VM(doh)

How to Make More Sales This Holiday Season

Brian Altenhofel — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:45:16 +0000

ChannelAdvisor is out with a white paper on the results of their 2010 Consumer Shopping Habits Survey, and you will love the results.

The first thing that you will notice in the report is that 59% of consumers start their online shopping experience on search engines such as Google. This is why it is very important to spend the time and resources on search engine optimization for your website, especially if you engage in e-commerce. You've probably noticed that some search engines have a product search that shows you results from various online retaillers, both large and small. Good SEO will help you rank well here, too!

And while we're at it, you're probably thinking that you cannot compete with the household names such as WalMart and TigerDirect. That is simply not true! Two thirds of consumers throw brand recognition out the window and would purchase from an unknown retailer if they offer a better deal.

It doesn't matter if you are an e-commerce veteran or just getting started, remember to diversify your sales avenues. 43% of consumers say that Amazon is their first choice, while 22% hit up eBay first. This means that you can reach 65% of consumers through those two marketplaces alone! How's that for visibility?

Now here's the real kicker: 92% of consumers actively read reviews for a product. Out of that pool of consumers, 97% are influenced one way or another by the reviews. This means that product reviews can make or break you!

If you're not using social media as part of your marketing strategy, you should be. 90% of consumers are on Facebook. Facebook not only allows you to connect on a more personal level with your customers, but it also allows you to create fine-grained marketing campaigns. This is an opportunity that you should not pass up!

Finally, you need to make sure to optimize your website for mobile users. As more and more consumers are using smartphones, they also tend to browse online while waiting in long lines or shopping. And with most smartphones having the capability to scan bar codes, many consumers are actively making price comparisons online through their phone while shopping the local brick and mortar retailer. If your e-commerce website is not yet optimized for mobile browsing, you need to make that a priority prior to this holiday season!

The white paper contains more information in more detail than I covered here. It is a free download, and I encourage you to read all 10 pages of it.

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Make Your Social Media Efforts Successful for Your Business

Brian Altenhofel — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:23:56 +0000

While many businesses are looking at social media as a viable piece of their marketing package, it is still very common for these businesses to enter this realm without thinking about how they are going to actually implement it. Many of these businesses try to treat social media for their business the same as they treat it for their personal profiles. That will not work.

To be successful in social media, you first need to define what you want to accomplish. If you don't have a target to aim for, then how do you know that what you are doing is actually working? If you fail to define goals that you want to reach, then you will basically start shooting randomly into cyberspace with hopes that something hits.

Along with your goals, you need to define the criteria that must be met in order to determine when you have reached your goal. This will be obvious to anyone that works in marketing, but many small businesses are largely one-man shows. Take a little bit of time to think about what would be a good indicator of reaching a goal. Make sure that the criteria you are trying to meet is traced back to your social media marketing efforts. If you reach your goal, but social media didn't accomplish it, then you should either find what you need to improve your effort or drop social media from that part of your business altogether.

As you are defining the criteria to be met when you reach your goals, define subsets of criteria that must be met along the way. For example, imagine you have a product that you are wanting to heavily market over the next 6 months. You decide to implement a social media strategy into your overall plan. If you only define the criteria for the goal, you won't know for 6 months if your efforts are actually providing a return. If you define criteria that must be met along the way (and leave room for some fudging, since nothing ever goes perfectly), then you can tell one or two months in whether something needs to be adjusted or dropped before spending time and effort that isn't worth it.

Finally, make sure you have the right tools so that you can tell what efforts are paying off. Use a tool like Seesmic to manage your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Use the Google Analytics on your website to see where those leads are coming from. Use the Google URL Builder to create links that define the sources that you control so that you can see what is really going on in Google Analytics. Use a URL shortening service such as bit.ly for posting trackable short links on Twitter and Facebook.

