Fortunately, these companies have found innovative and unique ways to not only get you to scan their code, but boost their brand awareness in the process.  Here are a few of the most memorable ones – and a few examples to get your mind stirring.

Who’s Using QR Codes?

Nearly half of all smartphone users have used their phones while shopping in brick-and-mortar stores – 40% of them to compare the competition’s prices.  Statistics for who’s scanning QR codes and with what device appear to be mixed, although most data places iPhone users at the top, with the user age range being 25-34.  Japan and the U.S. are currently leaps and bounds ahead of other countries in QR code scans (around 60% approximately) – with Canada and the U.K. trailing dozens of percentage points behind.

Still, QR code creation jumped a whopping 1,253% in 2011, with two million of them created in less than three months. By far, most were used to lead users to a web address, but they can also store vCard details, Google Maps info and even Youtube video links.

1. Creative Ads for Apps

Even though QR codes in marketing are just starting to gain traction, there are still companies and individuals making their message loud and clear to early adopters.  Here are two eye-catching ads, for Instragram and Angry Birds, both created by U.K. Ad Agency “Made by Stupid”. Both QR codes take you directly to download the app, and are a great showcase for both ad creativity and self-explanatory promotion of the apps themselves:

Instagram and Angry Birds QR codes highlight their respective apps while taking users directly to the download page

2. Greeting Cards and Mixtapes

Here’s a creative and interesting thought – what if you combined greeting cards with playlists? It’s the new generation of mixtape and the QR images, as they’re called, were developed by the same U.K. agency that did the aforementioned unofficial ads for Instagram and Angry Birds. If the user has the premium Spotify app on their phone, they can scan the barcode and instantly start the playlist. Music in the playlists spans nearly every interest and occasion including music for geeks, music for cooks, and everyone’s mixtape favorite – love songs.

3. Breathe New Life into Boring Places

When was the last time you went to a museum? If you responded “on a grade school field trip” or “only old folks go to museums”, you’re in for a treat. Sukiennice Museum in Poland has added a whole new dimension to their paintings to turn each one into a series of stories about insanity, intrigue, deception, war and much more. Sukiennice Museum brought reenactors to tell the “Secrets Behind the Paintings”. Visitors scan the QR code for a particular painting, and get the inside scoop direct from the “painter” themselves.

4. Get Festive with Personalized Gift Messages and Wrapping Paper

Although the holidays are behind us, you can’t help but admire the clever ways in which marketers have attracted holiday shoppers using QR codes.  This past year, JC Penney released “Santa Tags” which would let the gift giver record a personalized message that would be played when the recipient scanned the QR code:

If that isn’t enough, you can always wrap your gifts in QRAPPING PAPER – wrapping paper printed with your custom QR code.

5. QR Codes Share Your Life in a Single Graphic

While we’ve yet to see any QR codes on tombstones, they can be used to check in at the funeral (much like Foursquare) and notify the family who was in attendance.  Currently, most of the older generation doesn’t exactly know what they are, but once they’re told about how the QR codes (or Remembrance Codes as they’re called in the industry) work, they’re amazed.  Who else thinks that in the future, names and dates will be eclipsed by QR codes that share a story about a loved-one’s life?

How to Get Your Own QR Code

An example of a stylized QR code by Custom QR Codes

The fastest way to get a QR code (for free) is over at QR Stuff.  For a price, you can also get scan analytics. If you’re looking for something a bit more stylish, Custom QR Codes designs the codes in much the same way as a logo.  In fact, up to 30% of a code can be distorted or purposefully left out and it will still be readable by most scanning devices.

Potential Pitfalls of QR Codes

Before you jump on this new trend, be aware that there are some potential issues with QR codes.  For example, spammers are now using QR codes as a way to flood smartphones with their gunk (you knew this was coming, right?) Savvy hackers and scammers can use them to disguise malware downloads and force your phone to send premium text messages non-stop at $1 each.  Because some QR code scanners will let you use shortened URLs, there’s currently no telling where those URLs could point to.

That’s why, like with your computer, it’s important to know how your QR scanner works, what’s being downloaded, and whether or not you trust the source.

Action Steps for Working with QR Codes

So how can you take advantage of this growing trend for your business?  Keep in mind that much more than web addresses can be scanned. For example, you could:

• Direct employers to your resume, your LinkedIn profile or your Vcard
• Use a QR code in a direct mail piece, business card or postcard to provide a discount
• Give customers an inside look at your new Facebook promotion
• Take them to a page with more detailed information that wouldn’t easily fit in a print ad
• Use them to deliver step-by-step instructional videos or a printable setup sheet
• Have the QR code send a tweet when scanned, or check in with Foursquare
• Let them enroll in an event such as a webinar or teleseminar
• Use the QR code to let customers send themselves a reminder via SMS
• Link them to a special “Exclusive” YouTube video

What are some of the most creative uses of QR codes you’ve found?  Have you used a QR code yourself in a promotion? What sort of results did you get?  Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments below!

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversions with website reviews and SEO copywriting.  Download a free conversion checklist and web copy tune-up at iElectrify.com or get more from @sherice on Twitter or Google+.

To make matters worse, for every social site launched, there seems to be two or more services created to measure, track and monitor that service. What’s a marketing professional to do?

To help you cut through the clutter I thought I’d share with you 17 must-use social media tools that have helped my clients and their businesses. You’ll also get my reasons for why you should be using these tools, too.

1. EditFlow

An open source project led by Daniel Bachhuber, Mo Jangda and Scott Bressler, EditFlow is a WordPress plugin that allows you to manage your editorial team seamlessly.

Get a snapshot of your month-to-month content with the calendar:

Improved content status beyond WordPress’ default draft and pending review:

Inline comments between writer and editor:

And user groups to help you keep your team of writers organized by department or function.

Who should use EditFlow and why: anybody who manages a multi-author blog and wants a one-stop shop for managing one. EditFlow keeps all of the things that are important to a multi-author blog in one spot so management is easy, clean and documented.

2. TweetReach

This nice, little tool allows you to see how far your tweets travel. For example, with TweetReach I can search my blog (QuickSprout) and come up with these results:

Who should use TweetReach and why: From a social media manager to a consultant to a celebrity…basically anybody who is interested in finding out how effective their tweets are based upon the number of people they touch. This is also useful from a metric standpoint when you are justifying results with senior management or partners. By the way, this is one of the tools that helped me learn how to get more retweets.

3. ArgyleSocial

This Durham-based startup is a social media platform hoping to help marketers connect the business dots with the social media dots. And they aim to make it drop-dead simple.

Some of the features ArgyleSocial includes are team-based collaboration and publishing:

A single dashboard to monitor Facebook and Twitter that allows you to delegate tasks to your team:

And easy reporting on the ROI of your social media efforts:

If you’d like to be an affiliate, you can use ArgyleSocial’s white label brand and resell the social media platform to your clients. Even the billing of this feature is simple. All of your accounts will be wrapped up into one bill and sent to you to distribute or absorb as an included service.

Who should use ArgyleSocial and why: From the social media manager to the one-man or –woman shop who needs to prove to management, clients or themselves that their social media campaign is paying off. Also useful for those who are chronic testers and want to know if their latest experiment worked or not.

4. HootSuite for iPad

HootSuite users, you’ll be happy with this iPad application that reflects HootSuite products in general with the column approach. Includes a stationary column in the sidebar that keeps track of all streams being tracked.

Among the other things HootSuite says you can do with this iPad app:

• Check-in and shout via your Foursquare account
• Translate messages to and from 50+ languages
• Schedule messages to send in the future
• Examine click-through statistics
• Add geo-location coordinates to messages
• Share and store photos and files
• Shorten URLs with built-in Ow.ly tool

Who should use HootSuite for iPad and why: For anyone who wants to manage their social media content and engagement away from the laptop or desktop (doing it on a smartphone just plain sucks).

5. TweetLevel

You might be thinking you don’t need another Tweet metric tool, but TweetLevel, a handy tool from Edleman, allows you to specifically search for hash tags, leading to interesting insights on who to follow based upon conversation versus person.

Once you’ve found someone you’d like to follow, you can measure their social influence:

Evaluate the buzz around a certain topic to determine if it’s a trend worth paying attention to:

Then take a peek at related phrases around your topic to gauge the true scope of the trending idea:

Who should use TweetLevel and why: PR managers and social media marketing professionals who want to analyze a campaign. These tools can help you identify the conversation, where it’s going wrong and how to correct that mistake.

6. ReFollow

When it comes to Twitter, numbers are not important. It’s who you follow and who follows you. ReFollow is a premium application that allows you to lock in those followers that you’ve connected with…and keep them.

Other features include filtering a search on your Twitter circle to uncover insights:

And you can also uncover unique relationships…like what you have in common with certain followers:

This can lead you to connecting with someone who maybe you’re Twitter conversation has been close to zero, but with a simple DM you can make a connection and build a relationship with that person.

Who should use ReFollow and why: This tool is perfect for the person who wants to grow a list of highly-qualified, like-minded people…very slowly. If you’re concern is quality over quantity, which you should be, then ReFollow is your tool.

7. TwitterSearch

You’ve probably heard of TwitterSearch. It’s one of Chris Brogan’s favorite tools. More than likely, however, you’ve never been taught how to use it correctly.

Here are seven tips from Thomas Baekdal.

