Inbound Internet Marketing Blog

Understanding Google Authorship and Google Publisher

Cort Tafoya — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:06:00 GMT

What's All This Google Author and Publisher Stuff?

If you've been hearing about Google Authorship and Google Publisher but aren't sure what the heck all of the commotion is about, don't worry. You're not alone.

In a nutshell:

Google is constantly trying to improve their search results. They're always trying to weed out low quality or spammy web pages that don't add value to your search experience.

One way they do this is by verifying the authenticity of the author and/or the company that's creating the content.

They verify by using your personal Google Plus profile for Google Authorship and your business' Google Plus Page for Google Publisher

Once you're verified, any content you or your compay produces has a chance of ranking higher and becoming more visible than your competitors in Google's search results.

What's the Difference Between Google Authorship and Google Publisher?

There are some great SEO's out there that have answered that question better than me. In particular, Ann Smarty put together a simple but informative presentation that answers that very question:

Rel=Publisher versus Rel=author from Ann Smarty

Bottom Line: Google Authorhip is for Google to verify individual authors' content e.g. this blog post. Google Publisher is to verify an entire company's authenticity and content.

Using a 'real' world example:

Here in the Sacramento area, the McClatchy Company controls the local Sacramento Bee newspaper. They're the publisher. They're the real world equivalent of Google Publisher.

The real world equivalent Google Authorship would be veteran sports writer Ailene Voisin, who has her own persona and individual opinions on various NorCal sports teams.

Google Authorship allows writers like Ailene to carry around her good writing credentials with her, regardless of where she hangs her hat. Her professional reputation is independent of her publisher....as it should be.

Should You Do Both?

Absolutely. If you're a company engaged in content marketing, you should set up your authors on Google Authorship and set up the company with Google Publsher.

A great take on this question was written by web developer and marketer Daniel Berman.

He explains:

"You want to set up the rel="publisher" to provide a context for identifying your business website to Google and especially giving you the chance to give them the categories that your business fits, and then tying all of that back to your NAP (Name, Address & Phone Number) information that Google has on file.

You want to set up your rel="author" markup to recognize your contribution to the context as published by the business, but recognizing that your role as a human being is larger than just your position at that business. Maybe you also have a blog, and a hobby website. If you set up the rel="authorship" formatting on all those sites then your online identity or persona becomes clearer to Google as a whole."

Setting up your rel="publisher" means officially connecting your Google + Business page to your website through Google (more on that below). Setting up rel="author" requires connecting your individual Google + Profile to your blog posts.

See the videos in Resources for more details on how to set it up.

What Are the Visible Benefits of Authorship and Publisher?

Google Authorship

Here is screenshot of a Google search result of one of my blog posts. The image is me. Not a great pic....but it does give you a warm fuzzy doesn't it? You're more likely to click on it because you can see who wrote it!

Benefit: Higher click through rate on your content. More people see your stuff. Here are some case studies that show a difference in click-thru-rates based on the quality of profile picture a person has for their Google Authorship.

Notice the "More by Cort Tafoya"? This is a link to other content that I have written. Pretty cool incentive for an author to publish good stuff, wouldn't you say?

Also if you click on one of my articles, and you don't like it for whatever reason and click the "back" button on your browser, Google will add three additional links to similar articles from the me below the originally clicked link.

This and more were explained in an article titled "Google Confirms Hidden Benefits of Google Authorship."

Another benefit to your Google Authorship is embodied in the awkwardly branded "Google Search Plus Your World". Basically, if you're active on Google Plus and you have a lot of people in your circles, your content will appear higher in rankings to those who have you in their circles or who have +1ed the same things as you.

Google Publisher

By having your Google Publisher set up, your company's brand could be displayed on Google's search results.

Without advertising.

Google explains that validating your site through the rel="publisher" process can guard your company's brand against imitators.

"Verification badges are designed to help our users find what they're looking for by ensuring that people, brands and businesses that are subject to broad-based impersonation are protected."

Here's an example of how Sony shows up on Google search results. Notice in the right column an entire space devoted to Sony, the company, and links to recent content. This is Google Publisher in action.

And it's taking up valuable screen real estate that could be displaying an advertisement. Kudos to Google on that one!

Benefit: Your company and brand gets some great visibility and authentication above the fold that otherwise you'd have to pay for.

Resources

Here are some links and videos that will help you dive into Authorship and Publisher a little more deeply.

Interview with Google's Matt Cutts on Google Authorship (Rel=Author)

How to Set Up Google Authorship and Google Publisher from Aaron Fletcher

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How To Repurpose Your Inbound Marketing Content

Cort Tafoya — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 00:50:00 GMT

Not too long ago the only thing people posted on the Internet were articles and blogs. It wasn't by choice. The redundancy in this form of content was a matter of capability - or lack thereof.

Today you can take a blog post, turn it into an audio file or podcast, v-log yourself summarizing the article or syphon out key statistics from the post to create an infographic.

Even newer forms of online multimedia can be repurposed. Audio files can be transcribed or posted to video sharing platforms. Videos with the right kind of audio can be recorded with different applications and turned into a podcast.

Don't think that because the information is the same, all this content repurposing and multimedia work is a waste. The value of creating content for different platforms is immense.

Let's explore!

Audio

A podcast format has multiple advantages. Unlike a radio show that comes on every morning at 6 AM, a podcast is there any time any place, and can even be emailed to you. Internet users are in agreement about the benefits. Statistics show that over 70 million people have at one point listened to a podcast, and podcast listeners are more receptive to the ads they hear compared to radio.

Looking at social media, Stitcher, BlogTalkRadio, iTunes and more are places where you can put your content and find your audience. Stitcher has 6 million registered listeners, and BTR has 23 million monthly listeners.

If a blog post was just a blog post, it may never be found by this different type of web user. A recorded reading of an article allows it to be shared with even more potential customers. That audio can even posted to YouTube, with slides and photos inserted so people aren't look at a blank screen. Now this content has hit three birds with one stone.

Visual

Pinterest! Instagram! What more do we need to say?

The number of people on these two social media outlets has exploded. It was recently reported that Pinterest is up to 23 million unique users - they launched in 2010 - and this September Facebook king Mark Zuckerburg estimated Instagram was up to 100 million users! That's triple what they were 6-8 months ago!

So how can the latest article that you slaved away for eight hours researching on be shared with this visually stimulated audience? There are two answers depending on the industry.

If the topic was real esate, we already know people want to see it - so digging up the best photos and posting them to Pinterst and Instagram accounts is a no-brainer.

Just like Twitter, a setence or two plus a link can be added in the description or excerpt, allowing people can click through to the blog post.

Pictures of cars, vacation destinations, cell phones, and even hardware equipment can all be visually appealing with the right touch. Food, fashion and sporting are ripe for visual social media platforms.

For nerdy industries like accounting, engineering, or SEO analyzers, an info-graphic filled with all the data put into a blog post is a fun an easy to share statistics with other social media users.

Video

Let's all put on our director caps and pretend we're trying to grow a hair salon business. What video content can we create that will attract new customers? The answer: a video that includes a tour of the salon and a recording of a customer before and after they got their highlights done - with clips of the process spliced in.

From something as visual as hair to as analytical as inbound marketing, videos work. A simple computer screen recording with a voice narrating what's happening can be informational and valuable. Even a simple v-log about what's new in an industry can be useful content.

Once completed, making a blog post out of it is as simple as re-listening and transcribing what's been said.

That's the hardwork, here's the bonus: the video just created is something that can go on a YouTube channel (and within an article of course). In this long list of statistics on YouTube users, the big one to remember is there are 800 million different viewers worldwide each month.

Today there are even more places to post your videos, with sites such as Vimeo and Ustream all growing their number of users.

As one blogger wrote in her article 34 Ways to Use Youtube for Business, "YouTube’s not just for posting silly videos of sleepwalking dogs and other embarrassing moments — it can also be used as a highly effective business tool. You can use it to show off your expertise, share knowledge, market your products and connect with customers, colleagues and prospects."

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How Google Voice Search Will Change Your SEO Forever

Tod Hirsch — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 20:04:00 GMT

What is Google Voice Search?

Google Voice Search allows you to speak your search query into a microphone on your computer or on your mobile device like an iPhone or iPad. It returns your question in a voice eerily similar to the Apple Siri.

If Google Voice Search doesn't have an exact answer, it just returns a normal Google search results page.

Isn't This Just Google's Answer to Siri?

Yes it is. But with one key difference - it's Google. We use Google everyday to answer questions, buy things and help solve our problems. Google is a utility that we've come to rely on. Kind of like electricity. It's a resource we can't imagine living without it.

Not so with Siri.

Even though Siri uses Google as its default search engine, people just don't think of Siri as a search engine.

In people's minds, Google and Search are still synonymous....for now.

That's why this could be game changer for SEO

Google Search App for the iPad is Awesome

The new Google iPad app is extremely well done. It's fast, responsive and the voice recognition is highly accurate. In this video, I ask a natural language question and get the perfect response. Check it out!

How will Google Voice Search Change SEO?

People ask Google questions all the time. They throw in a few important keywords and hope for the best. But it's usually never a full, natural language question.

As voice search becomes more widespread, natural language queries like these will become the norm:

Where can I find an Audi mechanic in Pittsburgh?
Give me the best barbecue restaurant in Phoenix?
What's the best wine to go with pasta alfredo?
What's the best place to go to get my tires replaced in Sacramento?
Give me a list of hosted PBX providers in the Bay Area

An Experiment to Test Our SEO Hypothesis

Does Google dismiss these natural language patterns as irrelevant to the keywords in the query.

I don't know. But we're going to find out.

I do know that Google's algorithms try to return the most highly relevant information to a query. We also know that the concept of exact match exists in Google's algorithms.

Therefore it may be logical to assume that if you create content that exactly matches natural language queries...you may gain an upper hand over your competitors in search.

Over the next couple weeks, we're going to test this theory with some content that exactly matches a natural language query. We'll do some before and after testing and write up the results in this blog.

Subscribe to our blog or just come back for the results.

Are we fools? Is this folly? What do you think?

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How to Create Quality Content in an Industry You Know Nothing About

Jennifer Wirth — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 14:20:00 GMT

"Local Inbound Marketing Agency Learns How to Be a Medical Spa in Record Time"

Recently, Go Time Marketing successfully completed a total website makeover for a client in the medical spa industry.

Medical spas specialize in non-surgical procedures such as facials, botox injections, non-surgical liposuction etc.

It was a difficult project because the medical spa industry is specialized and technical. Frankly, you need a medical background to create quality content in the medical spa industry.

But I'm a Marketer Jim...not a Doctor! (Let us know if you get that reference)

So how does an inbound marketing writer like me, get up to speed quickly?

Here are five tips on how I got up to speed and became a medical spa "expert" in no time flat.

1. Research Your Target Market's Needs

Before we did any work on the content, we needed to find out who our target market was.

We dove into the research and identified our client's typical customers as 30+ year old, affluent women who have an interest in beauty, a history of proactively managing their looks and who live near Milwaukee WI.

We also knew through other research that women use blogs and social media to seek advice, get product information and make purchasing decisions.

We also discovered that women have a lot of questions about medical spa treatments.

Will my face look burned after a chemical peel?
How much weight will I lose with a AquaLipo procedure?
How much does a AquaLipo cost?
What can I do about acne acars?
Does the HCG Diet actually work?

Now that we understood what people wanted to know, creating content became easier. Researching on the web goes much more smoothly when you know which questions to ask Google.

2. Create A Content Matrix

Now that we understood more about what the medical spa's customers were looking for, we could organize their website from a user's perspective. We organized all the medical spa's services around what was relevant to the customer. Not the other way around as you often see.

This is known as user-centered design. And it's easier said than done.

One tool that helped was what we called Content Matrix. Sounds complex, but it was just a spreadsheet that allowed us to arrange the spa's services in ways that made sense to people. Our solution was to create a top menu that identified the problem (ex: Acne) and led the visitor to a page that clearly identified all of the different medical spa treatments someone could use to fix their problem.

After looking at a ton of medical spa websites, I realized this very few spas were using user-centered design. It was our chance to differeniate the client.

This method of problem-based organization is a great way to capitalize on good search keywords. People are searching on ways to solve their problems. So it just makes sense to create content that focuses on their problems. Why make Google guess what your web page is about? Speaking of Google...

3. Ask Doctor Google

For each medical spa-related ailment or treatment that I wrote about, I must have made 50 queries in Google. I read forums, other medical spa websites, blogs and online publications.

I also learned how to search better. Here is a great tutorial on advanced Google search techniques.

After I learned about the subject matter, I sat down to write the content in my own words. This was educational in and of itself. When you write, you learn.

