The Appeal of a Social Only Effort

There is a lot of appeal to social only strategies, especially for small businesses.  Social only strategies tend to:

• Tailor to smaller budgets
• Require less effort to gain momentum
• Require fewer resources
• Utilize existing social media understanding of staff, or office members

It’s easy to understand why so many businesses are drawn to social media.  They hear all the buzz around social media, they see big corporations using social media in major ad campaigns and it leads them to believe that social is where its at.  And in a lot of ways, they’re right.

Social media is a great way for brands big or small to increase visibility and create engagement among existing customers, but in comparison to SEO, social media has a hard time driving leads and delivering high ROI from a dollars and cents perspective. People use social media to socialize, but they use search to find solutions to their needs.

As a recent Search Engine Watch article pointed out, recent studies from both Adobe and Conductor find that when it comes to online queries, most consumers are still turning to their favorite search engines before their favorite social network.

Why You Need More Than Just Social Media

You need more than just a social media strategy, just like you need more than just an SEO strategy, or just a paid search strategy.  At the end of the day digital marketing delivers numerous channels for businesses to pull from.  And with anything, its never a good idea to put all of your eggs in one basket.

It Doesn’t Lend Itself to Discovery

Unless you’re running paid advertising on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and the like, chances are you aren’t going to generate a lot of new discoveries for your brand or your business.  SEO is great as a foundational element for building your online presence.  It helps people who aren’t familiar with your brand find you and discover what you or your business has to offer.

SEO Can Strengthen Social Engagement

When you think of the core of SEO you think of on page factors such as Titles, Descriptions, and the like.  Optimizing your website for discovery lends itself nicely to social media in that when people share your content on sites like Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ they won’t just see words like “Home” or “Products” in the title of the links shared from your site.  Instead they will be keyword rich titles and descriptions optimized for encouraging people to click through to your website and describing exactly what it is the page is about.

Social Can Increase SEO Visibility

When you look at the adoption of social results in both Bing and Google, you recognize there is a huge opportunity for businesses not only to use SEO to show up in the search results, but to take it a step further by having relevant content that has also been shared or liked by social media users who influence the person searching.

Search and Social Are Stronger Together

There’s no question that social media has become valuable tool, but as it grows in popularity and is analyzed by the search engines and how they rank content it will only increase in its value.  However the value will only be there if you have a strong foundation within your website to fuel it.  Without the proper SEO foundations in place, there is no way to guarantee your content is going to show up in front of the right audience.

I would never recommend a solely social strategy to a client, just as I would never recommend a SEO only strategy to a client.  Fueling your business from a single channel is dangerous no matter what that channel is.  If Facebook, Twitter, or any of the other social channels you’re using shut down tomorrow where would you earn your business online?

The post Why Social Can’t Be Your Only Online Strategy appeared first on Mike Wilton's Internet Marketing Blog.

This past weekend my family and I headed out to the Louis Rubidoux Nature Center for the annual butterfly festival.  We’ve been to the nature center in the past, but its been about a year and so our directions were fuzzy at best.  So we did what most people do and turned to the center’s website for some direction.

When we reached the site they had both an address, and what was supposed to be directions.  Unfortunately the directions widget on the site wasn’t working so we had to rely solely on the address provided and Google Maps on our phones.

We plugged the address in and when we “arrived” at our location we were actually in the middle of a nearby residential neighborhood.  Needless to say, Google Maps didn’t get it right.

The Benefits of Providing General Directions On Your Website

Getting us to where we needed to be proved to be a bit difficult.  Google struggled to find the address and it was really hard to navigate from satellite imagery on our phones. Ultimately I had to try and remember roughly where the Nature Center was located in order to get us there.

There’s benefits to including general directions to your location within your website.  First, it helps lost visitors like my family and I find your location in the event our means of navigation fail us.  Additionally it can generate some additional localized content for your website.

By including directions from different regions in the area you can help to build local content around other areas you may be interested in targeting, as Doug Antkowiak of Portent suggested in his Local Business SEO Q & A late last year.

A great example of this is the directions page from a seasonal favorite of mine, Riley’s Farm.  While the site itself is a bit dated, and they lack the latest mapping technology to help you find your way, they do an awesome job at explaining how to get to their location from nearly anywhere here in Southern California.

As you can see in the image from the site, Riley’s Farm does a stellar job calling out major cities in the surrounding areas and calls out specific landmarks and street names in its directions.  This helps build additional local relevance by referencing locations located in and around the location.

