MarketingNxt - Innovative Marketing Delivered

Surviving the Google Penguin Vanquish attack

Tue, 08 May 2012 05:25:00 -0400

If you have not heard of Google Penguin, then your not living in the digital world. In a nutshell, the google penguin was created to fight spammers who use crappy techniques to rank websites. In the month of april, a lot of changes took place, they tweaked their algorithm targeting sites with excessive onpage optimization (high keyword density, keyword stuffing, etc) and later targeting offsite factor.

This new change, code-named Penguin has created a huge buzz among SEOs and bloggers because a lot of legitimate websites were affected. Even quality sites were affected by Google Penguin update, and a lot of webmasters have complained about the latest algorithmic adjustment.

In order to survive this and race ahead in SEO rankings, these few tweaks and changes will help.

a. Quality content - The phrase is still true to the core even now “Content is King”. If you dont have content, then having a site / blog is of no use. You need to invest in your content as much as the website.

b. Using Anchor Text in your links - Many people who own website or have small and medium businesses, have no idea what is an anchor text and this is ok. People tend to link other websites using the URL itself. You can build links with anchors like mysite.com, www.mysite.com, MY SITE.com, visit my site. com, HTTP SITE.COM, etc.

c. dofollow and nofollow links - I have read on so many blogs and websites about this and how people question link building opportunities just because those links are nofollow and so this link is not worth buying. PageRank is not all you need. Relevancy, authority and quality are also important links

d. Using long-tail keywords as anchor text - People link to your site because of your content and that’s why you should have to use long-tails as anchor text.

Free online reputation management tools that will rock your world

Thu, 03 May 2012 03:07:18 -0400

In continuation with our post yesterday Why Online Reputation Management (ORM) is a must for your online business found here http://bit.ly/IwdEn2, and why #ORM an important activity to go with in your business and professional life. I have listed below just a few free tools which will provide you a small step towards monitoring your reputation.

Google Blog Search - A good tool when you want to filter the data you need or the blogs that you wish to track.

Monitter – A real-time Twitter monitor for your keywords. Read our review here for monitter - http://bit.ly/IqTqMl

Tweetbeep - Keep track of conversations that mention you, your products, your company, anything, with hourly updates!

Backtweets - Searches for your back links on twitter

Google Alerts - Not much of information needed here.

Naymz - This is a one-of-a-kind network that helps you manage and measure your online reputation and earn free products and services for your good name.

Social Mention - Just like Google Alerts but targetted towards the social community

Widfire Monitor - Its a awesome comparison tool and it measures your performance and tracks your Competitors

Addict-o-matic - This is addictive and i like this.

MonitorThis - search for new entries in 25 different search engines

If there are more free tools listed out there, please feel free to comment and add the same or send us an email on connect@marketingnxt.com

Why Online Reputation Management (ORM) is a must for your online business

Wed, 02 May 2012 06:20:33 -0400

In the online world, nothing is written in pencil which can be erased, it is written in ink and whatever ranted or raved online once indexed will be found and somewhere down the line via search engines will reach your mailbox or in a generic search done.

You cant erase much of what is written especially if you are in any business and you are dealing with negative publicity from either your customer or any other business rival. We have seen a lot of companies with irate customers / business rivals who are quick to jump on the social media wagon and start maligning and smear the name of the company.

When businesses start of with their marketing activities, it is very important to include Online Reputation Management or Monitoring cause if you are good at what you do then you will always have people out to get you. It is very important to know what’s buzzing around about you that influences customer decisions hugely. Be it a product as small as a mobile phone to a LED TV, customers go online and review what others have spoken about it and/or reviewed it and how many stars given and whether it is value for money (VFM).

It is the influence of others and mainly individuals that matter in influencing the end customer to buy what your selling. Word of Mouth marketing still rules and with social media playing an important role, its all about listening to whats happening and what each person is saying or complaining.

Key Points when you have an online business

1. Social media is yet another way to get to know what your customers are talking about you.
2. You must keep a track of every comment / rant/ rave that floats around online and analyze everything that is spoken about you.
3. When you send out Press Releases, review them first as that carries the most amount of information about your brand.
4. Disgrunteled employees of a company are the first faces of your business who go out and talk about the enterprise, so employees matter and the online presence is strong when your employees are happy and satisfied to go out and say good things about you.
5. Keep your eyes and ears open and stay informed about what your competitors say about you as well.

How can you go about it?

1. Setting up Google Alerts to identify the use of your brands in the news
2. Monitoring of websites that are linking to your company URL or where they are mentioned online (this should be an ongoing process).
3. Monitor information about any of your company’s product or service names
4. Use sites such as Twitter, BlogPulse, and Technorati to monitor your brand in blogs
5. Track all names including brand names and key employee names & monitor industry-related sites.