4. Keep In Constant Communication

Learning the medical spa business was a team effort and one of the biggest saviors during this process was communication. We’re always plugged into Skype and Podio and Go To Meeting. With these tools, we could ask quick questions, post interesting content or vet new ideas without disturbing co-workers.

5. Interview The Experts

Our client is a medical doctor. She's an expert in her field. So we asked her a lot of questions over the course of 2 months. All the interviews were recorded. I think we reviewed these interview 4-5 times before we understood everthing. This led to follow up questions that we asked in later interviews.

Have you been in this situation? What techniques have you used to become an "expert" in an industry? Leave something in the comments, we'd love to hear back from you!

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What Should Your Inbound Marketing Team Look Like?

Tod Hirsch — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 23:15:00 GMT

Inbound Marketing Teams Are Different

Many marketing departments are trying to evolve their marketing mix toward inbound marketing. But many people don't know what kind of skills they need to build an effective team.

The truth is that the skills you need for an inbound marketing team are very different than a traditional marketing team requires.

Here is what kind of people and skills you need for a great inbound marketing team.

You Need a Journalist

The foundation of effective inbound marketing is consistent, quality content production.

To get that, you really need to have a journalist-type on staff. You don't need a old-fashioned, hardcore Bob Woodward-type, but you do need someone who can research a topic and create content about it. Consistently and regularly.

They need to know how to write for the web. Not newspapers, not novels, not screenplays. The web is a different medium that requires a different writing style.

They should understand what the inverted pyramid is, how to conduct an interview and the process of fact checking. They should have read On Writing Well by William Zinsser and Strunk's Elements of Style.

Besides traditional article creation, they'll create email campaigns and write landing page copy as well. They'll also need to understand the value of business blogging.

You Need a Social Community Manager

Just because you create great content, doesn't mean anyone will find it.

Promoting your quality content is just as important as creating it. And one of the primary tools to do that is social media.

You need someone who understands all the major social media platforms and how best to grow an audience using them. They need to understand how each platform differs and if they're appropriate for your target market. They should be a Hootsuite power user and should be able to introduce regular ideas for how to increase your reach and improve engagement on social.

You Need a Visual Content Specialist

My original title for this section was "You Need a Graphic Designer". But this term doesn't quite describe the position. The title "Visual Content Specialist" seems to work better.

These days, most content that gets people's attention is visual. Yes, text is still pervasive but that's changing rapidly.

So your inbound marketing team needs someone with solid graphic design skills but they also need to have the ability to translate complex concepts into a visual form. This is crucial if you want to catch people's attention.

You may call on this person to perform a variety of content visualization tasks:

Create an explainer video using Powtoon or VideoScribe
Put together an infographic using Illustrator or Pictochart
Design a Call to Action graphic
Design a Cover Page for your new Facebook Page or Twitter Page
Create an eBook with InDesign
Design a banner advertisement for a new Google Display campaign
Put together a Gallery or Slideshow
Put together a video intro for your industry interviews with Camtasia

You Need a Testing & Analytics Specialist

When you start generating traffic and behavior from your inbound marketing efforts, you start generating data. Lots of it. You need someone who can interpret this data and make recommendations from it.

They should be highly analytical and be able to convert disparate data into meaningful recommendations. They should be an Excel whiz.

They should also be able to run A/B Tests on landing pages and other marketing assets and be able to report on them regularly.

They should be able to answer the question, "Is this campaign working?" And back it up with data, not unsubstantiated opinion.

You Need a Strategic Manager

Your team will need a more senior and knowledgeable manager who understands inbound marketing, who can manage people and deliver campaigns on a deadline.

This person should also understand inbound marketing strategy:

What campaigns are you launching this month or quarter?
What target market are you going after?
What mix of earned and paid attention are you going to use?
What kind of content will best generate leads?
How do we manage the leads that come in? How do I know if the leads are "sales ready"?

But What About SEO?

Some of you might be asking if an SEO (search engine optimization) specialist is needed. SEO has changed a lot in just the last couple years. To even talk about SEO the way it was commonly used two years ago is misleading and confusing.

Without getting into a lot of detail about the role of content or social sharing or the demise of links the latest Google Panda or Penguin updates, suffice it to say that getting found through search is absolutely important to your Inbound Marketing program. But how you achieve that may have changed somewhat.

Do you still need to understand how to properly use keywords in your content and to research what keywords you should use? Yes
Do you still need to optimize your pages properly so you're not making Google guess what the page is about? Absolutely
Do you still need to understand what local SEO is and how that might apply to your business locally. If your business has local customers, you betcha.
Do you still need to understand how to reach out to publications and bloggers to establish relationships and earn links? Yes, mam.

But do you need a full time SEO specialist to do this? Increasingly, I think the answer to this question is no. Getting found online is now become less the responsibility of any one technical specialist and more of the overall goal of the entire inbound marketing team. Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz pointed this out in a classic Whiteboard Friday over a year ago.

In other words, getting found through search these days requires ALL of the skills that I've described in this article. Getting found means doing inbound marketing.

Conclusion

Inbound Marketing requires a wide variety of different skill sets. And building a team to execute an inbound marketing program is challenging on several levels. You need new skill sets, a change of company culture and a different mentality of marketing.

But if you realize how technology is fundamentally changing the way we discover and buy products and services, you'll understand how necessary it is to invest in inbound marketing now...instead of waiting until your competitors do.

If you would like to know more about Inbound Marketing in general or how Go Time Marketing can assist your business develop a strategy to get found online and begin developing leads, feel free to contact us by phone, (855) 468-4631, by email (info@GoTimeMarketing.com) or simply by clicking here.

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How to Create a Facebook App in Shortstack: A Step by Step Guide

Stephanie Strong — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 00:52:00 GMT

Here at Go Time Marketing we really like ShortStack for creating fast, easy and beautiful Facebook pages for our clients.

With Shortstack, you can do simple Facebook apps with ready-made templates or your can get your hands dirty with advanced capabilities in CSS, Javascript, HTML, jQuery, and iframes.

Check out this overview of ShortStack when you've got a minute.

Now, here's what you came here for. By the way, it's pretty long, so if you want to download and print out the PDF version here, go for it.

How to Create a Facebook App Using Shortstack: A Step by Step Guide

Step 1: Register and Login
Step 2: After Logging in you will see the Tabs Dashboard. Click “Create Tab from Template” in the upper left hand corner and click on it.
Step 3: Make sure public templates is selected. This should happen automatically but if your screen does not populate the templates you can find this button in the upper right hand corner. Select the “Photo Vote Contest” template from the list. A visual of the template will show up on the right, be sure yours matches the one shown here. Select the “Make Tab” button to open this template in the designer dashboard.
Step 4: Add Widget Menu: Here you can select other widgets to include. You can explore what each of them are if you want but all of the widgets needed for this tab are included in the template. Live Preview Preferences: From left to right. Views allows you to view the tab as an admin, fan, or non-fan. Simulated Date and Country can be used if you want to double check that date and country restrictions are working properly. Pre-Designed themes can be selected or you can upload your own theme to use. The new timeline width is set as a default. Leave the “live” field un-checked so you can test the submit function without actually submitting a photo. You can also view what this tab will look like on a mobile platform. Edit Widgets Menu: As you mouse over the different parts of the template, the widget your mouse is on will highlight in light blue. These are what you will use to modify the different widgets to specify your different needs.

Notes on Step 4

A. These buttons from left to right are modify, duplicate, and delete. You will want to select the modify icon and use each widgets manager to replace sample content with your own specific content. Every photo place holder will tell you the width needed (in this case it is 810 pixels). The length of the photo is not specified because you can make it as long as you want (keep in mind though that the size shown in the template is visually appealing, a longer photo might not be so).

B. Here you can manage the visibility of each individual widget, which is helpful in creating Like gates. The icons, from left to right, are: everyone, fans only, non-fans only, page admins only, inactive, and starts hidden. The first four are pretty self-explanatory.

An inactive visibility setting is helpful in the case of starting a voting period after the submission period. If you select the “starts hidden” setting, that widget and every widget below it in the menu will be hidden.

Step 5: Once you have the Custom Tab designed the way you want find the button that says “Install Tab” in the upper right corner and click on it.
Step 6: There are two ways to publish your new tab to your Facebook page. I always choose to custom publish so that I can modify the settings shown in step 9.
Step 7: After selecting Custom Publish a page will open explaining step by step how to publish your tab. Click the button to “Open Developer Facebook App”. A new window will open up (note: if you have not registered for a developer account you may do so through this window with your current Facebook login information). Select Create New App, and name it (as shown highlighted in yellow). After clicking continue you will need to fill out a captcha just to be sure you are not a robot. After your app is created you can copy and paste the App ID and the App Secret ID into the relative fields. (Note: after you have done this close the Facebook developer window WITHOUT hitting the save button. ShortStack can manage the install process with the information given.) Be sure to customize the app name, up to 16 characters, which will appear directly below your custom app image. Once these fields are added click on the orange “save and continue” button.
Step 8: Here is where you pick the Facebook page to install your custom app to. Find the gray install button next to the Facebook page you wish to use. (Note: Custom apps can only be installed to fan pages or business pages, not to personal Facebook pages.)
Step 9: Log in to Facebook and go to your business page. You will notice the custom application is showing up on your page. Find the arrow all the way to the right of your applications. Click it to enable editing capabilities. Mouse over the top right corner of your custom application and clic on the edit icon that appears. Go to “edit settings” in the menu to change your custom apps image and title. (Note: If you customized your title during the installation process on ShortStack you wont need to change it here.) A pop up window will open. Click on “change” next to the Custom Tab Image field. A new tab in your browser will open allowing you to upload an image from your computer. (Note: this image will be scaled to fit 111px x 74px so you may want to make one that is at this size.)

That's it! Now that you've got a great app, don't forget to promote it! Promotion is the other half of good content marketing!

If you have any questions or comments. Let us know. We're all learning here.

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Successful Email Marketing for Small Businesses

Guest Blogger — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 16:56:00 GMT

Editors Note: We are delighted to introduce to our Inbound Internet Marketing Blog readers, guest author Megan Totka, Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com.

Email can be a very effective marketing tool for large and small businesses alike.

Most consumers have at least one email account, with some people having as many as 10 or more. Many people check their email from more than one source, and more than once per day. So a successful email campaign can catch people anytime, anywhere. This is why it is very important to have an effective email marketing strategy.

Here are some tips on how to market yourself and your business successfully, using email:

Sell a reason to open the email in the subject line. Crafting a good subject line for your email can be tricky. You want to give the recipient enough information that their curiosity is piqued and they want to open the email. But if you include too much info, you run the risk of the customer deciding that they don’t need to know what is inside, and just deleting the email right then and there. Be aware of what is in the body of your email and keep the subject line short and sweet.
Make sure the body of the email is something that is worthwhile to your target audience. While general emails about what is going on with your company can be useful on occasion, make sure that the majority of your emails have a call to action. The call to action can be any number of things. Probably one of the most successful things to include in an email is a coupon or discount. Letting customers know of upcoming promotions is a great thing to include as well.
Don’t overuse email marketing. Some companies are guilty of sending out 5-6 emails per day. This can get tiring for the recipient. For smaller businesses, even one email per week can keep your company’s name in your customer’s mind.
Make it easy to subscribe or unsubscribe to your company’s email list. A chance to enter your email address for updates should have a prominent spot on your webpage. Many companies also offer an incentive for signing up, such as a coupon or discount. Conversely, it should be just as easy to unsubscribe if the customer no longer wishes to receive updates. Not being able to take your address off of an email list can be frustrating, and can leave a bad taste for your potential clients. Better to let them easily unsubscribe and come back at their leisure, if they so choose.
Don’t try to trick your customers. Only include relevant information, deals, and offers in your email. People will be irritated if they open an email with one promise, and land on your site just to find that the opposite is true. Commit to your content.

Use Email Marketing To It's Fullest

Small businesses can use email just as effectively as those that have a larger customer base, if not even more so. Email is a fantastic way to communicate with your customers. Just make sure to pay close attention and use email marketing to its fullest.

Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide. She has spent time working for major media news outlets in Las Vegas and Pittsburgh.

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HubSpot 3 - The Next Generation in Marketing Automation Software

Steven Bloom — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 15:47:00 GMT

One of the biggest challenges for anyone considering tackling internet marketing today has always been the difficulty of gathering information, executing a strategy and understanding what works best and what is failing.

Six years ago, two young men just out of MIT understood your pain and created a solution that would allow small and medium businesses, a single consolidated software package to accomplish that lead generation and lead management.

Since it's inception, their company, HubSpot has become the marketing platform of choice for over 7,000 businesses and that software has generated over 35 Million leads for them.

On September 1st of this year, HubSpot is releasing the most upgraded and integrated platform ever for inbound marketers of small and medium businesses.