Takeaways

1. If you use a Google Map on your website for the purpose of directions, make sure the widget works.
2. If its working, make sure that it is giving people accurate directions to your location
3. In addition to giving people a means of getting directions from Google on your site consider adding additional written directions to help grow local content and help visitors in the event their means of navigation fails them.

The post Why Giving Some Direction Might Help Your Local SEO and Your Customers appeared first on Mike Wilton's Internet Marketing Blog.

Top Tweets and Stories Daily Digest

When Twitter acquired Summify it integrated the Summify content aggregation feature into its service in the form of Top Tweet and Story digests.  If you follow your peers and industry leaders on Twitter these digests can be a great resource of some of the most popular content being shared and talked about by the people you follow.  In Twitter’s notification settings you can choose to receive digests daily or weekly.  The daily digest will be emailed to you on a daily basis and include about eight pieces of content that were the most popular among the people you follow.

The best part is that the digest not only showcases some of the hot content among those you follow, but it allows you to reply, retweet, or favorite directly from the email.  You can also click to view individual related tweets on Twitter.  This is a great resource for not only catching up on popular content, but for engaging the people you follow.

Feedera

Feedera is another form of Twitter digest that you can setup to email you daily.  But what sets Feedera apart is that the digest is divided into the categories photos, articles, videos, and music.  This provides a unique opportunity to curate and be inspired by different types of media being shared by the people you follow on twitter.

Feedera also comes with a lot of customization options including the size of digest (you can receive up to 100 items in your email), the order in which the content displays, and the total number of each content type you want to see in your digest.  As an added bonus it also allows you to ignore content from certain domains or users so that it doesn’t show up in your digest.  I’ve used Feedera for some time now and the only frustration I have with it is that the email format is inferior to some of the other services I use or have used.  Oftentimes it will also struggle with generating the link to the content and will just show the title and description of the homepage of the site and link to it, which forces you to have to click through to the actual status to see what was shared.

News.me

News.me is one of the newer tools in my arsenal, but so far I have been pleased with it.  The nice thing about News.me is that it not only captures content from Twitter, but also Facebook.  The email format is very clean and easy to skim and you can choose to receive five, ten, or fifteen items per email.

An added benefit of News.me is that if you’re like me and favorite tweets that you want to revisit later there is a setting that can include tweets you favorite in your daily digest.  The only downside I have found to News.me at this point is that the digest is the only one I have seen so far that tends to provide overlapping content found in other digests.

Plinky

Mosty of the tools I have mentioned up until this point have been good for both inspiration and curation, but Plinky is one tool that is all about the inspiration.  With the tagline, “Because sometimes you need a push,” Plinky was designed to get people talking.  Each day it provides a new prompt such as question, or a challenge and gives you the opportunity to answer.

When I started using Plinky in 2009 I was answering questions like, “Name three songs you’d put on a road trip mix tape,” or “When did you realize you were an adult?”  The prompts were less though provoking and most of the content I created on the site or saw friends create was mindless dribble at best.  Thankfully over the last few years the site has matured a bit and with it so have the prompts.  The questions these days are more thought provoking and force users to really put some thought into their answers.

Plinky is designed to have you visit the site and share your answer to the days prompts directly from your Plinky profile.  You can then share your response on Facebook or Twitter.  If you’re looking for social engagement this may be a great opportunity, but you can take Plinky’s prompts a step further and use them as inspiration for blog posts, social updates, and the like.  Take the prompt from Plinky and turn the answer into a blog post on your own site.  You could leave it at that, or you could even visit Plinky and leave a brief response with a link back to your post.

So there you have it.  A little inspiration automation that will deliver some content love to your inbox daily.  If you struggle with coming up with content for your blog or social presence then hopefully these digests will give you some opportunities to generate some new content that will resonate with your audience without having to rack your brain too hard.

If you’re an inbox zero kind of person and don’t want to add to your daily email load you may be able to create a similar strategy using apps like Flipboard, Zite, or Google Currents.  These would create feeds or digests of content from users, topics, or resources you choose but in the form of an app.  I tried this for a bit, but much like Google Reader I found myself getting overwhelm with having too much content to consume on a daily basis.

The post Four Automated Sources for Content Curation and Inspiration appeared first on Mike Wilton's Internet Marketing Blog.