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Need a Job? Get LinkedIn

Brian Altenhofel — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:00:00 +0000

This post wraps up my series this week on why you need to get your social media profiles in order before you go job hunting. First, we talked about cleaning up Facebook. Wednesday, we talked about watching what you tweet. Today, we will make sure that you have your LinkedIn profile ready.

LinkedIn is a great network for professionals that is growing rapidly. Not only does it allow a means to maintain ties to former colleagues, it also provides an opportunity to prove your expertise.

Think of LinkedIn as your online résumé. You post your professional history and can solicit recommendations from people you have worked or done business with in the past. Depending on your industry and locale, your employer might decide to search for you here.

First, optimize your LinkedIn profile so that it works for you rather than just sitting there waiting to be read. Then you should link your profile to Twitter so that your LinkedIn status updates can match Twitter. This helps create the illusion that you are everywhere for those who only use one site or the other.

To help establish yourself as an expert in your field and gain credibility, you should participate in Groups and Answers. Just answering one question a day in a group or posed by someone in your network can help you establish yourself as a expert. One a day isn't much, but it adds up to 365.25 opportunities to build your credibility per year.

Just like Facebook and Twitter, your LinkedIn profile will rank high in search results for you. Make sure that it conveys your message exactly the way you want it.

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Need a Job? Watch What You Tweet

Brian Altenhofel — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:00:00 +0000

Monday, I wrote about why you should make sure that your Facebook profile is presentable to a potential employer just in case he chooses to search for you online. Along those same lines, you need to make sure that your tweets on Twitter won't cause your potential new boss to change his mind.

Especially with the simplicity of tweeting from mobile devices, Twitter can be quite the convenient place to post things that should not be posted. Some people assume that only those who follow them will see their tweets and then go on a 140 character rant about their boss or a client. That kind of tweet will definitely turn almost any potential employer off.

Just like with Facebook, you should avoid posting anything hinting at your participation in illegal activity. The guy you just had an interview with doesn't want to know about your epic journey to White Castle. That guy wants to know that, while you have personality, you conduct yourself in a professional manner.

Depending on your job prospects, you might even want to refrain from using foul language in your tweets. For example, my target market is in the buckle of the Bible belt and consists largely of very conservative people. There are times where it would feel great to add a four-letter emphasis to a statement, but I would most definitely lose business in the process.

Just like Facebook, Twitter is likely to rank very highly when you search for yourself. Make sure that your tweets support you as being the candidate that your prospect wants to hire.

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Learn to Harness the Power of Social Media for Your Business!

Brian Altenhofel — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:00:00 +0000

Are you a small business owner looking for a cost-effective way to market your business? Has your marketing budget taken a hit during the recession? Do you want to connect with your customers?

Using Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks effectively to promote your business can seem difficult. But when you are armed with the knowledge of how to use these new forms of media, you possess the power to harness them to your advantage.

Join me for two evenings in October! I will show you how to use social media as a highly effective business tool. You will learn the do's and don't's of social media with a focus on the two largest opportunities: Facebook and Twitter. You will learn how to build relationships with customers through social media conversations. You will learn how to market yourself via social media.

If you're worried about competing with the national brands for your local customers, this class will show you why social media gives you the advantage. If you're worried about the time investment, this class will teach you how to use social media wisely.

This class is hosted at the Weatherford Campus of Western Technology Center. Print this form or go by the campus to sign up. You can also call them at (580) 774-0224.

"Business Aspects of Social Networking" is a two-night class offered on October 26th and 28th from 6:00PM to 8:00PM. You must attend both evenings to learn all of the material. Cost is $35.

Space is very limited!

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Need a Job? Clean Up Your Facebook

Brian Altenhofel — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:00:00 +0000

With unemployment rates through the roof (for various reasons), it can seem like a daunting task to find a job in the current market. Want to get an advantage over the other applicants? Then you better make sure that your online profiles are clean, starting with Facebook.