In case you want us to do this for you, drop us a line at connect@marketingnxt.com for a freemium review.

Monitter (Tool Review) - Realtime search & tracking for your keywords using Twitter

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 02:58:00 -0400

Weekly Tool Review (4 stars) - Monitter

Monitter is an awesome tool which can be used effectively to understand and monitor what keywords are being used by twitter and the best part of it is, its free to use and its very very simple. We have being using monitter for months now in understanding what #hashtags are being used and what other tags are useful and understanding the social media trend line.

When you log into Monitter, you notice just a simple black screen like below and what you can do is immediately is put in your twitter id like we did for MarketingNxt and see what people are talking about your website.

The other options that you come across on this site are

Swap Colors - This allows you to change the background of the monitter website from black to a lighter shade.

LoadTrends - This will load all the default trends that are currently being followed by Twitter, you can also add another column which you think is important and you want to watch the trends for. In my case, i have added #socialmedia but you can also put in your competitors name or anyone else whose keyword you want to track.

Load Widgets - This page takes you to the “Pro Twitter Search Widgets” provided by Monitter, i havent used them so i cant really say much on this. But going by the free version of Monitter, i am sure that these paid options are worth a try.

SEO is not Dead!! Its very much alive

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 02:02:05 -0400

Over the past couple of days, i have been watching and listening to people rant about “SEO is Dead”. To be honest, SEO is not dead and it can never die. As long as you have a website and the website is going to have content and the content needs to be found - then SEO is going to there. How in the world would you optimize your website if you are not going to have keywords for it. And if there are keywords then you need to be found.

More so than the above, these below points will ascertain the fact that SEO will be there as long as the internet will be present, no matter what new comes across.

Google needs SEO - If there was nothing to be indexed or searched then why would Google go all the way and improve their search engine ranking and provide us with the best possible results. We love organic results, as 70% of all searchers will click on an organic results and we don’t go beyond the third page in Google as we hate to scroll.

SEO is the connection between customers and prospects - If you have a business either offering a product and/or service and you want customers to turn into prospects, then you need to make your website search engine optimized and get found online and convert these customers into prospects. If your website - keyword strategy is not sound, then you loose your business, but having the right keywords will definitely get you found online.

Mobile SEO - With more & more smartphones, blackberry’s coming up and people using it daily to search for information, asMobile searchers are even less likely to go beyond the first page and 1 in 3 mobile searches, according to Google, has a local connotation. We don’t go to stores to search for solutions to our problems or for products and services we’re looking for from our phones, we go to search engines.

SEO is the important part of your marketing plan - Although there is email, PR, Social Media, Blog, PPC there is even SEO which drives most of your marketing. Its the piece of the puzzle that if you remove your entire marketing can come to a HALT!!!

If there is anything more to add, please feel free to write to me at connect@marketingnxt.com

Hacking Linkedin - Inbuilt Tools of Linkedin deciphered

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 11:29:00 -0400

All of us use Linkedin each day and by far it is one of the most important sites for business and jobs. Over 100 million professionals across the globe use LinkedIn’s network to exchange information, ideas and opportunities. It is the most important tool for professionals to highlight their profiles to employers, business companies use it to show what they are made of. Linkedin’s popularity is growing, and one of the reasons for this site to grow is the applications provided free of cost.

Linkedin is not just about connections but a carefully crafted structure on Linkedin and usage of the tools make it a very important tool for individuals and business houses as well. To access the Linkedin applications, you need to go to this link [http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=application_directory&trk=hb_side_apps] and below are some of the applications which you will come across.

1. WordPress – Having a blog on WordPress is FREE and nowadays everybody has a blog on which they showcase their talents. It can be anything ranging from a travelogue blog or technology blog or could be just about anything. This application synchs your posts automatically with your LinkedIn profile and also displays your posts, and after you have synced it with Twitter, you can do a posting here and it will reflect on your twitter profile.

2. SlideShare Presentations – Again a very good tool to showcase your presentation. It could either be a individual presentation or a company presentation, this tool allows you to display and share your presentations within the group. If you are a powerpoint guru, then this would be a right place to showcase your presentation skills. If you are a technology company, then this would be the right place to showcase your company prowess.

3. Events – This application shows what events people on your network are attending and helps you find events recommended for you based on your industry and job function. You can also view the most popular events, search for events and create new ones. This application is great for making connections prior to attending a conference, or following up.

4. Google Presentation – This is similar to Slideshare but it is here directly connected to your google account. For this, you dont need to have a new account, you can simply use your gmail login to get inside and create a presentation and then sync the same with your linkedin profile.