• Uncover top trending topics – Search that topic plus –rt filter:links. For example, “digital marketing-rt filter:links”. That code will remove all of the RTs.
• Find out who is talking about you – To see who is talking about you in conversations you aren’t involved in, use this search string: Patel-to:patel-from:patel-@patel. Replace Patel with your name.
• Track multiple profiles – If you have more than one Twitter profile, search using to: plus your Twitter handle. For example, to:patel plus your other handles.
• Follow conversation about your competitors – To see what people are saying about your competitors, search with to:competitor or from:competitor. Replace “Competitor” with their handle.
• Follow links from certain people: Search with the search string from:handle filter:links.
• Look up only the latest on a trending topic – Search with “trending topic” plus –rt –via which will exclude all the RTs.
• See pictures with trending topic – If there is a picture/s trending with the topic, search for these using the string “trending topic twitpic/post.ly/twitgoo filter:links”.

Who should use TwitterSearch and why: Anybody who’s interested in learning any of the things I mentioned above. By the way, this is very good for finding topics to blog about. When you see trending topics, you can create a blog post with content relevant to that discussion.

8. Traackr

A simple way to find and follow people who are influential in your space is to use Traackr. Whether you are an ad agency:

Or a brand:

You can identify the authorities that will mean the most to your business or your client’s. What’s also nice is that you can watch how social media leaders are responding and contributing to content you are sharing.

As an agency you can see who you should target to help social media campaigns get off the ground, build your engagement strategies based upon Traackr’s unique intelligence and then see results of those campaigns.

Who should use Traackr and why: Traackr is superb for either agencies or brands who want to build social media campaigns that will demonstrate effectiveness from the start…improve over time…and ultimately show how it pays off in the end. Traackr is also superb for the brand that wants to grow its presence based upon certain influencers.

9. SocMetrics

The Topical Influencer platform by SocMetrics is a web-based platform that allows you to identify influencers, understand who these people are, interact with this select list and then monitor that campaign.

You can even validate their influence:

And build a list of these influencers:

Their Competitive Influence feature allows you to specify brands and contrast their influence and drill down for detailed influencers.

What’s slick about this tool is that it allows you to narrow your search to a long-tail keyword, thus seeing who is truly influential on a finite level.

Who should use SocMetrics and why: Any marketing professional who wants to build an effective social media campaign based upon influencers in that field. We’ve all learned by now what power thought leaders have. SocMetrics help you harness that power to build your brand and sell more.

10. Social Scope

For Blackberry users who’ve longed for an app that combine Twitter and Facebook on one screen, like TweetDeck for your desktop, enter Social Scope:

Plus, on that same screen you’ll see a little thumbnail of an image if someone shares something from TwitPic. The ease of sharing a link is nice, too, since as you surf you’ll get an option to “Send to Social Scope”:

It’s got a built in retweeting feature, hash tag search and will also let you see the entire URL to know where a truncated URL is pointing.

Who should use SocialScope and why: Obviously, anyone who owns a Blackberry and has a Facebook and Twitter account is a prime target for this app. And for the reason you should use it, it’s the closest thing you can come to a desktop as you will get on a Blackberry.

11. Google+

Google+ seemed like it was primed to take the social-site spotlight on its launched. It didn’t do that, but I wouldn’t count it out just yet. In fact, I expect the adoption of Google+ to grow much in the same way that Facebook and Twitter both grew. Right now the early adopters have set up camp in Google+. I recommend you do the same, even if you don’t consider yourself an early adopter.

One feature that will draw more people is the open content approach—everything that happens on Google+ is by default searchable on the web. This includes photos and other rich media. In other words, what you do on Google+ can leave a footprint in the search space.

Who should use Google+ and why: At the moment I think Google+ is most useful for those who are concerned with a personal brand.  But even the big brands can benefit from the growing connection between social and search that Google has monopolized with its site. If you haven’t started with Google+ yet, here’s a nice beginner’s guide.

12. Social Mention

When it comes to real-time of monitoring of keywords and mentions, Social Mention can’t be beat. Drop a keyword in their search tool and you’ll pull up results like the latest mentions across the search world (I searched my blog “QuickSprout”):

You can see a snapshot of your influence:

Then drill down into that data:

You can also get the Social Mention blog widget or sign up for alerts…like Google Alerts, but for social media.

Who should use Social Mention and why: Any professional who is interested in following their brand or their client’s brand, measuring their influence, gauging the general sentiment on that brand. With this data, plus other data from the tools I’ve shared earlier, you can build a comprehensive view of your standings in the social web.

13. Ice Rocket

Probably the best blog search engine out there, Ice Rocket allows you to search across blogs, but the social web as well. This includes images and video.

Here’s a search under “QuickSprout”:

Who should use Ice Rocket and why: Bloggers. I love Ice Rocket because it helps me to research a particular topic…and then to see all the citations of that topic across blogs. This then allows me to create a high-concentration of outbound links that leads to a stronger SEO presence through link building but also helps me to reach out to new people I can help.

14. HashTracking

Whether you want to do research on a current topic or track a future event, Hash Tracking is your tool to do it. Let’s say you are going to Blog World. Simply enter the hash tag and Hash Tracking will start tracking as the conversation with that hash tag starts.

But you can also run custom reports on hash tags, like “networking”:

With the data reports you can see who is using that tag, total tweet impressions and reach, total tweets and a complete transcript of all tweets.

Who should use Hash Tracking and why: This is another great tool for the marketing professional who wants to gather information in tweets and links from the social web on a particular topic, who the influencers in that topic are and seeing the reach for that topic. Insights might lead you to plan where you will focus your social campaigns.

15. Qwerly

For anyone with an email newsletter, you’ll be interested in Qwerly, a data API that allows you to mine social profiles in your email newsletter list.

You can grab a key and get started right away.

If you have an email newsletter and want to capture social profile data for the list, Qwerly is a data API for mining social profile information which is somewhat similar to Rapleaf. This way, you can identify the top social sites your email list is associated with and can adjust social advertising, networking, and content accordingly.

Who should use Qwerly and why: This tool is perfect for the email marketer who wants to squeeze as much performance out of his or her email list as possible.

16. Rapleaf

Like Qwerly, Rapleaf gives you useful social profile information about your email newsletter list. Drop in a text file into their system and out they spit the demographics of your list:

Who should use Rapleaf and why: Rapleaf is perfect for the email newsletter marketer who wants to get the most out of his or her list. Find out what people like and then create unique offers based upon that data. You can make recommendations to a segmented email list, thus driving up your conversion rate.

17. Page Lever

Last but not least, there’s Facebook analytics tool Page Lever. This will take you beyond Insights that will allow you to grow more fans, traffic comments and newsfeed impressions.

You can see where your fans are coming from:

The Day Overview lets you get in-depth information from a particular day:

Page Lever was created by two guys who were consulting with high-profile clients like MTV and YouTube to help them optimize Insights when they recognized the shortcomings of what was available at the time. So they created Page Lever. MTV and YouTube followed them over.

Who should use Page Lever and why: If you manage a brand’s Facebook fan page, you need Page Lever. The unique, granular data will help you pinpoint what works and what doesn’t. As the tag line says, this is data you never thought possible. And if MTV and YouTube use it, don’t you think you should, too?

Conclusion

The first step in any social media marketing plan is to identify which social media sites you are going to concentrate on. Then it’s super important to track your performance across those sites as your campaign proceeds.

If you’re not tracking, how can you know whether your campaign is working or not? If you do know you can tweak to make it work better…and deliver results that will make you happy…or your clients happy.

Which social media tools do you use that I didn’t mention?

About the Author: Neil Patel is the VP of Marketing of KISSmetrics and blogs at Quick Sprout.

Why Quora?

Why should you check out Quora? Here are five great reasons:

1. You can get exposure to Quora’s 1.5 million monthly visitors worldwide.
2. You can demonstrate your expertise on almost any topic.
3. You can get insights from experts in any industry.
4. You can give direct answers to anyone asking about your business, products, or services.
5. You can share content from other websites (including your own) in topic-focused boards on your profile.

Now that you know why you should join, let’s look at how to get the most out of Quora, starting with your profile.

Your Quora Profile

Once you’ve signed up for Quora by connecting with Facebook or Twitter (or creating an account on Quora by saying you don’t have Facebook or Twitter), your first task is to create your profile. There is no purpose of getting exposure by demonstrating your industry expertise if people go to your profile to learn more about you and there is nothing there.

To edit your profile, click on your name in the top menu bar. Then click on the Edit links to add your headline and profile content.

Be sure to include links in your profile to your main website or main social accounts. This should help lead to traffic back to your website from Quora.

Finding & Following Topics

Once your profile is ready, you will want to start finding topics to follow. To find topics, use the search box at the top and start typing in a keyword. Quora will give you instant suggestions based on what you enter.

The topic pages start out with the latest boards and questions.

At the top right, you can click on the green Follow Topic button to follow the topic. This will place the latest activity within that topic on your Quora home page news feed. If you would like the latest questions sent to you view email, click on the Settings button that appears after you follow the topic and change the Email Settings to On.

Alternatively, you can subscribe to any topic by adding /rss to the URL. If you used a search query to find the topic, just strip off the ?q=keyword from the end of the URL before adding the /rss. For Google Analytics, the URL for the topic is http://www.quora.com/Google-Analytics and the URL for the RSS feed is http://www.quora.com/Google-Analytics/rss. I use Google Reader and keep my favorite topics under a folder called Questions along with feeds from other question and answer networks.