This week, we detected unusual access patterns that led to us identifying unauthorized access attempts to Twitter user data. We discovered one live attack and were able to shut it down in process moments later. However, our investigation has thus far indicated that the attackers may have had access to limited user information – usernames, email addresses, session tokens and encrypted/saltedversions of passwords – for approximately 250,000 users.

As a precautionary security measure, we have reset passwords and revoked session tokens for these accounts. If your account was one of them, you will have recently received (or will shortly) an email from us at the address associated with your Twitter account notifying you that you will need to create a new password. Your old password will not work when you try to log in to Twitter.

Twitter believes the attack was carried out by very savvy individuals and does not believe it to be an isolated incident.  While the company has not completed its investigation it announced the attack because of its severity and the belief that other websites may also be impacted.

If you were impacted Twitter suggests creating a strong password that isn’t utilized across multiple accounts.  The password should be at least 10 characters, with a mixture of upper- and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols.

The story is still developing, but users should be on the look out for the mentioned emails and as a safety precaution update their passwords.

The post Twitter Hacked: Password Resets Being Sent To Impacted Users appeared first on Mike Wilton's Internet Marketing Blog.

If you’ve followed my personal blog at all then you know that I’m a father of twins that were preterm and spent the first month of their life in the NICU at UCI Medical Center.

For nearly a month my wife and I practically lived in that hospital, and my son Aiden and daughter Cambria did.  Watching your child through glass hooked up to heart monitors, breathing monitors, and feeding tubes is one of the hardest things I think any parent could endure.  But while those first months were difficult for us, I recognize that we were far more fortunate than some parents of preterm babies.  It’s because of this that my wife and I have vowed to do our part to help prevent other babies and their parents from going through it.

The March of Dimes March for Babies is a walk is designed to help support research and programs that help moms have full-term pregnancies and babies begin healthy lives. And it’s used to bring comfort and information to families with a baby in newborn intensive care.

You can help support the fight (see where the money goes) against preterm pregnancy – and other infant defects a few ways…

Make a donation

My donation page for the Inland Empire March for Babies is here (International donations accepted) and there is no minimum contribution limit.   Every dollar helps and donations made to the walk are tax deductible.

Walk with us

If you live in the Inland Empire, consider walking with us.  My wife and children will be walking with me and I encourage other locals who would like to as well.  It’s a six mile course that is routed through historic neighborhoods in Riverside.  Best of all you get a free lunch at the end.  You can sign up via the Aiden & Cambria’s Crew page if you’d like to join us.

Support a walk in your hometown

 The March for Babies is not limited to the Inland Empire, there are walks in all fifty states of the union.  If you’re not local and can’t contribute financially consider donating your time to a walk in your neck of the woods.  Find your local March for Babies and get involved!

Thank you to all of those who have supported our efforts in the past.  Let’s help stop premature births and the heartache they bring so many families!

The post Please Support Me in the March of Dimes March for Babies appeared first on Mike Wilton's Internet Marketing Blog.

If you’re a regular reader of the blog or you follow me on the slew of social networks I keep up on, you know I do a lot of writing on all things internet marketing.  And while it may seem as if my writing here is limited, I can assure you I’m constantly writing as a regular contributor to the Plastic Surgery Studios blog, Search News Central, and Search Engine People.  And because my content can be found at all corners of the web I figured I would do my part to do a year end roundup to showcase some of the top pieces from 2012 that you may have missed.

The Top 10 Plastic Surgery Social Media Influencers According To Klout: My first intentional piece of ego bait worked like a charm and drew a ton of attention from not only the doctors mentioned, but a number of their peers as well.  A year old now and the piece surprisingly still earns a ton of traffic depsite the fact many people no longer give much clout to Klout.

6 Unique & Inspiring Ways To Use Pinterest In the Field of Healthcare:  Let’s face it, Pinterest has been a force to be reckoned with in 2012.  With huge growth, and massive adoption from businesses large and small it has quickly risen to social network stardom, but as with anything many businesses were uncertain what to do once they staked their claim on the network.  In this piece I explored how early adopters in the medical community were effectively utilizing Pinterest to build community and raise awareness about their business.

How To Convert Your Pinterest User Account to a Business Account:  One of the bigger changes to Pinterest this year, Pinterest finally started to show some love for business users and surprisingly made the transition pretty seamless.  That said, I did my part to explain in step-by-step instructions how users can convert their user profiles into business accounts quickly and easily.