5. Company Buzz – This tool is of the most powerful tools to have on your side. It allows you to tap into information stream to find relevant trends and comments about any company including yours. It helps to discover relevant trends and comments about your current employer or a target employer. You can customize and modify the topics to watch, monitor trends and display charts that track activity.

6. Tweets – This application needs not much of an introduction. With this, you can display your most recent tweets on your LinkedIn profile. This tool also gives you instant access to the updates of people you are following on Twitter and the power to tweet, reply, and re-tweet — all from your LinkedIn home page.

7. Polls – An awesome data collecting utility. With this nifty tool, you can raise all your queries and get the experts to answer it for you. Polls can be highly beneficial if you are into the research and opinion section, it tells you a lot of information.

8. Projects and Teamspaces – An awesome collaboration tool especially when you have a team spread across. It can be used for any kind of activity such as software development, event planning and more. And the best part of this, is that you get an unlimited workspace.

9. Reading List by Amazon – With this you know what other people are reading and if you felt like reading any book and wanted to know other people’s opinion, this would help.

10. Portfolio Display – A creative tool used not only by creative people but anybody would benefit from this. The tool will help in presenting creative projects done for past clients or for your personal portfolio. Also can be used to showcase the creative talent to recruiters and professional contacts viewing your profile.

11. Box.net – Box is a simple, scalable and affordable solution to manage documents, media and all the content online. You can Share files as a link and also sync with the desktop.

I have left out a few other apps as i personally haven’t used them but if you have used them, please feel free to comment or drop me a note.

Mixing Search Engine Optimization & Social Media to improve your ranking

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 08:51:43 -0400

It wasn’t many years back that the entire focus of marketers and webmasters to focus entirely on search engine optimization. This has changed now and the focus now includes social media in SEO and they both continue to work together. If you are thinking “Can social media improve SEO” then the answer is YES. But this doesn’t sound so easy and it requires a lot of work and some helpful points below which will help.

Search engines have become social – In December 2010 Google and Bing both announced that they would start showing the social media influence in search engine results. Google brought in the largest algorithm makeover in history when “Caffeine” update happened. This update was created to help Google keep up with ever changing content at a much faster clip. From what I think, social media played a very important role here. If you want to get results for your online results, you need to combine the strength of these two together.

How they work? – Not all links and content within social media sites are indexed by search engines, but majority of social media networks are indexed by Google to some extent. Here below is a skeleton of what social networks get indexed in google.

LinkedIn
–Profile
–Job postings
–Answers
–Company page

Facebook
–Profile
–Page
–Groups
–Comments (recently added)

Twitter
–Tweets

YouTube
–Video
–Channel
–Groups

Flickr
–Profile
–Photos/videos
–Groups
–Applications

Slideshare
–Slidedeck titles and descriptions
–Transcribed slide text and notes

Now you have an idea as to what google tracks, it will be easy to modify your sections in social media accounts. You can use appropriate keywords and information in your posts to help it achieve higher ranking.

How people work with your posts and like your facebook updates will all help in improving your website information. Another way to optimize your social media is to build multiple accounts which you can manage and promote.

Unique Viral Marketing Techniques that can boost traffic to your website and increase sales

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 08:40:38 -0400

When you have business and your goal is to increase sales and get visitors aware of what you offer, then viral marketing is one of the ways for you and somewhere down the line you have to make use of it. Viral marketing is the technique that will spread your message across the internet and reach the audience in a short span of time. Facebook is one such example of viral marketing, hoping that you have seen the movie “The Social Network“

Viral marketing entirely depends on how well you have pushed your message across and how many people have caught on it and passing the message along. If you have no audience, then your campaign is not viral at all. Below are a few techniques which will help on the same

Giveaways and Competitions

Videos

Social Media (Tweet Button + Facebook Like)

Buzz Marketing

Press Releases and Newsletters

Article Marketing

Share Widget

E-Books

Top Free Online Tools for Web Analytics, SEO and Social Media

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 00:16:30 -0400

Being in the digital marketing world and working on a very limited budget or no budget at all, the one task that was most difficult was to find tools that were free to use and also would be as good as the ones that you are paying for.

Over the years, i came across a lot of sites which were free to begin with and then became paid. In this post I am listing some of the tools that you can start using for free. Please note that this is not the most comprehensive list of the free tools.

