeted keywords and key phrases easily indexed by Robots.  Use your keyword phrases in headlines, title tags, in the first paragraph, the top of the HTML document, and in alternative text on images.  But be careful not to overdo it - as you don't want to appear to be keyword stuffing.
2. Develop Accessible Markup.  Accessibility is not just for the visually impaired.  The more accessible your HTML pages are, the easier it is for search engines to read and rank them.
3. Create a Detailed Site Map.  Submitting a Sitemap XML file to the search engines helps them understand how to crawl and index all of the pages, including the frequency that the content changes.

The Solution:
While writing for robots is essential to SEO, don't stress mechanical search engine optimization so much that user's needs are forgotten.  We must provide content on our websites in a format that supports the way both Humans & Robots use the web.  We must write for human visitors first, and then optimize our code and content to help search engine robots find and index our pages.

Labels: Accessibility, online marketing, search engine optimization, SEO Copywriting, Web Design

Continuously read blogs, daily papers, and magazines

Most likely, you gravitate towards information about your industry. Just about any business is addressed on and offline in some journalistic fashion. Get to know specific writers and the kinds of information and stories they relate to the public. You may be able to offer yourself or your company as an expert cited source in an article.

In addition, most magazines have editorial calendars, which alert you of upcoming story topics. Your business can be proactive and offer insight for an eventual piece. Bloggers may also have a set list of topics to cover in the future; it may be wise to ask them.


Join organizations

Junior and senior-level executives may benefit the company by joining organizations pertaining to specific industries or joining a business organization such as their local Chamber of Commerce. Events are usually planned inviting opportunities to meet other professionals, spread the word about your company, intrigue potential investors and partners, etc.


Orchestrate fundraisers and events

Every business seeks exposure. Exposure helps brand the company and keep its name in the long-term memory of the mass public. Hosting fundraisers and other events facilitates a company's acclaim. It shows the company is interested in giving back to the public and provides a platform for the public to interact with the company brand. Hosting events are especially beneficial for local businesses that would like to begin and strengthen relationships with local customers.


Elect Company and Executives

The business world hosts a large number of business awards. Use a search engine to search for business award sites, such as the Stevies, and nominate your company and its executives. In addition, you can search for state and local award sites. It creates another goal for your company to achieve and provides proof of your company's recognition and excellence in your industry if you win.


Write Press Releases

Press releases can serve multiple purposes. It is advantageous to attempt to have one release achieve many. A press release:

- can be sent to local and nation-wide reporters and editors. Remember to write a newsworthy press release; otherwise, your release won't get featured anywhere.
-can feature multimedia such as sound and video clips. Clips augment the information contained in the content of the text.
-can be used for SEO purposes using your company's keywords and phrases
- educate the public about upcoming, company events

Labels: how create pr, online marketing, philadelphia online marketing, seo services

While there is no true road map that we can pull from the glove compartment and unfold to help us navigate the search engines, it has been proven that these common pitfalls will be detrimental to your organic search engine marketing efforts. As always, hire an expert to handle these services for optimal performance and continued results.


1) Starting Too Late

SEM should be well thought out as early as when you first register your domain name or plan your new web design or re-design. The concept of customizing your web pages content toward targeted keywords and key phrases has become more apparent and rewarded with top position results given by major search engines. These results are in no way an accident nor are they necessarily just a trick used to fool your way to the top. They more importantly benefit the visitors of your web site.

Advice: Give thought to your prospective customers and the keywords you want to focus on early in the marketing development stage.


2) Spy vs. Spy

In the wild, wild west days of SEO there were plenty of agencies offering top results, and getting it, by font matching (hidden keywords stuffed on a page that match the color of the background of a page), soliciting links from link farms as well as generating duplicate content (multiple pages with the same content). These practices are labeled “black hat” (as opposed to wearing a white hat and being the good guy) and quickly may cause penalization toward your site and in some cases lead to being banned.

Advice: Let a professional SEO company do what they do. Industry professionals have seen what works and will be able to adapt a campaign to meet your companies’ needs.


3) Less Is More

OK, you’ve got your site up and running. You’ve seen some traffic coming in. Now is the time that you decided to do some research on how to optimize your web site. That’s fantastic! Problem is, you took every single suggestion you found on the web and applied it toward your pages. Over optimizing a web page or web site can and will be detrimental to your SE results.

Advice: When in doubt, natural is best. A properly optimized site will feel natural to read and navigate. Don’t force keywords in where they shouldn’t be.


4) Too Much Coffee

Considering the evolution of the webs interactive features and web 2.0 functionality we need not neglect the inclusion of a little bit of javascript. The fantastic thing about this type of code is in the way it encourages our visitors to interact with our sites for a variety of purposes. That being said, many novice or intermediate developers will simply copy/paste code directly into the page. While this works it is not best practice for SEO

Advice: Use external files (or unobtrusive javascript – DOM scripting) at all times. Also place CSS in external files.


5) What’s In Your Head?

There are tags used for specific reasons when it comes to search engine placement. Regarding the most important element on the page, the content, there are header tags and paragraph tags. A page without header or paragraph tags is a missed opportunity. Optimizing the layout of your page by utilizing the correct components is essential in assisting with identifying the more important elements on that page.

Advice: Try not to use any lower than an h2 tag for identifying a header and make certain that your targeted keywords and phrases are evident within them.

Labels: choosing the right seo company, online marketing, search engine optimization, seo

One of the most frustrating aspects of being involved in the online marketing industry is the fact that many "experts" in the SEO field act as if there is a certain "magic" behind SEO that only a few select individuals possess. These "experts" guard this information as a magician would protect his secret magic tricks. These "experts" also build fear in potential customers by claiming that only they can get them results and that other companies will get them "blacklisted" by search engines.

These practices are what in many ways have given the Search Engine Optimization industry a bit of a black eye. The reality of it all is that many people don't understand what goes in to getting good natural search results and they rely on "experts" to help them get those results and some companies take advantage of this lack of knowledge to exploit these customers.

While every company you speak with will claim to be "the best", keep in mind that very few companies will actually get you blacklisted but at the same time, very few companies actually get you results. WebiMax applies the core principles that we have put in place for years to get our customers the type of results they are seeking. Proper site structure, well written content, frequently updated content, proper meta and h1 tags, strong relevant inbound links from quality websites and comprehensive site map which interlinks your website pages correctly. While there is obviously more that goes in to this process beyond these points, it really isn't "magic", is it?

Labels: online marketing, search engine optimization, seo