Digging Up Local SEO Keyword Gold with the Google Places Dashboard and Analytics:  There are a slew of keyword research tools on the market that all do a pretty solid job of helping you understand what users are looking for on a large scale, but if you want to drill it down locally you usually wind up empty handed. In this post I explored how you can easily identify local keyword opportunities from your Google Places and Analytics dashboards.

Ian Lurie: A Day in the Life:  This post surprisingly didn’t do as well as I had hoped, which leads me to believe that maybe I am the only person in the internet marketing realm that finds SEO’s wittiest CEO that amusing.  Whether you are familiar with the Portent CEO or not, the post is worth the read for insight on time management and balancing work and life.

5 Reasons Your Infographic Sucks:  While many believe that infographics have seen their 15 minutes of fame and are on their way out, I believe good infographics still have a place on the web.  With that said, I mapped out five things to avoid when creating your next infographic.

Stop Using Pinterest for SEO and Start Optimizing for Pinterest Search:  Earlier this year everyone was talking about the SEO benefits of Pinterest.  As usual people wanted to use and abuse the system to help their site rank for some holy grail money term that meant the world to them.  In this post I explain why the bigger picture is optimizing for Pinterest itself and the Pinterest search experience.

Life of a Liveblogging Rock Star: An Interview with Virginia Nussey:  If you’re not familiar with the name Virginia Nussey, then you are making me feel old in SEO years.  Virginia has been a member of the Bruce Clay Inc family for a number of years and is regularly liveblogging the top industry conferences. In my interview Virginia talks to me about what conferences are like now compared to the past, her advice on going solo as a writer, and what its like liveblogging so many conferences each year.

The Ugly State of Google SERPs: Rich Snippet Abuse: This was a very controversial piece, mostly because it was attacking the grey areas of Google’s guidelines on using semantic markup and how easily they can be manipulated.  The post itself got a number of comments, as did my follow up post, and a forum discussion which outed the website in question that I had originally blurred out.  In the end, its still a grey area since there are no guidelines spelled out against it, though I still believe my stance on the matter is built upon pretty strong inference.

Why Customer Service Should Be At the Core of Every Social Media Strategy:  My first guest post at the Bruce Clay Inc blog explores why businesses should be factoring in customer service as a core goal of any social media effort.  These days customers expect you there and if all you’re doing is using it as a broadcasting channel it’s bound to come back and bite you.

Local Search Optimization, Google+ Local, and the Future of Local Search: AAFPRS Fall Meeting 2012 Presentation:  My first major speaking engagement tackled one of my favorite topics; local search.  In September I took a trip to Washington DC to discuss the ever changing local search climate with members of the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.  The talk was well received and this post was a recap of my presentation along with slides.

Three Steps To Social Media Lead Generation:  Also listed in Ruud Hein’s curated knowledge post, this article dives into generating leads from social media without using it simply as a broadcast channel.  As we move forward marketing is going to become less and less about interruption and more about being genuinely helpful and a part of people’s lives.  This post is a primer for getting you into that mindset.  As Avinash Kaushik put it during his keynote at SES San Francisco this year, answer the question “How are you improving my life?”

2012 has been a journey, but 2013 is sure to be full of just as many surprises.  I appreciate all of you taking the time to read my ramblings both here and through various social channels and I look forward to providing you with new and exciting content in the year to come.  If there are any topics you’d like to see me cover specifically, feel free to drop me a note in the comments below!

The post The Best of 2012: My Top 12 Posts from Around the Web appeared first on Mike Wilton's Internet Marketing Blog.

I’ve been a Raven Tools user for almost as long as I have been in the field of internet marketing.  I still remember being introduced to Raven Tools via a phone demo with Jon Henshaw and I remember receiving my first Raven Tools t-shirt for simply tweeting at Jon Henshaw that I wanted one.  Needless to say Raven Tools and I have some history.

But there’s a reason Raven Tools and I have a history.  It’s not because I own a different Raven t-shirt for every day of the week, or the fact that Taylor Pratt was kind enough to interview me on the Raven Tools blog a couple years ago, or the fact I know I’ll always have a place to hang during downtime at a conference.  We have a history because of the people and the service behind the toolset.  From day one, Raven has been made up of a group of people who actually care about their customers and their industry.  Never have I gone ignored when I had a problem or suggestion for Raven Tools.  They have always supported me, and I have always supported them both in praise and in recommendations.