Web Analytics
1. Google Analytics – http://www.google.com/analytics
2. Piwik – http://www.piwik.com
3. 4Q – http://4q.iperceptions.com/
4. ClickTale (Free Link) – http://www.clicktale.com/signup?p=90&ct=t%28Free%29

Search Engine
1. Google Adwords Keyword Tool – https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
2. SEOMOZ has set of Free tools – http://www.seomoz.org/tools
3. Google Webmaster Central – http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
4. Bing Webmaster Center – http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters/
5. Google Trends – http://www.google.com/trends
6. Google Insight for Search – http://www.google.com/insights/search/#
7. Facebook Lexicon – http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/

Blog Search Tools
1. Technorati Search – http://technorati.com/search
2. Technorati Advanced – http://technorati.com/search?advanced
3. Google Blog Search – http://blogsearch.google.com/
4. IceRocket – http://www.icerocket.com/
5. BlogPulse – http://www.blogpulse.com/

Social Media
1. WildFire Monitor – http://monitor.wildfireapp.com/
2. HowSociable? – http://www.howsociable.com/
3. Addict-o-matic – http://addictomatic.com/
4. Socialmention – http://www.socialmention.com/

Competitive Analysis
Alexa – http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo
Compete – http://www.compete.com/
Quantcast – http://www.quantcast.com/
Google Trends for Websites – http://trends.google.com/websites
Google Ad Planner – http://www.google.com/adplanner

Social Bookmarking
Digg – http://digg.com/
StumbleUpon – http://www.stumbleupon.com/
Delicious – http://www.delicious.com/

Feed Aggregator
FeedBurner – http://feedburner.google.com/
Yahoo Pipes – http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/

URL Shortener
goo.gl/ – http://goo.gl/
Bit.ly – http://bit.ly/

Please feel free to suggest a few more to me in any category that i may have missed out.

Unleash the dark side of Product Marketing and get assured results

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 00:24:48 -0400

Selling products isn’t easy and as more and more products are getting launched each day, marketing these products becomes a challenge by itself. Most of the companies which launch products are either into an infancy stage and/or a start-up and they focus most of their attention to product building than product marketing. Product launch is a very challenging job and there are number of decisions to be made during every stage and each decision becomes an important part of the product launch.

As developing a product has its own phases and timelines, the product marketing stage has its own phases and here below is a quick step and what needs to be done in each phase.

Initial Phase of the product: Giving the product life and its own individual name along with that you make a competitive study and analysis of similar companies and what makes you different so that you can add your USP

Messaging and Pricing: The most crucial step of the product timeline is product positioning and charting out the features and benefits of the product. Working out the core content and catch phrases for collateral, white papers, presentations and reviews. The second phase of this is working with product pricing, introductory pricing, discounts and promotion

Product Launch: What is a product without a website and this goes hand in hand with keyword research, definition, finalization and search engine optimization. Logo design for the product and not to forget the other marketing elements for this product such as (Press Releases, Newsletters etc)

Website is up: What do you want visitors to do after they come to your website, you need to build an arsenal of tools such as (Self running product demo, Product literature, Newsletters, Case Studies, Whitepaper and much more)

Branding & Advertising: Now your website is up and you have the content, the next step is brand strategy definition along with the cost estimate and advertising plan based on the available budget

Online Community Setup: As you have a product and have people using it, the next step is to have a community software setup and define a forum and a set of questions which work like a FAQ of sorts.

Create kickass social media campaigns for customers

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 00:20:16 -0400

As we are all aware of the power of social media and how a great video, idea can go viral and make it an overnight sensation. Many businesses are now leveraging the power of social media and creating campaigns around it to promote their products and services.

Creating a campaign to make it a success involves a lot of parameters but the one that matters the most is listening to what your customers are saying and what they want more from you to be delivered. As customer is king, listening to the demands/requests/complaints of the customers is a great value and building customer centric campaigns are what matters the most. Applying social media listening and monitoring to your advertising campaigns will help you determine your campaign effectiveness.

Going PPC with specific keywords – How many campaigns have been written / modified and tweaked based on the keywords provided. The best way to have an effective PPC campaign is to catch the key phrases used in the campaigns and monitor the web for it. What the audience is saying about your product / service and your campaign. Does the campaign come across as positive and what sentiments are around it?

Unique URL – Unique URL’s have always been there for a long time and now marketers have taken to it big time as the benefits have been realised by them. Going with a unique URL helps in the following ways

1. Increase traffic to your website
2. It’s often the easiest way for your audience to respond to ads,sincethey’re online anyway
3. Gives more visibility to your brand URL
4. Provides a mechanism to track response to ads

Using a URL shortener (bit.ly) or tracking it in google analytics is the best way to know its effectiveness.

User Content – Getting your audience to take part in your campaign is the most valuable way to get content on your site and it’s all about listening and creating engagement with your customers and getting good content on the website. Recent and past examples of social media have been the Hero campaign which is all about getting people to record their voice and sing for the hero ad and upload it on their website and if selected they get to feature in an AD. The earlier example was Maggie noodles who used a similar but innovative campaign to get consumers talk about their brand and spread the word.