Many (if not most) employers now use search engines to check on candidates for jobs. Do you wonder what they might find? Google yourself. You'll find that your social media profiles (and most likely Facebook) will appear at or near the #1 slot. (To make sure that these results aren't influenced by your activity, add "&pws=0" to the end of the URL in your address bar, without the quotes of course.)

Now, would you hire yourself based on what you see? Answer honestly.

If your profile shows you participating in illegal activities, you just lost points with your job prospect. If your profile shows pictures from that night that you thought you were the Queen of Karaoke, you just lost points with your job prospect. If you post a lot of inappropriate jokes, you just lost points with your job prospect. If your profile contains nude photos of yourself, you... well... that might depend.

To land a job in today's competitive market, you must make sure that what a potential employer finds out about you on Facebook will paint you in a favorable light. This means that you shouldn't be posting rants about your current employer if you are in the market for a new job.

If you keep your profile clean and showcase your job skills, legitimate interests (i.e. quit "liking" every funny page that comes along), writing skills (lose the l33t speak, overused acronyms, and emoticons), and career history, you will be well on your way to standing out a bit from the rest of the applicants for that job that you really want.

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Enhance Your Gmail Productivity with Multiple Inboxes

Brian Altenhofel — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:07:43 +0000

If you're a fan of Inbox Zero, meaning that you try to keep your inbox as clear and non-distracting as possible through the use of filters and quick archiving, you've probably run into the issue of accidentally archiving a client's email. You don't look at the folders for a while and then realize the mistake. How can you avoid this in the future?

If you use Gmail, it's pretty simple. I use Gmail for all of my email, even those messages you get from brian.altenhofel@vmdoh.com. Gmail has a nice Labs feature called Multiple Inboxes. Multiple Inboxes allows you to add up to five panes to your Gmail home page that show messages from the search string you choose. I use it to put all of my emails with my active clients on the home page just to the right of the actual inbox. This way, I can set the filter for those emails to archive on receipt, thus keeping my inbox clear of stuff that will be filed anyway, while still viewing new, very important emails as they come in.

Here's how to set it up.

Log in to Gmail (I know, this should go without saying, but I've been offering PC support to people recently).
In the upper right corner, you'll notice a little green flask. Click it.
Scroll down until you see Multiple Inboxes. Click "Enable".
Scroll either to the top or the bottom and click "Save Changes".
You should now have a Multiple Inboxes tab in your Settings.
Enter the search queries you want to show for each pane, and select where to place these "inboxes".
Click save changes.
Buy yourself a beer for lunch.

If you've never taken advantage of Gmail's search function, the queries might be confusing to you. Here are some examples:

to:someone@example.com will show messages not in your Sent or Spam folders address to someone@example.com
from:someone@example.com works much the same as above
in:all can be added to any query to search all folders
in:spam can be used to search only the spam folder
label:your-folder-name will show emails that have been filtered and archived with a particular label

You will likely want to use the last one (label) on Multiple Inboxes. When using that query, you replace all spaces and symbols with hyphens. If you are unsure of what the query is for a certain label, go to it the normal way by clicking on it. You will notice that the search box has a query added. Copy the query and paste it into Multiple Inboxes.

I hope this has been very helpful to you. I find it to be a great productivity enhancer, and I hope that you do, too.

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Managing Your Facebook Page

Brian Altenhofel — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:00:00 +0000

If you set up a Facebook Page for your small business or non-profit, you will eventually have fans begin posting comments to your wall posts or directly to your wall. Of course, that will only happen if you set up your Page correctly to allow fans to post such things. If you haven't, I suggest you read a little bit about how fan interaction influences EdgeRank.

At some point, someone will post something inappropriate on your page. Some people might even post criticisms of you or your organization. How are you supposed to manage this?

It's pretty simple. Encourage people to get involved in the conversation on your page. If something inappropriate comes along, deal with it swiftly and appropriately. If you're really having to actually think about this, then you are thinking about it too much.