This helps me manage all of the activity on sites I participate upon.

Beneath the top questions and subscription options, you can find the latest activity on the topic, top “answerers”, and the people following the topic.

This is a great area to find new connections who will be interested in the same subjects you are. Simply click on any person’s profile to learn more about them and use the green Follow button to follow them.

Describe Your Topic Experience on Your Profile

After you’ve followed the topics you are interested in, go back to your profile and click on your Topics.

Here, you can describe your experience with each one of the topics you are following.

Whatever you enter here will be shown next to your name whenever you answer questions on those particular topics. If you don’t enter anything in this area, then the main headline for your profile will show up next to your answers.

Quora, Customer Service, and Reputation Management

Remember that topics can be brand based as well. If your business has a product, be sure to use the search to see if anyone is talking about your products or services.

You’ll definitely want to follow any topics that are specifically about your business so you can join in the conversation when new questions about your products or services are asked. You may find potential sales opportunities too as people are likely to ask the difference between your products or services compared to others. Be prepared to make your answers shine and convert!

Submitting Questions & Answers

Once you’ve followed your favorite topics, you can start submitting questions and answers.

Adding Questions

Adding questions to a question and answer network is a great way to find out more about your target market. Simply go to the appropriate topic, then click on the Add Question button.

Once you start receiving answers, be sure to let people know you appreciate their help by clicking on the Upvote and Thank link beneath each answer.

Not getting any answers? You can use the Ask to Answer system to ask specific Quora members to answer your question.

The users suggested are usually the top answerers in that topic. You can view more suggestions or find people by search. This is a great way to draw more attention to your questions!

Adding Answers

Ready to demonstrate your expertise and start answering questions? You can do so by clicking on a specific question in a topic you are following, then scroll down to the Add Answer box.

Here, you will answer each question as best you can. You can link / tag other questions, topics, and Quora users in your answer using the @ symbol. You can add images from your hard drive or using an image URL from the web. If you have a supporting link to add to your answer, just paste the full URL in and it will be automatically hyperlinked. This is a great way to promote your own blog content, products, or services if applicable to your answer. Be sure to make useful answers and try not to look spammy.

Sharing Content on Boards

Want to organize your favorite questions, answers, and collect content from other sites on your Quora profile? You can with Quora boards. Simply go to your profile, and beneath your Followers – Following strip, you’ll see a field to Create a New Board. Enter the title of your board and click the Create button to begin.

Once your board is created, you can start adding content to it. You can even allow submissions from other users.

Click the Add to Browser button to add a Post to Quora bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar, or grab it from the resources page.

Then click on the Post to Quora bookmarklet to add content from outside of Quora onto your new board. You will get a popup window asking you to add the link you want to share to your own boards or others that are open to outside contributions.

This is another great way to promote outside content to Quora users on your own profile’s boards or on others. You can also simply paste in links to your outside content on the board itself. Be sure on either option to click the Share with Followers checkbox to notify those following your profile.

To add content from Quora, such as a question or answer, to your board, just click the Repost link.

Using a combination of sources off and on Quora, you can create a very useful board on any topic on Quora which will hopefully lead to followers of boards on your profile.

How to Use Quora for Marketing

To recap the marketing potential of Quora, here are the ways you can use Quora to market your professional brand and your business.

• Create a great profile so that anyone who wants to learn more about you can do so and be able to click through to your website or other social profiles.
• Follow topics in your industry. Become an active participant on these topics by posting thought-provoking questions and valuable answers. When appropriate, include links back to content on your website for more information, but don’t spam.
• Find people to connect with on Quora by looking at the top answers and followers of a particular topic.
• Create and contribute to boards on topics in your industry. Share content off and on Quora to create valuable information that other Quora users will want to follow.
• Encourage others to follow you on Quora using the Quora Follow Button on the Quora Resources page
• Curious what kind of questions / answers get the most notice? Check out this page of most popular topics on Quora.

Do you use Quora to promote your professional brand and your business? What results have you seen so far? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

About the Authors: Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, professional blogger, and social media enthusiast. Her blog Kikolani focuses on blog marketing for personal, professional, and business bloggers. You can follow her on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook.

The following resources will help you understand how Google+ is now integrated into search and other products, and how you can start adjusting your online marketing strategy for Search Plus Your World.

Search Plus Your World Official Resources

• Search Plus Your World Announcement – The official announcement of Google Search Plus Your World on the Official Google Blog.
• Search Plus Your World on YouTube – The official video introduction of Search Plus Your World by Google.
• Inside Search – Search Plus Your World – The official page on Google Inside Search about what you’ll find with Search Plus Your World. Be sure to read through for:
• Personal Results – With a single Google search, you can see regular search results, along with all sorts of results that are tailored to you — pages shared with you by your friends, Google+ posts from people you know, and content that’s only visible to you (like private photos from Google+ and Picasa albums).
• Visibility of Personal Results – To learn about the visibility of the content in your personal results, you can look at the link that appears beside each result, or for photo results, hover over the photo. Personal results may be marked as Public, Limited or Only you.
• Details About Your Personal Results – Your personal results are unique to you. This means that your private content and any content privately shared with you will not appear in the search results of others, unless this content has also been shared with them.
• People in Your Personal Results – If you have Google+ , your personal results will include content that has been shared by people in your circles. Regardless of whether you have Google+, your personal results show content that has been shared by suggested connections who have Google+ profiles.
• Profiles in Search – When you search for a person’s name on Google, you might see a link to a relevant Google profile in the list of autocomplete predictions. These profile links make it easier to find information about a particular person.
• Turn Off Personal Results – You can see what your results look like without personal content by clicking the globe button on the top right-hand side of your search results page. This setting is session-specific, meaning that if you close your browser, personal results may appear next time you search. You can also turn off personal results in your search settings . This action is account-specific, meaning that personal results will remain disabled as long as you’re signed in to your Google Account .
• Related People and Pages – Want to appear in the People and Pages on Google+ related to a search query in search results (shown in the images at the beginning of the post)? Find out how on this page in Google Inside Search.

Google+ Social Integration with Other Google Products

• Search Gets Better with Google+ – Learn how Google+ integrates with search, including profiles in search and related people / pages.
• Gmail Gets Better with Google+ – Learn how you can see emails from people in your circles, share photos instead of download them, and see what people are saying on Google+ when you open their emails.
• YouTube Gets Better with Google+ – Learn how you can watch videos on YouTube with friends, see what videos friends are sharing, find new videos on Google+, and share with the right people.
• Maps Gets Better with Google+ – Learn how to send directions to the right people.
• Blogger Gets Better with Google+ – Learn how to expand your audience and see which Blogger posts are most popular.
• Earth Gets Better with Google+ – Learn how to virtually explore the world and share your discoveries on Google+.

Opinions About Search Plus Your World

• Sharing a Search Story – Google’s own Matt Cutts expresses his view of Search Plus Your World with some personal examples. He also says it will pull information from other sources than Google+, including Quora, FriendFeed, LiveJournal, Twitter, and WordPress.
• Google’s Results Get More Personal With “Search Plus Your World” – Search Engine Land takes a look at the personal items in search results which even includes content shared on Google+ to a limited audience.
• Google “Search Plus Your World”: Twitter Not Happy – Twitter’s feelings about Google Search Plus Your World (and Google’s response).
• Why Google’s New Social Search Features Will Make You Dumber – A look at how limiting your search results to those you know could be harmful for your brain.
• They Did It: Google Personalizes Search & It Is Not Evil – Why the toggle switch to turn off personalized results makes it ok.
• Google, Please Keep Social Out of Our Search Results – How this change creates the “filter bubble” effect and why personalization doesn’t equal social.
• Google’s Search Plus Your World? – Not in My World! – Vertical Measures shares thoughts on the activity of Google+ vs. other social networks, impact on SEO, and importance of content.
• Understanding Search Plus Your World – After an explanation of the basics, this article covers the implications and whether it kills SEO.
• Google ‘Search Plus’ and Our Ever Decreasing Circles – How Search Plus is beneficial to Google, how useful the new results are, and whether it will be ultimately bad for users.
• FAQ: What’s The Debate About Google’s Search Plus Your World – Just digesting the new features is tough enough, much less trying to follow all the accusations and counter-accusations that were flying around. Here’s a guide designed to answer questions you might have.
• Evil or Not? Another View of Google’s New Social Search Moves – Critics said the move, which will apply to people who are signed into Google, is a gift to politicians or the Justice Department that might want to pursue an antitrust case against the search giant.