An Intelligent Platform That Puts The Marketers in Control

The evolution of the HubSpot software (now referred to as HubSpot 3) is the result of the rebuilding and weaving together many of the single modules that were used previously.

Some of the existing modules are still current such as the blogging software, CMS, SEO tools and the Marketing Analytics.

What’s new or rebuilt in HubSpot 3:

Contacts Database: Contacts is an ever-evolving information portal on a company’s audience (Prospects, Leads and Customers).
Email: The email system is closely integrated with the contacts database, workflows social media, dynamic content and a company’s CRM system. It enables greater personalization and deliverability than ever before.
Workflows: Workflows leverage the enormous amount of data in the Contacts database and a series of rules set by the marketer to create dynamically evolving segments and automate marketing actions. More than email automation, workflow enables marketers to trigger campaigns, change contact profile properties, score leads, send notifications, and sync to a CRM system based on when a lead has met a set of conditions.
Landing Pages: Landing pages have been rebuilt to be closely integrated with the Contacts database, CRM systems, email, dynamic components, and social media. Using the new landing pages marketers can build, implement, and measure a full multichannel campaign in one place. A/B Testing is built in (at the enterprise level) and the new landing page templates have responsive design to optimize for different devices and browsers. Because of Smart Forms and Smart CTAs, HubSpot's landing pages are also among the most adaptive on the market.
Smart Fields: Smart forms adapt and minimize over time. As a company gathers contact information about a given lead, the forms remove fields that have been satisfied in past submissions, making for a better user experience. Smart CTAs: Built off the Contacts database, HubSpot 3 enables you to show images and CTAs that adapt to reflect the interests and stored qualities of the person viewing them.
Smart Lists: Smart lists are continually evolving contact lists based on a set of criteria. Each time an individual meets the rules of a smart list, they are added. You can have an unlimited number of Smart Lists that are segmented based on the value of a contact property, being a member of a static list, or having ever filled out a specific form.
Social Media: With a new integration directly into Contacts, HubSpot Social Media now enables you to view a lead's social activity and create dynamic segments based on your most engaged social media followers. In addition to that functionality, called "Social Contacts," HubSpot social media now has an in-app view of all your Twitter and Facebook interactions and enables you to respond, follow or other.
Mobile App: Available for free in the apple store, HubSpot has added a mobile application to enable marketers to keep tabs on their lead generation and customer conversions on the go. The mobile app includes a view of Sources, Marketing Grader and Contacts.
Salesforce.com Integration: HubSpot 3 brings you an even stronger Salesforce.com connector than ever.
App & Service Marketplace: First launched in 2011, the marketplace has now grown to include more than 100 providers and 60 add-ons to HubSpot. The marketplace aims to ensure that HubSpot users will be able to customize their HubSpot and never run out of functionality for their platform.
Overall UX improvements: In addition to rebuilding portions of the product and launching new tools, HubSpot has made significant investment in the overall user experience within the platform. From the marketing analytics reports to the set-up process, it is a completely new and guided experience for users.

(Source: HubSpot)

As an Inbound Marketing Agency and a HubSpot Partner, Go Time Marketing is very excited about this latest integrated release. Wondering what this means for your business? We would love to show you how inbound marketing can improve all of your marketing efforts. Just click below to get a free marketing evaluation for your business.

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Every Inbound Marketing Campaign Should Start With An Offer

Steven Bloom — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 23:11:00 GMT

Increasing Site Traffic is Just the Beginning

If you're blogging to increase your site traffic, you're probably seeing an increase in traffic.

But increasing your site traffic is really just the beginning.

The next question is: Is that traffic converting to more leads?

If it's not, read on to see what you may be doing wrong.

The Offer Comes First

Any inbound marketing campaign needs to start with an offer. Not a blog post, a tweet or an email.

It's all starts with your offer.

What Do You Mean By Offer?

In the Inbound Marketing world, an offer is normally embodied in a downloadable piece of premium content that is offered in exchange for a name and an email address.

Examples of offers are:

So getting someone to fill out a form to produce a lead is what an offer is all about. Will that "lead" buy from you today? Probably not. But that's OK because you're just getting started.

Now that you've created a valuable piece of premium content that people want, you can use all of your great inbound marketing tools at your disposal to move that lead to a real customer.

What Comes After Your Offer?

After you've defined your offer, all your subsequent marketing activities should flow from your offer. All blog posts, all email nurturing campaigns, all social media posts should be based on and support the offer.

Each of these inbound marketing elements all have a role in the campaign.

Calls to Action (CTA) - Buttons and graphics that stand out on your page and direct people to do something is what CTAs are all about. Download Now is a classic example.
Landing Pages (LP) - Landing Pages are where your offer lives...after they've given up their Name and Email Address
Lead Nurturing & Email - Once they've given up their email address, you put them on an informative and occasional email nurturing campaign. You want to educate and nurture them over time. Share, Don't Shill
Blogs: Blog posts, done well, bring in top of the funnel traffic. Hopefully in great numbers. But it may also continue to act as a nurturing tool as people subscribe and read your blog. Over time they may become customers.
Social: Social networks are a great tool to get the word out around your blogs posts and offers. That's it. It's just a tool.
Analyze: What campaigns are working? You'll find out with analytics and reporting. Don't neglect this important final step.

Conclusion

The conclusion of this post is straightforward. All inbound marketing campaigns should start with an offer. But that's just the beginning and it's the right place to start.

And like your inbound marketing program, we're just getting started as well. Subscribe to our blog above to get more future posts on such great topics like:

What's the Lead Conversion Path?
What metrics should I Use to Measure an Inbound Marketing Campaign?
What are Calls to Action and how do they fit into the mix?
Should I have more than one campaign?

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Tame Your Social Media Beast With An Editorial Calendar

Isabel Reyna — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 19:59:00 GMT

Do You Have Community Manager ADD?

If you’re anything like me, your office space looks like it was hit by a ravaging tornado. Coffee mugs and paperwork in disarray, combined with the disorderly documents on your desktop - it makes one wonder how we manage to get anything done.

As a Social Media Community Manager, I'm faced with the disorder on my real and virtual desktop on a daily basis.

If you're a Community Manager, you know how easy your responsibilities can become a huge jumbled mess!

The Chaos of Being a Social Butterfly

Here at Go Time Marketing, we service many clients. And most of them need help with their social media campaigns, extending their social media reach and just general engagement with their followers.

It's an exciting and rewarding part of inbound marketing and I absolutely love it...but it can be very overwhelming at times.

You probably have 5+ browser windows open with 15+ tabs each
There’s always something to read or update with every click
You're constantly combing through the web for the latest on your clients' industry
Not to mention the different voice you have to convey on a client's social media content

Is There a Better Way?

After a few months of this, you start thinking..."Is there a better way for me to organize my community management tasks that's trackable and easy to use?"

Yes, dear reader, now there is.

Make way for the amazing-balls Go Time Marketing Community Manager Editorial Calendar.

The spreadsheet is really straightforward to understand but here a few pointers:

It has multiple tabs for multiple clients. One tab per client. Feel free to add more
The Day Column is just there if you need to organize yourself if you're adding multiple posts per week ahead of schedule
The Date Time Column is there if you want to upload the spreadsheet (CSV) into your Hootsuite for example. Check out this other cool spreadsheet for uploading into Hootsuite as well.
The Medium Column allows you to specify which social media platform you wish to make the post
The Post Title, Post Copy and Post URL are all self-explanatory.

Why Should You Use the Editorial Calendar?

So what's in it for you?

It may seem like just one more thing to maintain, but it really isn't. It will make your life easier, less stressful, and save you time.

Here's how:

Keeps you more organized
Keeps all your posts in one place
You can upload it into Hootsuite
Keeps track of what you've done
Helps you plan out the week so you can get all your posts done in one day

Download For Free Now

[articlelink]

23 Content Quality Factors That Will Get You Ranked on Google

Steven Bloom — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 18:46:00 GMT

What Makes Your Content Rank Has Changed

If you've been following the great debate on what Google looks for when ranking your content on the front page of their Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) then you've heard the same mantra over and over...

Produce quality content and you will rise to the top of the search results. Produce weak, mediocre content and you will sink into the muck and mire of Page 10 obscurity.

Obviously, there are many factors that contribute to your site's pages ranking:

Site history
Domain authority
Proper on-page SEO
Keyword placement / density
Inbound links
Much more...

And throughout the last decade, people have been trying to manipulate these factors to gain an edge on the popular search engine's rankings.

Those days are coming to an end.

Google Panda and Penguin Have Changed the Game

Google's stated mission in life is to "organize the world's information".

Tough job.

One of their biggest technical challenges has been fighting people's attempts to manipulate rankings in the algorithmically-driven search results page (SERP).

But over the last 18 months, Google made two game-changing additions to their fabled algorithm. One was called Panda and the other Penguin.

SEO MOZ Video on Google Panda

SEO MOZ Video on Google Penguin

As these excellent SEOMoz videos make clear, it is now much more difficult to manipulate Google SERP rankings.

And it has now become accepted wisdom in the SEO community, that creating quality content that gets shared on social is the only true, long term way of getting ranked on Google.

In other words, you now have to create content for people, not search engines. What a concept!

23 Content Quality Factors Revealed

In a Google Webmaster Central blog post last year, Google Fellow, Amit Singhal explained what Google looks for in order to give your content a quality ranking.

While Google isn't going to give up their algorithm secrets (more on that below), Singhal advises and intimates that if you'll ask yourself these questions about your site and your content, you will understand what signals Google looks for in determining quality.

Would you trust the information presented in this article?
Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
How much quality control is done on content?
Does the article describe both sides of a story?
Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

Go Time Marketing provides professional content marketing services for all our clients. If you require quality articles, e-books and other content for you to use on your own site, contact Go Time Marketing. Call (855) 468-4631

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Content Above the Fold Should Tease, Not Trample

Stephanie Strong — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 17:11:00 GMT

What Does "Above the Fold" Mean?

"Above the Fold" is a web design concept that's been co-opted from the newspaper business.

Back in the day, anything on the top half of the newspaper's front page was considered above the fold.

Above the fold is where publishers put the most important headlines and articles of the day.

And it also sold more newspapers.

Does Above the Fold Apply to Web Design?

In the web world, the term refers to any content that appears on a web page when the page first loads. If you have to scroll down using you browser's scroll bar, that's considered content that's "below the fold".

And it's important for the web as well. First impressions matter on the web. Ever heard of the blink test?

The Message Got Lost

But somewhere along the line, above the fold changed. It morphed from its original newspaper intent of "entice and tease" to 'cram it all above the fold".

Paddy Donnely author of Life, Below 600px, says it well:

Many web designers, after presenting a site design, hear the client worriedly ask 'But, where is the fold?!'...switching on the guides in Photoshop to show them the fold usually results in a response like 'Hmm, yeah, we're going to need those articles, and those links, and those 6 images all above the fold.' And there goes any sense of white space, readability and story telling you had planned for their site.

Getting Back to Newpaper's Original Intent

Just like people are enticed and teased by a good newspaper headline, they should be drawn into the story on the web as well.

But this doesn't mean putting in everything and the kitchen sink.

This was never the case for newspapers and it should never be for websites. In fact, even less so. Is scrolling a browser window really that difficult?

And this should not only apply to the home page design as well.

Above the Fold Design for Different Page Types

Above the Fold on Your Home Page

Your home page above the fold content should communicate what you do in 5 seconds or less and draw people in the company's narrative and story. That's it. It's ok to make them scroll!

Above the Fold on Blog Pages

Blog pages are content-oriented. People are there to learn something or be entertained. You want to grab them with the content ASAP. Your key point and keywords should be above the fold. Interesting images are great here too!

Check out our infographic on the Anatomy of a Business Blog Post.

Above the Fold on Landing Pages

Landing pages are different. They have one purpose in life - to convert the visitor to a lead. For this reason, keeping things above the fold may be a more important consideration than other web pages.

Your Unique Selling Propostion along with an enticing call to action and a form should probably be above the fold.

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The Catch-22 of Traditional Marketing

Tod Hirsch — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 19:54:00 GMT

Permission Marketing's Enduring Legacy

I recently re-read Permission Marketing by Seth Godin.

The book is considered a classic by anyone in the internet marketing industry. And for good reason. Published over 13 years ago, the book's ideas are even more true today.

And they form the basic foundation for what people now often call Inbound Marketing.

Godin predicates much of Permission Marketing on what he calls the Catch-22 of Traditional Marketing.

What's the Catch-22 of Traditional Marketing?

Simply put, marketers used to enjoy wild success with their use of traditional media over the years. You used to be able to generate demand for your products with consistent, repeated marketing on traditional media like TV, Radio, Newspapers or Billboards.

