Internet Marketing Adelaide

5 Tips for Starting a Business

noreply@blogger.com (Sam Morris (54M)) — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 22:00:00 +0000

Have you been thinking of starting a business but just haven't got around to it? Here's a secret: don't delay another day, get started right now! Here's 5 tips for starting your own business taken from an interview I did with Karen Gunton from Build a Little Biz on the Web Marketing Adelaide Podcast.

Finding the right idea – something that combines your interests/skills/expertise with what people actually need/want
Doing your research – into biz models, profitability, a point of difference in the marketplace etc.
Building the framework of your biz – your products, your customers, your brand etc.
Giving yourself a timeframe – ‘portfolio building’ stage
Starting right now with a simple marketing strategy

Finding the right idea

Most people, when trying to start their own business, fall into two categories. The first category are people who have a particular skill, hobby or expertise that they think they can make money out of and turn into a business. The second category are people who like the idea of having their own business but don’t know exactly what it is they want to sell or what service they can provide and charge money for. What ever it is you do or sell, you have to keep in mind that not only does your product or service need to be something you can provide but also something that other people need. So if you already know what it is you want to sell, you now have to find people who want to pay for it, which can be pretty difficult. On the other hand, if you already know that there is something that other people need or want, it becomes easier to sell because you already know who you are going to sell it to. The important thing is to find something that you are willing to do that other people will pay for.

Doing the research

Before you start your business, it’s important to research who else is selling the same thing or providing the same service. It can really help to know how other people are conducting their business and to find out what you can do better and what you can learn. It’s pretty easy to find someone with a good buisness model that you can turn into something unique by making a few tweaks here and there and calling it your own. It is also important to know how profitable your business will be and how much you should be charging for your product or service. For instance, if you are selling homemade jewlery and you are charging twenty dollars for earings, you might be pushing away customers who are looking for high quality products. It is always easier to start off pricing high and then bring the price down if that isn’t working for you than it is to start off pricing low and then raise the price later.

Building the framework of your business

When starting a business you need to be clear on what your product is, who is going to buy it, how you’re going to sell it etc. You need to make sure you have a specific audience who you are targeting and you need to know how you are going to sell your product to that audience. Sometimes it helps to look into what the real, more broad reasons for why people are buying your product of using your service. People don’t just buy jewlery because they want jewlery - they buy jewlery to make them feel good about themselves. You need to look into what you’re really selling people, and that can be really helpful when trying to communicate with your customers.

Giving your self a time frame

When you’re first starting out, it can be useful to designate yourself a certain amount of time to test out how you’ll run your business and build a portfolio before you actually properly launch your business. You can use this time just as a learning stage to find out what you need to change about your business or how much you’re going to charge or how many hours a week you’re going to spend on your business. It doesn’t really matter what you do in this time because you can always go back and fix things. Remember that what you do in this time is ‘not a tattoo’ and isn’t going to define your business forever and can always be changed.

Starting right now with a simple marketing strategy

One of the best ways to begin creating an online presence for your business is to just start a simple blog or website where you can talk about your ideas and hopefully gain followers. Another great thing you can do is start keeping a list of emails of people who are interested in what you do or interested in your product or service. So if you want to notify people about a new idea or a new product, you already have a list of people who are interested in what you have to say. This is great for when you are in your portfolio building stage and you want to try things out before launching your product or service.

The most important thing when starting a business is to just start right now. Leave a comment bellow and tell us what you can do today to help you towards starting your own business.

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Get People to Throw their Money at you using Word of Mouth Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 06:38:00 +0000

Word of mouth marketing harkens back to the days when friends told friends about businesses that they liked. People share information, and it can either hurt you or help you. Here are some tips from my interview with Dr. Martin Russell on the Web Marketing Adelaide podcast.

Referrals are Warm Lead

When developing your business through word of mouth marketing one of the biggest positives is that you have a warm lead. Trust in any business is huge. You want your client to feel that you do have the right product and the right information. When the client has been referred to you by someone that they trust, they are more likely to trust you, the first time.

Asking for Referrals is NOT Begging

Businesses are built by good word of mouth. Encouraging your clients to refer their friends and family is not the same as begging them. Chances are you have a service that many people need. When you get your happy clients to tell their friends, who are also looking for the service you provide, this is part of your marketing. Much of your business can come from referrals, so, how are you generating them?

One positive strategy to get people talking about you is to put it into your marketing. Talk about a time when someone was referred to you and then that same person referred someone else. Show people that there is a chain reaction of happy clients. They will trust you, and be encouraged to spread the word.

Networking on a Business Scale

Word of mouth marketing is customers talking to customers. Anytime you have a connection that can lead to business; that is your network. Do you work with other vendors that can refer you? Do you work with vendors that you can refer? The more people that are connected the more opportunities will arise.

You Can’t Prevent Everything

Positive word of mouth marketing is wonderful. However, there will always be the other side of that. As a business owner you need to know what people are saying about your business. What negative aspects are popping up? This is why it is important to follow up. After someone has worked with you, how do they feel, are they happy? Search the internet to see if there are complaints about your business.

If there is negative word of mouth about you, you may not be able to remove it. However, how you handle it can make all the difference. Contact those who have had an issue. How can you rise to the challenge and turn them into a happy customer? Remember, if people like something they may tell three people. Alternatively, if people hate something they may tell everyone who will listen.

Follow Your Demographic

Talk to the customers who you want to refer people for you. What social media do they use? If you find they are on Facebook all the time but you have spent your marketing budget on Twitter then you will want to change your focus. You are relying on the people who rely on you and this is why you want your budget to fit their styles. If you end up saving money, great, funnel that back into your product.

Listen to the whole discussion in Episode #6 of the WMA Podcast.

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Website Usability Tips [Guest Post]

noreply@blogger.com (Sam Morris (54M)) — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 12:32:00 +0000

This article is going to give advice on how to make your website easier for it’s visitors to navigate and use. We will be covering the topics of:

URLs
Breadcrumb links
Sitemaps
Custom 404 pages
Website Navigation
Linking Out

URLs

URLs will often contain a bunch of indecipherable codes and numbers. To make it easier for users to remember the URL to a particular page, make it so the URL is short, simple and uses words that relate to its page (eg. www.example.com/blog/2008/jan/how_to_mow_cat ). It is also useful to make it so parts of the URL can be deleted and the URL will still work. For istance, if you deleted everything after the ‘2008’ in the example above, www.example.com/blog/2008 would lead to a page containing all the blog posts from 2008. It is good practice to only have one URL leading to a particular page.

Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumb links are a really useful way to help people better navigate your website. Breadcrumbs are usually located near the top of the page and look like this:

Home > Shoes > Kids > Sandals > Kosh Leather Sandals

Visitors can use this to find their way back to pages they viewed previously.

Sitemaps

To help users find their way around, include an HTML sitemap with links to all the important pages. If there are a lot of pages, they should be organised on the sitemap by subject. To make it easier for search engines to navigate pages on your website, create an XML sitemap file for your site using a sitemap generator.

Custom 404 Page

There will be times when visitors will try and open a page that doesn’t exist. This is often because of misspelling a URL. Setting up a custom 404 page that guides users back to a page that works (typically the home page) can make peoples visit to your site easier and more enjoyable. Google has a useful 404 widget you can embed in your 404 error page.

Website Navigation

Most sites have navigation links near or at the top of each page. These usually include the home page, about, contact and any other important pages such as products or a blog. These are good for helping visitors find their way around your site.

Linking Out

The last bit of advice is about linking to other pages or websites. It is better to use text links rather than pictures, because people don’t always know to click on a picture to go to another page. It is always good to make links words or phrases (known as 'anchor text') that describe the place you’re being linked to rather than just a URL. This is especially important in the case of websites like Youtube that have a bunch of seemingly random letters and numbers in their video URLs. If you just provide a raw Youtube link, people might not know what is on the other side. That is why it is important to use words as links.
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This article is a guest post by Sam, a year 10 student at Heathfield High School who has been doing work experience with us at Wicked Cow Marketing recently. Sam and I discuss all of the tips given here in Episode 12 of the Web Marketing Adelaide Podcast.

6 Adelaide Business Networking Tips

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 13:50:00 +0000

Networking is one of those buzzwords that everyone talks about doing but don't seam to have a clear idea of why.

When I started my SEO business I found myself doing a lot of networking without having a clear idea of what exactly the value was and how it was going to help my business.

I regularly attend the Flying Solo small business meetup which is held monthly in different places around Adelaide (next one coming up on September 5th). In the lead up to the meetup, I always see people umming and ahhing over whether they can fit it in to their busy schedule which seems to point to the fact that most people think there's some value there but that its far from the most productive thing they could be doing with their time.

Good things that can come from networking;

New clients/customers (either those that you meet or by referral from someone you meet)
Increased reputation, personal branding and awareness
Business/joint venture partners
Business advice and tips
An opportunity to make friends, get support and vent with like minded people

My Networking Tips

1) Figure out what your networking objectives are. If you want to meet small business owners, then maybe attending a networking event for professionals is not the best use of your time.

2) Arrive early. Its harder to enter existing conversations than it is to start them. If you get there early, you can strike up a conversation with people as they arrive.

3) Try and meet everybody. You never know what you could be missing out on so a good strategy is to try and meet everyone then go back to the people who are most interesting to you if you have time. This is not a hard and fast rule. If you're engaged in conversation with someone interesting and relevant then you don't want to just kick them to the curb but if there's a break in the conversation, use the opportunity to move onto someone new rather than returning to the same person.

4) Focus on others, not yourself. I think you can get far more value by listening, asking questions and helping other people out than you can by talking about yourself and your business. If you can provide value to someone, they're much more likely hire you, refer you work and talk about you in a positive light to others. Further, by listening and asking questions you can learn more about the problems people are having and how you can help them solve those problems.

5) Collect business cards. While your instinct might be to try and give out as many of your business cards as possible, don't forget to collect the business cards of those that you meet so you can connect with them later. I also like to group business cards by the event so if I'm going back next time I can have a look at the cards of those I met so I remember their names and what they do when I see them again.