Search Plus Your World and SEO

• Google+ SEO – This comprehensive Google+ SEO guide covers every aspect and angle of Google+ and how it impacts search. The first section covers search within Google+, and the second covers Searcy Plus Your World (or Search+).
• What the Merging of Google+ and Google Search Means to SEO – How merging of Google+ data into SERPs will impact SEO, including why Google+ can’t be exploited and suggestions for approaching SEO in a Google+ world.
• What Google Personalized Search plus Your World Means for Marketing – SEO Tips – One of the key Google+ takeaways for marketers is that the more people who have added your personal or business Google+ page to their circles, the greater the likelihood that your content or activity will appear in their search results.
• How Google Search Plus Your World is Changing SEO – Now, SEO needs to be as conversational as it is contextually relevant, in order to be well represented in Google’s most recent algorithmic shifts. True to form, enterprise level SEO initiatives will have to play a game of catch-up this year in order to reap new opportunities from social search results.
• Rank for Anything You Want on Google Search Plus Your World – Right now, early Google+ brand page adopters and those who survived the Google+ business account shutdown can rank for pretty much anything they choose in the logged in searches of the people who have Circled them.
• Link Building in the Age of Google Search Plus Your World – The value of merit-based links will never die, and that’s for sure, as it’s still the best way to characterize and qualify credible pages over the web. At this stage of search, I believe that any link that generates traffic can and will still yield rankings, attract more natural linkers and grow a brand’s online presence.
• Google+ Will Build Your Search Traffic – Google Search Plus Your World builds organic search traffic, big-time. Say what you want about the evil-ness of the whole thing. It’s a huge opportunity, and you need to capitalize on it now.
• Google “Search Plus” Impact on Local: Limited So Far – Examples where the searcher toggles between personalized and general Google results. In a few cases you can see AdWords differences but the organic results appear to be almost identical. However the “personal results” (top of the page) are radically different. In some cases they’re very useful, in others completely irrelevant.
• How Google’s Social Search Shift Will Impact Your Brand’s SEO – What does a change this big mean for businesses that depend on their Google rank for traffic and sales? Personalized results are the default when users are logged into their Google account, so it will be harder to determine your rankings. It’ll also be harder for your customers to find you, and for you to get traffic from the same ranking because more often than not, Google+ results will be appearing before public listings.

Search Plus Your World and Social Media

• How Google’s “Search Plus Your World” Should Change Your Social Media Strategy – Whether you’ve fully worked Google Plus into your social media strategy, are still experimenting or have put off building out a G+ page until now, Search Plus Your World is a big, flashing sign from Google warning you to get on board – or suffer the consequences in oblivion.
• Google+ Optimization vs. Community Building: Pros & Cons of Google SPYW – While the addition of Google Search Plus Your World (SPYW) has made a big splash in the digital community, Google+ is far more useful (from a personal perspective) as a social network than it is as an augmentation of search on Google.com. With a Marketer’s hat on, of course it doesn’t matter what we think of G+ – the task is to figure out how to optimize opportunities to gain an advantage.
• Google+ Growing Your Social Network: Quantity vs. Quality – While growing your audience is important, pluses and likes for the sake of pluses and likes may have short term benefits, but they aren’t productive. To successfully build the network, there needs to be meaningful interactive engagements.
• How to Harmonize Google+ With Your Other Social Platforms – Search Plus has magnified the importance of blending your web marketing strategy so that it will adhere to the at once social, personal, and personalized search algorithm. Search Plus Your World doesn’t mean Social Minus Your Other Networks! Use your extended branding channels for specific purposes.
• Your Essential Guide to Google+ – If you haven’t gotten started on Google+ yet, this guide will help you set up your personal profile and your business page on Google+.
• Real-Life Examples Of How Google’s “Search Plus” Pushes Google+ Over Relevancy – Key takeaway: if you’re not on Google+, you’re not a suggestion.

Search Plus Your World and PPC

• 7 Changes Search plus Your World Brings to PPC – Search Plus Your World impacts PPC just as it impacts SEO. A look at brand bidding, coordination between earned & paid media, and more.
• How Does Google’s Search Plus Your World Impact AdWords and Other Forms of Online Marketing – Search Plus Your World affects AdWords users by increased competition, higher bidding on keywords, lower click through rate, and more.
• How To Social Proof Your Google AdWords Campaigns – Recently Google announced an innovation that could be the most significant change yet – the integration of Google Plus “+1’s” into Google AdWords. This new feature allows advertisers to use social proof to enhance their advertisements.

What are your thoughts on Google’s integration of search and social? Have you seen any impact in your rankings and organic / paid search traffic? Please share your thoughts in the comments. And if you are not a fan of personalized search results, don’t forget these alternative search engines!

About the Authors: Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, professional blogger, and social media enthusiast. Her blog Kikolani focuses on blog marketing for personal, professional, and business bloggers. You can follow her on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook.

But how do you make sure that you’re optimizing your site for all the different types of users that visit your site, many of whom will have different aims and intentions for their visit? User personas offer a means of identifying these user groups and presenting them in an accessible format that can be shared throughout your business.

In my last post on the KISSmetrics blog, I spoke about how you can put user personas to work when carrying out keyword research or implementing a link building campaign. If you’re not familiar with personas and how they can be developed, I’d recommend you check out at least the first part before you read on.

Done? Great! Let’s have a look at how they can be useful in the CRO process.

User Research

Research is an integral part of any good CRO project – how can you make educated, informed changes to improve your website if you have no research to base them upon? User research allows you to get insights into how prospective customers might feel when using your site, how they react to different messaging, and what their objections might be.

Techniques employed during user research include:

• One on one usability testing where representative users are asked to carry out representative tasks and vocalize their thoughts whilst the session is recorded or a tester takes notes.
• Interviewing users either in person, online, or over the phone. This may be less focused on the usability of the site itself and more their attitudes towards the brand, the market, what they look for in a product or service.
• Surveys and feedback forms which could be run on-site (typically and sometimes irritatingly presented as a screen overlay), promoted to email lists, promoted to social media followers, or respondents bought.

If you have already developed user personas for your site, this is a perfect opportunity to employ them to ensure that your user research includes responses that represent an accurate cross section of your user-ship.

I’m going to refer to the example personas used in the SEO centric post I mentioned above – it’s from the Vodafone developer blog and depicts 3 groups of users that they considered when designing a widget (but in this post we’ll use them for their website in general):

Vodafone might be soliciting feedback on new site functionality by sending a survey out to their existing customers and readers. Let’s consider where each of the personas might hang out online:

• Mike the Techie – according to his persona, he consumes content through Twitter, blogs, and RSS
• Zoe the Socialite – again, in her persona we can see that she predominantly hangs out on Facebook
• Cost-conscious Geoff – he doesn’t seem to use any social media platforms, so maybe sending something out to their email list might capture this sort of user.

In this case, Vodafone might want to consider using all of these channels to promote their survey to ensure that they have a broad range of feedback. Furthermore, perhaps they’ve developed a new feature that allows users to compare handset specs side-by-side. This sort of landing page might have been conceived particularly with users like Mike in mind, in which case feedback might only be solicited from his user group.

More accurately, capturing demographic information during user feedback, whatever the technique, can help to ensure that all bases are covered.

Analysis and User Intentions, Objections

Once you’ve gathered your user research and hopefully have a lot of qualitative information to process, this is a perfect opportunity to develop your user personas still further to include their intentions on visiting your site and what their possible objections might be.

Identify feedback from users that fit into the personas you’ve outlined, and look for the common themes amongst them rather than the themes that span all of the research you’ve carried out.

Again, to come up with some hypothetical examples, when shopping for a new mobile phone, the profiles of the Vodaphone users could be:

• Mike the Techie – Intention: To find the phone with the best specifications such as processing power, screen resolution, memory. Typical objections: Specifications not available, hard to compare handsets.
• Zoe the Socialite – Intention: To find the mobile phone deal that offers the most minutes, texts, and data on her given budget. Typical objections: better deals with other networks, confused about which contract offers best value.
• Cost-conscious Geoff – Intentions: To find the cheapest contract, or the cheapest pay as you go handset. Typical objections: Cautious about hidden costs for monthly contracts.

Identifying these intentions and objections can help you to develop tailored, engaging landing pages for each user group.

Figure out Landing Pages for each Persona

Next up, you need to consider where these different user groups with their own requirements might touch the site. Key pages, such as the homepage and main category pages may be part of a wide range of user journeys, in which case they must cater for all needs.

However, there are more specific landing pages for other users. You could start by looking at your referring keywords – what is the intention of the visitor and does that fit with any of the personas you’ve developed? Which other sites refer traffic to you, and where do those users land?

Mike for example, might use keywords relating to specification and technical details when he’s researching a new phone. He also uses blogs and Twitter to consume content, so look to those for referring sources. What are the landing pages for these types of referral?

Look for themes in the page type (category, product, gallery, article etc.) and look at the volumes of traffic hitting those pages in order to prioritize your efforts.

Page Content and Functionality

Right – you know what your user personas are, you know what they want to do when they get to your site, and you know where they’re touching your site. Now you have to ask yourself if the features and content on that page address their needs.

If, for example, price conscious Geoff was searching for “cheapest vodafone handset” he might see their PPC campaign at the top of Google UK’s search results. On clicking he would be taken through to the homepage:

There’s very little on the page the addresses Geoff’s needs as a user. This may highlight a problem with Vodaphone’s PPC campaign, but resellers such as Phones4U are doing a much better job with pages such as this:

Users should be landing on the right page for their intentions (not just the homepage), and the content on that page should be focus on their primary needs.

Engaging On-Page Elements

Once you’ve got that basic functionality right, you can also make the user more likely to convert by engaging them with the variety of elements that are available when building a landing page.

Let’s take a look at KISSmetrics’ own anatomy of a perfect landing page:

Each of these elements can be used to be more persuasive – think about what sort of headline might make each user persona more likely to convert.

