Every one of your potential customers has different needs and expectations.  Our challenge is to identify the pieces that matter the most, to the largest group of people, and put programs in place to address their concerns, remove barriers, and show value.  The key is to focus your efforts on the right set of messaging, and be disciplined enough to stay true to plan.  

Sounds easy…

Until your’re up against a lead goal and tracking 5-10% behind plan, in a month with 20 working days and a holiday long weekend.  The only thing you can do in this situation is trust the data and react as quickly as possible.  After all, the reason we spent all that time up front building tracking, identifying key metrics, crafting a plan and forecasting is to allow our reporting to tell a story that enables us to make informed decisions that are supported by data.

I was recently involved in a rather detailed conversation focused on measuring the effectiveness and overall success of social engagement channels.  No matter how hard I tried I could not direct the conversation away from ROI.  I get it – when you own a business it’s all about the dollar signs, and social media can’t always be measured in terms of ROI – or can it?

How are you (or your business) perceived within your community? Are you a thought leader providing expert insight and analysis? Or are you merely a connector – funneling traffic to other experts?

How much influence do you have over the decisions being made by members of your online community?

Social influence comes down to a couple of very important factors:

1. How valuable is the resource you are providing to your community? Is it unique, relevant and helpful to the community?
2. How well do you listen and react to the needs (or wants) of your community?
   • Do you monitor the conversation within your community?
   • Do you actively engage your members? Answer questions, and provide clarification where needed?
   • Are you aware of the overall mood of your community? Do you monitor your activity and how your members react to different types of posts?

The way I see it – having 20,000 people following your Twitter feed means very little if you are not actively engaged within the community, and aware of their needs and wants…

People decided to follow you for a reason and it is your responsibility to nurture, grow and guide the community. If you neglect to give it the attention it demands you could end up doing more damage than good for your business!

Social Influence is about more than just dollar signs. It’s about name recognition. It’s about managing your brand.

It’s your brand becoming the solution to their problem.

It’s all about you – your name – and the way people connect with you.

So how do you measure social influence?

Well each channel is a little different…let’s take a look at Twitter.

I like to keep a close eye on:

• # of Followers
• # of Lists
• # of Mentions
• # of RT
• # of Tweets

I track these weekly in a custom excel dashboard and for a better visual representation view the data in linked trend charts.

It is also a good idea to:

• Regularly monitor the conversations by creating custom columns within your Twitter Client for things like:
  • Your Name
  • Popular/Related Terms
  • Common #Tags
• Watch big players (influencers) in your community to see what they’re talking about and who’s interested.

And of course:

• React, Respond and Contribute
• Get involved in the conversation. Be present. Engage your audience!

Finally – Create a custom segment in Google Analytics that is aimed at your incoming traffic from Twitter, and analyze the data! How effective is your social media campaign at driving conversions? What are your twitter followers doing on your website? Which content do they find most useful or interesting? How much time do they spend on your site? Are they completing any of your goals?

After a while you will easily identify trends and better understand how your community reacts to different types of data. The more you understand about your community – the better you can serve their needs – and the more valuable you become to them!

Building long-lasting, meaningful relationships (establishing trust) takes time. It’s not easy and it doesn’t happen overnight. Be patient, stay focused and follow the data!

Maybe you’ve seen this – maybe you haven’t, either way it is well worth the 4 minutes and 23 seconds it’ll take you to watch it!  This video is packed full of incredibly powerful Social Media Statistics…here are a few of to get you started:

• 1 out of 8 couples married in the u.S. last year met via social media
• Facebook added 100 Million users in less than 9 months
• 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations / only 14% trust advertisements

This video really puts the power of social media into perspective…thank you Erik Qualman! I’ll be starting your book Socialnomics tomorrow!

Is it!? Those words were spoken to me the other day and at the time I didn’t think much of it.  As with most spoken words they don’t really hold any weight, as soon as you can no longer hear them it’s as if they were never spoken. It’s when words are put on paper – written down – carved in stone – or posted in a blog that they hold meaning and accountability.