6) Follow up and follow up some more. In the first few days after the event, try and follow up with those that you met. Add onto the conversation that you had with another thought or a link to something they might find useful or interesting. Try and keep in contact with people by connecting with them every now and then via email, social media, commenting on their blog or even a phone call.

For some more ideas and pro tips, check out this networking article.

Adelaide Networking Events

Flying Solo Meetup - Small business owners, held monthly, usually 5-10 people
Adelaide Open Networkers - Some small business owners but mostly professionals, held every 2 months or so, 20-40 people (last time I was there)
The Startup Club Adelaide - They haven't had any events for a while but I think they are starting them again soon? I've not been to any events so don't know much about them but I've heard they're good
Young Leaders at the Office - Young IT professionals, every 1-2 months, small cost for non ACA members, 15-30 people
Silicon Beach Adelaide Meetup - Tech based entrepreneurs, geeks and businesses, held monthly, 10-30 people
Adelaide Word of Mouth - Business owners & professionals, a few events each month, free, I've not been to any events yet but I hear they are quite popular.

Got some networking tips of your own? Put them in the comments below.

Things to Consider Before Developing Your Website [Guest Post]

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 07:25:00 +0000

This is a guest post by Urszula Richards from online iq. I discussed these topics with Urszula in a recent interview for our new Web Marketing Adelaide podcast (Episode 2) and this post summarises and expands upon that interview. You can find out more about Urszula's business; online iq, in their company profile in our internet marketing directory. - Nick, Editor

What are some things people should consider before having a website designed?

There are two primary things a website must do. It must solve the needs or problems of the website visitor, and it needs to help the business owner achieve its goals.Its true to say that the best websites are designed for the end users - as they will vote with their actions about whether there is anything of value or interest to them. This is one reason why it is good to have an objective person to help with developing your site.

The second thing is that it must align with the business goals. For established businesses, these can be quite clear, but for a young business, these could be quite formative and it can be difficult getting to the bottom of what a business offers (especially if it is a service business). So my advice would be to take the time to get very clear about this.

Other things important to consider:

budget - contrary to what most people do, telling your developer what your budget is will help them help you be realistic about what can be achieved, and appropriate options suggested.
online shopping websites - these can be built *fairly* cheaply BUT will they work? Be sure to factor into your budget photography (main expense if you have lots of items; but photographs sell), your fulfillment plan (who will be handling orders), shipping and payment methods. Then, you need to allocate funds to some serious marketing. Just because you build it does not mean they will come. If you don't budget for these items, your 'budget' shopping cart may well become a white elephant.
ongoing relationship with your web firm - a website is a little like a car. You get the car, but you may need driving lessons, maintenance and fuel to get the most out of it. Work with someone you trust - they will be your first port of call for making your website work for you.

Are mobile websites important?

Awareness of mobile is really important, but what does this mean?

It means that you need to be aware that your website will be viewed on any number of devices, including phones, tablets, huge screens and tiny portable PC's. There is no way a website can look exactly the same across all these devices.

However at the very least -

make sure your graphics do not include Flash (as it can't be viewed on many mobiles); or at the very least that those pages redirect to an alternative mobile friendly page when accessed from a mobile device.
do view your site on a range of mobile devices and see if there are simple changes you can make to improve it
consider having a *micro* mobile site version - which would show up on mobile phones, for local business - ie. phone number, google map, possibly faqs; just the basic information 'on the go'

On the other hand if your target market and/or your offering is very 'mobile-centric' you may want to consider an entire website version completely optimised for mobile.

What are 5 ways business owners can market their website once it has been created?

First a note about marketing in general. It should be seen as a form of genuine, long term, relationship building. I also see no distinction between online and offline marketing - "online" is just a medium.

Make sure you are listed in all the local directories. If you are in a particular niche and there is a directory for that niche, make sure you are listed there. (eg if you are a restaurant, make sure you are listed in Urban Spoon). Take control of these listings - so you have up-to-date and interesting information / photos.
Blog. You have probably heard about blogging 'ad nauseum' but there is no better way to prove you are current, knowledgeable and interested in your domain. The added bonus of this is that once this has been created, you will actually have something of substance to distribute via your social networks.
Do use social media - but make it interesting, relevant or delightful (ok, you might not be able to delight every time!) to your audience. Don't simply have social links on your site going to a very empty Facebook or Twitter page.
Capitalise on your web address. Add it to your signature (make sure it is clickable, and not an image), use it in your print advertising, and distribute it on your business cards wherever you can.
Understand the importance of your database. Not just names and emails, but who they are. Segment it as much as possible, so that when you do communicate with people, it is a communication which is of value and relevance to them. This is one of the key reasons why I use Business Catalyst to build my websites in. It has a Customer Database and the ability to segment and communicate with your customers. I only wish my clients used it more!! In fact my interview on Web Marketing Adelaide with Nick was a direct result of ongoing, relevant occasional communication via my segmented database.

About onlineiq.

We are a small boutique web design and development agency offering both the creation of websites and the necessary training, support and maintenance to keep them meeting business goals. You can find us @ www.onlineiq.biz or call 1300 970 730

Onlineiq Company Profile

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 12:13:00 +0000

Company Name: onlineiq
Founded: 2008
Key Personnel: Urszula Richards (business development)
Products/ Services: Websites and marketing solutions for business & community organisations
Specialty: Providing integrated online solutions - providing solutions you may not know were possible beyond just having a website

Information Sources:

Contact Details

Address: 14 Company Street, Semaphore 5019
Website: www.onlineiq.biz
Email: ursh@onlineiq.biz
Phone: 0413 606 463

Search Engine Optimisation Tips for Adelaide [Infographic]

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 02:38:00 +0000

I've created this infographic with 8 tips to help improve your search engine rankings in Adelaide. If you head to the page on my website; Adelaide SEO Tips, you'll find more information about each tip and a video explaining each tip as well. Enjoy!

Online Marketing Resoruces

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 12:00:00 +0000

As you know, I haven't been posting much here lately - there are several reasons, mostly because I've been really busy, but also because I've been writing articles for my Online Marketing business website: Wicked Cow Marketing. I've already built up a pretty good collection of resources, here are some of the most recent:

On-Page Optimisation - A comprehensive guide to on-site SEO, that is search engine optimisation done on the page
Page Title Optimisation - A follow up to the on-page optimisation article above that focuses on just the optimisation of your page's titles
How to Get More Facebook Fans - A structured approach to getting more Facebook fans
How to Get More Twitter Followers - A structured approach to getting more Twitter followers
Ultimate SEO Checklist - A huge checklist of SEO techniques and ideas that you can use to improve your site

The Future of Internet Marketing Adelaide

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 13:52:00 +0000

I have been thinking about where I'd like to take this blog now that I have other projects to work on and perhaps not as much time to spend here.

The key areas I'd like the blog to focus on include:

Interviews - With Adelaide based experts in the internet marketing field and the occasional non-Adelaidian when useful or interesting.
Guest Posts - From Adelaide based exerts in the internet marketing field, more details here.
Jobs - Continue to posts to and promote our job board.
Education - Information about internet marketing education and courses in Adelaide and online.
Events - Covering the various networking and internet marketing events in Adelaide and maybe organising some events of our own.
News - Covering internet marketing news in Adelaide.

I have made several posts in the past with my own opinions about SEO strategy and ideas. I will continue these, when I have the time, but they will be posted to my personal site nickmorris.me.

I'm toying with the idea of doing future interviews as recorded audio and putting them together in a kind of podcast. They would also be transcribed and posted to the blog.

Some of the event ideas I've had include networking events for internet marketing professionals in Adelaide, SEO round table discussions, small business networking events and free lectures/workshops from internet marketing professionals for small business owners.

Overall the site has two main focuses - information, news and networking within the internet marketing community in Adelaide and packaging some of the community's knowledge and bringing it to small business owners and managers who can benefit.

If you have any ideas or comments about the direction of the site, please add them below.

What is the Best Way to Leverage an Article?

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 13:54:00 +0000

There are several different things you can do with an article to aid your SEO and online marketing, including:

Posting it on your main website
Posting it on another website you own with a link back to your main website
Syndicating the article to a large number of relatively low quality article marketing networks
Syndicating the article to fewer higher quality websites
Using the article as a guest post (one location)

This post seeks to explore which use is the most effective way to leverage an article for maximum benefit.

Article Use	Pros	Cons
Main website	The article can rank and attract traffic to your website	There are no guaranteed links generated from the article
Another website you own	Guaranteed link back to your main website and the article can attract traffic to your other website	Have to divide your content over two websites
Low quality syndication	Potentially large number of links from low-medium quality websites and some exposure	Many links are low quality and will produce little traffic
High quality syndication	A small number of medium-high quality links, exposure to a new audience and likely to send some relevant traffic	Limited number of links generated
Guest post	Guaranteed link from a potentially high quality site, exposure to a new audience and likely to send some relevant traffic	Only one link generated

The traditional use would be to post the article straight onto your main website where it can rank in the search engines and attract visitors for years to come. The article can also be shared on social media and linked to from elsewhere to give your website traffic and an SEO boost to lead to better rankings overall. However, there is no guarantee that you will get links, unlike the other article uses mentioned. Earning links simply by writing good quality content is getting harder and harder so perhaps leveraging your article to obtain value exchange links is a better use of your content.

Value Exchange Links
These are links that are gained by giving something of value in exchange for a link back to your website. Money is a common form of value that is exchanged for links but in this case, the 'value' is the right to use a piece of content on a website. The three uses in the diagram above are value exchange links where you grant another website owner the right to use your content on their website in exchange for a link pointing back to your website. These techniques produce guaranteed links which reduces risk and increases the efficiency of your SEO efforts.

The lower quality method at the bottom of the pyramid has the potential to deliver tens - hundreds of links from low-medium quality websites. The links are likely to have a lower life time value so this technique has less long term value but the sheer number of links, with desired anchor text can still have a good effect on your rankings in the short term.

The higher quality techniques will produce much fewer links but they will have a greater long term value, greater authority and link value and have other benefits such as increasing your reputation and gaining exposure from a relevant audience.

For more information about the SEO value of 'value exchange links' see my recent post discussing whether article syndication is white hat.