Zoe the Socialite might be more likely to browse the specifics of the contract pages, whereas Mike the Techie might be more interested in the product pages of the handsets themselves. Engaging them straight away with a relevant headline could help to improve conversions – on contract pages could it emphasize the sociability afforded by their plans? Photos of people socializing and having fun could be used to supplement this.

Mike’s attention might be captured by a headline that states that the handset is the latest and greatest, the highest spec. What unique selling points do those products have that separate them from other high-technology offerings on the market?

Clearly listing the benefits of a product or service is another common CRO technique – which 3 primary benefits are going to really connect with a user group? A strong call to action on a page is another crucial element, and again the wording used here could be tailored to specific user groups if you know that they are landing there.

Multiple Personas on a Page

Targeting multiple use cases, intentions, and objections on a single page can be inevitable – take your homepage for example. It’s only natural that users with all manner of needs will land there. Here are a few examples of homepages that use techniques to push different users down different funnels:

HP.com

This page uses a slider along the bottom of their main carousel that has a section for Home Users, Small and Medium Businesses, and Large Enterprises. The carousel displays appropriate content accordingly.

Omniture

Omniture’s homepage uses a tabbed widget to display content that might appeal to Marketing Managers, Online Marketers, and Analysts.

IBM

Perhaps more subtly, IBM’s homepage has 3 boxes beneath their main carousel that might resonate with different types of users with messages relating to knowledge sharing, social, and sustainability.

Start Testing!

Split test or multivariate testing, if you don’t already know, allows you to test different versions of a page and measure which leads to the best conversion rate. I’d recommend checking out KISSmetrics’s post if you’re not familiar with the subject.

Test different messaging for different user groups – Zoe the Socialite might be interested in both getting the most call time and messages for her money, but also the wealth of social apps available for that platform. But which of those two needs leads to most conversions? Or can you address both equally one page?

Once you’ve run tests and gathered some findings, you’ll hopefully be able to feed these back into your personas to make them more effective and get a better understanding of what makes each user group tick.

I hope this gives you some idea of how you might be able to use personas in your CRO strategies – if you’ve got any further ideas, please feel free to let me know in the comments of give me a shout on twitter (@rob_millard).

About the Author: Rob Millard writes on behalf of Distilled (http://www.distilled.net), a leading digital marketing agency specializing in SEO, PPC, and CRO.

Have you tested LinkedIn Ads yet?

Like AdWords, Bing or Facebook, LinkedIn advertising has its idiosyncrasies. It’s quite different from SEM or display buying. It’s a unique ad buying and ad management experience that deserves a handbook of its own. In this post, I’ll lay down the basics, explain how it works, and share with you some tricks and best practices to get the most from your LinkedIn CPC investment.

Who Should Advertise On LinkedIn?

Before you decide whether this is truly a channel worth testing for your business, you should ask yourself:

“What affinity is a professional, in a day-job mindset, likely to have for my product, service or offer?”

Business-to-business marketing is usually a snug fit here. If you sell something that benefits business owners or working professionals and you can, in one short sentence, clearly delineate why, the answer is probably yes.

People are on this site to better their careers, find a new job, network, connect with business contacts, and to get a few minutes of mindless get-away-from-work time. Your offer should speak to someone in that head space.

If you make educational games for children, maybe LinkedIn Ads aren’t your hottest new marketing channel.

Who Sees LinkedIn Ads?

Nearly everyone surfing LinkedIn and some of their partner sites. The partner sites, called the LinkedIn Audience Network, are mostly high-end media sites, some of which are also part of the Doubleclick exchange and the ad network Collective Media. Some of their partners are:

• New York Times
• BusinessWeek
• CNBC

People in your network and outside of it. Here’s where they show up and what they look like:

Who Can I Target?

You can get pretty smart about targeting your customer. Company size, title, industry and geographic targeting are available.

Perhaps you’re marketing a recruiting firm focused on executive search for tech companies in Silicon Valley. Your targeting profile might look like this:

• VPs of Human Resources
• Companies of 501+ employees
• High Tech & Semiconductor industries
• In and around the San Francisco Bay Area

Anatomy Of The LinkedIn Ad

LinkedIn Ads are a hair different than your standard AdWords ad, because they have a photo.

Hot tip: According to LinkedIn’s own optimization team, choosing a photo of a woman typically drives the best clickthrough rates. Only use your business logo if you’re trying to build brand awareness. Don’t have too much going on in your photo — remember, it’s a small thumbnail and you have a lighting-quick opportunity to draw the eye to your ad before, poof, it’s gone.

1. Headline. It’s got to be short, so use something punchy. Using the title of the people you’re targeting can be very effective.
2. Ad copy. You know how this works!
3. Destination URL. You want a landing page tailored for LinkedIn members, if necessary.  Don’t just take visitors to your homepage. Think about why people spend time on LinkedIn and dream up something relevant to the LinkedIn audience.
4. Photo. Like I said: pick something that draws the eye. Photos of people are better.

How Much Do LinkedIn Ads Cost?

As with any contextual CPC ads, it depends on your targeting criteria and your competition, but we’ve seen CPCs start at around $2 and run up to $4 or $5 per click, with the higher end typically coming into play when your clickthrough rates aren’t fantastic.

Clickthrough rates vary. LinkedIn pegs a good clickthrough rate at 0.025%, but you can do better with laser-targeted ads featuring compelling copy and a vibrant photo.

A good rule of thumb is to shoot for a number that would make a pleasant blood alcohol content after a good night out: if you can achieve better than .08% to 0.10% you’re in very good shape.

Hot tip: Switch up your ads often, at least once a month. New ads get a boost in terms of impressions and have a chance of scoring a higher CTR than your previous ads. Don’t run more than 2 ads at a time. Test early and test often.

How Should I Capture The Leads?

You have two ways to collect leads from LinkedIn Ads, and I recommend you use both simultaneously.

The first is obvious: your landing page. Consider giving away something for free — like great content relevant to your audience — or running some kind of promotion. People jump at free stuff, and their engaging with your offer puts them into your lead nurture funnel and opens the door to a relationship.

You can try to run ads selling your product directly, but our experience with Clever Zebo clients has been that you’ll see low interest that way unless you’re really selling something awesome and relevant.

So what’s the second way? It’s a feature LinkedIn cleverly calls “lead collection” and it looks like this:

When someone requests to contact you about your ad, you’ll get an email and have a chance to reach out immediately — and conveniently for the user, they never have to divert their browsing experience to get in touch with you.

The key shortcoming of this feature, at the time of writing, is that you can’t have email alerts about collected leads go to more than one recipient, so choose wisely.

Tracking Your Ads

At the time of writing, LinkedIn didn’t yet offer conversion tracking, so, to state the obvious, you need to track conversions specific to LinkedIn Ads using your analytics solution.

Why should you track your ads? The biggest reason: so you can make an educated decision about whether the channel is ROI-positive for your business, and so you have clear visibility into which optimizations you choose to make will ultimately impact your bottom line (not just your traffic).

Here’s what you want to look for in Google Analytics to ensure you can track conversions from these ads:

1. Set up Goals.

Click on Settings | Profiles | Goals, and add a goal in the screen below.

You’ll likely want a “URL destination” goal, meaning that the goal will be triggered when your user hits a specific page after converting. Usually this is a “thank you” page or an order confirmation page.

You don’t need your domain name in the URL. If your confirm page URL were www.yoursite.com/thank-you, it can simply look like this: /thank-you.

2. Look at your Traffic Sources and cross-reference against the goal(s).

You can also create unique URLs for each ad you’re running, in order to get ad-level conversion data. Why do this? Let’s say you’re trying to determine whether you should explicitly show pricing in your ad copy. You might find that fewer people click the ad, deterred by the dollar signs — but the only way to learn that, for example, those who do click the ad with pricing are converting better and spending more time on the site, is to set up tracking at the ad level.

You can add the appropriate ‘utm’ parameters to make sure Google Analytics picks up the data.

A sample ad URL might be: www.yoursite.com/linkedin-landing-pg?utm_source=ppc&utm_medium=linkedin&utm_campaign=ad-number-1

You should also check analytics for engagement metrics (time on site, pageviews, bounce rate, etc.) to understand how long LinkedIn ad visitors are staying on your site. If you’re consistently seeing a time on site of under 5 seconds, your offer isn’t compelling, your landing page needs work, or your ad copy is a little “too attractive” for the effort required to convert.

Look at the pages these users are visiting to get a sense for the quality of the visits. Are they reading up on your company at all, or are they just hitting the landing page and bouncing?

Just like any paid media channel, what happens on the other end of the click matters most. Study your conversion funnel and make sure it contains none of the all-too-common user experience pitfalls that tend to annoy prospects.

Hot tip: If you’re a marketer or business owner on a shoestring budget, find a way to nab one of those $50 LinkedIn Ads gift cards. Some online marketing agencies will hook you up with them, or you can try contacting the LinkedIn team for one.

Ultimately, LinkedIn Ads can be an expensive promotion channel in terms of CPCs, aimed at an elite audience; you have to be crafty to extract ROI from it, but it’s worth testing. Needless to say, paid advertising is just one way to get leads via LinkedIn; you can also get strategic about using LinkedIn groups to source leads.

In the second part of this series, we’ll explore more advanced techniques and load you up with juicy nuggets and tricks to derive maximum ROI. Now go test up a storm!