On Friday Raven announced the removal of their SERP tracker tool and unfortunately they were met with pretty harsh backlash.  Sadly it seemed to bring out the worst in people, as though Raven Tools was intentionally trying to make the lives of SEO’s more difficult  Strangely, even in 2012 we still have a ton of SEO’s living and dying by ranking reports alone.

I have so much rage for @raventools for ditching their SERP tracker and hurting my business. What a horrible business decision.

— Stephanie Ann.(@scoccaro) December 10, 2012

This was clear not only from the backlash, but also from the number of rank checking tools that bombarded users over the weekend offering special discounts.

@mwilton13 Try RankWatch.comfor RankTracking, 20% discount to raven customers, Awesome Features: rankwatch.com/blog/raven-use…

— RankWatch (@RankWatch) December 8, 2012

As people threaten to leave for other providers because rankings were the only tool they used, I can’t help but think about all they are sacrificing.  Raven Tools is so much more than “a ranking tool.”  Raven tools is a comprehensive internet marketing suite that features tools to aid in analytics analysis, link building, content marketing, social media and so much more.  But more than that, I’d be surprised if you could find another group of people behind a product that are as hard working, caring, and passionate about what they do.  I doubt any provider out there offers the same level of service Raven has for all these years.

That said, with so many people focusing on just the rankings portion of Raven, I challenge Raven to make education on how to effectively use their remaining tools to make smart internet marketing decisions part of their 2013 content strategy. Clearly their client base doesn’t recognize what they have in their arsenal.

Did I use Raven’s SERP tracker? Absolutely.  I work in plastic surgery internet marketing where rankings and vanity are almost all that matter, but over the last year or so I have focused my efforts on educating clients and our sales force on the importance of other metrics such as organic search traffic growth, and conversion.  It’s this communication that I am hoping will help make the transition easier in the coming year.  Rankings are dying metric and have been for sometime.  Localization, personalization, and the like have made them much less reliable as Chris Countey illustrated in his Raven Tools post.  For those of you kicking and screaming about losing your precious SERP reports, I would encourage you to take this opportunity to learn, grown and embrace a life without SERP reporting.  Can you prove your value without it?  If not, you might want to rethink your career.

On January 3 I’ll still be a Raven Tools user and I hope to be for years to come, because I know at the end of the day what matters most to me and my career is the success of my clients and Raven Tools as a whole helps me achieve that success, not just a monthly rankings report.

The post Why Raven Tools Still Matters In Spite of Removing Rankings Data appeared first on Mike Wilton's Internet Marketing Blog.

I’ve followed Virginia’s work since the start of my SEO career back in 2007, but I didn’t have the opportunity to meet her in person until earlier this year when I attended SMX West.  A fun spirit with a friendly smile, she was a pleasure to meet. But what I was most fascinated by was her life on the conference circuit and her ability to regularly liveblog sessions like a rock star.  After doing a guest post for the Bruce Clay blog, and then running into her again at SES San Francisco I decided I wanted to learn a bit more about Virginia’s past and what it’s been like attending and covering search conferences all these years.  This interview is the result.

For those who may not be familiar with you and your work. How and when did you get involved in the internet marketing industry and Bruce Clay Inc.?

It was one of those happenstances of good fortune that I came to work for Bruce Clay, Inc. In late 2007 I was looking for a writing gig through a temp agency. I was coming out of journalism school at a time when traditional media wasn’t sure how to profitably deliver content to online audiences and that practically meant a hiring standstill. So, I felt very lucky at the time to find a position with a company that valued content writers; little did I know how lucky I really was to be entering a burgeoning industry from very near the ground floor. It was a fast and steep learning curve from there into search engine marketing, and on to the bigger picture of Internet marketing, and further on into holistic branding strategy. It’s a dynamic field that surprises me to this day, five years from my first introduction to SEO.

In September 2010 you parted ways with Bruce Clay Inc and would return nine months later. During the time away you spent some time doing freelance writing. Upon your return you talked about the major differences between freelance life and the agency life on the Bruce Clay Blog. Looking back on that time, what advice would you give other agency professionals considering a similar move?

Have in place a lifestyle and work environment that supports productivity. It’s pretty intuitive but I think some of those elements include:

Location: Whether it’s a home office or a coffee house, know where you can go that will be distraction free.

Peer interaction: Give yourself an outlet to trade notes with colleagues. This could be meetups, online groups, conferences or something else. Be part of a community so you don’t feel isolated, something to satisfy in-person interaction that could be missing.