2011 in Review

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 06:11:00 +0000

I've been rather busy lately with work and haven't been able to give this blog the attention it deserves. However, this post will continue to make sure that I've posted at least once a month, every month since its inception in early December 2010.

Here are the top 10 posts for this year:

It's been a fun and interesting year and I've got a number of plans for this blog to keep the content coming.

See you in 2012.

Is Article Syndication White Hat?

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 12:43:00 +0000

Article Marketing or Syndication is the process of trying to get your content republished on other websites for the purpose of getting exposure and building links.

I've been meaning to write this article ever since the article marketing product 'Article Samurai,' from the same company that makes Market Samurai, came out. More recently, I've been involved in an extensive discussion, in the comments of an article on SEO myths, about whether article syndication is a good way to build links.

There's a range of article marketing techniques that span from the very low quality to the higher quality. A point that was raised in the article and discussion mentioned above is that article syndication on quality sites is a good way to get your content distributed to targeted readers, which I don't dispute.

The focus of this article is with using article syndication as a link building technique for SEO.

There's actually two questions here;

Is article syndication/marketing white hat?
Is article syndication/marketing effective?

While the second question is certainly important, I'm actually more concerned with the first question as I'm looking for long term value and techniques that are not white hat will decrease in value over time as the Search Engines improve their algorithms.

Editorial Links
My main problem with article syndication is that it doesn't produce truly editorial links but rather value exchange links. Those re-publishing the articles are doing so, at least partly, because they benefit from having the content on their site, not because they think its great content.

However, it's not as straightforward as this. Some low quality sites will publish syndicated articles to their own sites with very little editorial scrutiny - these are certainly at the low quality/spammy end of the spectrum. But what about sites that only pick the very best articles to re-publish? It would seem that this is certainly an editorial process and therefore the links back should be given value by the search engines.

It seems like a difficult issue to make a decision on but I think that while the links produced are editorial to some degree, they are still value exchange links and therefore shouldn't be given as much link value as a true editorial link which makes the technique not entirely white hat. That's not to say that its black hat... I would categorise it as a grey hat technique.

In the following video, Matt Cutts talks about article marketing and syndication and he doesn't come right out and say that its a black hat technique. I think this is because he also recognises that if there's an editorial process and the articles are being published on good quality sites then the links do have some value as an indicator that the original content is authoritative.

He concludes the video by saying that the trend is that article syndication is a bad technique and that the resulting links should be devalued. There's also a great video by Rand from SEOmoz on this subject. Rand's video deals more with the lower quality end of the spectrum, but I think he agrees overall that no article syndication is entirely white hat and he then brings up the subject of opportunity cost.

Opportunity Cost
I think there's no doubt that article syndication can be an effective link building technique, especially if done in a higher quality way. But, if you're spending time on a technique that's not white hat then you know that the effectiveness of that technique is probably doing to decrease over time. You could be spending that time on white hat techniques which will have more of a long term value.

Many of the tools in the SEO's arsenal are not strictly white hat. The reason we use them is because they do have some value now so they'll produce positive results in the short term and because they're easier, quicker and cheaper to do than truly white hat techniques.

Do you do Article Syndication? Do you think its white hat?

James Whitrow on Video Marketing, SEO and Get Seen Online (Interview)

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

James Whitrow is the director of Get Seen Online, a business providing SEO and corporate and creative videos. I was lucky enough to sit down with him to discuss his business, their services and a recent viral video that he produced called 'Herbert Wilkes, a Hungry Life.' If you haven't already, read the Herbert Wilkes article and watch the video, it's great stuff. I found James to by an interesting guy with lots of passion for his business and for getting results for their clients.

What is your role in the business? What is your background? How did you come to be doing what you do?

I am the owner of Get Seen Online, we have three employees. I’m responsible for marketing & sales, some of the tech work, research and development, managing accounts, content writing and optimisation. The other two in the business are primarily tech and SEO consultants.
I’ve always run my own business since the age of ten, in San Diego, when I folded papers for other kids in the street who were old enough to have their own paper route.
I’ve been in the IT space for about 15 years. Previously I had a full service network management business and our clients started asking for websites and SEO. Initially we outsourced the work but were not happy with the results and we realised we could do better. We started offering SEO as a service and eventually it became a separate business, and that’s how Get Seen Online was born.

What does Get Seen Online do?

We do what it takes to get you on page one of Google using SEO, Online Video, Social Media and other methods.

What are your core services?

SEO, Website development, Online Video

Where does video production fit into those services?

Video adds a great extra element for users. We can show footage of clients’ work, how to's, what its like to experience doing business with them; anything information and story driven.
The videos are mostly made for the client’s website then linked through Youtube and social networks.

How can videos be used for online marketing? What are the advantages of video over text?

People are lazy. Some people don't like reading a screen, videos are much easier on the eyes.
On the down side, written content gets more mileage for SEO than video, so it’s good to have a blend of both.

How does video marketing complement other online marketing techniques?

Adding video to your content provides a more complete package, giving information in many formats for different people's preferences

What should the videos be about?

Think about what people would want to watch
Do research - use Google's keyword research tool, for example type in 'how to ,’ to see if people are searching for ‘how to’ guides on that subject
Try and expose in an engaging way what is unique about your business

Is there a specific formula to make a video go viral? What are the biggest factors?

There's definitely something to having an X factor
Marketing is also important
It has push boundaries and there’s got to be something that makes you want to share
Short - around 1 to 3 minutes
Video and audio quality are important, people need to see and hear clearly what’s going on. Sound extremely obvious, but overlooked by so many videos. For some videos the music can make or break the video.

Are there any Youtube specific tips your can share?

Youtube wants people to be active. Logging into your account, friending, subscribing, commenting and voting are all things that Google/Youtbe likes, so do them.
Getting involved in the community will also help get your videos featured. Featured videos go on the home page and get lots of views.

How do the costs and returns of online video marketing compare to TV advertising?

The ratio of costs of TV ads to cost of online videos is anything up to 10 : 1 for production.
You can use a basic video camera that only costs $300 and both Macs and PC’s come with free editing software (imovie and windows movie maker) or you up the quality and hire a local company to use professional gear and do something slick, either way, the main requirement is to have a good story to tell
On the distribution side, for TV ads you need to pay for each showine
Online videos stay up forever so there's no limit to their potential
Many people, especially the younger generations, already watch more online video than TV.

Can business owners have success by creating videos themselves?

Yes, simple videos can be really easy to create provided you have content that will engage the viewer.

What are five things that small business owners can do to leverage online video for marketing?

The most important thing is to get good quality content. Think about what content might interest your customers, what do you see everyday that they might find interesting?
Steer away from blatant self promotion
Do research. See what kind of videos are popular on Youtube in your niche and use Google’s keyword tool to see what people are searching for
If you don't have much editing skill or software, plan your shot carefully to try and shoot everything in sequence so there's not much editing required.
Ask around, there’s plenty of people involved in film in some way who can help and advise.

How would you describe your SEO philosophy?

Focus on providing great content with the belief that Google will appreciate informative, entertaining and useful website content.
We do lots of research and monitoring of results.

How do you differentiate yourselves from other online marketing businesses?

We work face to face with customers as well as through the net.
We aim to find out what's unique about our clients and portray their uniqueness and reason for existence as a common thread throughout all the marketing material and content on their website

Why is website structure important for SEO?

It enables search engines to easily crawl all the relevant content
Coding is also important, for example you should use CSS for page layout rather than tables nested in tables
Title tags, descriptions, headings (h1,h2,h3 tags) are all important places to put keywords- they should all be matching and consistent and accurately represent and summarise the content.

What are some common mistakes you see in small business website design?

Keyword stuffing, by people who don’t understand keyword density
Using lots of meta keywords- Google have stated they no longer use them in their algorithms
Content that doesn’t relate to the page titles

Thanks again to James for giving his time for this interview. You can learn more about Get Seen Online and the services they offer at their company profile in our Internet Marketing Directory.

The Making & Marketing of Herbert Wilkes - A Hungry Life

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 23:51:00 +0000

I recently caught up with James Whitrow of Get Seen Online to discuss their creative and promotional video, 'Herbert Wilkes - A Hungry Life.' Watch the video below and see my interview following that.

What were the objectives of the video?

To entertain. I’ve been a hobby film maker, and actor, for a few years and I wanted to make something for the business.

Steve wrote the script with purely commercial intentions. Then we thought about it and decided to modify it to be purely entertaining. We analysed each part as asked ‘is this entertaining enough?’ and then it was altered to make it more entertaining

It was originally written with the main character as a person, only later did we decide that a rat would be more entertaining.

Did you have any goals in mind in terms of number of views, links generated etc.?

Not goals exactly, just ideas, nothing specific. We kept to the main goal of entertaining.

Has the video achieved those goals and objectives? If not, why not?

I was hoping for 100,000 views, but there’s still more promotion to be done.

We have seen an increase in business, some of which can be directly attributed to the video, some not.

More clients have been gained than I expected.

So, if the video had less views than you expected and it resulted in more business than you expected, is if fair to say that the video had better leverage than you’d expected?

Yes, definitely!

Who is Herbert Wilkes?

Herbert is a purely fictional character
He is a brilliant painter that nobody knows about, then he died.
Herbert is played by Daisy, a rat owned by the business. Daisy lives in our office with her friend Scribble.
After we released the video we actually found another video about a person named Herbert Wilkes, who is also a painter and who is 97 years old - all a complete coincidence.

Was Herbert difficult to direct on stage?

Initially yes, but once we got to know each other it got easier.
It’s a matter of limiting the space he has to move within and putting the reward in the right position to get him to do the right thing.
In the art gallery scene, which was filmed without Herbert then green screened in later, Herbert was put on the table and left to improvise, he did exactly what I had in mind for him to do on his own and it worked perfectly with the actions of the human actor on set.

Where did the props and sets come from?

We shopped at several different stationery and craft shops to acquire the materials to make the sets. The majority of the furniture and props were bought on eBay.

I particularly liked the little toilet plunger, did that come from EBay too?

The toilet plunger is actually a little device for propping up/holding a mobile phone which was given to me a couple years ago. The scene was originally written with Herbert standing next to a regular sized plunger, then I realised the phone holder would make an ideal rat-sized prop.