2012 is all about listening to your customers and the main question is are you?

Optimize your trade shows and get your highest leads & ROI – A complete list on Trade Show Marketing

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 04:48:10 -0400

In the 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, 1,745 marketing organizations revealed that trade shows took most of their budget allocation, infact it was a over 21%. Even with that number, trade shows rank fourth in the most effective ways of marketing.

Having a marketing strategy in place for each of your trade shows makes it easier to sell your products and services and convince potential customers to visit your company. From my knowledge and the work that i have done in trade show marketing, the process for the same starts way back.

Initial Research and Development (R & D) – This is the very first step and i would like to call it R & D is finding the right mix of audience for your product and/or service. When you plan to enter any trade show, you need to make sure that this event is suitable for your offerings.

But much before this, there is another step which is researching for these events through the net, social media, SEO and even going ahead and asking your vendors / customers in countries that you have never entered an event. Once you have found all this information, you keep this information in an excel file and then you start contacting the concerned people to avail more information about the event.

Don’t feel shy in asking them any questions, after all its your budget at stake and you need to be sure about this. You can always check with them on the brochure, previous years feedback and visitor turnout and visitor profile etc. Once this is done and you have received that information, you move to the next level.

Pre-Trade Show Marketing – Now that you have got the list of the events you are going to, the next step is getting this news on your company website events page and social media channels and go with other online strategies to spread the word across.

On the company website home page, you can add a small box showcasing the list of events and linking it with your home page, on the events page you can add a small script code in case visitors to your website want to setup a meeting with you, they can do so by adding their information and contact details.

You can publicize this page on your social media channels and also inform your vendors to do the same for you, depending on the relation you share with them. SEO to your events page is a must. Offline marketing such as mail out invites and digital collateral would be a good idea.

Trade Show Marketing during the event – This is one platform where your company needs to outshine itself and prove its mettle. It is very important to be ready with all the marketing collateral, documents such as FAQ, product collateral, AV – Self running demo should be all setup first hand.

You really don’t get any time once the show starts. Having a giveaway or a raffle is a great way to bring in leads to your booth also when you are collecting information from the visitor, you need to collect their business cards and in case you are carrying a card scanner, make sure it works well.

Discount coupons on the next purchase are also a good way to promote your offerings. If you event has free Wifi, don’t feel shy to ask the visitors and your customers who come to meet you out there to tweet about your booth, it’s a good marketing technique but keep a watch on the #Hashtags as well.

Post Trade Show – Once this is done, this is again where your work starts and you have many more things to do, a follow-up is very important. You need to use all the contact information, notes, business cards you collected during this event. Sending out ‘thank you’ emails are important to demonstrate that you appreciate the time each lead spent attending your event.

You can also send small promotional items, coupons, or additional contests at this time as well. These can go to those who attended the event as well as to those who couldn’t make it. Follow up is also a key element in this.

Improve Lead Generation through Opt-In registration.

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 22:18:49 -0400

For any business to work and grow, it is very important to have visitors which can be divided into 3 kinds (1. causal visitors / surfers, interested visitors & the ones who are going to buy from you). What we are more interested is in the 3rd kind of visitors and we need to understand where they are coming from? For any marketer, it has always been important to improve the quality of the leads that are being provided to the sales team.

It so happens that we come across websites where we just put in basic information such as name, email id etc but we dont know anything about the customer and what would be the next step to pitch to the customer, assuming he is a interested customer and has knowledge about what you are selling, then it doesnt make sense to send him an email on the product but here asking him to join a webinar would make more sense.

To improve lead generation through opt-in registration, i will mention a few ways which will help

1. Add an Industry Expertise drop down box and based on your line of business populate the categories in here.
2. For a quick sale, add the options of asking the visitor if they are interested in being contacted by a sales person.
3. Understand the timeline in which the visitor would like to purchase the product.
4. Add a comments box in which the visitor can write if they choose to as to why they have visited your website
5. Also have options to find out how they found your website (Search Engines, Word of Mouth) etc.

These are the few i can remember off hand, if there are more, please feel free to add them in the comments section and i would love to learn more.

Top 10 Best Practice Tips For Email Marketing

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 09:15:04 -0400

Email Marketing is a more personalized and targeted approach to reach your target audience in a better and more focused way. The cost-per-lead in email marketing is much lesser compared to the direct offline marketing. Here below are the top 10 best practices for email marketing

1. How To Measure Success

Outline what your key performance indicators (KPIs) are going to be and bench mark each campaign against them. The KPIs could include:

    * Open rate
    * Click-through rate
    * Click to open rate (number of unique clicks/number of unique opens)
    * Bounce rate
    * Delivery rate (emails sent, measured against bounces)
    * Unsubscribe rate
    * Referral rate (‘send-to-a-friend’)

2. Personalize Where Possible

Improve response rates by personalizing the email content. The more you know about your customers such as their topics of interest, their industry or company size the easier this will be.