About the Author: Igor Belogolovsky is Cofounder of Clever Zebo, a group of online marketing strategy experts specializing in SEM, SEO and conversion funnel optimization. He also happens to like craft beer and snowboarding.

Those days are ending, if they aren’t already completely over. Today, an advertiser with great marketing but a terrible product or customer service may be outright banned from most advertising channels, and will have a hard time profiting from the remaining few that allow him access. Mistreat your customers and you can get banned from Google AdWords, eBay, Amazon, and comparison shopping engines, not to mention getting slaughtered by bad reviews on Yelp and massively viral outrage via social media.

Introducing A New Social Component: Google Plus

Recently Google announced an innovation that could be the most significant change yet – the integration of Google Plus “+1’s” into Google AdWords. This new feature allows advertisers to use social proof to enhance their advertisements. To highlight the power of this feature, ask yourself this:

If you have rabid fans of your product or service, why not leverage these advocates in your Adwords advertising?

The concept here is a direct homage (or, um, some would say, rip off) of “social actions” in Facebook PPC. Google Plus integration, which Google calls “social extensions”, works the same way. If your friends +1 a company, you might see their mugshots below that company’s AdWords ads:

Imagine doing a search for “mortgage rates” and seeing pictures of your friends next to only one of the eight to ten ads Google serves up – the combination of social proof and herd mentality are incredibly strong psychological factors to resist. Over time, imagine repeating that search and seeing pictures of your friends next to all of the ads except for one. Is there any doubt that you would avoid the lone outlier like the plague?

Search is a “bottom of the funnel” channel, Facebook is “top of the funnel.” When a consumer conducts a search on Google, he is very close to making a purchase decision. As such, social proof – or lack thereof – on search results pages is potentially way more important to advertisers than social proof on Facebook, simply because this social proof could very likely be the difference between an immediate sale or lost business to a competitor.

How to Connect Your Google+ Page to Your AdWords Account

To integrate Google+ into your AdWords account, start by clicking the “Campaigns” tab in your AdWords account. To the very right of all the standard tabs at the top of the tab (Campaigns, Ad Groups, Settings, etc.) you’ll see a little button with a down arrow on it. Click this button and an additional list of tab options will appear. Select the one called “Ad Extensions”:

You should then be automatically taken to the “Ad Extensions” tab. Once again, you need to find the hidden option by click on the drop-down list entitled “View: Location Extensions.” Scroll down until you see “Social Extensions” and click that.

You are now ready to link one or more of your AdWords Campaigns with your Google+ account. To start, just click the “New Extension” button:

The next screen prompts you to choose the Campaign you want to associate with Google+. Generally speaking, there’s no disadvantage to associating all of your campaigns with Google+, but if you want to start conservatively (which is always a good idea), start by testing one or two campaigns that will get you enough clicks to determine the effectiveness of social extensions. Make sure to enter the URL of your Google+ page here as well!

And voila, you now have a Google+ page linked to your AdWords account via a “social extension”! Now that you are connected, you need to start analyzing the actual performance of the social extension. It’s important to understand that Google determines the rank of ads on search result pages (SERPs) based on two primary factors: the maximum cost per click you are willing to pay (Max CPC) and your ad’s click through rate (CTR). When you change your ad text – in this case, by adding social extensions – you are hoping that this change leads to an increase in clicks from quality users. The higher the CTR, the lower the CPC you have to pay to get to the top of the results.

Keep in mind that your goal is to get quality users, not just any users. So if your social extensions resulted in thousands of people clicking on your ads but no one actually buying anything from you, you would win the battle but lose the war (more specifically, you would be making money for Google but not for your business). For this reason, in addition to evaluating the impact social extensions have on CTR, it’s also worth measuring the impact they have on your conversion rate (CR). At PPC Associates, we do this by evaluating what we call “Conversions Per Thousand Impressions” (CPI). To calculate this metric, simply multiple your CTR times your CR. If social extensions in your ad text gives you a higher CPI, you should see a decrease in CPC and an increase in conversion rates – a win-win!

As noted, the theory behind social extensions and the convergence of Google+ and AdWords is that recommendations from friends (social proof) increases both clicks and conversion rate. Theories, however, always need to be tested. If you find that social extensions are performing poorly as compared to other extensions in a given campaign, you may need to eliminate them from that campaign.

What This Means for the Future

So what can you do to position your company in a future where Google+ matters? For starters, get a Google+ account for your business and start building relationships with your customers through Google+. Growing your base of +1’s will positively influence both organic and paid results on Google (note: for organic results, +1’s will influence someone’s personalized search results, I am not suggesting that +1’s will necessarily improve a company’s Page Rank).

In addition to simply having a Google+ account, marketers need to start become internal champions for outstanding customer service and awesome products. It is no longer enough to just do a great job of driving traffic or sales and wash your hands of responsibility for the actual customer experience. Online marketers who disregard customer satisfaction will be put out of business by these very customers, either indirectly through social proof mechanisms like Google+ or Yelp, or directly through outright bans on major marketing channels like eBay, Amazon, and AdWords.

A famous cartoon in the New Yorker once noted “on the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog.” Today, at least concerning online advertisers, that phrase rings hollow. It’s fairly easy for potential customers to determine whether or not your company is a “dog”, in the pejorative sense.

Integrating social proof like Google+ into AdWords makes it even easier for customers to make this judgment. AdWords advertisers will live and die not by their crafty ad text, advanced bidding algorithms, or beautiful conversion funnels, but simply by delivering great products with great service to consumers.

About the Author: David Rodnitzky is CEO of PPC Associates, an SEM agency in Silicon Valley. Follow him on Twitter @rodnitzky or contact him at david@ppcassociates.com.

That’s not such a bad thing. It’s really what you do after that failure that counts.

At the very least, failing at a web marketing campaign means you’re trying. The secret is to figure out how not to make those mistakes in the first place.

The best way I’ve discovered to improve each of my web marketing campaigns is to focus on three measurements:

1. Contextual influence of sales
2. Market share
3. Advertising awareness of the brand

Let’s explore each.

1. Calculate Contextual Influence of Sales

I’m sure you’re saying to yourself, “what the hell does that mean?” Well…let me start off with an example.

For my Quick Sprout Pro Traffic System product I decided to create a simple video as a product promotion. The investment on my end was low and it was relatively easy to make. I figured it was a good idea to test to see how well it would work. Here’s the video:

One of the things I wanted to know was how many people who bought the Pro Traffic System actually watched to the video and who didn’t watch it.

It’s possible that other means besides the video drove them to buy the Pro Traffic System. However, if I just looked at the straight sales numbers, I couldn’t assume it worked. I needed a way to isolate the sales.

The way to do that is to look inside your web analytics account…look at how each feature of your web marketing campaign performed or was influenced by other features.

This is called “contextual influence.”

With our Crazy Egg’s confetti heat map you can do just this:

The analysis I did with my own site and web marketing campaign proved that the video was in fact having positive results on the outcome.

Luckily, creating the video was a minimal investment that paid off.

And in comparing the heat map data with sales numbers and the leading referrers I discovered that sales actually fell when I did not use the video.

The beautiful thing about looking at this type of data is that you can isolate the features that work so you can put your resources in the right area and avoid losing money unnecessarily (which can lead to failure as the mistakes compound).

2. Calculate Market Share

This is not an easy one…but we need to try and work through it because we all need to try to expand our market share at some point.

But how do you even calculate market share? Simply calculate the number of products or services sold vs. market size.

But it’s not as easy to say that the number of items sold is how many products you moved off the shelf. For example, you need to ask yourself these questions:

• Are you going to calculate in dollars or units sold?
• Do you count orders that have to be delivered or appointments booked…when actual service or money has never exchanged hands?
• Do you include sales from affiliates?
• Do you include taxes? This is a part of doing business, so my suggestion is, yes, include taxes.
• Do you include the service/maintenance component of your product or service? Add-ons? If any of these externals were included in the original offer, then yes, you need to.

Next, you have to figure out market size. That information isn’t the easiest to capture, but here’s an approach I like to use:

• Collect annual reports and company information about the total revenue in a particular market. This approach works best when there are few players in the market. The airplane industry, for example, has relatively few players, so market share is easily obtained.

You can also determine market share by looking at similar markets:

• Find a market that is similar to yours in the way it behaves or its size. For example, if I couldn’t get this data from the web analytics industry for my company KISSmetrics, I might look at similar industry…like the offline analytics industry, which has been around for a while.

It’s from this determination that you can figure out what your market size is…and then calculate your penetration into that market.

Let’s Use My Business As An Example

Personally, I might view my market as the web consulting industry. Now do I include everything from all the small businesses receiving consulting help to large brands like Viacom? For this example I’m just going to focus on large, established brands.

Next, I add up all of the consulting agencies out there who are working in this market. I try to figure out how much business they have, and then compare that to how much business I have.

Let’s say I have 7% of the market share of the big, established brands in the web consultancy business. My goal could be to gain 3% by the end of the year, raising my share to 10%.

I would then create my marketing campaign around that objective and benchmark. By having a focused goal for the year, it makes it much easier to reverse engineer my marketing strategy to obtain my objective.

If you are interested in more marketing research information, check out these companies:

• You can get geographical and demographic data from companies like Applied Geographic Solutions or Nielsen.
• You can get consumer data from Nielsen, NPD and Market Research Insight.