But that's not so true anymore.

The root causes of this problem and how traditional marketing is reacting to these big changes in marketing is what the Catch-22 is all about.

Cause #1: We're Out of Time

As technology has transformed our world, our lives are moving faster and faster. We're busy.

Time has become our most valuable commodity. And unlike other commodities, they're not making any more of it.

Traditional advertising interrupts our valuable time. We don't have patience for it anymore.

Cause # 2: 500 Channels and Nothing On

There used to be just three channels on TV and everyone was watching the same shows and the same advertisements. Now there are hundreds of channels with everyone watching different shows. Did you know that the average viewer audience for network news shows has declined more than 55% since 1980?

Did you know there are over 10,000 different magazine titles published in the US every year?

Our limited time has been fragmented into tiny slivers of attention. We've become a nation of niches.

Cause # 3: Protecting Ourselves from the Onslought

So how has traditional marketing reacted to this?

More of the same. More advertising. More interruption.

Depending on which study you read, it's now estimated that the average consumer can receive up to 3,000 marketing messages per day. This is up from "only" 570 marketing messages per day in 1971.

To combat this barrage, we've built up walls.

We have DVRs that zip past commercials and do-not-call lists that save us from telemarketers People are now paying money to satellite radio companies just so they don't have to listen to ads.

Cause #4: The Internet

The obvious 800-pound gorilla in the room is the Internet. People are simply spending less time in front of the boob tube than they used to.

A 2010 Forrester report indicated that Americans are now spending the same amount of time on the Internet as they do on TV.

Cause # 5: Traditional Marketing is Expensive

Any marketing technique that relies on interrupting people's valuable attention, must repeat the message multiple times to be effective. Expose people to an ad one time, they remember nothing. Expose people 10 times, they'll start to remember. Expose them 1,000 times and you've got a Coca-Cola or McDonalds.

In other words, frequency works in traditional marketing. But there's a huge downside - cost. In order to get the message out effectively, marketers have to pound the message home with a costly, high frequency campaign.

All of these factors have contributed to a gradual but relentless reduction in our ability and desire to pay attention to marketing messages.

Call it Consumer ADD.

The Downward Spiral of the Traditional Media Industry

In a nutshell, traditional media has got itself caught in a downward spiral of higher costs, smaller, more fragmented audiences and less effective marketing.

The more traditional marketers spend, the less it works and the less it works, the more money they spend.

Inbound Marketing Solves the Catch 22 Problem

Inbound Marketing solves the catch-22 problem of traditional marketing because it takes advantage of the same societal shifts that are causing the decline of traditional marketing in the first place.

Inbound Marketing Doesn't Interrupt You

When a business creates a good business blog post, it's created a marketing asset. That asset exists on the internet and is available exactly when you need it. It doesn't interrupt your day. It's just there, all the time, findable with a simple Google search.

Inbound Marketing Doesn't Waste Your Time

Inbound Marketing assumes you're busy. It doesn't bother you with irrelevant marketing messages delivered at inconvenient times.

For example, good email nurturing campaigns deliver emails to your inbox that you look forward to. They're anticipated, relevant and personal. It's content that adds value to your day. It's the opposite of spam and it doesn't waste your time.

Inbound Marketing Requires Your Permission

If you don't want to receive an email campaign, you unsubscribe. If you don't want to download an ebook, you don't fill out the form. Inbound Marketing assumes the consumer is in control. Not interested? No problem. There are plenty of people that are.

Inbound Marketing is Affordable

Godin calls the Internet "the greatest direct marketing medium in the history of the world".

Where else can you establish a permission-based relationship with people so cheaply? What's the cost of an informative blog post? What's the cost of a relevant, highly anticipated email?

The incremental cost of delivery is virtually free to the marketer.

Not so with traditional media. Every marketing message you send out costs big money.

At some point, it doesn't scale. At some point, it doesn't work anymore.

I think we've reached that point in 2012. I think Mr. Godin was 13 years too early.

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Five SEO Errors That Sabotage Your Content Marketing

Jennifer Wirth — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 20:49:00 GMT

You’ve written a blog post and you’re pretty sure it's akin to the next great American novel.

You’re an expert on your topic, probably the smartest person you know and funny to boot. So why isn't everyone hanging out with you and your blog?

As someone who recently transitioned from copywriting with a rock and chisel to SEO copywriting, I'm a little overwhelmed by all of the expert “advice” about why the universe hates my blog.

Everyone can agree that content is King (ahem, or Queen!) but you could have pages of useful content that just falls by the wayside.

One of the biggest problems content creators face is how to transform their marketing masterpieces into customer action. Those of us in the ‘biz call that a conversion. So what does SEO have to do with any of it?

In short, SEO helps search engines find, decipher and rank your page based on how helpful the information is to the typical searcher in your niche. Better rankings raise your visitor count and increase your chances of conversion (and superstardom).

If you’re struggling with SEO setbacks, have no fear because I’ve compiled a list of five errors that sabotage your content marketing. And for those of you that love multi-tasking, half of these tips can also be applied to your dating life.

SEO Error #1: Cheating With Link Spam

Look out link-spammers! Although inbound link building is a great way to increase your SEO off-page, it’s also a common outlet for those looking to game the system. Google is cracking down on paid link brokers who back sites to help companies boost their search engine ranks. Sites that opted into link building instead of creating quality content are now being penalized with de-indexing and no longer hold any SEO value. Your goal should be to obtain as many natural links as possible, and realize that these might take time. Keep in mind an engine-friendly website has links that are easy to navigate. This will be a lot more efficient and result in higher quality pages than dumping a bunch of energy and money into a quick fix.

SEO Error #2: Being Lazy

The graph below says it all—right after an article is published, it has a high ‘freshness score’ that declines over time.

In a nutshell, fresh content appears higher in search engine rankings. Your goal should be to publish more often because a blog post written this morning has a much higher ranking than some ancient web page.

SEO Error #3: Using Key Words As A Crutch

As an avid reader, this is a huge pet peeve of mine. Your content should have a natural flow and feel to it, so don’t force in a bunch of key words and phrases if they aren’t working. You can always break content into several pages or blog posts in order to capture a larger audience. After all, if reading and navigating your site isn’t easy for a visitor, they’ll probably just move on to one that is. Also, in an effort to offer more security to Google searchers, marketers are being given less access to keyword data. In layman’s terms, its getting harder for marketing gurus to figure what words brought people to their sites. One of the best ways to alleviate this issue is by increasing your content footprint; just one 500-word post per day can get you 182,500 words indexed by the end of the year. I’ll totally drink to that in 2013!

SEO Error #4: Being Boring

Sometimes, reading a blog post can feel like reading the back of a shampoo bottle. Think about everything you love in a blog post: useful information that’s well written, entertaining and presented in an organized, reliable way. Google recognized this when they rolled out Google Panda and filtered out websites with poor content. Pages with content that testers found valuable were rewarded with higher rankings and more traffic.

Sparking The Social Flame

Search engines are a useful tool, but they don’t retweet you, buy stuff from you, or share comments with you. When producing content, your first priority is your audience because the more people like you, the more search engines will too.

SEO Error #5: Don't Make Search Engines Guess

Search engine spiders are not that smart. They’re actually kind of stupid. The point of SEO is to spell everything out so the search engine can pick up on the relevance of your page. Your article titles, title tags (H1, H2, H3), meta-descriptions and meta-keyowrds should be in alignment with the topic to make sure your page has crystal clear communication with search engines. When people interact with your site, this data is collected and used to rank you.

To get more information about fixing SEO and other mistakes, contact Go Time Marketing at our office (855) 468-4631 or fill out this form.

[articlelink]

[INFOGRAPHIC] Anatomy of a Business Blog Post

Tod Hirsch — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 14:18:00 GMT

The Benefits of Business Blogging

Much has been said on the benefits of blogging for business.

It improves credibility and demonstrates expertise
It answers customer questions
It creates goodwill
It attracts new visitors through search
It gives you something to talk about on your social networks

Easier Said Than Done

But there are still a lot of boring, unfocused company blogs out there. They talk about the company Christmas party or their latest factory opening.

No offense, but this is boring to everyone but the company.

This is because it's easy to start a blog. It's easy to put words into a computer screen.

But it's hard to consistently maintain useful content that people want to read and share.

It's hard to turn those words into a true marketing asset that actually contribute to your marketing program.

This is what business blogging is and should be for all companies.

The goal of this infographic is to help companies do this.

Click on it , print it out. Put it on your wall. And let us know if we missed anything.

Good luck!

[articlelink]

Conan O'Brien Does Content Marketing

Steven Bloom — Tue, 29 May 2012 23:18:00 GMT

Conan O'Brien Is A Social Media Star

Whether you are a late night fan of Jay Leno or a raving member of Conan O'Brien's Team Coco, you can immediately distinguish the difference between the two by their use of social media.

When Conan O'Brien was interviewed by talkshow host Piers Morgan at The Cable Show 2012 in Boston the following facts came to light:

With 5.6 Million Twitter followers compared to Leno's 376,000, there is no comparison. Next, take a look at their respective Facebook pages. Conan rocks with 1.86 Million “Likes” to Leno's measly 429,000. So why is there such a difference?

"He's busy. He's got the largest privately owned car collection in the world," O'Brien smirked. "So, he doesn't have time for social media."

During the interview O'Brien was insistent that in 1993 when he began his late-night talkshow career he was a computer Luddite. "The networks felt that it was all about how many viewers you had watching your television show. When I was at NBC, we had a late-night page but it was the same website page a dry cleaner would have."

When O'Brien was asked about how he got into social media he responded:

“I was standing with a foot in traditional broadcast and one in this "brave new world" and I felt I had to make a jump to one or the other. My team and myself had to figure out what it is about this new world we are in and how we could exploit it."

When asked of his strategy O'Brien replied, “I never pretended to know a thing about this. We just knew that we had a following of young Internet savvy fans and we were aggressive about reaching out to them."

It's All About Content

Whether he's blogging, tweeting, posting in Facebook, checking in on Foursquare, posting videos to YouTube, creating a live webcast, posting pictures on Flickr or writing a blog on Tumblr, Conan goes where his fans are.

"At the time this all started happening [Conan's post Tonight Show Tour], I was forced to embrace this world and the first thing I learned was... It's all about content!"

Morgan asked O'Brien whether it upset him that his material can be found in various formats across the Internet to which he replied, “no, not at all." When Will Ferrell unveiled on Conan's television show the date of the new Anchorman 2 movie, (and play the flute), O'Brien's staff chopped that performance up into bit sized pieces and knew exactly how to "get it out there so that's its everywhere."

"When I started, we were taught to not give anything away for free. You teased people so that they would watch."

What O'Brien and team have found out to be true is that it is a different world out there today. You can show them exactly what Will Ferrell did and mass distribute it so there is no surprise. But what happens is that it created a wave of viewers for their 11:00 show. It created conversations on the web and created a curiosity for people to want to watch. Some watched it on TV, some on their DVR a few days later and some are experiencing it in little pieces like from the Huffington Post and other blogs.

So here's what you can learn from Conan:

It's all about content
Go where your fans (customers) are
Post your content EVERYWHERE
There is no "right way" in the new world
That was then... and this is now
Posing with a monkey is good press!

To fully experience the richness of the Conan's insights, take the 20 minutes and watch this interview. Even though Piers Morgan is a bit of a bore.. don't you think?

[articlelink]

Facebook Restrictions Make Your Fan Page Invisible to Search Engines

Stephanie Strong — Thu, 17 May 2012 22:53:00 GMT

Can you find your Facebook fan page on Google?

If not, you may want to check your page settings.

In your settings, Facebook allows for you to limit the people that can find your fan page by geography and age.

What you may not know is that using these restrictions are making you invisible to Google.

Facebook has no control over the public internet. For this reason, adding these kind of restrictions to your fan page effectively closes it off from the public internet. And if you are trying to market using a Facebook fan page, this defeats its purpose. To increase your find-ability, we recommend that you remove any restrictions you may have turned on.

Here's how:

Facebook Facebook Permissions

Go to your fan page to access the Admin Panel.
Click on Manage. Then click on Edit Page.
Check that you are on the Manage Permissions landing page
From there you should make sure that the Country Restrictions box is empty and that the Age Restrictions box is set to Anyone(13+).

These are the most liberal visibility settings for Facebook and will allow you to optimize your fan page's SEO.

Are there any other settings within Facebook, or any other social media platform, that you know to watch out for?

Go Time Marketing offers many different SEO management techniques. If you have any questions about marketing your fan page feel free to contact us.

[articlelink]

Should Google Be Wired Into Your Brain?

Steven Bloom — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 20:15:00 GMT

I guess I shouldn't be shocked. I use Google to run my life and my business.