Is Herbert working on anything right now? Is there anything else planned for the future?

There are more videos in the works, stay tuned.

How did you come up with the idea for the video and why did you think it would achieve your objectives?

We did lots of research. We looked at the top videos on Youtube and realised many of them featured animals.

I wanted to do something quirky and out of the box and rats are nice to work with, which helped make the choice. We went to lots of pet shops to audition rats. We wanted to stay away from black, hooded rats as they have that typical ‘evil’ look about them, and white rats are bad as white can be hard to work with on camera. Daisy is a nice apricot colour which was perfect for the role.

How did you distribute the video?

I sent lots of emails out to friends and colleagues, everyone I know really, and encouraged them to send it on to their friends.

We also posted it to Youtube and Facebook

We also posted it on various 'hot video' and 'trending video' websites as well as social sharing websites like Reddit.

What were the steps to create the video?

Writing
Pre-production- casting (most of the actors were people I had worked with in the industry), costumes, locations, props and sets

Production- filming

Editing- The editing took 3 solid weeks, this included high quality video, colour corrections, pulling and pushing focus, fixing the blurry bits.

Release and promotion

How long did it take to create the video?

The video took 8-9 months. We estimate that about 250 hours were contributed to the film when you count everyone involved.
There was a hold up on the music. I couldn't find anything that fitted the video the way I wanted. We eventually had it composed by a very talented composer in London.

How much did it cost to make?

A couple of thousand dollars. Many people donated their time, big thanks to everyone who gave their time to the project.

Have you made similar sorts of videos for clients? Is this the sort of video you might recommend to a client?

I wouldn't ever recommend this kind of thing to a client as it is high risk; a lot of effort goes into it and there’s a low certainty of results. But I would happily make creative videos like this for clients if they wish to show themselves to be out of the box... I will definitely be making more for ourselves.

Get Seen Online Company Profile

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 23:22:00 +0000

Company Name: Soul Stone Group Pty Ltd / trading as Get Seen Online
Founded: February, 2007
Key Personnel: James Whitrow (director)
Products/ Services: SEO, Corporate & Creative Videos
Specialty: Corporate & Creative Videos

Contact Details

Address: PO Box 3003, Norwood SA 5067
Website: www.getseenonline.com.au
Email: info@getseenonline.com.au
Phone: 08 8463 1112

SEO Maverick's Andrew Webber on PPC Advertising (Interview)

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 03:00:00 +0000

I recently caught up with Andrew Webber of SEO Maverick to talk about PPC Advertising. Andrew has some great insights into how PPC (pay per click) works and how to maximise the benefits for your business.

What is PPC advertising?

PPC stands for “pay per click” and is the pricing model that most search engine marketing ads are sold through. Advertisers who promote their products and services using pay per click ads are only charged if a potential customer clicks on one of their advertisements.

How is PPC different from other forms of advertising?

Pay per click advertising is one of the most targeted and measurable forms of advertising. There are not many forms of advertising that allow you to put your ads in front of potential customers at the exact time they are actively doing research or looking to make a purchase.

What are it's advantages and disadvantages?

Advantages: Highly targeted and extremely measurable. Easily see return on investment, overall ad spend, and which ads are performing the best.

Disadvantages: Can be time consuming to set up correctly

Is Adwords the only PPC provider you need to worry about?

If I was just starting out I would absolutely focus just on Google Adwords first as Google has around 90% market share in Australia for search engines. The return on investment for setting up a campaign on the Bing/Yahoo platform wouldn’t be there so I would focus all of my efforts on the Adwords platform to begin with.

Obviously once you start seeing some success in your Adwords campaign, then you can start to look at the Bing/Yahoo platform and see whether you can make some inroads in that market.

Facebook also offers PPC advertising and can be a very useful platform.

Who else offers PPC? How do they differ from Adwords?

Bing/Yahoo are the other major provider in the search marketing space with their AdCenter platform. Their interface and tools are not as user friendly as Adwords at this stage.

The Facebook PPC platform differs as it allows you to segment your ads based on some really detailed demographic, age and interests information. This means you can target your ads directly to very niche markets based on things you know they are interested in.

Can every business benefit from PPC advertising?

I think so. Whether it be for lead generation, selling a product or service, or general branding I think most businesses can use it as a low cost solution to marketing and customer acquisition.

Which types of businesses does it suit most?

Pay per click suits the big markets like insurance, banking, finance and real estate as it is easy to measure costs vs return on investment.

But there is definitely a large scope for smaller local businesses to put together PPC campaigns such as dentists, physios or other health products that have a long average customer life cycle.

Is it difficult to manage an Adwords account? Could the average small business owner do it successfully?

No it isn’t particularly difficult. It takes a bit of forward planning but most businesses know their markets very well and intuitively know what types of things their customers would be searching for.

The first thing they should do is take a look at their analytics and see what keywords are currently driving traffic to their website, and then plug some of these into the Google keyword tool to discover some other variations.

I think most business owners can easily create their own campaign. I would recommend opening up a spreadsheet and writing down all the different product and services and organise them into common themes or clusters of related products and keywords.

Start small – but keep adding to this list as you go along and you have some seriously good segmentation and data in no time.

What aspect of managing an account takes the most time?

The initial keyword research and segmenting these keywords into small ad groups is definitely the most time consuming part. From there, making sure you test different bid prices, match types, negative keywords and ad copy is what takes time.

Once an account and campaigns are set up, can they be left to run on their own or do they have to be maintained?

Generally it is advisable to keep an eye on your bid prices to make sure you’re not paying too much for your clicks. Also testing new ad copy variations can have a significant impact on click through rate and conversions.

How much should a business expect to pay to have their account managed by someone else?

Percentage of ad spend or a flat management fee are the most common forms of account management fees. It really depends on the scale and complexity of the campaign and the value to the client.

What benefits can an Adwords professional deliver that a regular business owner can't?

Setting the campaign up in a structured way using the correct match types, ad variations and tight keyword groups. Having the knowledge on how to structure a campaign and use different targeting parameters can give a much higher ROI than if a business owner set it up themselves.

I’ve seen several businesses set up campaigns with one ad group, one ad copy and 500 keywords. We separated this into much tighter ad groups around keyword themes and were able to increase click through rates, lower cost per clicks and increase conversions within the first day of running the ads.

Is there a minimum ad spend recommended?

A few hundred dollars to test the market is usually a good place to start for smaller businesses. There are plenty of free adwords coupons out there that can give you $50, $75 or even $100 to start off your campaigns.

I find its usually a good idea to use a few hundred dollars just to test the market to see what the general competitiveness is and what the most popular keywords are going to be.

What is 'Quality Score?' What is it used for?

Quality score measures the relevance of the landing page to the keyword and ad copy. In general, the higher your Quality Score, the lower your costs and the better your ad position.

The quality score is calculated every time your keyword triggers one of your ads and is determined by several factors. These are just a few:

Landing page quality
Historical click through rates
Keyword relevance to ad copy and landing page

Google has a great resource on quality score and how it impacts your campaigns
performance.

How can you improve your Quality Score?

Having smaller and more specific ad groups with less keywords that match closely with the ad copy. Creating specific landing pages for each keyword group can dramatically improve quality score which in turn will lower your cost per click and increase your ad position.

What's the difference between Google's display network and their regular search results ads?

This page outlines extremely well the differences in Google’s different advertising options. Here is my take:

Display network as defined by Google: “Text, image, video, or rich media ads are targeted based on themes in your keyword list, rather than specific keywords”

The regular search network results are the sponsored links you see on a Google search results page and are ads targeted based on what search terms users type in.

Do the two mediums require a different strategy?

It’s always advisable to run separate campaigns - one for just search, and the other for the content network. The content network allows for interactive ads such as videos and images that are not offered on the search network.

Obviously the ads that you will use will be quite different depending on what you are trying to achieve.

What kind of businesses/ads are best targeted to internet devices?

Local businesses such as restaurants or cafes as many local searches on mobile devices are done when looking specifically for a local service

Is location an important targeting factor to consider? How canlocation targeting be used to improve a campaign?

Absolutely. Having the ads only displayed for your particular area is vital. You can do this by city, suburb, state or GPS region. This way you can create broader themed campaigns around a keyword that are only displayed to people who are searching from a given location.

This means you don’t need to rely as much on keyword location modifiers such as “adelaide cafe, melbourne cafe” to have your ads displayed. Instead you can buy “cafe” and have it geotargeted to anybody searching for that who is located in Adelaide.

Is it easy to track PPC performance?

Extremely easy. In Google Adwords automatically ads a tracking string which makes it easy to see the data in Google analytics. The Google URL builder is something you can use to track your campaigns as well – a very useful little tool.

In competitive markets, which aspects of PPC advertising become more difficult to manage successfully?

Managing bid prices and working out the optimum amount to pay clicks based on your conversion rate and return on investment as opposed to the click through rates.

Are landing pages important for improving PPC performance?

Extremely important. A lot of PPC campaigns drive visitors just to the homepage with no real clear call to action for that specific search.

Having specific landing pages tailored to particular keyword groups that heavily promote the call to action can improve conversion and ROI dramatically.

How should your website be set up to maximise performance?

As mentioned above I think having specific ad groups for related keyword groups with several different versions of ad copy can have a huge impact. Custom landing pages for different groups of products or services is extremely important in maximising performance as well.

What can you do to reduce competition?

More specific ads, geotargeting and use negative keywords.

What are five things small business owners can do to best take advantage of PPC advertising?

Use one of the free advertising vouchers from Google
Set up a small campaign based on a couple of local keywords and use to determine market size, competitive and potential – then use this to power your SEO efforts
Use it to drive customers to your site and sign them up to your mailing list
Use in conjunction with your Google places page to dominate your local area
Start right away!

How does PPC relate to SEO?

PPC can be excellent for researching volume, competitiveness and cost of a particular market or keyword. You can use this real data to determine which keywords you should target in your SEO campaign.

How do PPC and SEO costs and returns compare?

PPC gives immediate returns and can show exact ROI numbers - very quickly and easily. The returns are definite but you are limited to the markets you are currently competing and buying ads in.