The first thing you need to do is determine who will be posting to your Facebook page. It is important that these are people who can communicate effectively. These people will be the only voice of your business or organization.

Next, I recommend developing a flow chart to help determine how to handle certain comments posted to your page. You can feel free to leave SPAM of the chart if you wish, because I'm pretty sure everyone knows to delete that type of stuff. But what about the other comments?

If you are going to build a relationship with your customers through your Facebook page, you have to let go. Seriously. You have to let your customers feel like they are free to discuss anything about your business. However, you also need to make sure that comments posted to your page are relevant and do not hurt the innocent. This is where that flow chart comes in handy.

I recommend developing a flow chart with four categories: Appropriate, Inaccurate, High Risk, and Low Risk. The first category is pretty self explanatory. But we still want to define how to respond to Appropriate comments on your Facebook page.

Responding to Appropriate comments may seem like a no-brainer, but you need to consider who is going to respond to comments. You should also consider what kind of Appropriate comments merit a response. For example, an Appropriate comment concurring with your post (i.e. "+1") doesn't merit a response from you. However, you may want to concur with someone else's post or comment, and possibly provide additional information to support that comment. It is important that you have a plan for responding to comments, even if those comments are Appropriate on every level.

Next, you need to know how you will address Inaccurate comments. These are comments that are providing misleading information. These should obviously be corrected swiftly, and most of the time these will not merit deletion. This is where you will want your Communications and/or Public Relations people to step in. (Considering who you are going to have respond to Inaccurate comments, it might be helpful to also classify media requests into this group for simplicity's sake.)

The final two categories are your Risk categories. These are comments that merit deletion. High Risk comments included violent or inappropriate comments. This category also includes allegations against your organization. These are the comments that need to be assigned to whoever handles Risk Management in your organization and may even include your Public Relations people. These comments should be dealt with swiftly, both via deletion and risk mitigation by press release (or whatever method your company prefers), because it is likely that someone read that comment before you were able to handle it.

Low Risk comments include inflammatory statements or offensive language. The comments that fit into this category typically merit deletion but no further action on your part.

So where do you classify criticism? You might not like my opinion: Appropriate. As long as the criticism does not fit into either Risk categories (especially High Risk), you should let the criticism stand. This is your opportunity to publicly address an issue. By letting criticism stand and addressing it, you can show the rest of your fans that you are willing to handle problems that may arise. You've heard the saying that goes something like "a happy customer tells one person while an unhappy customer tells ten", right? Well, it is your opportunity to show many people beyond just the unhappy customer and his peers how you will work to rectify a situation. This helps build trust with your customers and strengthens your relationship.

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LinkedIn Phishing Scam Alert

Brian Altenhofel — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 13:44:44 +0000

I have been receiving a lot of invitations to connect recently that are fake. What they all have in common (so far) is that the "connection" claims to be a Colleague at Interbrand. I also just received one today that looked like a reminder that you have many unread messages in your LinkedIn Inbox.

I personally have not clicked these because I have a habit of going directly to the website myself. I suggest that you do the same.

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August 23: You Will Lose 30% of Your Marketing Space on Facebook

Brian Altenhofel — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 18:06:46 +0000

Facebook previously announced that they would be reducing the width of custom application tabs on Pages and removing the popular Boxes feature. Last week, they posted the following announcement:

Based on feedback from developers, we have committed to the following plans to ensure a smooth transition:

Boxes. We will notify users via messaging in profile boxes and in the Help Center that the "Boxes" tab, boxes on profiles and Pages, and application info sections will be going away.

Application Tabs. Next week, we will give Page admins the ability to preview their custom tabs in the new 520 pixel width so they can modify their layouts as needed. All profile and Page tabs will be resized automatically beginning the week of August 23.

They had originally said the early part of 2010, but that has since passed. If you are using the Boxes feature or have a fixed-width Static FBML tab, you will need to replace those features before August 23.

So congratulations! You just lost 30% of your marketing space!

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