I use their Gmail, Google Calendar, Document sharing, Adwords, YouTube, Feedburner and Google +. I am excited about the work they are doing with the self driving car (I want to be able to work while commuting without getting a ticket for distracted driving).

But the question I am asking now is… Do I want Google in front of me during all of my working hours?

In an online story in the "Bits" section of the New York Times, Google talked about their Project Glass, a up to this point secret project that hopes to produce wearable computing.

Though the glasses are not yet haute couture and they are just being tested, you may come across a random Google employee walking around wearing a pair of the wrap-around glasses that are a little more understated than Geordi Laforge's ocular appliance from Star Trek. Google is also developing a pair of contact lenses that include pixels embedded into the display.

In this video that Google recently released, you can see how Google envisions you in the near future "mind melding" your day with today's very commonplace Google apps.

A young man begins his day in his New York City apartment, gazing out the window and getting the time, date and weather on his "heads up" display. He then goes about his day, asking for and getting directions, chatting with his friends, taking pictures, checking in at a local eatery and sharing a beautiful sunset, overlooking the city in a video call with his girlfriend while playing her a tune on his ukelele. Take a moment to watch it. It is actually very intriguing!

So, what do you think? Do you want Google to be "wired" into your brain? Please share any comments for or against. Also, if you have any additional ideas for Google, let them know!

[articlelink]

Sacramento Social Media Marketing - One Hour A Day - Really!

Steven Bloom — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 19:43:00 GMT

Sacramento Social Media Marketing is such a misunderstood process. It seems that every few months there is a new social media company on the rise. Just see Pinterest, Google + and a myriad of other large and small hopefuls looking for a foothold in the mass appeal of sharing.

The New Paradigm

What began as a way to connect bands to their fans, (MySpace), a way to pick up chicks (Facebook) and a way to find a better job, (LinkedIn), has turned into a new age of marketing and socializing.

People love to talk.. and gossip... and recommend... and warn... and most importantly, they like to research. We no longer have to take the word of salesmen and fancy marketers. We can immediately find, research, compare and show for ... just about anything.

What does that mean to businesses? Well, it can be good.. or bad depending on your business, your reputation and your willingness to embrace your current and potential customer.

Remember I said people talk.. and research.. and recommend? Well, whether you like it or not, people are talking about you, your company and your brand. They are telling others what a great experience they had, any problems they encountered but most importantly, how they perceived buying products or services from you.

Chatting It Old School

Early on, when businesses first began tapping into the social media market, they experimented with many different ways to interact. Some of the early mistakes were:

Mixing Personal pages with Business Pages (Nobody really wanted to play Farmville with you then buy your $10,000 product)
Talking only about your business (A continual commercial... exhausting.)
Buying (bribing?) Likes (Surveys show that over 90% of the people who "Like" your page never return.)

Today's Level of Sophistication

Sometimes it worked, but overall a new level of sophistication has taken over. Where there were only the 'big 3' mentioned above (plus YouTube), there are now hundreds of sites that strive for acceptance and some that are growing so fast, it is impossible to ignore them. See Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Tumblr and others that garner millions of eyeballs each day, looking for interesting and valuable content.

Content Drives It All

Google, Facebook and the others are paying very close attention to what is called "edge rank." In layman's terms, the more people are talking and interacting with your social media content, the higher you are rated in terms of importance and authority.

If people are sharing, Plus 1'ing, Liking, Re-Pinning, commenting, etc. then you must be providing quality content, thus, they feel you will provide a great experience for their members. Get it? Quality Content + Engagement = Higher SEO rankings.

Let's Do It Right

Can you spend 30 minutes to an hour a day tending your business social media garden? With the myriad of tools available, (HootSuite, TweetDeck, OnlyWire and hundreds more. Please don't shoot me for not naming your favorite!), you should be able to automate the following:

Posting of your new content to all of the major social sites.

Posting of others content to your social sites

Monitor who's talking about you or your company

Monitor who is talking about your industry

Answering or responding to tweets, posts and comments

Participating in sharing your unique opinion to other's content (this is social media, remember?)

Overwhelmed yet? Don't be. Knowing all of this information is wonderful, but you just need a Social Media Marketing strategy that works.

Talk to us. Tell us your biggest challenge and obstacle to becoming a productive marketing machine. You are not alone and we will answer as many comments as possible.

If you would like to arrange a private phone call. Just fill out the form and let us know.

We are committed to helping businesses tackle Sacramento social media in a meaningful way.

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Sacramento Internet Marketing Local Techniques

Jerry Kennedy — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 11:17:00 GMT

When it comes to internet marketing for business, Sacramento is one of the most savvy cities in the nation.

A study conducted in 2010 found that Sacramento ranked fourth in Twitter use by local businesses, and that same spirit of early adoption has made Sacramento a hub for learning about local internet marketing.

It goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway) that you should have your business listed on every local directory you can find. Creating a free profile for your business on Google Places, Yelp, Merchant Circle, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are essential steps in in your local internet marketing efforts. But what else can you do?

Twitter Community

Take a lesson from the local Sacramento Twitter community when it looked like the Sacramento Kings would be moving to Anaheim. A grassroots movement among Twitter users started immediately, and has been sustained for nearly a year, using the hashtags of #HereWeStand, #HereWeStay, and #HereWePurple.

The result? A tentative deal reached earlier today (February 27, 2012) will keep the Kings in Sacramento. That's the power of social media and internet marketing in Sacramento. People and businesses are paying attention.

So how can you, the local Sacramento business owner, apply the lessons of the "keep the Kings" campaign to your own internet marketing efforts? Consider these three lessons.

Lesson #1: Find Your Clients' Passion

Possibly the most important lesson Sacramento businesses can learn from the example of the #HereWeStay campaign is the importance of passion in driving online behavior. Many fans made personal financial and time sacrifices to support the campaign, and even fairweather fans turned out to show their support.

So what are your clients passionate about? How can you speak directly to that passion and use it to drive behavior? These are questions that you must answer about your own business, as your local internet marketing efforts trade heavily on the currency of your clients' passion.

#2: Get Them to Share

Make no mistake: while the #HereWeStand and #HereWeStay Twitter campaigns were launched by individuals, they quickly became a team effort. The reason for their success was the amplification effect; as fans saw their friends using the hashtags and taking up the cause, they joined in and, in turn, made other converts from their own friends and followers. Without the amplification effect of sharing, the campaigns would have been short-lived.

Sacramento businesses can follow suit in their own internet marketing. One of the best endorsements your business can have is a "Like" on Facebook, a Tweet about how great you are, or an endorsement on LinkedIn. Those kinds of testimonials are priceless, and they are more likely to be shared with still others.

So encourage your customers to connect with you on social media channels, to review your business on Yelp and Google Places, and to check in on Facebook or Foursquare when they visit your establishment. How can you encourage them to follow through. That's lesson

#3: Reward Your Fans

The efforts of Sacramento Kings fans didn't go unnoticed by team owners Joe and Gavin Maloof, local Sacramento officials (including Mayor Kevin Johnson), and even the NBA. Their voices were heard, and they received their reward in the form of an agreement to keep the Kings in Sacramento.

Sacramento business owners need to do the same. As part of your internet marketing strategy, be sure to reward the kind of behavior you want to see in your customers (i.e. "liking" your Facebook page, checking in on Foursquare, and writing a review on Yelp). For example, you could offer a discount to customers who are actively promoting your business on social media channels. You could give perks to clients who become Foursquare mayors or who regularly check in on Facebook or comment on your wall.

One note of caution: don't provide perks just to those clients who leave positive feedback! As we noted in an earlier post on negative social media feedback, if someone leaves a legitimate negative comment or review, use it as an opportunty to shine. Offer them a bonus for allowing you the privilege of making things right. You'll be surprised by the positive results such actions can have.

For more information on how you can improve your Sacramento internet marketing efforts, download a free copy of our Step by Step Guide to Internet Marketing, available behind the link.

Sources:

https://www.netprospex.com/np/system/files/NetProspex_Social_Report_Fall2010.pdf
http://www.inc.com/news/articles/2010/report-ranks-social-media-savviness.html

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Great Sources for Inbound Marketing Training

Steven Bloom — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 12:30:00 GMT

Inbound marketing training can often be a blessing and a curse.

Inbound marketing is a marketing methodology that is statistically proven to drive more traffic and convert more leads, but also entails doing many different things… all fairly well… all at the same time.

Where to Begin Your Inbound Marketing Training

HubSpot

If you like it full force and you like it free, then HubSpot dominates Inbound Marketing training with free webinars, blogs and content. The only investment that you need to make is in time and focus to learn. HubSpot's superb training will teach you about the art and science of:

Search Engine Optimization

Blogging and Social Media

Lead Generation

Lead Management

Email and marketing automation

Marketing Analytics

Inbound Marketing University

Also if you are a real achiever and want to become a "Certified Inbound Marketing Professional", then Hubspot has it's own Inbound Marketing University complete with tests. (Start cramming now!)

HubSpot services range from a basic 200.00 monthly to 5000.00 monthly.

SeoMoz

SeoMoz primarily deals in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) software that can benefit any website a great deal in ranking highly on various (and we mean Google) search engines. The service is offered free for the first thirty days at the "pro" level. This software will help your company with:

Crawl Diagnostics

On Page SEO

Link Analysis

Traffic Data

This software isn't cheap and is mainly for businesses that utilize SEO services to there fullest. Prices range from 99.00 a month to 499.00 for the Elite Pro offering. However, their SEO blog is not only extensive, but packed full of helpful hints and advice for the DIY'er.

Marketo

Like getting leads? Yeah, we know, dumb question. Marketo caters to the lead nurturing and web analytic crowd. They are a software platform that caters to B2B. The services they offer include:

Consulting

Lead Management

Sales Insight

Revenue Cycle Analytics

Data Base Management

Social Media Integration

Marketo has two pricing plans. The "pro" pricing plan covers marketing automation and lead management at around $2000.00 a month. The "enterprise" tier starts at about $3,600.00 a month and adds to the professional plan, added security, the ability to add additional users for a lower price, and a sandbox environment for users. Again, a little pricey, but their marketing blogs are fantastic!

So, whether you are a "do-it-yourself'er" or you would like to talk to one of our Go Time Marketing Account Managers about either partnering out some of the tasks or letting us "do-it-for-you" services, just give us a call (800) 693-4339, drop us a line (Sales@GoTimeMarketing.com), fill out our form (to the right-->) or "chat us up" with our widget. One way or another, we are at your service.

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Sacramento SEO - The Good The Bad and the Ugly

Steven Bloom — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 20:47:00 GMT

As one of a number of professional Sacramento SEO companies advising local businesses in how to get their presence found online using local Search Engine Optimization, you’ll find that while we all take slightly different approaches and have slightly different opinions, we also all agree on a few main points.

As a result, we are going to kick off a weekly series of the good, the bad and the ugly about what makes up a good local Sacramento SEO campaign.

1. Local SEO is NOT a “set it and forget it” proposition.

What most business owners don’t realize is that SEO is an ever-changing target and there really is no “set it and forget it” like many unscrupulous SEO vendors will claim.

The rules (read algorithms) are ever changing. Google produces minor changes to it’s rules daily and weekly and has accelerated their major changes from annually to almost quarterly in order to heighten their customer’s (searchers) positive experience.

So, if you are have spent time in the past doing local SEO, you probably need to revisit your efforts as many may no longer be effective and some may be counter-productive.

2. Don’t try to “punk the system”

Building links organically takes time. Every search engine is now looking at the quality of every link, including directories.

You can buy listings in 1,000+ directories in Romania, Bulgaria, and literally all across the globe. But don’t. Google will assume that you don’t provide a quality experience to their searchers, based on the fact that you tried to “buy your way” to the top. They will ignore you and in some cases, ban your site.

Google and Bing are looking for real local listings, preferably with reviews from real people who either like or dislike your product or service.

3. Your Company Info is your Ticket

You need to have your company name, address and phone number displayed in each and every page of your website. A post office box no longer suffices. The search engine uses that information to match up to other sites that talk about you. This is where you are awarded your authority for local searches.

If a directory or social review site lists your company name, address and phone number, then that generates the equivalent of a back-link or recommendation.

4. Ask for Reviews

Increase the level of interaction and engagement by asking your customers (preferably happy ones) to give you a review, a +1, Share or Check-In.

Hint: Don’t put all of your reviews in one place. It pays to spread the love around by asking different customers to post reviews in different review sites.

5. Don’t be afraid of bad reviews.

Data shows that conversions actually go up when customers see a not-perfect review. As long as the review or comment is acknowledged and commented on with an explanation or solution by the business, most people will forgive or ignore the occasional critical review. We all know that it is impossible to please everyone so this brings ”realness” to your business. Just don’t ignore it, even if the reviewer is mean spirited and wrong. We’ll talk about how to address these in a future article.