Schedule: Have a production schedule in place, a plan for getting things done. If you’re disciplined in meeting deadlines you’ll be successful.

You’ve been covering search conferences for a number of years now. Do you remember your first conference, and what do you feel has changed most about the conference experience since then?

The first search industry conference I went to was SMX Advanced 2008. I remember being introduced to industry veterans by Lisa Barone and Susan Esparza and, to be honest, I felt like I was being initiated into the SEO cool crew. Those ladies are connected, and it really felt like there was a celebrity set in search – and I knew The Lisa so I was set! I think now the celebrity vibe has mellowed because there’s so much fresh, creative, cutting-edge talent. It’s a dynamic field now, and it’s fascinating to see so many personalities and skill sets moving the industry forward. There’s a lot more variety of methods and tactics covered at shows, and they’re splintering off into specific channel shows, like the new SMX Social, and in time that may splinter off more. The overall direction I’ve witnessed from the conference scene has been concurrent growth and division, interestingly enough.

The Bruce Clay Blog does an awesome job covering industry conferences. How many conferences a year, on average do you attend and live blog, and what is it like traveling so frequently to cover those conferences?

The company probably attends about six conferences a year and between Jessica and I, we probably liveblog two or three each. Attending conferences is one of the most exciting parts of the job. It’s a fast-paced few days of total immersion in topics of critical importance to everyone there. You really never turn off because you’re learning during official presentations, when info-hungry attendees are asking questions during sessions, during a few minutes downtime at the booth when people stop by and over drinks with colleagues and peers. It’s awesome fun.

By covering so many conferences, much of the information you hear probably becomes a bit redundant. How do you keep the information you live blog fresh and relevant when oftentimes it may be a subject you’ve covered previously?

We thoroughly vet each conference’s liveblog schedule, comparing the conference agenda to previously blogged sessions. One thing I do is look at the speakers of sessions, because a session title could be the same but if the speakers are different you’ll be getting a totally different presentation. It’s also a good idea to pay more attention to speakers than topics as we evaluate the agenda with an eye for speakers we feel are leaders in the field.

Looking back on the last year of search conferences, have there been any tidbits of knowledge or conference moments that stand out in your mind as being particularly awesome?

The stand-out moment at a conference this year for me had to be Matt Cutts’s surprise Q&A keynote at SES San Francisco as the history of search was represented by Mike Grehan, Brett Tabke, Danny Sullivan and Matt Cutts on one stage – unpredictably awesome. I was very impressed throughout that show with the agnostic approach SES took, eschewing years old traditions of speakers in favor of cutting-edge, fresh, relevant topics and presenters. You know there’s got to be a lot of politics behind the scenes at industry events, especially those as large and established as SES and SMX. I applaud SES’s leadership for recognizing that personal politics need to take a backseat to high-quality educational content.

In all the years of doing conference coverage, do you have a particular favorite that you look forward to attending each year?

SMX Advanced is always awesome in terms of content caliber and events. I think that’s one show where speakers and presenters look forward to the possibility of learning and hearing something new as much as the rest of the attendees. And Seattle is always a treat.

In addition to conference coverage you blog regularly for Bruce Clay Inc. Writing on such a consistent schedule can be hell for many SEO’s. How do you manage to regularly come up with new topics and what advice do you give SEO bloggers who are struggling to come up with fresh content?

Keep a notebook of ideas. When you’re stumped and on deadline, draw on one of these evergreen topics and with a little research you’ll have a post.

Reuse content. Reports and recommendations for clients can be repurposed for a general audience.

Keep your eyes open. Teaching moments can be found in the most unexpected places.

Answer questions. Write posts about things your clients ask you about. Write posts about things your project managers and sales department ask for resources on. And, quite simply, ask your audience what they want to hear about.

What’s your favorite thing about your work?

The people, no surprise. I definitely missed coming into the office during my stint as a consultant. Nothing can replace friendships grown through professional collaboration and shared successes.

What’s one interesting or random fact about Virginia Nussey that the internet marketing world may not know?

I have the world’s biggest sweet tooth – and will battle to the bellyache for the title!

The post Origins, Blogging, and the Life of a Liveblogging Rock Star: An Interview with Virginia Nussey appeared first on Mike Wilton's Internet Marketing Blog.