SEO returns are harder to quantify, longer term and more closely tied with your branding and strategy. However, it is a more defensible strategy as if you have strong organic traffic not just from Google but from other websites, this can improve brand value, increase customer retention and allow you to charge higher prices.

I don’t think one is better than the other – they are both different ways to market your business!

-------
Thanks very much to Andrew Webber for agreeing to be interviewed. You can learn more about Andrew's company; SEO Maverick at their Company Profile in our Internet Marketing Directory.

SEO Maverick Company Profile

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 05:44:00 +0000

Company Name: SEO Maverick

Founded: 2010
Key Personnel: Andrew Webber

Products/ Services: SEO, PPC, Internet marketing strategy

Specialty: SEO

Information Sources Authored/ Provided by SEO Maverick:
Blog: www.seomaverick.com.au/blog
Best posts:

Contact Details

Website: www.seomaverick.com.au

Email: andrew@seomaverick.com.au

Mobile: 0450 609 633

Interview with Chris Schwarz on PPC Advertising

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 05:10:00 +0000

I recently caught up with Chris Schwarz from The Search Guys to talk about Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. Chris struck me as someone who really knows his stuff and he was able to give me really great answers to all my questions. [my questions are in bold]

What is PPC advertising?

Form of online advertising with a cost model of an advertiser paying per click and directing traffic to a website

How is PPC different from other forms of advertising?

It’s more targeted
The Pay Per Click cost model is unique

What are it's advantages and disadvantages?

Advantages: Highly targeted, super quick results
Disadvantages: Can be expensive, can have a lower ROI (than SEO), easy to set up but difficult to master

Is Adwords the only PPC provider you need to worry about?

No, I'm sure there’s hundreds of PPC networks out there. Adwords is 100 times larger than all of them combined though.

Who else offers PPC? How do they differ from Adwords?

Both Facebook and Linkedin offer PPC which are content targeted ads as opposed to keyword targeted. This usually results in a lower click through rate relative to Adwords.
Search advertising is direct response marketing (deleted bit about facebook being branding, it can be direct response as well. The Adwords display network is about branding)
Facebook ads work better for social advertising, for example gaining likes to a Fan Page rather than directing people to a website, then those people can be marketed to later from the fan page

Can every business benefit from PPC advertising?

Not right for every business.
Products that have low margins are difficult
Competitive markets are difficult because the market is saturated. In these markets it comes down to being more intelligent and innovative than your competitors. We’ve seen businesses change their whole business model just so they can get that extra 1% margin and nudge out their competitors.

Which types of businesses does it suit most?

Higher margin business will generally have better success than low margin business (all else being equal)
Business who are not afraid to try new marketing strategies

Is it difficult to manage an Adwords account? Could the average small business owner do it successfully?

It varies greatly.
A large E-commerce store with hundreds of products is much more difficult than a small business with only a few products.
Small businesses owner’s can take over the PPC account once set up with some training. Handing over a bigger account is much more difficult.

What aspect of managing an account takes the most time?

Structuring the campaign, creating the ads and selecting the right keywords
Testing and optimisation is also ongoing

How much should a business expect to pay to have their account managed by someone else?

$300-$400 / month for a small account (typically 50-100 keywords)
Lead generation websites are generally cheaper, while E-commerce site are more expensive. There’s no upper limit if it works.
Adwords has a large number of ‘products’ such as the display network and remarketing, a large account manager can continually test and optimise these other Google Adword products making them have a higher management fee

What benefits can an Adwords professional deliver that a regular business owner can't?

Better campaigns.
Years of research and experience.
There’s much more trial and error for the small business owner.
We’ve found that most business owners will set up their campaigns from a ‘one-dimensional’ approach and not really understanding the Adwords platform as a multi-dimensional marketing tool. They always miss the simple settings as well (turn of display network in your search campaigns!)
There’s lots of information out there for those who want to learn, Google offers lots of support too

Is there a minimum ad spend recommended?

$25/day at least ($750- $1000/month)- less makes results take longer to come back.
Adwords advertising is entirely a data driven problem. You want to get data back as soon as possible so you can improve your ads and campaigns.
The same numbers apply if someone was doing it themselves.

What is 'Quality Score?' What is it used for?

Quality score is a measure from 1-10 of the quality of a keyword in relation to the rest of a campaign.
The purpose of quality score is to make the ad experience better for the user.
Quality Score is the most important part of an Adwords campaign.
Business owners don't tend to know what quality score is and will overlook this very important variable

Why is it important to have a good 'Quality Score?'

Google will reward you for a high Quality Score with lower costs per click and higher as positions
If you have a higher quality score than a competitor, you can effectively have a higher ad position AND be paying less per click

How can you improve your Quality Score?

Improve the click through rate
Improve the relevance of the keyword to the ad and the landing page
Structure your entire Adwords account more logically to be mirror your website structure.
Everything affects quality score. Campaign and landing page relevance and keywords are the most important.

What's the difference between Google's display network and their regular search results ads?

Search results are displayed on Google's SERPs and their partner’s websites e.g. Hotfrog.
The Display Network allows advertisers to deliver text ads, image ads and video ads to third party websites which have elected to be a part of the network.
Google delivers most of its ads through the display network
For example, ads popping up over Youtube videos are ads on the display network
There’s also mobile ads which are shorter text ads and they can be shown in various different place including in games

Do the two mediums require a different strategy?

Yes. User intents differ so our strategies must differ. Search is more targeted so you can target your ad to their intent.
Ads on the display network are targeted by the content of the page. They generally have a lower click through rate. These ads are generally more useful for a branding strategy- similar to Facebook and Linkedin.
The display network targets ads either by keywords on the page or by choosing a ‘theme’ of website to target. Website themes are assigned by Google.
Trial and error to decide which is best.
It’s important to test - measure everything. If a website is not delivering well you choose to not have your ads display there
You can also use ‘negative keywords’ or 'negative sites' to identify websites you don’t want to have your ads appear on.
There are three keyword targeting options, ‘broad,’ ‘phrase’ and ‘exact’ match. We never use the traditional broad match for our keywords, there's plenty of neat tricks you can use by combining keyword targeting options.

What kind of businesses/ads are best targeted to mobile internet devices?

Local businesses.
If you are going to send traffic to a website on a mobile device then it should be mobile optimised.

Is location an important targeting factor to consider? How can location targeting be used to improve a campaign?

Yes, very much so. There are four targeting settings- location, language, device and network
You should target the area where your audience is
You also might use different strategies for different regions, e.g. different capital cities. Maybe Melbourne has an event coming up that you can incorporate into your ads.
Location targeting is ultra specific, you can go down to the suburb and even the street level
Location targeting is a good way to get more highly targeted leads as well as a higher click through rate (CTR) and higher quality score which leads to a lower cost per click (CPC)

Is it easy to track PPC performance?

Yes. Very easy to track everything.
Tracking codes can sometimes be difficult for E-commerce sites.
Third party payment systems, such as Paypal, make it difficult to track the user throughout the payment process
Tracking is available within your Adwords account which can also be hooked into Google Analytics for more comprehensive data
You should analyse your data regularly, we analyse ours weekly

In competitive markets, which aspects of PPC advertising become more difficult to manage successfully?

Adwords is a hugely complex, multi level and multi variable optimisation problem
In competitive markets it becomes important to optimise every aspect of a campaign to get the highest return for the lowest cost.
Its more mathematical

Are landing pages important for improving PPC performance?

Yes.
There are two parts to the equation, the website side and ad side
Many things can be done on both sides to improve the ROI of the campaign
On the website side its all about conversion rate.
You should always send traffic to a specific landing page rather than the home page. This could be a product or category page or a sales page. I prefer to use a simple landing page and stay away from long form sales pages.
You can also do split testing to test different ads against each other, you can use third party software for this
Google also has a service called Google website optimiser which allows you to send traffic to two different variations of a page and determine which page produced the best conversion rate

How should your website be set up to maximise performance?

Goals should be clearly defined
Make sure the message on the website matches the ad

What can you do to reduce competition?

Research your competitor’s offers and their ad copy
Focus on improving your quality score

What are five things small business owners can do to best take advantage of PPC advertising?

Compelling offer and call to cation
Landing page the replicates the message
Conversion tracking setup
Keyword research using a keyword tool and/or competitive research software
Give it a shot! It's costing you more money not to try Adwords.

How does PPC relate to SEO?

PPC is much more of an exact science. SEO is more weaved, more of an art form
Google makes 80% of its revenue from Adwords

How do they complement each other?

Keywords research. You can assess the profitability of keywords quickly using PPC then target them using SEO
With both PPC and SEO success you can dominate a market
They can steal profit from each other, i.e. someone can click on a paid ad even if you’re ranking well organically
Having said that, I still think its a good idea to bid on brand keywords because they’re very cheap
'Ad Extensions' for Adwords allow you to get extra information into, and take up more space in the SERPs than you can get with an organic result. This can double your PPC CTR. There are four types:

Site links to navigate to deeper pages from the results
Google places linking
Phone numbers
Google shopping integration to give images of products in the search results

How do PPC and SEO costs and returns compare?

It varies
PPC has tighter margins and returns. It gets results quickly and is easy to measure.
SEO is harder to measure but if you can do it well it results in much higher returns

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Re-marketing is an interesting feature that allows you to re-market to people who have already been to your website. This generally results in a higher conversion rate because they people are pre-qualified.
Mobile ads can also include click-to-call phone numbers which are easy to track. One thing that can be more difficult to track is when people see your phone number in an ad or on your website and then call you, giving you no indication where they got your number from. It’s possible to get a dedicated phone number in order to track these types of leads. A separate number costs around $50 a month plus call costs – from our experience, for lead generation, phone calls leads from Adwords can be up to 50% of total leads.

End Interview

Thanks again to Chris for his generous donation of time and knowledge and thanks to The Search Guys for having me at their office. You can read more about The Search Guys' services at their company profile in our Internet Marketing Business Directory.