3. Use Clear Calls To Action

Ensure the content is clear, consistent and communicates a clear call to action.

4. Experiment With Subject Lines

Keep subject lines short and to the point and try to refrain from using words which will be 'junked’ by spam filters. A/B test alternatives to find out what most appeals to your audiences.

5. Test With All Email Clients

Test your email content with all the top email clients and providers (Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL etc) to ensure it can be seen by the majority of users.

6. Test To Improve Performance

Continuous A/B testing of templates, subject lines, topics and sending day & times can help to optimise open and conversion rates.

7. Images & Alt Tags

Avoid putting text within an image. Most email clients don’t automatically download images, therefore image content is not viewable on first sight. If you have to use text within images, ensure you use an ‘Alt’ tag reiterating the text within the graphic.

8. Avoid Spamming

Try not to send too many emails to your audience unless you know they want to receive them. If you make the mistake of sending daily / weekly emails to your database you may find out that consumers quickly opt out.

9. Keep It Relevant

Consumers like to receive messages that are relevant to them. Don’t try and sell them something they did not sign up for.

10. Promote Key Content At The Top

Make sure you communicate key messages at the top of your email content. Many email clients don’t automatically display all email content therefore the top content needs to be motivating enough to encourage consumers to scroll down. Also a very important point to remember is not to have images in the front or else your message would be hidden.

Using Social Media Marketing for Business

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 03:15:00 -0400

Social media marketing or Social networking is about one thing: connections. You can join every social network online, but unless you can provide some value, some reason for people to want to connect with you, you stand no chance of successfully using social networking to make any progress from a business view point.

Here are a few ways that you help to expand the number of people connecting with you on social networks, how you can use social networks to save money and how you can use them to generate new leads /click to call action.

Facebook

Everybody / anybody you know in business already has a Facebook account. If you are already familiar with Facebook you understand the power Facebook has to create and maintain connections. If you are already using Facebook in your personal life to create and maintain connections and relationships there is no reason you shouldn’t be doing the same for your business.

Facebook allows you to create a business page for free. This is an enormous benefit to your business for several reasons.

- Creating this powerful link to your website will instantly give your search rankings a slight boost.
- It also creates another avenue for your website to be found. People can also become fans of your page.
- This allows you to send updates to all of your fans.

Wouldn’t it beneficial for your company if you could instantly and effortlessly send an update to hundreds or even thousands of potential customers without spending a single dollar. Each person that becomes a fan of your website will have a little link back to your page on their profile.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social networking site that is centered around business. LinkedIn has become THE hub for online networking in the more traditional sense – that is business networking. LinkedIn is a bit more ‘professional’ than your more traditional social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook. All in all, LinkedIn is a very different environment than the other social networking sites.

That means that you will need to take advantage of it in a different manner. First off, create your own personal profile on LinkedIn. Connect with all of your business acquaintances that you can find. Connect with old classmates, professors, and co-workers. Build a network. LinkedIn allows you to join 50 groups, so join 50 groups. These will preferably be groups that have to do with your industry. If you are into Online Marketing, join as many online marketing groups as you can. Use the discussion boards, engage in conversation and try to build connections that have legitimate business value. Answer questions. LinkedIn has a questions and answers section where users can ask people questions about a given topic. Try to answer as many questions as possible about your business topic.

If you are a social media / SEO expert try to answer as many questions as possible. The person that asks the question can then tag one of the answers they receive as the “Best Answer”. If enough of your answers are tagged as being good, or best answers your profile will reflect that you are en expert in that category. If you are open to connecting with just about anyone one LinkedIn (a great way to build new connections).

Considering adding the term LION after your name. This stands for LinkedIn Open Networker. This means you are willing to connect with anyone that asks to connect with you. Be aware you will probably get some spam, and your email address will be out there with this method. I recommend setting up a dedicated email address, separate from your business account to use strictly for LinkedIn.

Twitter

Twitter – is here to stay and grow. Some people get it, some don’t. That being said it could be beneficial to have your business on Twitter. Just launch a new product line? Tweet it. Just completed a big project? Tweet it. Hire a new employee? Tweet it. Moved your business location? Tweet it. Twitter allows you to quickly and easily update those that care about your business on the internal goings on of your company. Keeping your business on the mind’s of your customers is always a good thing.