3. Personal Brand Awareness

If your marketing campaign is designed to build awareness of you as your brand, you need to measure awareness before the launch of the campaign, during the campaign and then after. But how do you measure this one?

There are four tools you can use to figure that out.

Klout is a measure of your influence in the social web. It actually measures 35 different variables across three specific segments:

True Reach – This is a measure of the size of your engaged audience.

Amplification – This is a score of the likelihood that your audience will actually do something with the content you share. Will they retweet? Like? Comment?

Network – This score is all about who is in your audience. Do you have a small audience of large influencers? Or do you have a large audience of non-influencers?

Your overall Klout score is combined to create a score between 1-100. The higher the Klout score, the better of an influencer you are.

PeerIndex is a lot like Klout, but it also creates three subsets of scores called Authority, Audience and Activity…and then delivers an overall score.

Where the other two tools looked at data over all of your social media sites, Twitalyzer focuses on Twitter only and pulls the hard data in the form of Engagement, Impact, Reach, Velocity and a few other metrics that show you how you use Twitter.

Available are benchmarks like most influential people on Twitter:

Like Twitalyzer, Crowdbooster also focuses on Twitter, but adds some interesting metrics like the growth of your followers, who your top retweeters are and the most influential followers you have. What’s really sweet is the scatter plot graph that lets you see which tweets got the most engagement.

You can track your follower and fan growth:

In addition, this tool will give you recommendations for the best time to tweet based on the times your most influential followers are active.

Put all this information together to create a benchmark before you start your marketing campaign. Then set landmarks that allow you to judge whether your efforts are increasing or decreasing your personal brand awareness. And learn from the results so you can optimize constantly.

Conclusion

Marketing is a lot like a science. There are so many measurements you can use to track your results and improve your campaigns…so much data and facts to help you make wise decisions. And as you get really good at it, the accuracy of your predictions about how your campaigns will perform should get better.

Think about it: when you test the right things like contextual influence, know the size of market you are operating in, and set both industry and personal benchmarks, your knowledge and experience will grow.

So, what measurements do you think people fail to look at when they are running their marketing campaigns?

About the Author: Neil Patel is the VP of Marketing of KISSmetrics and blogs at Quick Sprout.

General Search

To start off our search adventure, let’s look at some general search engines beyond the top three.

DuckDuckGo

Concerned about online privacy? DuckDuckGo prides themselves as being the search engine that does not track or personalize your searches and results. They even offer handy visual guides on Google tracking and filter bubbling.

Now Relevant

Tired of stale search results? NowRelevant attempts to give you only results from the last two weeks on your search query. I say attempts because my test searches seemed to be more from the last six months, but it’s still better than getting results from six years ago. Hopefully that will be worked out once they are out of beta.

Dogpile

If you want results from the top three search engines, but don’t want to go to them individually, try Dogpile. It’s results are pulled from the top three search engines “without all the mess.”

Blekko

Want spam free search results? Blekko‘s mission is to provide a differentiated, editorial voice in search. They look for quality over quantity, source based authority over link based, removes sites whose primary purpose is monetization over information, and uses human curating through the use of user tags.

WolframAlpha

Looking for a search engine based on computation and metrics? Try WolframAlpha. It will give you website data, historical information by date, unit conversions, stock data, sports statistics, and more. You can see examples by topic to learn more.

Joongel

Want to search ten sites at a time? Check out Joongel. While it doesn’t always get things right, it does give you some great ideas of sites to search under various categories including the ones shown above plus analytics, local, finance, and jobs.

Social Network Specific Advanced Search

Need to find something specific on one of the top social networks? Here are some great advanced search pages.

Facebook Search

Want to see a particular search across different areas of Facebook? Use Facebook Advanced Search. When you type in your query, click on the “see more results” link at bottom of the suggestions. Then use the filters on the left to see results within people, pages, places, groups, and more.

LinkedIn People Search

If you want to find some new connections on LinkedIn, use the Advanced People Search. This will let you narrow down your results by the above plus relationship and language. Premium members will have access to additional search filters including groups, company size, years of experience, and more.

LinkedIn Job Search

LinkedIn offers job seekers an Advanced Job Search to find jobs using the above information plus experience level and industry. Premium members can narrow their search down further by the salary offered.

LinkedIn Answers Search

LinkedIn Answers is a great way to gain exposure and build authority in your industry. Use the Answers Advanced Search to find the perfect questions to answer.

Twitter Search

Twitter’s Advanced Search is a great way to find better results on Twitter. It is especially great for businesses looking for a local audience by allowing them to filter their results using the Near this place field.

Social Search

The following search engines will allow you to search one or more social networks in one place and gain additional data about the results.

Topsy

Topsy allows you to see the latest tweets on your search query. You can see more about each tweet by clicking on the orange number of tweets, including what users tweeted it. Topsy also allows you to see Google+ results by switching to it under Network in the left sidebar.

Social Mention

Social Mention allow you to search across multiple types of networks including blogs, microblogs, bookmarks, comments, events, images, news, and more.

Bing Social

If you’re looking for updates from Twitter and Facebook on a particular query, try Bing Social. Updates seem to be a day behind, but they will continue to trickle through when you click the play button at the top right of the results.

Addictomatic

Addictomatic creates a topic page for searches using results from Bing, Google Blog Search, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, WordPress, and other search & social sources. Bookmark the page on your browser to check on the latest results regularly.

Who’s Talkin

Who’s Talkin is another social search engine that will let you filter results by various networks under blogs, news, videos, images, and more.

Forums

Want to participate on forums in your industry? Use this search engine to find results specifically on forums.

Boardreader

BoardReader allows you to search forums and narrow results down by date (last day through last year) and language.

Blogs

Find industry related blogs and posts using the following search engines.

PostRank

PostRank allows you to search for blogs by topic and sorts them by social engagement metrics. Bypass the login and use the search box to find topics or specific blogs to which ones have the most comments and social shares.

Technorati

Use the search box at the top of Technorati to find blogs or posts on your favorite topics.

Regator

Regator allows you to search for blogs and posts on any topic, then narrow down your results by posts with audio or video, date range, topic, and domain.

Documents, eBooks, and Presentations

If you’re looking for documents, eBooks, presentations, or other similar file types, try the following searches.

DocJax

DocJax allows you to search for free eBooks and other documents. Sort by file types for documents, spreadsheets, powerpoints, and PDF to narrow down your results.

Scribd

Scribd is the largest social reading and publishing network that allows you to discover original written content across the web. Sort results by category, language, length, file types, upload date, and cost (free or for sale).

SlideShare

SlideShare is the largest community for sharing presentations. If you missed a conference or webinar, there’s a good chance the slides from your favorite speakers are here.

Image Search

Looking for beautiful images? Try these image search engines – note that you must gain permission to use any images you find unless they are specifically marked as Creative Commons licensed.

Flickr

Flickr offers an advanced search screen that allows you to find photos, screenshots, illustrations, and videos on their network. You can also search within Creative Commons licensed content.

Bing

Bing offers an image search that starts out with the top trending images, then leads to images which can be filtered by size, layout, and other criteria. They also display tabs above the results with related search queries.

Google

Google Advanced Image Search allows you to get even more specific about the images you are looking for, including specifying whether they are faces, photos, clip arts, or line drawings. You can also search within images labeled for reuse commercially and with modifications.

Creative Commons Media

Need to find media created by others to use on your website? Try these Creative Commons searches.

Creative Commons

Looking for only images that you can repurpose, use for commercial purposes, or modify? Try the Creative Commons Search which will allow you to look through multiple sources including Flickr, Google Images, Wikimedia, and YouTube.

Wikimedia

Wikimedia Commons has over 12 million files in their database of freely usable images, sound bites, and videos. Use the search box or browse by categories for different types of media.

Video Search

Looking for video to embed on your website or simply entertain you? Try these video search engines that look across multiple sources to find what you need.

Yahoo

Yahoo Video Search allows you to search through video content from their own network, YouTube, Dailymotion, Metacafe, Myspace, Hulu, and other online video providers for videos on any topic.

Blinkx

Blinkx allows you to go beyond YouTube to find videos on any topic from hundreds of video partner sites including big names like YouTube and Hulu. If you’re looking for video, you’ll likely find it here.

Clipblast

Clipblast allows you to find professional video on topics discussed by news stations, newspapers, podcasting, and commercials. Top sources include CNN, ESPN, E, Sundance, BBC, and more.

VideoSurf

VideoSurf brings clips from Hulu, CNN, TMZ, Metacafe, Fancast, Dailymotion, and other sources to provide you with entertaining videos across the web.

Website Data & Statistics

Looking for information about your favorite brands and websites? Try out these search engines for data and statistics.

CrunchBase

CrunchBase offers insight into your favorite online brands and companies. Listings will tell you people who are associated with a company, contact information, related videos, screenshots, and more.

Quantcast

Quantcast allows you to search for website profiles based on topic or specific domains. Domains with a high volume of traffic will have data including total regional visitors per month, pageviews online vs. mobile, demographics, sites similar audiences like, and more.

DoubleClick Ad Planner

Google’s DoubleClick Ad Planner lets you research domains and get the traffic statistics, daily unique visitors, and demographics such as age, gender, education, income, topics of interest, and more. This tool can be used with or without a Google account. You can also see a list of the top sites measured by Ad Planner and traffic stats in a glance.