Remember, interactions lead to higher authority and higher rankings in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP).

6. Local Call To Actions and Landing Pages

Does your local directory listing point only to your home page? You might want to try pointing your URL to an offer, a coupon or a special service that is tailor made for your city or target a geographic location. This technique allows you to point interested visitors directly to a locally branded landing page where you can make them an offer they can’t refuse.

Try offering an eBook, discount coupon, free trial in exchange for their email address. As 78% of most web visitors aren’t ready to buy, you can “lead nurture” them over time, giving them value and establishing trust for when they do decide to make a buying decision.

Contact A Professional

So, whether you are a local business or a multi-location business needed to do local SEO for each location, give Go Time Marketing a call, chat with us online or fill out the our contact form. We are always happy to talk about your particular business strategies.

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QR codes - Thinking outside the box

Liz Bloom — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 23:06:00 GMT

No doubt you have been hearing about QR codes, those funny black and white square boxes you see on ads, billboards and more recently, even on television commercials. If you subscribe to our updates then you know that we talk a lot about this on the Go Time Marketing Blog.

And for good reason. They are becoming a “must have” compliment to any traditional marketing source like print, tv and billboards.

If you have already launched a campaign or two for your product/business and are wondering why you aren't getting that much traffic….

There are many ways you can screw up a QR Code Campaign:

Don’t send the customers who scan directly to your Home Page!

This is one of the 7 deadly sins of online marketing. Target the landing page where you send them to an offer that is perfectly aligned with the campaign goals.

Is it to provide more information in exchange for an email address?
Is it to sign up for an event, contest or webinar?
How about a secret “unlock” code or fantastic coupon?

Tell them what they can expect when they scan.

Many QR codes are passed over because they are vague or unrecognizable. (Yes there are some people out there who still do not know what a QR code is.)
Give them the offer value statements that entice them to scan.

Make your QR code stand out from the rest.

Did you know that QR Codes do not have to be static images? You can play around with them and use many creative flairs to bring in potential customers. Did you know that QR Codes can be made out of food and are still scan-able? The possibilities are endless. Another good tip is to get your brand into the QR code.

Test those codes!

One reason a campaign with QR codes might fail is that people often overlook this crucial step.

Be sure to test your codes to see if they work, test as many times as it take to make a seamless experience for your customer. Test your codes and then test them again for every single platform you can.

These tips should help you get started on a having a successful campaign with QR Codes.

Do you have any questions about QR codes? Are you wondering how you can use them in your business? Just contact us at Go Time Marketing by phone, email or by our chatting with us online. We can help you turn a regular marketing campaign into a successful one.

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Why Should You Use Alt Tag to Improve SEO Score?

Steven Bloom — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:52:00 GMT

What does Love, Justice and Google all have in common? They are all supposedly "blind."

While we can't talk expertly about the first two, we can tell you that whenever you put up a picture on your website or blog, Google has absolutely no idea what the picture is. You have to tell the search engine about the picture. That is where "alt tags" come into play.

Go to your website and right click on a photo, then choose the "Get Info" option. Now, close your eyes and imagine you are unable to see pictures and can only read text. Does your picture have a name like 38u39e7.jpg? How about img036.gif? It doesn’t tell you what the picture is showing, only a random mix of numbers and letters. Even if your image has a name such as “backyardbbq.jpg”, it doesn’t tell the search engine the context in which it is placed.

Search engines were designed to scan the web for text and index it. There is currently no way for search engines to look at a picture and determine how it is relevant to the rest of the page (Google has this insatiable need to know relevancy and authority).

Alt tags are inserted into the HTML or coding of your website. They will look something like this - <img src=”images/38u39e7.jpg” />. To a search engine they only see what’s displayed which is a little line of code, which folder you image is placed and the image name.

Here’s an example of what the code will look like with the addition of an alt tag <img src=”images/38u39e7.jpg” alt=”ipod accessories – headphones, headsets, cables docks, cases and power accessories” />. Can you see how this could be beneficial not only to search engines but also to your SEO? By placing this simple line of text you tell the search engine what the picture is and the keywords that correspond to the image itself.

Help your search engines out. Set up your Alt Tags to read: "Big Red Nike Sneakers" (if that is the keyword you’re optimizing your page for), or even "Handsome owner of Go Time Marketing" just to keep it relevant.

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7 Deadly Mistakes of Blogging

Steven Bloom — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:49:00 GMT

Breaking through the wall that is effective blogging can require persistence at times, but the benefits to be gained for your business are substantial.

Providing potential customers with relevant, informative content on a frequent basis is a key to establishing rapport and trust with prospective clients as it relates to inbound marketing.

Minimizing many of the common mistakes people make when authoring a blog will translate to more and better customer leads in the future.

7 Deadly Mistakes of Blogging

Here the 7 most common mistakes a business can make with their blog:

Blog Frequency: Do not fall into the trap of not blogging enough. Effective inbound marketing requires frequent and consistent blog updates. Updating your blog with a new entry between two and four times a week is optimal.

Content Matters: Ensure your blog entries are relevant to your business as well as helpful to customers. Providing meaningful content will cause potential customers to take notice as well as funnel more potential customers to your blog through search engines.

No Copying: Unique content is ranked much higher as it relates to search engine results. Copying other's content is not only unethical but also less effective.

Blog Length: Entries to your blog which are excessive in length can often cause the reader to lose interest. Keep your blogs focused and concise to improve its reading experience.

Call To Action: A blog without a purpose is essentially just words on a screen. A proper call to action will energize and motivate the reader to make changes and take action.

Key Words: Key word recommendations serve an excellent purpose; they help your blog be discovered by customers looking for information on a specific topic. An overly keyword saturated blog will be ranked lower than a blog with the proper amount. Conversely, a blog without enough of the keywords might not receive the proper association at all with the search results.

Persistence Pays Off: Throwing in the towel too soon is a serious blogging mistake. Establishing readers and moving up search engine rankings does not happen overnight. Continuing to consistently and frequently write meaningful, quality content will gain recognition; it is not a matter of if, only a matter of when.

Closely following these important steps will yield many benefits to your blogging activities. GoTime Marketing can help guide you through this process further, feel free to ask any questions.

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If You Want More Leads – Try List Building and Email Marketing

Steven Bloom — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:44:00 GMT

Every day, millions of visitors view business websites to get more information about products or services. If your business has a website, there is a good chance the number of visitors to your site is quite substantial.

More so, if your website has a means for visitors to subscribe or inquire further on your products, you probably have a significant number of potential customers ready and waiting for you. But how do you convert this list of emails into customers? And what if you need to get more leads from your website?

List building and email marketing are two important strategies that should be included in your internet marketing plan.

Here are some tips on list building to get more leads:

Create a Facebook “fan page” where people can “like” the page and then opt-in to receive more information.
Join forums that focus on your products and services – or that pose problems where your product or service is the solution.
Participate in industry or trade blogs by providing articles about industry issues and how your product can resolve the challenges.

Here are some tips for email marketing:

Aspire to send emails often, but not too often. Depending on your product or service once a week can be plenty. In some cases, once a day is a better choice. While you do not want to overwhelm your subscribers with emails, you should strike a balance so that your business comes to mind when the time is right.
Avoid repetition in your emails. Coming up with new ideas can be challenging, and you can cycle through particularly successful emails every few months. But otherwise, your content needs to be fresh and eye-catching.
Always have a call to action – make offers, send coupons, have contests, encourage referrals, or simply challenge the reader to click to your website for more information or to order.

The effort to get more leads can be daunting, and managing those leads and building a long lasting customer relationship can be equally challenging. Many businesses choose to work with a firm who can specialize in internet marketing and customer relationship building. Before giving up on your website visitors and subscribers, consider working with an expert who can help you assemble a plan to turn them into your customers!

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Is it Really all about Your Blog Content? - The Numbers Don't Lie!

Steven Bloom — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:52:00 GMT

Whether you're in the planning stages of building a new business or just trying to grow your company into its next phase, the last thing most business owners are thinking about is whether their websites and blogs are going to attract new customers. But they should.

According to HubSpot Marketing, companies that blog have 55% more visitors to their websites than companies that don't.

Business To Consumer Companies (B2C) that blog generate 88% more leads per month than those who do not.

Business To Business (B2B) Companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those who do not.

Inbound Marketing is the newest business strategy which puts the customer in control and gives them the power to decide how they will receive their marketing materials. The way it works is simple:

Marketing content like blogs posts or videos are created and uploaded to your website.

That messages is then Search Engine Optimized (SEO) which gives your content a higher ranking in search engines like Google and Yahoo.

The message generated can then be spread through social media like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

The numbers do not lie.

Inbound marketing is more cost-effective than traditional outbound marketing. This is because your clients will spread your message themselves via social media, which is more effective than putting up a billboard or placing ads and hoping someone notices. In addition, you can target your audience better than using traditional advertising routes.

Inbound marketing has been used in successful presidential and political campaigns and will put you ahead of your competitors. It helps you work smarter, not harder and puts your business ahead of your competitors.

Generating new leads and growing your customer base has never been easier. Qualified agencies like Go Time Marketing would love to show you how this cost-effective and measurably proven resource can get you more leads, more customers, and more business. Give them a call or just ask a question on their website. They would love to hear from you!

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QR Codes For Comics, Musicians and Artists

Steven Bloom — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:54:00 GMT

Anyone trying to build a career as a creative or performing artist knows how key an email fan base is -- and how frustrating it can be to build one.

Luckily, smartphone technology makes it much easier to gather email contact information at performances, gallery openings, signing, or other venues where you interact with the public.

Here's how it works. Get special postcards or business cards printed that include a quick response (QR) code.

A QR code is a specialized two-dimensional barcode containing information that can be read by a mobile phone. In this case, the information is the URL to a smartphone-optimized landing page on your website. From there, it's easy for the fan to download tracks or comics, view photos and tour schedules, or even receive a special merch discount.

After a performance or a showing, fans are excited and energized. They want to know more about you. Give them a QR code, and they might be on your mailing list before the feeling can start to fade. And from there, you'll have fans you can nurture for years.

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Does SEO Generate More Business Leads?

Steven Bloom — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:43:00 GMT

SEO is the most powerful tool in today's marketing industry! With 85% of all sales transactions now beginning with an Internet search, it is imperative that you take advantage of SEO to get more leads to drive your Inbound Marketing sales.

What makes SEO so powerful? Research of search engine giant Google (80% of the market) shows that people's eyes tend to follow a "Z" path on a landing page; landing on the first page of an Internet search is critical, and on every page there is a "Golden Triangle"; which captures over 90% of prospective customers' attention. A recent Cornell University study showed that the first two listings on a Google landing page captured over 53% of user attention, but if you are the top listing, the number of people clicking over to your website is four times greater. After the second listing the results drop sharply- numbers three and four capture almost 23.5% of eye attention, with numbers five through eleven splitting up the rest.

Fall out of that Golden Triangle, or worse, off of the first page, and it is unlikely that your message is getting noticed. Get more leads by placing your website at the top left hand corner of that "Z", and you will drive sales with ease!

Consider this: people that initiate an Internet search have pre-qualified themselves with their interest in your product or service- they are coming to you already actively looking to make a purchase. Placing your company's website in prime position guarantees that you will get more leads.

This is the easiest way to take the frustration out of lead generation: let your website get more leads for your business, freeing your sales people to close the deal with customers who have found you by demonstrating interest in your product or service.

Cold calling, mailers, commercials and other forms of outbound marketing are losing efficacy due to customers having so many methods of blocking them out, i.e., caller id, spam filters, even the wastebasket. Don't let your message get lost in the maelstrom of today's media blitz- use SEO to position your company where you are sure to get noticed by your customers. If you don't, your competitors will.

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On-Page Search Engine Optimization: 3 Requirements For Success

Liz Bloom — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:00:00 GMT

On-page SEO can be overlooked at times, but is a requirement for any website that wants to rank well with Google. Although Google constantly changes it’s algorithm, here are some things we know for sure:

The Title Tells All
When you are browsing the internet, what draws you to a webpage? The pages title, right? Well Google uses it’s spiders to catalogue in the same way. (Which is spooky in itself right? But I digress)

The title of any webpage can be optimized to your company’s advantage using specific keywords that are relevant to your company’s product or service. For instance if you are selling toys, make a specific page for each product you are selling with its own title, I.E. Giant Stuffed Panda Bear. This not only gives you the opportunity to rank for more keywords, but to have more web pages in your site index (which Google not only approves of, but also is how they know what your page is about).

Here are some common Title Mistakes:

Generic Page Titles – like Home, About, Contact Us, Products, etc. These tell Google nothing about what you do and what the page is about.