Twitter also allows you to quickly and easily post updates from your phone using SMS text messages. This allows you to keep your readers in the know as new events unfold.

YouTube

More and more of our customers are asking us to integrate video into their site and propose a solution for doing so. Our solution is almost always the same – YouTube. Why YouTube? WHY NOT YouTube!?! Why reinvent the wheel to add video to your site? Custom flash players can be expensive and cumbersome. The bandwidth for hosting video can be expensive and slow. Use YouTube to host any and every video related to your company that’s on the net. Why? I’ll tell you why.

YouTube allows you to create your own video channel and upload your videos for FREE (that’s a pretty good price). You don’t have to worry about your website crashing due to a huge bandwidth spike because one of your company’s informational videos suddenly became the most popular video of the week. YouTube gives your customers another way to find you.

Social Bookmarking Sites (Digg, Del.icio.us, Stumble Upon, Reddit, etc)

If you are not submitting your website, your blog articles, and your social networking pages to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Del.icio.us, Stumble Upon, etc, you are missing out on a ton of potential traffic. Many people surf the web almost exclusively from these social bookmarking sites. If the site isn’t there, they aren’t visiting it. Like some of the social networks mentioned above, you can gain a nice little SEO high by listing your articles here.

These sites have a much higher page rank than your site (trust me, whatever yours is, theres is higher). Incorporate links on your website and blog so your readers can quickly, easily, and effortlessly add your pages to these sites, which will in turn increase your traffic even more.

Niche Social Networking Sites, Forums, Message Boards etc.

Smaller, niche social networks can be very useful for building valuable traffic and creating new relationships depending on what your field is. Do a little research to find out where and why people from your field hang out online.

Make your business marketing work for you in 2012

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 02:03:43 -0400

All businesses need to survive and do better year after year, it’s not an easy task and sometimes we put all our eggs into one basket and it may work or it might just fail for us. Optimizing your B2B marketing takes a lot of time and effort and these points below will help get an idea as to what you can do make B2B marketing work for you in 2012

1. SEO is not Internet Marketing – A lot of people confuse till date about SEO being internet marketing, and this is not true as SEO is just one part of internet marketing, in 2012 you need to pay more attention to SEO and give it a twist. Keep your eyes more focused on new trends and Google updates.

2. Content is King – A firm believer in this and content always delivers, the key element to remember is to deliver the right content and at the right time definitely to the right channel and medium. You can only make and deliver good content is when you listen to what your consumers are talking about you and what is it that they desire.

3. Build Strong Partnerships – If you want to succeed then you need to build a partnership and move along with it. Within the internet marketing space, you need to leverage a lot of mediums such as PR, Social Media and many more strategies with your partner, this way you can give your business a huge magnitude.

4. Integrate Social Media with everything – You need to connect your social media activities with all your activities, be in online sales or a download brochure or any webinar. You need to use this channel effectively and provide your audience with a gamut of social media parameters.

5. Measure anything & everything – With so many free tools available for SMB online such as Google analytics, Hoot suite and many more, measuring all the efforts put in the marketing mix is very easy. By adding goals to your targets and measuring each click and mouse movement, it gives you an idea as to how everything works around you.

6. Video Rocks – The dark horse that has turned out a money spinner from time to time, not only does it provide most valuable to your customers but it the most preferred format for content delivery. It could range anywhere from a How To video, informational videos, testimonial videos. You can also optimize the content for videos to be found easily in search engines.

7. Be customer centric – How many times have you heard “Customer is King”, you need to start paying more attention to the customers and understand their concerns / suggestions and grievances. Once you have placed yourself in the customer shoes, it’s easy to walk that line and give them what they need. You can send out feedback emails and check on your customer relationship from time to time.

8. Establish trust among peers / customers – If you want people to believe you and your product and/or service that you are selling, then you need to establish your trust and your worthiness with your consumers. If you are into consultancy and/or product company, it’s important for the consumer to know that you know the subject you preach and sell. By having blogs and writing articles could be one good way to begin.

9. Go Mobile – If you’re not mobile and don’t have in your B2B strategy, then your business model wont be the same. With analytics reports showing more people visiting your site from iPad and Blackberry and Android, it’s important for your business to be easily searchable and readable.

10. Engage your visitors / audience – Very few companies believe in this but this according to me is this is one of the most needed things to do. By talking to your audience, knowing what they feel about you and/or product and asking them questions helps in taking your business to a new high.

Why Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not Internet Marketing

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 01:50:00 -0400

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has always been an important tool of your marketing arsenal. Without Search Engine Optimization (SEO), your organic traffic would not grow and not show up in your analytics reports as well. The main questions that i have been asked over many years have been - “How can we increase our page rank” or “How can i get my website in the Top 10 ranking of google”.