The Search Guys Company Profile

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 04:55:00 +0000

Company Name: The Search Guys

Founded: 2010
Key Personnel: Luke Jamieson (Online Marketing Directory)

Products/ Services:

SEO Audits & Strategies
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Social Media Marketing
Conversion Optimisation
Inhouse & Group Training

Speciality: SEO Audits & Strategies

Information Sources Authored/ Provided by The Search Guys:

Blog: http://blog.thesearchguys.com.au

Best Posts:

How To Build Relationships on Twitter (http://blog.thesearchguys.com.au/twitter/how-to-build-relationships-on-twitter/)
Email Marketing 2.0: How Amazon’s Campaign Was Almost Amazing (http://blog.thesearchguys.com.au/email-marketing/email-marketing-2-0-how-amazons-campaign-was-almost-amazing/)

Contact Details

Address: 38 Payneham Road,

South Australia

Website: www.thesearchguys.com.au

Email: info@thesearhcguys.com.au

Phone: 1300 723 618

Move, Eat, Learn Marketing Interview with STA Travel's Adam Fyfe

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 23:55:00 +0000

If you're traveller, you've probably already seen the 'Move, Eat, Lean' video series from STA Travel for their I Want to Know Campaign. If you're not a traveller, or you haven't seen it, check out 'Move' below (my favourite of the three videos) and you'll soon be thinking about your next trip.

(be sure to check out the Eat and Learn videos as well)

To say I liked the videos would be a massive understatement. As I write this I'm listening to the extended versions of the videos' sound tracks (composed and performed by Kelsey James) and I must've watched 'Move' a hundred times since I first saw it a few days ago.

I'm not alone either. The videos have spread like wildfire, receiving 6.2 million views on Vimeo and 390 thousand views on Youtube in just a week. 'Move' was number 1 briefly on Reddit and has been shared by: Huffington Post, Newsweek, CBS Digital, Oprah’s Blog, OK! Magazine (UK and US), Daily Mail, CNET, Mashable, EW.com, Nymag.com and hundreds of other high-traffic web spaces across the globe.

Adam Fyfe, the campaign coordinator, was nice enough to talk to me about the marketing of the videos and campaign (my questions in bold).

What were your objectives for this project?

At a brand level we had a need to increase awareness of our brand. At a more personal level, it was about putting some excitement back into what should be an inspiring industry.

Were you inspired by other similar projects, such as ‘Where the Hell is Matt?’

Not necessarily. We admire that video but it did not form part of the brief to the crew. It is difficult to condense the “why” of travel without editing a series of shots of the principal in a variety of locations.

How much direction did you give to the film makers?

I prepared a brief for Rick back in February. We discussed initial concepts and Rick and Tim White took it from there. One of the reasons the clips have been so popular is that I did not put too many “corporate” restrictions on the creative – it just had to nail the objective of the brief.

Has STA ever done something similar to this?

Not at all. I have been very fortunate to have the support of the Marketing Managers (Brendan McGrath and Tania Tandora) and the Marketing Director (Natalie Placko) as well as the rest of the business.

Were you nervous when you released the video or were pretty sure it was going to be a hit?

I have known Rick Mereki for a while so I had confidence that he would nail the brief. The rest of the team were blown away by the initial edit. From then on we were pretty sure it would be a hit but had no idea it would be as popular as it has been.

Who is Kelsey James and how did she get involved in the project?

Kelsey james is a musician from Melbourne. She is friends with the director Rick Mereki.

Many businesses have been dabbling in purely online marketing campaigns. Did you ever consider keeping this video to the internet only? What does the TV advertising medium offer that the internet can’t deliver?

It was initially conceived as an online campaign. TV was added in as it boosts search efficiency and contributes to our overall goal: Brand Awareness.

Can you explain what 'search efficiency is'?

Once TV starts to hit certain reach thresholds, search impressions for the brand name increase.

This is a result of increased Brand Awareness.

Increased efficiency comes in the form of a greater number of links from organic (as opposed to paid) search and higher search numbers overall.

I originally saw the video (Move) posted on Facebook, I reposted it, then I saw it on another friend’s profile who had posted it independently. Did you anticipate a lot of social sharing for the videos and did you do anything to encourage it?

The aim was to create content that was so engaging and inspiring that people would want to share it. The plethora of social network sites makes sharing of branded (and unbranded) content easy – they key is to give the public a reason to share.

What distribution channels did you use to get the video out there?

Primarily Vimeo and Youtube.

Have you been able to track, or can you venture a guess as to how the video spread so quickly?

The first step is to create engaging content (views will reach the thousands). Step 2: get the content in front of opinion leaders (views into hundreds of thousands). Step 3: get the content in front of mainstream media (views into the millions).

Part of the reason I liked the video so much is because I’ve recently been travelling myself and it reminded me of being on the road. Do you think the video will appeal to non-travellers and would-be-travellers as well?

We hope that the desire to travel is an intrinsic human desire. That is what we are trying to tap into.

Its still early days yet, but can you comment on the work, costs, risks and returns involved in this project vs a more traditional marketing campaign?

There is always risk in taking a non-traditional approach. The rewards can be great, as this campaign shows. The senior marketing team here at STA Travel took a chance in following my vision and trusting in Rick and Tim’s ability. It is sometimes necessary for smaller brands to take risks in order to be heard in such a crowded environment.

I’ve been impressed with the response time and answers to questions in the comments of the Youtube videos. Is this something you consciously implemented?

Yes. I ensured that our entire team were ready for the interest that the campaign would generate. This also meant answering questions at all hours and keeping near a computer myself on weekends. The excitement this campaign has generated has made putting in the extra yards quite easy.

What's the most important ingredient to make a video go viral?

For the travel industry – Inspiration!

-End of interview-

Thanks very much to Adam Fyfe for agreeing to be interviewed and to the STA Travel marketing team for a brilliant campaign.

Interview with Karen Zaskolny on Copywriting

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 01:30:00 +0000

I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to interview Karen Zaskolny from Copy With Cream. Read on for 'what is copywriting?,' more about the copywriting profession and some tips for your business.

What is copywriting?

This term usually refers to copy (words) that are specifically to do with advertising. I tend not to use the term because it’s jargon – the average person hears the word ‘copywriting’ and all they think of is the ‘C’ with the circle round it and they stop listening. Hopefully The Gruen Transfer and Mad Men will change this... but in the meantime, I will continue to say...”I work in advertising and I’m a writer...”

Why is good copy important?

Have you ever sent an email or text that you wish you hadn’t? Getting the words right means the person reading them gets the message you really intended. When we communicate in person, only 7% is to do with the words! 38% is tonality and the remaining 55% is your body language. But when you are writing, it’s 100% words!!! You don’t have tonality or body language to help you get your message across. Or soften the blow. That’s why the words are SO important when you are writing. I also want to say here, that I am seeing a helluva lot of emphasis on key words and SEO. That’s all very well and good, but it’s important to be able to write for people, not just bots and search engines. Otherwise the thousands that flock to your site will just go away again.

How do the skills of a copywriter differ from other professional writing disciplines?

A good copywriter is someone who has a great imagination - it’s about getting into the head of your target audience. And that usually involves simple, conversational language. I call it ‘man-in-the-street speak’. Copywriting is not just about apostrophes and grammar, it’s about getting the message across in the best way. It’s about making sure the ‘voice’ is the voice of the business owner. It’s about writing in a conversational style so that when you are reading good copy, it sounds like someone is talking to you. Effortless. As a copywriter, I first start with strategy. It’s important to understand the business I am writing for - I am not interested in just shuffling words around to make them sound good. In fact, there have been times when I have lost a job because I didn’t want to just take their money and make their words ‘pretty’. I always want to make sure we have the strategy right first.

Just because someone is a writer, does not mean they are a copywriter. I have met some extremely eloquent academics with fabulously large vocabularies who would make rubbish copywriters because they’re not able to get into the head of their target audience. If I can’t understand what they are talking about, the majority of people out there won’t either. I find writers some of my most difficult customers. For example - public servants and teachers. The public servants keep putting jargon back in, and the teachers keep getting their red pen out and correcting me when I write in phrases rather than sentences. Like this. They don’t like it.

What are some of the key differences between copy written for the web and copy written for print?

Actually, I tend to write very much the same for print or web. Obviously with writing for the web, you need to be aware of keywords. But basically, I write in a conversational style, in the voice appropriate, for anything I write for my clients. With websites, it’s not just about the words, it’s about where you put them. I find lots of my clients have great content but it’s all in the wrong place! I help them understand how people navigate their site, and make sure we put the content where it will be looked for. Because people just hate wasting time clicking through to a page expecting to find one thing and finding something completely different. They get annoyed and they go away, never to come back.

What percentage of your work is copy for the web? What is the trend?

These days, probably about 75% of my work is for the web and that’s growing. But gee, it’s taken a long time – much longer than I thought. I was working on websites in Hong Kong in the mid-90s. When I came back to Adelaide and started my business in 1997, almost all of my work was print. I would mention the web and nobody even knew what I was talking about! Today, my business has changed and much of my time is spent not writing but, rather, coaching my clients. I want to empower people to create better content for themselves.

What are 5 things anybody can do to improve their web copy?

KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid. An oldie but a goodie.
Check grammar, punctuation and spelling. Apostrophes especially. I have a blog of great advertising and copywriting boo-boos...
Avoid jargon. Every industry has jargon. Don’t use it, you will alienate your audience. If you can find a simpler word to say something, use it. For example..require = need.
Break it up. Nobody wants to read reams and reams of text. It looks too hard. Break it up with subheadings, bolding, bullet points, anything you can to make it easier to absorb.
Cut and polish. Ladies – think ‘diamonds’, gentlemen – think ‘cars’. Cut and polish means edit, edit and edit again. Most of us over-write, so the trick is to cut out the waffle, to polish the words, craft the phrases, get rid of anything that doesn’t help your message. Most people just write something down, then that’s it. The best copy you will read has been edited many, many times.

Are inbuilt spellcheckers sufficient for proofing? If not, what are their short comings?