Using your Company Name as the Title – Really? Is your name the keyword that you are hoping to be discovered under?

Using the same Title for every page – See using your company name in every title.

On-Page SEO Calls for Quality Content

Don’t let those two words scare you. Quality content is something you know about. It is the business/service you have to offer. Such content on the Giant Stuffed Panda Bear page would include a “How your new bear was made” blog post or embedded video.

This useful content grabs the reader’s attention and helps your product stand out from everyone else. Having this content on your site also encourages people to share your web site over their social media accounts, which could bring in more conversations, traffic and ultimately, conversions.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

One of the most neglected aspects of On-Page SEO is Image Optimization. It is easy to just upload a picture with a random name (picture.jpg) and get on with more important business. But if you take a few seconds and use these tips, you can make the difference in your search engine results.

Try to name your image something that is keyword dense, but not overly so.

Make sure to have an appropriate image for the page title and theme. This may sound a little obvious, but it doesn’t hurt to reiterate, right?

Also make sure your images have alt tags. Alt tags are image information that is held in the HTML of your website, and the Google spiders look for and index regularly. (What do you think makes more sense to both humans and Google; image454.jpg or Giant_Stuffed_Panda_Bear_Picture.jpg?)

It takes commitment and effort to be effective with On-Page SEO. If you would like Go Time Marketing to do an evaluation of your website and marketing efforts, contact us today!

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Landing Pages – How To Use Them To Get More Leads

Steven Bloom — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:37:00 GMT

A website visitor is a terrible thing to waste! They came to your site based on a social media recommendation, a Google search result, paid ad or just by seeing your URL on a sign. Now what are you going to be doing with them?

Many web designers show off their skills with flashy design elements. Home pages, product pages, beautiful logos and images... all important, but none of which helps you make money or help you get more leads.

Knowing that all customers aren't created equal, you need to make sure where they land is specific to what they’re searching for. You can achieve this by using targeted keywords that direct potential customers to a landing page optimized for that specific keyword or phrase.Ex. You have a website selling books. A potential customer enters “Mastering the art of French Cooking by Julia Child” into the search engine and clicks search. Your landing page is optimized for that term so when the results are shown to that potential customer they see your page title indicating you sell that specific book. They click the link which leads them to a landing page that allows them to purchase the book and find similar books they might enjoy. You just sold your first book or possibly two with the upsell opportunity you provided.

Whether you’re selling books or offering a free white paper to obtain an email address, there needs to be a strong and clear call to action, a little more information about the specific product or service you’re offering and a way for those leads to convert (i.e. form).

You can increase the effectiveness of your landing pages by including these 6 key factors:

Eye-catching headline
Your offer
Benefits of your product or service
Lead capture form
Clean layout
Image or video

Incorporating these components will help you get more leads, more sales and increase your return on investment.

Go Time Marketing can help you create landing pages that convert visitors to leads and leads to customers. For more information visit our website http://www.gotimemarketing.com/ or call us at (800) 693-4339.

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4 Blogging Lies That Lead to Bloggers Giving Up

Steven Bloom — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 12:32:00 GMT

Blogging Myths Got You Down
There are many misconceptions floating around about what works with business blogging and what doesn't. These myths lead to lots of frustration for business owners trying to find success with internet or inbound marketing.

It's easy to become overwhelmed. Don't let yourself get frustrated by these silly lies. There are smart ways to organize and manage your internet marketing strategy that can lead to success with smart working and time. I know, because I've used them, and they've worked for me.

Lie #1-Overnight Success-Not in the Real World
People think that they'll create one great sensation and be an overnight online success. This just isn't how things work in the blogging world. It will take several months of consistent strong internet marketing through large social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other niche sites before you will develop a solid internet following. It takes time and diligence.

Lie #2-Long Blogs Are Good-Nope! Long Can be Boring
Some writers think they need novels on their sites to have success with their followers. Keep in mind, the average reader loses interest after about 300 to 500 words. Also, don't let your writing style turn into a lecture. This is another opportunity for your readers to take a snooze and leave your site. Keep things upbeat, conversational, and to the point.

Lie #3-Repetition Blogging-No! Repetition Equals Bad News
Some bloggers think if they repeat the same things over and over in their blogging that this will keep their audience coming back for more. This isn't true. Your audience will return when you continue to provide them with awesome content that's trendy, appropriate, and what they like. Let's not forget humor. People don't want to read something that's going to bore them or make them feel sad. They want to read content that will:

Inspire them

Educate them

Make them laugh

Make them feel good

Benefit them in some way

Lie #4-You Must be Genius to Have Success. No. You Need to Learn and Work Smart.

You don't have to be an internet marketing genius or Pulitzer prize winning blogger to create decent content. To be successful at blogging, you need to:

Believe in yourself

Have a plan and follow it

Learn from mistakes

Track your progress

Try new things

If regular writing isn't your thing, try a professional content writing business like Go Time Marketing to create content for you.

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3 Ways to Get More Leads Using Inbound Marketing.

Steven Bloom — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 12:29:00 GMT

Inbound marketing can bring your target market directly to your Website, if applied properly. This marketing approach raises your site's SEO rankings. The higher your ranking, the higher your site appears in search engine results. Here are three methods to get more leads to your site using inbound marketing.

Content

Content marketing is an excellent way to get more leads to your site. Informative, relevant content attracts visitors that are already interested in your product or service. Providing important information helps them understand why your company is the best to provide what they are looking for.

Continuously providing new, relevant content also raises your SEO ranking. Google uses a technique that extracts actual word meanings in web pages, ensuring that Web searchers are directed to Web content related to their keyword searches. New, unique content gets higher rankings with Google and other search engines.

Blogs

Blogs are a great resource for providing informative content to your online visitors. As it becomes more popular, your blog's search engine rankings will continue to rise. This ensures that you will get more leads because more visitors will frequent your site for informational purposes.

For the best results, your blog content should be different from the content on your Website and any of your other online presence sources. Adding links from each blog, back to different pages of your Website for reference, and vice versa, helps to create backlinks to your site and your blog, raising your search engine rankings substantially.

Social Media

Social Media is one of the most popular inbound marketing tools available. They allow users to search for “friends” and “followers” based on keywords. Creating a social media network related to your marketing niche ensures that your network is interested in what you can provide for them. This provides a way for you to get more leads for your product or service.

Your social media posts, “Likes” and “Retweets” “Subscribes,” and “Google + Circles and +1’s” allow you to share pertinent content online with your network. They also allow you to build a loyal fan base that will take part in sharing your content with their own network, as well.

Niche Inbound Marketing

Niche Inbound Marketing uses online techniques that are directed towards site visitors that are already interested in your product or service. Raising your SEO rankings helps to bring these visitors to your site, making it easier for you to get more leads to your Website.

Would you like to ask us questions about marketing your business to attract customers looking for your products or services? Just ask your question below. We will respond within 1-2 business days.

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Red Stiletto Heels Turn Into Bunny Slippers Without A Landing Page

Steven Bloom — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 17:21:00 GMT

If you are wondering how Red Stiletto Heels can turn into Bunny Slippers, here’s how:

A one-in-a-million web surfer is surfing the net and sees your advertisement for Pretty Red "Come Dance With Me" Shoes and they immediately decide they WANT (not need) a pair for themselves.

Your now, Prospective Customer winds up on your homepage where you offer literally hundreds of different shoe choices. Your prospect clicks around, becomes distracted, and before they know it, suddenly they're looking at bunny slippers for Uncle Steven for Christmas.

But that triggers their memory that Shoe Warehouse is running a sale on bunny slippers, so then they're off to explore that website. Hold on a sec - what just happened?

Well, it's what actually happens every day - no - make that every hour. You invest lots of time, money and effort on your homepage, so that's where you're hoping everyone will start, and then of course, wind up buying from YOU. Right? Not so.

In reality, if someone clicked on the ad and was sent to the "Come Dance With Me" landing page, their decision would have been narrowed down to size, color, price, and whether they were ready to purchase.

Then you'd have converted them to more than just a lead or Prospective Customer - at that point, they're a bonafide customer.

Even if they weren't quite ready to purchase, they can sign up for email specials, using your "Contact Us" application, maybe send you a specific question, and ultimately become a future customer, or an advocate for your page/brand. Maybe they simply need a little "nurturing" until they're ready to buy. Then you can send them an email notification when Uncle Steven's bunny slippers go on sale - and just in time for Christmas, too! Clever you!

Landing pages for various items are invaluable, integral components of your website's success, and should never be underestimated. Put landing pages with multiple "customer info capturing" applications to work for you, and it's almost a given your profits will rise. Don't be a catalyst to propel those web surfers elsewhere, ever again. Landing pages could well be the best "work horses" your website utilizes to help you get more leads.

This is just one example which with a little tweaking, could make a huge difference in your business success and help you get more leads and sales.

Let's talk about your business and how to "fine-tune" your offers and landing pages to increase lead generation and ultimately, more sales.

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Is Inbound Marketing "Magic Pixie Dust?"

Steven Bloom — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 20:47:00 GMT

In a digital age that focuses heavily on helping consumers dodge traditional marketing efforts, inbound marketing strategies can help give your small business an edge over the competition. When done right, inbound marketing has the potential to draw highly targeted traffic to your virtual door step, and it doesn’t involve casting a huge net in the hopes of catching your customers off guard.

The following methods are the foundation for a successful inbound marketing campaign:

A strong social media presence. Actively updating social media profiles for your small business, like a Twitter account, and regularly engaging customers in conversation can act like a magnet when it come online marketing. Think of your social media accounts as a virtual form of customer service – people are more willing to recommend a product if the company behind the brand answers questions and keeps its customers updated on important news.
Proper on page SEO. While on page optimization is largely behind the scenes of your website, it plays a significant role in drawing customers to your small business. This includes filling out relevant META tags for every post, and ensuring that the picture tags contain local search terms that you want to rank for when customers search for images.
A solid base of quality content. A website that posts new content on a regular basis is more likely to rank well in the SERPS, which means that you will have a greater chance of being seen by customers that are searching for your product, money in hand. You can effectively cast a large net just by having a solid base of content, and if you update your website with fresh, engaging content your customers will do the work for you by discussing it in their own social circles.

If you want a high conversion rate, then the best way to attract sales is by letting your customers come to you. While traditional outbound marketing still works, billboards, commercial ads and radio broadcasts are becoming easier to tune out, which means you’ll be wasting money on an ad campaign that doesn’t net the results it used to – work smarter and let your customers find you through inbound marketing.

Want to discuss your marketing efforts in more detail? Contact Go Time Marketing and ask them a question.. any question. They love to help!

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If Your Social Media Campaign Is A Failure? Try This..

Steven Bloom — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 10:01:00 GMT

You've heard the recent hype about the importance of social media and want to tap into this latest marketing trend. The costs seem relatively low and, according to experts, the benefits appear to be endless. Yet, your efforts at social media marketing have fallen flat. What are you doing wrong?

First, the fact that you've taken the initial step of making a foray into social media marketing is admirable. You've already mounted the hurdle that many businesses have completely overlooked. You might have even downloaded Tweetdeck, HootSuite or a number of other helpful clients for free or purchased more sophisticated apps to help you.

Second, don't be intimated by the prospect of reaching out to consumers and businesses through this medium. It's not as daunting or complex as you may believe. In our next blog, we will review how to tend to your social media campaign in 10-30 minutes a day.

In order to meet that time goal and to reap the rewards you are seeking, you should develop a social media marketing plan that will help you steer, monitor and measure the results of your inbound marketing efforts. One of the keys to success when marketing via social media is the use of popular keywords that will lead consumers to your web site via search engines. Following are five tips that can assist you as you develop your plan of action.

Five Tips for A Winning Social Media Strategy

Be consistent. Consistently post your social messages via Facebook, Twitter and your blog. Many people make the mistake of being fired up in the beginning with their marketing efforts, and then abandoning them after only a few weeks. Keep at it and you'll see the results. Being consistent is the key.
Be relevant. Post items that are relevant to your customers, such as new product releases, new services added, quotes from satisfied customers, product tips or items on sale. You can also tie your posts with current cultural, political and newsworthy events. The keywords used should reflect the relevance of your product or service to the consumer.
Be confident. Spotlight satisfied customers and post testimonials, including customer photos. Be sure to request permission from your customers first. People like to see their names in lights, and the customer endorsements will add to your company's credibility.
Be synergized. To increase efficiency and so that your marketing message will have a multiplier effect, all aspects of your social media campaign should work in tandem with one another. The most lengthy message (your blog post) should be the foundation for the other outlets that allow for only brief communication.
Be proactive. Don't hesitate to seek the services of an social media marketing expert in order to perfect your marketing plan. Go Time Marketing can give your social media program that extra push to propel your company to the next level. We help you increase sales by getting your business found on the Internet and ultimately convert those all important leads to actual customers.