Converting Your Pinterest Account

If you’re ready to convert your existing account into a business account simply head over to business.pinterest.com to get started. Once there click on convert your existing account to get started.  If you’re just adopting Pinterest into your internet marketing strategy, you can also start as a business from this same page.

Completing Your Business Information

After clicking on Convert your existing account you will be taken to the screen to login to your account if you’re not already logged in.  After logging in you will be prompted to fill in the appropriate business information for your business including business type, business name, description, website and the like. Note: You can choose “Local Business” as a category and as a local search geek I had hoped this would give some additional local options, but at this time it does not appear to add any additional details to your profile such as address or phone number.  As you can see from when I converted a business below, the fields automatically populate with the information Pinterest has about your business from your existing account.

After completing your business profile information, Pinterest will redirect you to your “new” Pinterest business profile.  Once there you will be given four steps for getting started as a business on Pinterest. The first of which is verifying your website, a new feature that Pinterest introduced to all users a few weeks back.

Verifying Your Website

If you haven’t verified your website already, click on the “Verify Your Website” button to get started.  The verification process is easy, and only requires that you upload a file to your website that allows Pinterest to verify ownership of your site.  Once you click on “Verify Your Website” you will be taken to a screen that will allow you to download the file and then verify it has been uploaded.

After you’ve verified your website, your Pinterest Business Account is ready to go.  You’ll notice that on the surface there isn’t much of a difference to your account, but by the sounds of it the real value of having a Pinterest Business Account will come in the benefits available in the future.  As a business account owner Pinterest has shared that you will have access to upcoming features “that will provide more powerful ways of reaching and understanding your audience on Pinterest.”  This leads me to believe businesses will hopefully have access to powerful insights and analytics tools in the future.

What do you think of the new business accounts? Will you be converting?

Looking for more tips on Pinterest? Be sure to check out some of my past posts on the topic:

• Running a Pinterest Contest? Why Your Rules Shouldn’t Be at the Heart of It
• How To Use Pinterest for Small Business
• How To Resurrect Old Content With Pinterest
• Optimizing for Pinterest Search
• How To Effectively Pin Images from Tumblr to Pinterest
• Pinterest for the Everyday User
• 6 Unique & Inspiring Ways to Use Pinterest in Health Care

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Content Is King, and It’s Queen is Quality

I hate to start with the obvious, but people are consuming content in record numbers and the creation of regular content is crucial.  Think of what your customers need most?  What questions do they ask?  What help might they need with your product or service after they’ve purchased it.  These things can be great fodder for content of various types.  I recently attended the Explore conference in Orange County and during his presentation,  Marcus Sheridan talked in detail about how he turned a business that was struggling in a down economy around simply by producing content that answered questions his customers were already constantly asking.  The key was to produce in depth, quality content that answered some of the most common questions and concerns his customers had.

Become Part of Your Customers Day to Day Life

When I attended SES San Francisco earlier this year, I had the opportunity to watch the keynote from Avisnash Kaushik in which he stressed this point in detail.  The days of interruption at the point of need are behind us, now it’s about integrating your brand into the day to day lives of your customers.   In his examples he pointed out Skull Candy headphones as a company who has managed to do this well.

The Skull Candy mobile app doesn’t sell you headphones, in fact it doesn’t have anything do with headphones.  Instead it’s a branded app that helps with the day to day lifestyle of it’s core customer base by providing information on surf conditions, snow conditions, or find a skate park.  As an added bonus, you can listen to music from the app, which I suppose ties in nicely with the whole “headphones” element, but at no point do they try and sell you headphones.

Be Genuine

The first thing businesses can do to be helpful is to stop being businesses and start being people. Be genuine, or as Courtney Seiter of Raven Tools recently put it in her Explore OC presentation, “Be Interested”.  Social media, and the internet for that matter, is made up of billions of people that are all about “me”.  If you want to be helpful, make it less about yourself and more about your customer and while you’re at it, be genuine.  By actually caring about your customers and doing your part to help them, not because it’s good for your marketing, but because you truly care about your customers your business will go even further in today’s business space.

No matter how you tackle it the way you do business and market your business is going to evolve drastically in the coming year or so.  Businesses are going to have to start thinking like media companies when it comes to their content and they’re going to have to be more than a product or service, they are going to have to be a friend, a confidant someone the consumer trusts.  Find out what your customers need and then help them achieve that.  Become as much a part of your customer’s life as your product or service is.

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