HAHAHA!!! Too many to list, I can’t believe people rely just on that. It’s a good start but that’s all. Nothing can take the place of printing it off, getting out a ruler and going over it word by word, line by line. And I always advise my clients to get someone else to check their copy. It’s very hard to spot your own mistakes. Another good trick – read it out loud. And then there’s the overnight test – amazing how you can spot a typo (typographical error) instantly if you go away from your copy and come back later. The threat of being sacked for a typo also makes you very vigilant. I am not joking – at J Walter Thompson in Singapore, one of our copywriters was sacked for a typo. She was reinstated when the rest of us threatened to quit, but that’s another story we don’t have time for here...

Is good copy important for short messages such as tweets and facebook updates?

Yes. I am not a tweeter or a facebooker, but I believe the fewer words you have to get your message across, the more important they become. In this fast-paced world where everyone’s attention span is reducing rapidly, you’ve only got a couple of seconds to get it right.

What's your opinion of text-speak, twitter-speak and other butchering of the English language brought about by new technology and media?

I actually don’t mind text-speak. I’m lazy, so I’ve been using my own shorthand since highschool ...lol... HOWEVER!!! The text speak should make it EASIER to understand. And, there’s another problem - most kids can’t spell these days. Text-speak is surely not helping that...

There's a lot of crap on the internet. What are some indicators you use to separate fact from fiction when researching for an article?

I don’t actually spend a lot of time researching on the net or writing articles. I believe nobody knows their business like the business owner, so I actually rely on my clients to tell me all about it. That’s my research. In fact, the writing often takes up less than half the time I spend on a job! Much of my time is spent interviewing my clients and playing ‘20 Questions’. It’s amazing what will come up in a conversation that the client would never think to write down. In fact, that’s usually where the real gems come from. Sometimes that fabulous headline or tagline will be something I hear my client say to me – part of my job is to recognise the gems when that happens. If I do need to fact check, I use the organic search results, not the ads. And I double-check from more than one site.

How much should businesses expect to pay to hire a copywriter?

It really depends on what they need. I say, if you are going to bother with a professional, get the very best you can afford. I’m about middle-of-the-range for Adelaide at $120/hour - but what does that mean? Well, if we have a decent-sized website to overhaul, it might be $1500 or more. But if you want a couple of hours of coaching, brainstorming, web reviewing, whatever – I can help you for as little as $240. Or even for FREE!!! I am an approved consultant with NWBDC, (Pt Adelaide BEC) so they will fund 2 hours of my time to help an Adelaide small business with their advertising, copywriting, website, etc. Contact me to find out more.

What are some things to look at when looking to hire a copywriter?

I think the most important thing is to make sure the copywriter is on your wavelength. Someone could be the very best writer, but if they don’t communicate well with YOU, they are not going to produce what you want. It’s also important to check out some of their work, make sure you like their style, have a chat, and ask lots of questions. Such as...’How much will it cost?’, ‘How long will it take?’, ‘What if I don’t like it?’ etc. I work differently with different clients, based very much on their needs. Everyone has their own way of working, and it’s important to make sure you are a good match.

How can the value of copy be maximised?

Good copy should work hand in hand with good design. It’s important to think about how the words will be presented. More than once I have seen my brilliant copy squished into a brochure in teeny tiny text. In the wrong place. Or put on a website in white text on a black background, or superimposed over a photo. Impossible to read. Waste of money. Makes me feel like screaming, but what can ya do? One thing I can do is try to educate people. When I coach my clients, I also talk about design. I figure I am allowed to, because I studied graphic design before I became a copywriter.

Is there a measurable difference between the conversion rate (conversion being whatever you want the visitor to do on the page) produced by professionally written copy and copy written by an average person?

I am sure there is, but I have no proof. What I do have is feedback from my clients who tell me that they get lots of great comments about how easy it is to understand their web content. Comments they never got when their website was full of their own content....lol

What implications do you think Google's recent Farmer/Panda update will have on the web copywriting industry?

I think it will be a real boost – and it’s about time. I am constantly amazed at the poor content on the majority of websites. I am also amazed that people will spend literally thousands of dollars on the LOOK of their website and not even bother much about the WORDS. (“Oh, we’ll do the words ourselves...” Wish I had a dollar for every time I heard THAT!) I also think it might level the playing field – my vision is to teach as many SMEs as possible how to create better copy for themselves. Coaching and my e-book can help them do that.

Can you complete the hardest crossword puzzles in the Advertiser?

I hate crosswords. Always have. I don’t do them. You can’t be creative with a crossword, so they don’t appeal to my right brain. Give me Pictionary or Charades any day... I’m all about being creative first, then using words, second.

What are some useful websites/blogs/apps/tools you know of to help people improve their copywriting?

My e-book. It came about because all my clients were telling me I needed to write a book containing all the information I was giving them in our coaching sessions. The book is called ‘Better ads in 1 hour’ and I wrote it for the small business person who wants to DIY because they only have a small budget. You can read it in 1 hour, or just skip to the chapter you want. It started off being a book about writing but it evolved. I also talk a bit about design, colours, logos, branding, photography and more. My favourite section is the ‘What not to do’ section. Lots of great tips about how to avoid making mistakes on your website, brochure, business card, even vehicle signage. It’s $37 with a 100% money back guarantee and you can check it out at www.copywithcream.com.au

Do you have any copywriter mind tricks to help when you just can't remember the right word?

Yes, I have a couple of tricks. Write down the wrong word/s and come back to it later. Because good writing is all about editing anyway. Also, water seems to help... doing the dishes, having a shower, going for a beachwalk. The right word will just pop into my head. I also make sure I keep pen and paper by my bed, because unfortunately, 5am seems to be the time my subconscious gets those great ideas...

Bonus Question: How many errors did you find in the questions? Pass.

Thanks to Karen for agreeing to be interviewed and for her insightful answers. You can find out more about Karen's business, Copy with Cream, at her company profile in our Internet Marketing Directory.

Is Keyword Research Necessary?

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 03:19:00 +0000

Keywords are the words and phrases used to describe your business, products and services. The factors below lead to a wide range of possible keywords for each product or service that the search engines see as unique.

Synonyms
Variations (plurals, spellings)
Qualifiers (adjectives, descriptors and their synonyms)

Synonyms
Google does a pretty good job of recognising synonyms and returning web pages that don't necessarily contain a search term but do contain a synonym for that term. For example, a Google search for 'new automobile' returns many results containing the word 'car' as a synonym. However, a search for 'new car' does not return exactly the same results in the same order, so Google does (at this time) still recognise them as different keywords.

Variations
Keyword variations include plurals, different country spellings, common misspellings, shorthand spellings, different word orders etc. Again, Google is pretty good at recognising that these are different variations of the same word, however they still don't always return exactly the same results when these variations are searched for so we have to treat them as unique keywords.

Qualifiers
Qualifiers are additional words added to better describe or further qualify what the keyword is referring to. They can be loosely categorised as either specific or non-specific.

Specific
These are qualifiers that specifically relate to that product or industry, such as brand names or a word like 'spoiler' which specifically relates to cars.

Non Specific
These are more general qualifiers that are common across many industries such as words relating to colour, size, price, quality etc.

Not every qualifier will fall neatly into one of these categories. Many will sit somewhere in between, making it more of a continuum. I have discussed search qualifiers in the past with my posts on location qualifiers, discussing the different qualifiers people use when looking for local or location-specific results and my post on business qualifiers, discussing the different ways people look for businesses. The keywords produced from adding multiple qualifiers are often referred to as 'long tail keywords.'

The diagram below shows how the number of potential keywords can quickly escalate when you consider synonyms, variations and qualifiers.

Which Keyword Should I Use?
The best keywords will have:

High amounts of search traffic
Low competition
A high conversion rate

You can try and guess which keywords will have the best combination of these three things but that will be very difficult to do accurately. To get the best results you should do keyword research to collect and analyse the data and determine which keywords will be best to target.

Is Keyword Research Necessary?
No. Not everyone needs to do keyword research to be successful. However, it's more important if:

You are targeting a small market- If there is only a small number of customers out there, you want to make sure you're targeting a keyword that has a worthwhile amount of traffic. In some industries these keywords might be obvious, but in others not so much.
You are in a competitive industry- because you may pick a keyword that has such high competition that you have no chance of ranking for it.
You want to get the most out of your website- Keyword research will help you get the maximum return from your website.

I Don't Want to Do Keyword Research
If you decide not to do keyword research there are a few things to keep in mind to maximise your chances of success.

Choose keywords that are descriptive and relevant to the subject of the page
Try and think of your products from an outsider's perspective, how might they search for them without knowledge of the industry?
Remember that longer keywords (more words in them) tend to have lower competition and produce a higher conversion rate, but they also have lower traffic.

Once you have chosen your keywords, you need to incorporate them into your website especially your page titles, headings, urls and content. This is known as on-site optimisation.

Copy with Cream Company Profile

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 02:20:00 +0000

Company Name: Copy with Cream

Founded: 1997
Key Personnel: Karen Zaskolny

Products/ Services: Copywriting, coaching, workshops, brainstorming

Specialty: Dejargonizing and ‘man-in-the-street speak’

Price Range: $120/hr + gst

Information Sources Authored/ Provided by Karen:

Contact Details

Address: PO Box 660 Brighton SA 5048
Website: www.copywithcream.com.au
Email: karen@copywithcream.com.au
Phone: 08 8296 7667
Mobile: 0412 322 982

Anna Butler on Copywriting (Interview)

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 01:00:00 +0000

I caught up with Anna Butler, a professional copywriter and owner of Copybreak, a number of weeks ago to get some insight into the world of copywriting. On Twitter, Anna describes herself as "Self-confessed word nerd, perpetual student, arm-chair psychologist and doco-junkie. Fond of a good Mwahaha..! I’m also pretty good at writing stuff." I found her to be great fun to interview and interact with. She certainly seems to know her stuff and she keeps me on my toes when writing on my own blog because I know she likes to drop in from time to time and isn't afraid to point out my errors. I hope you enjoy the interview (my questions in bold).

What is copywriting?

Not to be confused with ‘copyrighting’ (which are the exclusive rights given to the creator of any original work), copywriting is the art of writing text (or ‘copy’) for sales/advertising purposes, such as brochures, newsletters, websites, TV/radio commercials, print ads or any other form of advertising communication which requires written text.