Now, I know that SEO is not brain surgery – not even close.  But that statement implies SEO is something anyone can do, and that it is not a learned skill that involves:

• in-depth content analysis combined with a detailed understanding of web technologies and search theory
• advanced math and research skills
• an understanding of marketing theory, user behavior and brand awareness
• copy-writing skills combined with the ability to manage and guide content experts

Not to mention the ability and willingness to spend countless hours in front of a computer scouring the web to gain a competitive edge!

So my question is why!?

Why do businesses still fail to see the value in optimizing their websites for search; tracking results, gaining insights and adapting their strategy accordingly!? Joe in sales cannot do that for you…

Why do businesses think its OK to put a summer intern in charge of their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Online Engagement efforts?

Why do businesses think they can have a freelancer design a digital strategy for them -deliver it- and then disappear? What…you’re just going to take it over???

You tell me – because I just don’t get it…

In Part 1 of this series on PageRank: Simplified we talked about the purpose of PR and why you should care about PageRank.  We touched a little bit on the importance of linking…but didn’t get into the why or how of it…that’s what we’re going to do here.

Go back to PageRank Simplified: Part One

Designing and Implementing a Strong Linking Structure

A strong internal linking structure will ensure that your website (or collection of pages) will achieve maximum PageRank (PR) in the right places.  In other words – your website has a certain amount of PR it can pass around to itself, and by strategically connecting your collection of pages you can allow important pages to achieve a higher PR than less-important (non-landing pages).

The maximum amount of PageRank that any given collection of pages can attain is equal to the number of pages in the collection.  So a 5 page system can only achieve a maximum PageRank of 5.  It is possible to fall short of this maximum value if your website is not linked properly.

Diagram 1 shows a solid linking structure that is able to achieve the collections maximum PR value of 5.

As you can see the linking structure in Diagram 2 has one page that is hanging – unconnected to the other pages in the collection.  This will negatively impact the PageRank Value of the entire collection.

Link Sculpting

There is difference between a well linked collection of pages, and an optimally linked collection of pages that is designed to achieve specific goals.  Link sculpturing ensures that your websites PageRank is passed to the appropriate pages and that none of the collections PR is wasted on less important pages within the collection.  So while EVERY page within your site may seem important not every page is intended to be a landing page, and therefore not every page should be treated equally.

In diagram 3 you see a linking structure that is designed to provide the maximum amount of PR to Page-1.  In this example Page-1 would most likely be the sites homepage and would link directly to the other 4 pages in the collection.  Page-1 then receives 4 links in return (one from each page) increasing its PR value within the collection.  While this example is oversimplified for the purposes of this article, this type of linking structure is typical of hierarchical site navigation schemes.

Diagram 4 gets a little more complicated – showing a linking structure that is similar to that of diagram 3, but includes – not only a homepage – but also what could be perceived as an optimized landing page within the site collection.

By carefully considering which pages within the collection link to (or vote for) each other you are able to pass PageRank strategically and achieve your desired results; and by not wasting PR on less important pages (that would not be targeted though organic search anyway) you are allowing your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on your collections optimized and targeted pages to reach their full PR potential – resulting in your pages ranking higher in relative Google Search results.

So take a look at your site linking structure and figure out where there is wasted PageRank being passed, and direct that waste towards your targeted and optimized pages.

It shouldn’t take long before your pages are ranking higher and showing up in more search results.

This blog is Part-2 of the series PageRank Simplified.

PageRank is intended to help Google return search results considered “most” important by humans

When a search query is executed Google first fetches the most relevant items for that specific term and THEN sorts and displays those results based on the relevant importance or PageRank.

Google uses the linking structure of the web (built by humans) to determine the relative importance of any given webpage.

The function that Google uses to calculate PageRank is highly complex so I am not even going to get into it. You can go check it out on Wikipedia if you’re interested. There is actually quite a bit of useful information there, including some nice diagrams that may help it all sink in!

Why should you care about PageRank?

PageRank directly impacts the importance of your website in search results returned by Google – if you’re PageRank is weak – so is your website…according to Google.