I have come up with a few tips and tricks below which will help to answer your questions.

1. Title Tag
2. Meta Tags
3. Correct usage of Heading Tags
4. Alt Attributes on Images
5. Title Attributes on Links
6. XML Sitemap
7. content is King
8. Links
9. Social Media

Making Inbound (Integrated) marketing work for you

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 00:58:48 -0400

Inbound marketing is all about knowing what the customer wants and how you as a business want to pitch the product / service to them. The Internet has allowed everyone to become a publisher in some form or the other. Social networking sites and blogs let consumers talk/post/tweet about whatever they want, online communities have come up for every possible niche and companies no longer have sole control over their brand, it’s all a networked world where everyone is just one connection away from the other.

Inbound vs. Outbound marketing

Outbound marketing, also referred to as “traditional marketing” although still quite effective from time to time, targets the mass customers using print ads, television ads, cold calls, direct mail, email campaigns or even workshops and events. Inbound marketing as mentioned above is a way of getting the customers to you and is basically termed as “new marketing” in response to the recent change in consumer behavior, where consumers source for information online, read blogs posts and reviews etc.

They are more in control with what information they want and how they want to receive it. Rather than disturbing people to get their attention with the traditional ways of outbound marketing, inbound marketing works on the logic that visitors find and come to you. In outbound marketing, the company is in control. While it’s totally the opposite for inbound marketing as the customer is in control.

3 essential elements of inbound marketing

1. Content (Blogs, videos, white papers, case studies)

2. SEO (Search Engine Optimization, keyword analysis)

3. Social media (Linked In, Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

1. Content - It is always said that Content is king and this holds true to this day that content rules. Reliable and quality content is the main fuel for inbound marketing, having good content on your website is not always for selling or marketing, it’s more for educating and teaching.

One of the key elements of having good content on your website is to make yourself or your company as an industry expert and get the consumers trust in you and make your words felt across the network. Content can be anything; website content, articles, whitepapers, videos, blog posts and more. The more useful and engaging the content, the more beneficial it is for your consumers and for your business.

2. Search engine optimization (SEO)- SEO is all about tweaking your website to make it more search engine friendly and easier to get found. The better your site is optimized for specific keywords, the better you will rank for those searches and the more targeted traffic will be delivered to your site.

SEO helps position your site in front of the eyes of people who are already searching for your company, product, services and more.

3. Social Media - Social media are the new effective channels for inbound marketing. Social networking allows you to reach out to your consumers in a very one-to-one way. Social networking communities are a great place to harness brand loyalty and create brand ambassadors.

If a consumer “Likes” your brand on Facebook or follows you on Twitter, they are inviting you into their online world. Having that kind of permission to share content and messages with your consumer is a very powerful tool to have on your side.

In all fairness, inbound or integrated marketing connects to the various marketing methods and channels to establish an online presence. Feel free to write to connect@marketingnxt.com or even add in your comments to this blog post and let me know your thoughts. You can also visit our website http://www.marketingnxt.com

Find New Customers & use Twitter search to increase followers

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 04:10:00 -0400

Twitter is one of the most widely used platforms for social interaction, be it for just social updates or acquiring new customers or just being yourself online and get your life on the web one tweet at a time. A lot of companies have begun using twitter in a variety of ways and these include companies like Comcast, Dell and many more. The main idea of this post is to give small and medium business (SMB) and startups and anybody who wants to make a difference in the twitter verse.

Finding new Customers on Twitter

Being on twitter and not being a part of the conversation is like coffee without sugar, you are missing out on a lot of business opportunities and also a lot of potential customers, I’m just not saying this but it’s true.

So if you are in the business of creating software’s or android apps or just want to be of any help, tweeting and providing a solution will not only win you a client but a long time customer. Product companies can also benefit from the twitter world by knowing the latest trend and providing the same. Even if they don’t have purchase anything from you now but as long as they are following you, there is always hope for some business.

How to Use Twitter to get more followers

1. You need to go to twitter search or just use this link - http://search.twitter.com and enter the words that relate to your business. If you are into android apps then use that or else if you are helpdesk solutions or virtual office, you can enter that word and click on search.

2. Check which questions are most relevant to you and the ones that you can answer? If you feel that the questions cannot be answered now, just get into a conversation with them and build your community

3. The main things here is to find your niche and provide updates accordingly. It is not a hard and fast rule to send updates to all as then you would be spamming them.

The most important aspect here is to build a relationship and trust among the twitter universe. Feel free to add more on this and also looking forward to your comments, write to us at connect@marketingnxt.com or visit http://www.marketingnxt.com