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1/2 Committed to Inbound Marketing is Like Being 1/2 Pregnant

Steven Bloom — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 22:37:00 GMT

Rarely in the history of the world have women been able to pull off a successful half-pregnancy. It is truly the stuff of legend. Much more common is the practice of being half-committed to internet marketing but both feats will leave you wondering what went wrong.

These days, search engines are so specialized that they no longer find quality content on the internet and show it atop search results. They now define what it means to be "quality content" and force webmasters to play by the rules or their website will never be found.

So how do you play by their rules?

Here is a list of many of the components of a complete internet marketing strategy. Just remember that it will take time and a commitment to have a profitable website.

Get Found

Professional, optimized website design - All content on your site is visible to search engines. You need to understand metadata, Alt tags and a host of other techniques.
Write compelling content that ranks - Your content has to appeal to humans and "bots." This means keyword density and research are crucial.
Find and engage your audience - Understand who you want, where they are and what they like.
Attract organic, high-quality traffic - Not all traffic is created equal. You want potential customers.
Social Media Management - Social networks are incredible but it's easy to blend in. You have to set yourself apart.

Convert

Understand in-bound marketing - Make your content easy for others to find and share.
Craft a compelling call to action - Even the best-looking sites need a good sales pitch.
Turn visitors to leads - Grab their attention before they "bounce."
Turn leads to sells - Outshine your competitors.
Email marketing - And get your customers to come back again.

Analyze

Web Analytics - This is an on-going process because search engines change monthly.
Observe what works and what doesn't - Understand your traffic reports, links, backlinks and referrals.
Design a winning strategy - Take everything you've learned and form a plan of action.
Establish your ROI quickly - A quick ROI will give you flexibility to grow and evolve. The internet moves fast; so should you.

In all seriousness, there is no such thing as being half-pregnant and there should be no such thing as a half-commitment to internet marketing. If you want your website to get quality traffic and to convert those visitors into customers, you have to do an outstanding job of planning your marketing strategy and you absolutely have to stick to it.

Go Time Marketing can help you get started, recognize and fix mistakes or even handle the entire effort for you so that you can concentrate on running your business. Contact Us for a free evaluation and let us help you.

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Inbound Marketing: How Much? How Long?

Steven Bloom — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 23:56:00 GMT

How much should you pay for inbound marketing? I get this question a lot.

If you have dipped your toes in and have tried inbound internet marketing, I am sure you are asking yourself, “How much you should be spending and how long you have to wait to start seeing results?”

Whether you have seen some limited success or have paid the ultimate "ignorance tax" that we all pay at one time or another, let's take a look at some of the requirements that can lead you down a successful path.

Let's answer the "How Long?" question first and talk about what it takes to shorten the process:   

It takes time. The best way to succeed with your Inbound Marketing program is to make a commitment to it and stick with it and follow through on each of the marketing steps we discussed earlier.

If you or your management is not committed or taking an active role and at least a small degree of participation, the results will not be there.

It’s worth it. Inbound Marketing has shown the lowest cost per lead and also establishes your brand awareness over time. If you don’t have the time or the bandwidth you'll need to hire a qualified business development or marketing person to manage your marketing program and represent your company in blogging, social networks and all other forms of online marketing. Note: Even if you hire an inbound marketing agency to provide the needed services, you should work closely with the agency to monitor results.

  Taking the long view– Inbound Marketing is about enhancing your online presence over time. People trust brands and companies that demonstrate a long term process of providing consistent and helpful information. This takes time and requires a steadfastness that borders on faith in the beginning.

Excellent content – by blogging, (building loyalty) and supplying e-books, whitepapers, webinars and other information (creating lead conversions), you are laying the ground work towards loyalty. Just make sure you're publishing relevant, helpful posts as often as possible. We recommend 3 to 4 posts per week.

Constant contact –don't forget to reach out to your customers with newsletters, webinars, updates and events to keep them engaged and loyal.  

Act Global - Think Local – have you looked at all forms of local marketing? If you overlooked local search and directories, Geo social, community participation then you can't expect to gain your market share. Remember, successful marketing takes time + activity.  

Where should you spend your money?  

You can hire yourself a Marketing Director – They can run somewhere in the $75K to $150K annual salary based on experience, location and responsibilities.  

Get yourself an in-house, inbound marketing team – Hire between 2 to 5 individuals with experience in marketing, blogging, SEO, graphic design, social media marketing, content marketing, lead generation, analytics. But you know, that could run anywhere from $70K $150K as well, even if it is your niece/nephew/summer intern.  

Hire an Inbound Marketing agency – providing the same skills as an in-house marketing team often starting as low as $24K per year without all of the downside of supporting new employees.  

The fact is that Marketing done properly is expensive, but it produces results in a methodical manner It takes about one year after beginning your marketing operations to realize a positive ROI.  

How committed you are and how much of a priority you make it are crucial elements for SMB and startup companies because you tend to be financially challenged and/or focused exclusively on building operations.  

Without the full scope of either an in-house marketing team or an inbound marketing agency you are more likely to grow your sales slowly and incrementally over a longer period of time. This can cause you to doubt the effectiveness of marketing and abandon it altogether.

Our advice is to do it right, do it consistently, and use a professional. Have focus on your goals and faith in your plans.

Make sure Inbound Marketing has a bonafide and established role in your business

Contact us to talk about your lead generation goals.

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QR Codes - A Business Dream Come True

Steven Bloom — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 03:39:00 GMT

You've seen them. You look for a second and when your brain doesn't recognize them, your eyes just continue to on.

However, that is about to change.

Why? you ask. With one click from a cell phone camera and you, the creator of the code can send someone straight to your company website's well crafted landing page, or to your LinkedIn page, or to YouTube for a video. How about a new email or SMS text message. Even a phone call. Easy to make, easy to use. They can save you thousands and earn you more.

QR stands for Quick Response. It's a bar code that is read by QR readers installed on cell phones with cameras.

If you are not using them in your business marketing and customer service strategy, you better start. The ease of use coupled by the proliferation of smartphones destines this technology to grow at an unprecedented pace.

Why will QR codes will catch on very quickly? Here are four good reasons.

Ubiquitous - Smart phones have proliferated to the point that they're everywhere you like. When you go to a business meeting or conference, how many people will have one lying on the table?

Free - Smart phones require a downloaded application to read the QR Code- but there are a plethora of free apps and likewise free programs online to make the codes. The QR code can be encoded with text, a web address, a vcard (Outlook contact business card), a SMS text message, a phone number or other data. Once read, the smart phone responds by going via wireless to the hyperlink destination. Or creates a text message, gets a phone the number ready to call. Creates an email.

Benefits the audience - My wife love it! It's an easy way for her to get instant gratification. I have to tell you that my wife is not addicted to her computer as I am. She would tend to NOT run and type in a URL or go out of her way to respond online to an ad or offer. However, now that she has an iPhone, she swears by the QR gods that made her life easier. She can get further information and instructions and coupons and more. When we were driving around looking at houses for sale in our neighborhood recently, she lamented that there were not QR codes on the signs so she could snap and go rather than find the flier bin empty.

Really, the uses are endless. A contest. A special code. A pre-formatted email or sms message. Details about a purchase about to be made. Facts about a house for sale. A how-to install video. Ingredients. Background information. I would love to find them on the sticker of the new car I am interested in so if I am there after hours, I can either get more information or request an appointment for a test drive.

Benefits to business - When coupled with an appropriate landing page, a well defined call to action and a mechanism for tracking, your company can experience lowered costs, improved customer service, marketing and sales opportunities.

If you have a creative idea on how to use a QR code, please leave your comments. In a future blog, I will be explaining how I have helped a comedian, a bood author and a musician use this fantastic, technological innovation to help improve their business and to engage their fans and customers further.

If you would like to discuss how a QR Code campaign might benefit your business, please contact us and let's discuss.

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Why I Sucked At Golf Before I Learned Inbound Marketing

Steven Bloom — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 21:11:00 GMT

"You really suck at golf." That was what my golf coach told me after my 8th weekly lesson.

"But I have been practicing my grip just like you showed me last week. I hit more balls than the entire Senior Open," was my whiney reply.

"Your grip is the best I have ever seen," he replied, tongue in cheek. "But your stance is wrong, your knees aren't bent properly, your hips don't swivel, your elbows stick out, your backswing is erratic, your wrists aren't breaking and you quit your swing right after striking the ball and you lift your head immediately to see how far your ball went."

He was right. I did suck at golf and now I know why. There are over 20 things that you have to do, and do them all correctly, each and every time to make a perfect golf swing.

If we take the golf analogy a little farther:

Great web design = Great golf clubs
Killer web tools = Good shoes and golf carts
Weekly blogging = Hitting buckets and buckets of balls
Golf Swing = SEO, Social Media, Promotions
Having a great game = Getting qualified leads from your efforts

So, applying this concept to mastering the promoting of your business, whether it is a B2B or B2C requires training with a methodology that you can practice over and over.

By using the HubSpot methodology of GETTING FOUND–CONVERT–ANALYZE it becomes a simple task that only requires consistency and practice to become a “scratch golfer” and a successful Inbound Marketer of your business or brand.

Download Your Free "Get Found Online" Guide to take your first Inbound Marketing lesson.

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8 Tips For Effective Emailing For Leads

Steven Bloom — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 19:07:00 GMT

In The Beginning
In the beginning there was direct mail. Those fancy yellow postcards, those long and well thought out sales letters, those envelopes stuffed full of brochures and feature charts.

Most business–to–business have used direct mail in some form or another, with some being more successful than others.

The one commonality today, is that direct marketing as we’ve known it in the past is becoming less and less effective.

With the advent of relatively inexpensive e-mail campaigns, a whole new paradigm has been created as to the etiquette required to pique interest without ending up in the spam can.

Let’s take a quick look at a few helpful hints that will enable you to create a successful email marketing plan to maximize your leads.

FIRST, HAVE A PLAN

You have to have a plan when you e-mail your customers and prospects in the first place.

What is it that you’re trying to achieve? Better yet, ask yourself why would your prospects want to hear from you and what useful information can you provide to the recipients of your campaign?

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING ACT?

Remember to ask yourself, what device is your customer using to read your e-mails? Are they at home watching on their widescreen High Def computer monitor? Or are they reading it from their iPhone or Android phone? It could be anything in between.

So you have to ask yourself before you begin; what format works the best? Should I put a lot of graphics in the e-mail? Shall I include a short video? What’s the benefit of a large file attachment?

It is also very importatnt to make sure that you sample your e-mail template in all of these potential environments.

DRINKING FROM A FIRE HYDRANT

Rome wasn’t built in a day, so what makes you think you can educate your customers in two or three e-mails? Create a monthly content calendar for the next 12 months and establish the goals for each week prior to distribution. Your timeline and steps will vary depending on your industry, type of content and calendar.

Just remember, that too much information can be as bad as none at all.

WADDA YOU WANT?

Try to offer a choice of topics. If you’re publishing about a distinct type of content let your prospects have a choice of what type of information to get. It’s better than losing them entirely, which can happen if they feel inundated with irreverent content.

The best way to do that is to segment your content into distinct newsletters for topical sending. Give them a choice of subject matter when they sign up to your list through your landing pages.

FINDING YOUR FREQUENCY SWEET SPOT

How often should you send information to your prospects? Who knows? Your prospects do. Let them tell you how often they would like to hear from you–bimonthly, monthly, quarterly or semiannually.

Remember the point about drinking from a fire hydrant. You don’t want to communicate too infrequently, but if you send too much, too often your subscribers will feel overloaded with your e-mails and may unsubscribe or, worse, report you as a spammer!

SIMPLIFY YOUR UNSUBSCRIBE PROCESS

“if you love someone, set them free. If they come back, they are yours forever.” This applies to your unsubscribes as well. If they want to go, make it easy with an unsubscribe link within your e-mail.

Not only is this a requirement of Can–Spam, but it shows that you respect their time and preferences. And out of respect, don’t ask customers to retype your e-mail address or to sign up for an account just to unsubscribe. Such barriers will only frustrate them and could lead to complaints or angry reviews.

NURTURE YOUR PROSPECTS–THEY WILL LOVE YOU

Like in any relationship, there is no perfect fit. However by taking care of your prospect and making every move with them in mind, you can nurture a relationship that will benefit you both. Be it merely friendship or an intense love affair, it will be built on respect.

For more information on the three principles of Inbound Internet Marketing: GET FOUND–CONVERT–ANALYZE please subscribe to this blog, join one of our very informative webinars, or just contact us directly.

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