While copywriting is predominantly focussed on sales/advertising content, most copywriters will also be adept at writing business documents, articles and website content. Sometimes you’ll find the term ‘content writer’ (a person who writes non-sales copy) used interchangeably with ‘copywriter’ – although these terms are not technically the same.

Why is good copy important?

Many people will make an immediate assumption about your services based on the quality of your copy. If your company literature or website is littered with typos, poor grammar, confusing jargon – or is just plain boring – it can indicate a lack of care and professionalism, potentially turning new customers away and into the arms of your competition.

Good copy not only incorporates solid English skills (such as spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc.) it also engages and speaks to your audience in terms they understand and feel comfortable with. This immediately builds trust by positioning you as a professional entity that not only understands the needs of your customers, but can help meet those needs too.

How do the skills of a copywriter differ from other professional writing disciplines?

A copywriter is sometimes known as the “silent salesperson” or “the salesperson behind the keyboard”. While poets, novelists or journalists write to entertain or inform, a copywriter’s job is to sell. With that in mind, the skill-set of a copywriter should include a solid understanding of marketing and consumer psychology – as well as the ability to write interesting, informative and engaging copy.

What are some of the key differences between copy written for the web and copy written for print?

While both mediums require the same basic approach – that is, to write material that speaks clearly to the intended audience – copy written for the web needs to factor in several additional elements.

Copywriters writing for the web need to know how to research strong keywords to optimise page ranking for their client’s niche, and how to work those words into the copy without destroying its flow or audience appeal.

The design elements also differ. Most people will only skim text online, so copywriters need to develop strong headers/sub-headers and keep paragraphs short and punchy to retain audience interest.

It’s also becoming important to consider the length and layout of text with the ever increasing popularity of iPhones and smartphones, since more and more people are using these technologies to access information online.

What percentage of your work is copy for the web? What is the trend?

About 90% of the copy I write is based online. With the availability of internet kiosks/cafes, laptops, iPads, and smartphones, people have access to the web pretty much wherever they are.

While printed copy is likely to stay with us in one form or another, more and more people are turning to the web to research and find what they are looking for.

What are 5 things anybody can do to improve their web copy?

Always ensure you introduce the main subject points at the beginning of your copy (above the fold). Readers don’t want to have to scroll down to find the important/relevant information.
Write for your audience. Don’t focus on who you are and what you’ve achieved – instead focus on who your audience is, what they need and how you can help them.
Make sure your keywords fit with the natural flow of the copy. They shouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb – and wherever possible, ensure you incorporate them into your page headings.
Avoid long, complicated sentences and paragraphs. Most people will skim through the copy, so make your message as easy as possible to read and understand.
Keep your tone conversational. The web is much more like a face-to-face interaction, so write like you would speak (avoiding slang or profanity, of course)

Are inbuilt spellcheckers sufficient for proofing? If not, what are their short comings?

You should never rely solely on spellcheck when writing copy. Aside from often defaulting to US English (which is fine for American audiences, not so good for Australian or English audiences), spellcheck programs can’t detect simple typos where a slip of the finger creates a real word, such as: form/from word/work then/than, etc.

Similarly spellcheckers won’t detect where correct words have been used in the incorrect context, such as: their/there, advice/advise, hear/here, principle/principal, etc.

When proofing copy, it’s always a good idea to print it out and go through each line with a ruler to check no words have been missed and that all words are correctly spelled. Any words you’re not 100% sure of should be checked in a dictionary to ensure the meaning is correct for the context of the copy.

Is good copy important for short messages such as tweets and Facebook updates?

Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook certainly allow for a little more flexibility – particularly as they happen in ‘real time’ – but it’s still important to pay attention to the basic rules of copy, especially if you’re using them for business.

While Twitter limits the amount of words available making it acceptable to abbreviate, no one wants to read tweets that consist solely of ‘how r u? wot r u up 2 2day? i cant blv my bf is out 2nite’.

Spelling, punctuation and audience relevance still need to be taken into consideration, although most people will forgive the odd typo in a tweet given it’s an instantaneous platform.

Facebook is probably a little less forgiving given it isn’t as immediate as Twitter, so more time can be taken to construct messages. The increased message length also negates the need for abbreviations, so this should be avoided where possible.

What's your opinion of text-speak, twitter-speak and other butchering of the English language brought about by new technology and media?

Personally, I hate the way the English language is being sliced, diced and julienned. As stated in my website profile, when texting, I still type out all my words in their entirety because I hate trying to decipher a bunch of letters (even if I send twice the amount of texts I need to convey the information!).

That said, I do recognise that for SMSs and tweets, abbreviations serve quite a useful purpose, but unfortunately some people seem to think the same savage butchery of our language is appropriate for emails and Facebook updates, which I find horribly rude and unnecessary.

There's a lot of crap on the internet. What are some indicators you use to separate fact from fiction when researching for an article?

When researching on the net, one of the first red flags for suspect information is often badly written copy! That immediately raises the question of how professional the source is.

Generally, however, I find the most reputable sources I can (ie. manufacturers, specialists, industry experts, independent reviewers, etc.), then cross-reference all my research to check continuity and consistency. This quickly reveals any extreme or bogus claims/articles.

How much should businesses expect to pay to hire a copywriter?

That really depends on the result they’re after. There are certainly offshore companies that’ll write copy for about $1 an hour… but you’d really have to question the quality. Often it’s mass-produced and written by non-native English speakers, lending itself to all manner of typographical and grammatical errors.

For a quality copywriter prices can vary quite significantly, however businesses looking for a copywriter should remember they’re not just paying for X amount of words on a page, but the skill to turn those words into a compelling call to action to ultimately increase their bottom line. Just like any other specialist, they shouldn’t expect to pay minimum wage.

What are some things to look at when looking to hire a copywriter?

Take a look at their website – is it well written? Does the writing style appeal to you? Do you find it easy to navigate? All these things are important, because if they don’t get it right on their own site, they sure won’t get it right on yours.

From there you can ask to see samples of similar work to gauge their ability. If they’ve not yet had the opportunity to work on a similar project, you may be able to ask them to write a brief sample to demonstrate their skill and understanding of what you’re after.

Once you’ve approached a copywriter, one of the most important aspects – in my opinion – is to have comfortable, open communication. Even if a copywriter is brilliant, if you struggle to communicate with them, or you’re not on the same wavelength, you’re unlikely to get the best result.

How can the value of copy be maximised?

Consistency of message, style and tone. When you keep these elements consistent throughout all of your copy (both off and online), it reinforces your message and brand. If copy is informal on one page, formal on the next, and generally inconsistent with its voice, it only serves to confuse your message – and ultimately your reader.

Is there a measurable difference between the conversion rate (conversion being whatever you want the visitor to do on the page) produced by professionally written copy and copy written by an average person?

This is an interesting question and not such an easy one to answer because there can be so many variables to skew numbers. I recently read an article about a direct mail letter that had a 7.1% conversion rate when sent via the post, but when the same letter was duplicated word-for-word on the company’s website, it only converted at 0.0015%.

Other factors such as market trends and demand, the economy, the time of the year, a fickle audience, etc. can all have significant impact on conversion rates. Copy which might have a conversion rate of 12% in April, might drop to 4% in September.

There are, however, a number of techniques copywriters will employ when writing copy for this purpose (which the average person may not be aware of) and it’s these techniques which give the copy the highest chance of converting.

What implications do you think Google's recent Farmer/Panda update will have on the web copywriting industry?

Personally I see it as a very positive move by Google, which should start separating the ‘wheat from the chaff’ (so to speak). If sites with quality copy are rewarded with better rankings, while those with mass-produced rubbish suffer, it only serves to improve the end user’s experience.

On the downside, it will potentially have a negative impact on small businesses who either can’t afford to pay top dollar for copywriting, or simply don’t know they can hire a skilled professional to write their web copy for them. My goal is to help reach these people so they’re not unfairly penalised by an otherwise sensible move by Google.

Can you complete the hardest crossword puzzles in the Advertiser?

Can’t say I’ve done the crossword puzzles in the Advertiser, but I tend to complete most the crosswords I begin (cryptics included – my faves!). I find most crosswords deriving from a single source can be quite repetitive with their clues, which they also phrase in their own unique way. Once you’ve done a few and established their profile, they tend to get easier in general.

What are some useful websites/blogs/apps/tools you know of to help people improve their copywriting?

An awesome blog I subscribe to is ‘Copyblogger’, which is both informative and entertaining.

Google Keywords and Wonder-Wheel are online tools I use all the time when researching keywords for SEO.

And the one that really surprised me as an excellent resource is Twitter! I’m always coming across fantastic links to articles, tools and websites.

Of course, I have all sorts of resources bookmarked to help with various tasks, but these are my favourites.

Do you have any copywriter mind tricks to help when you just can't remember the right word?

I go through the alphabet in my mind until I find the first letter that “feels right”… from there I keep going through the alphabet for the next letters in the word. It usually works for me - although I keep my dictionary and thesaurus on hand as much as possible to help me find elusive words.

Bonus Question: How many errors did you find in the questions?

LOL – I found three technical errors and another three things I would have corrected if proofing these questions to improve the wording and clarity.

Err... that's correct Anna, full marks.

Thanks very much to Anna for agreeing to be interviewed. You can find more details about Anna's services at her Copybreak company profile in our Internet Marketing Adelaide Business Directory.

Copybreak Company Profile

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Morris) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 03:30:00 +0000

Company Name: Copybreak

Founded: 2005
Key Personnel: Anna Butler (Owner and copywriter)

Products/ Services: Copybreak is a professional copywriting service dedicated to finding the right words to make your business shine across all marketing and media platforms such as: websites, social media & blogs, printed media (brochures, articles, direct mail, newsletters, etc.) and even TV/radio commercials.

Specialty: Original, consumer-centric and SEO-rich online and website copy.

Price Range: All jobs are quoted individually - rates are $80p/h + GST

Information Sources Authored/ Provided by Anna:

Website: copybreak.com.au
Blog: http://copybreak.com.au/blog/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/the_copy_chick
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Copybreak.Copywriting.Services

Contact Details

Address: By appointment, Strathalbyn SA 5255

Website: http://copybreak.com.au

Email: writeme@copybreak.com.au

Mobile: 0459 239 066