BuiltWith

Curious to see what technology your favorite sites use and usage trends of that technology? BuiltWith allows you to search for domains and see the technology they use, including analytics, content management systems, coding, and widgets. You can also click on any of the products to see usage trends, industries using the technology, and more.

Advanced Google

Can’t get away from Google, but want to get more out of it than a simple Google.com search? Try these advanced Google search features.

Google Advanced Search

Looking for something specific? Try Google Advanced Search or use Advanced Operators in your search queries.

Google Scholar

If you are looking for articles, theses, books, abstracts, court opinions or other information provided by academic publishers, professional societies, and university, try Google Scholar Advanced Search. You can also use Advanced Operators to refine your search results even more.

Google Books

Google Advanced Book Search will help you find search queries in books. You can also find entire books published online that might be available to download via PDF (when in the public domain).

Google Search Features

Need to check stock quotes, the time in another city, sports scores, or other specific information? The Google Search Features page allows you to search for everyday essentials, local listings, health information, and much more.

What are your favorite advanced and alternative search engines? Please share them and how you use them in the comments, and happy searching!

About the Authors: Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, professional blogger, and social media enthusiast. Her blog Kikolani focuses on blog marketing for personal, professional, and business bloggers. You can follow her on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook.

Explainer videos are typically 60-90 second videos explaining how your company works and what sets you apart from the competition (your unique selling proposition, or USP). Below is an explainer video for GoHoody:

But What If You’re Strapped For Cash?

If you’re like a lot of startups or small businesses, the typical price for creating a professional explainer video (anywhere from a few thousand dollars to ten thousand and above) just isn’t in the budget. But don’t let that get you down. I’m here to give you a few insider tips on how you can create your own explainer video in a few weeks on a budget of $100 or less.

Step One: Write a Script

A well-written script is the basis for a great video, so make sure to take your time and get this part right.

Like all sales-related copywriting, you want your script to:

• Catch the viewer’s attention
• Explain what your business does in an easy-to-understand way
• Keep people engaged.

This means keeping things simple (i.e. short and concise sentences), speaking in a personal tone and always ending things with a call to action. It also means keeping the duration short. Most studies show that viewers tend to drop off after 30-60 seconds, so try to keep things to a minute or less (no more than 150 words).

I find that a simple problem-solution format is often the most effective way to format a script. Your outline might go something like this:

1. Present a common problem or pain point that your typical customer is experiencing
2. Explain how your company will fix their problem or soothe their pain
3. Close things with your company name, tagline and an invitation for people to take the next step (e.g. sign-up, call-in)

Try writing your script in Google docs, and then sharing it with a select group of people that have your business’ best interests at heart. By asking them for input and ideas, you’ll have the advantage of a focus group—something many large companies pay thousands for.

Step Two: Record the Voiceover

Once you have a winning script in hand, it’s time to record a voiceover. The key to a professional sounding voiceover is:

• A decent microphone
• A quiet, echo-free space

If you have it in the budget, it might be worth investing in a quality USB microphone, like the Yeti from Blue Microphones for $100-150. You can usually record and mix the voiceover within your video editing software (see step four for software options). However, there are also a lot of free recording tools out there, including GarageBand from Apple, or Mixcraft (14-day trial) for Windows. But keep in mind, if you decide to use an audio-only tool, you will eventually need to import the audio file in to your video editing software.

If you don’t have a great speaking voice, try recruiting a friend or family member who you think might be able to pull it off. For those who would rather just use a pro, check out Voices.com. There you can select from thousands of voice artists who should be able to provide a professional quality voiceover for a few hundred dollars.

Step Three: Create the Visuals

Before you create a list of the visual assets you’re going to need to complete the video, it helps to brainstorm a written storyboard that coincides with the script. How will each scene play out? What visuals will most effectively convey the message?

Most visual assets for professional explainer videos are developed with digital or hand-drawn illustrations, usually in a program like Adobe Illustrator. Unfortunately, most of us aren’t proficient with Illustrator or gifted artistically. Fortunately, there are a few alternatives to consider.

• Stock Photos and Video – Websites like iStockPhoto and Getty have thousands of royalty-free images and video clips to choose from. Each asset can run anywhere from $5 to $50, but you can find almost anything you need.
• Doodles and a Scanner – If you or someone you know can draw (or even create a respectable doodle for that matter), have them draw each asset, scan them on to your computer and then cut them out (try using the lasso tool in Photoshop Elements; $100). Here is a finished video from a startup who used this technique with success.
• Live Video - In some situations, using live video can be the most effective way to present yourself. If that’s the case, borrow a video camera or buy a Flip cam (currently $70 on Amazon) and start shooting. Just make sure you pay attention to the lighting, speak in a loud, clear voice and drink a few Red Bulls beforehand.
• Screen Captures – If your product or service is software or web-based (or even mobile, using the iPhone or Android simulator), you can use screen capture tools like ScreenFlow for Mac and Camtasia or Jing (free) for PC. With these tools, you can create a video that shows your service in action.

Step Four: Video Editing

Voiceover, check. Visuals, check. Now it’s time to put it all together. During the editing phase, you’re able to add life to your project by injecting motion in to your visuals, adding transitions and fine tuning the video for publishing. The pros typically use Adobe After Effects, but you have a few free or cheap options, including:

• iMovie (Mac)
• ScreenFlow (Mac)
• PowerPoint (PC or Mac)
• Camtasia (PC)

All four of these options are relatively easy to use, and most include video tutorials which can get you up and running in a day or less.

Once you feel comfortable, start by dropping in your voiceover file. With the voiceover in place, you can start adding in the visuals (it usually helps to have a nice background and a few standard things, like your logo) and timing the transitions. It may take some effort to get everything just right, but the software makes it pretty easy to add professional looking effects and create a highly polished promo.

Common Editing Techniques:

• Cutting – Chances are you’ll be doing a bit of “cutting”. This means cutting video clips down to fit with your voice track. Look for a razor, scissor or knife icon in your tool bar. Remember, if you ever cut too much off a video clip, all programs allow you to easily “undo” your cut.
• Transitions – You may want to add transitions in between your video clips or title clips. Common transitions include: dissolve and fade-to-black. Experiment with different transitions to see what you like best.
• Adding Text – If you want to add text to your clips, look for the text tool (usually an icon with a big “T”), and simply click on your video editing work-screen to add text.

Tutorials for Various Video Editing Programs:

• Screenflow
• iMovie
• Camtasia
• Powerpoint

Step Five: Add Music and SFX

Once you’re happy with how the video looks, adding music and sound effects is a breeze. Because of legal issues, you can’t just pick your favorite song out of iTunes, but fortunately there are hundreds of stock music websites out there. Make sure any stock music you purchase is royalty free and comes with the proper license for unrestricted web use. I typically find music at Premium Beat, Audio Jungle and IB Audio. Royalty free tracks range from $15-30 and you can often sort each library by style, tone, instrument and more.

Sound effects can be purchased in bulk, or downloaded one at a time. A decent free option is Freesound.org where you can download individual sound effects as needed from a library of thousands. After selecting a music track and sound effects, add them to your video file and adjust the timing to sync with the rest of the video.

• Syncing the Music – Be sure to line up your music track so that it’s in time with the rest of your video. Usually this is as simple as dragging the music track to the right point on your time lime. You can always cut your music track down in size if need be.
• Music Volume – You don’t want the music track to be blasting over your voice track. Be sure to lower the volume on your music track to be loud enough, but not too intrusive.
• Fade In / Fade Out – To make your opening and ending smooth, it’s a nice touch to ramp the music volume up in the beginning of the video, and fade the music out at the end. All video editing programs have slightly different ways of doing this, but it’s worth the five minutes of research to learn how.

Step Six: Publish Your Video

Most video editing programs will allow you to adjust your video settings before exporting, giving you the opportunity to select a file type and adjust the size and quality. If you’re planning on hosting your video on YouTube, experts suggest exporting your video in MPEG-4 format, ideally in high definition (1280×720 or higher).

Once exported, watch your video all the way through at least once to make sure nothing was lost during the encoding process. When you’re ready to show it to the world, upload it to YouTube, or a paid service like Wistia and make sure to add:

• A Good Title – Obviously your brand name should be in the title. You might want to include a value statement as well.
• Description – Describe the value and benefit of your service, keeping your target audience in mind.
• Tags – Think of tags as keywords for video hosting sites. What keywords will get people to find your video?

When the upload is complete (usually only takes a minute or two), navigate to your video and find the embed options. In Youtube, click on “Share” and then “Embed” to expose the embed code and sizing options.

After adjusting the size of the video to fit your website, simply copy and paste the embed code (in most cases you can choose to use an iframe, HTML or javascript) on to your site.

As soon as the video is live, you can start tracking the results and making improvements as needed (both YouTube and Wistia have video analytics, which allow you to track things like view count, engagement statistics and more).

That’s it! All in all, I would expect you to spend close to $100 and several weeks on a project like this. That’s not bad considering the time and expense that can go in to a professional production!

Do you have bootstrappin’ video tips or tricks of your own? Let us know about them!

Andrew Follett is the Founder at Demo Duck where he creates handcrafted explainer videos using animation, live video and screencasting. He is also launching a new video venture in the Spring called Video Brewery