It’s not enough to optimize your website for specific keywords and phrases you also have to ensure that your optimized pages are acquiring the maximum PageRank possible (both internally and externally) by designing and implementing a strong linking structure.

PageRank is all about linking!

PageRank is distributed by outbound links and acquired by inbound links…so the more unique pages that link to a specific web page > the more important that page becomes > and the more PageRank that page can then pass on to additional pages!

I’ll get more into the details on how to develop a strong linking structure in next PageRank post…until then, if you have questions fire away!

This blog is Part-1 of the series PageRank Simplified.

1. Have a Keywords Strategy
   Generate a list of keywords that are relevant to your business and then research them!  Take care to focus on words that your customers use to describe your business; they can sometimes be very different then the words your and your coworkers would use!  Don’t forget the long tail…and try to stay away from works that are too competitive.
2. Title Tags
   Once you’ve researched and finalized your keywords strategy put them to use!  Use keywords and keyword phrases in your title tags (try to keep important words in the first few slots) and also name your directories and page names accordingly.
3. H1, H2, H3
   Keywords carry more weight when used in your heading tags…get them in there!
4. Writing Content
   Use your keywords responsibly in your copy!  Don’t force them in…you chose these words for a reason they should flow naturally into your content; if they don’t you need to choose new words!!!
5. Monitor and Adjust
   You need to track your progress and make adjustments as needed.  Make sure to give your strategy time to mature and yield accurate results – and then make adjustments as needed.  Let the statistics lead the way!

So there you have it…5 simple tips for improving your website search engine optimization.

Have some tips of your own? – share them here!

Mark Hughes states in “BuzzMarketing” there are 5 things that will consistently get people talking about your product or service and generate buzz.

1. The taboo (sex, lies, bathroom humor)
2. The unusual
3. The outrageous
4. The remarkable
5. The secrets (both kept and revealed)

After reading the book – I’m a believer!

This book is a MUST read.  If you’re a student of marketing, interested in learning about generating buzz, or just want to read and interesting and thought provoking book – this is the one!

The book is full of real world examples, expert knowledge, and marketing lessons that will instantly get you thinking about new ways to use the incredible collection of online tools available to marketing professionals today!

An incredible read – go get your copy today!

http://www.buzzmarketing.com/about.html

Today, while going through my daily morning LinkedIn routine, I came across a white paper that every small business owner should read – especially if you’re still in the process of developing your social media strategy.

The paper brought to mind something that is often overlooked by people when developing their online strategies.

Self Promotion!

While generating valuable, unique, expert content on a regular basis is crucial to expanding your brand and increasing your businesses reach – it doesn’t do you any good if no one knows it’s there, right?  You need readers!

What good is a blog if no one is reads it?

Sure, eventually you’ll build up enough content to influence the crawlers, and possibly rank high for certain keywords, but what you should really be after are Inbound Links, Qualified Referrals, and Word of Mouth Buzz…

So how do you get it!?

One of the best ways is to find online communities focused on your area of skill and add something of value to the conversation: answer questions, provide insight, ask questions and offer expertise.

DO NOT SHAMELESSLY PLUG YOUR BLOG OR WEBSITE

Just be a part of the community the rest will take care of itself.  Once you become known as a reliable source of quality information people will seek you out on their own.  They will mention you to their friends and colleagues, provide recommendations, and ask you for advice.

Give them a reason to find and follow you – and once they do make sure you keep them there with quality, engaging and relevant content!

Check out the white paper that inspired this post here:

Title: Generating Small Business Customers with Social Media Marketing: Small Business Case Studies
Published by: HubSpot

Establishing a presence online is critical to building trust – start by listing yourself in the many free online business listing services out there.

Here are a few of these services…

• Google Places
• Yahoo! Local
• DMOZ
• Bing Local
• Superpages.com
• Local.com

There are many others – search for [Local Business Listings] and I’m sure you’ll find a bunch of them!

Don’t forget to plan ahead.  You’ll need to manage and update these listing as your business grows and the services change.  Google Places has already started to change the game by using QR Code technology…pretty powerful stuff!