Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

SEO 101 - Part 12: Everything You Need to Know About Page Content

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:49:10 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

The following series is pulled from a presentation I gave to a group of beauty bloggers hosted by L'Oreal in New York. Most of the presentation is geared toward how to make a blog more search engine and user-friendly, however I will expand many of the concepts here to include tips and strategies for sites selling products or services across all industries.

Headings

The first place to begin in writing your content is to create a great heading for each page. In the last post I discussed grabbing the visitor's attention. This is one of the primary jobs of page headings.

The heading is different from the page title tag. Where the title tag is displayed in the search results the heading is viewed on the page itself. Sometimes you want the heading and the title to be the same, other times you don't. The title MUST use keywords in it. The heading SHOULD use keywords in it. It all depends on the hook you want to use to grab attention and entice your visitor to keep reading.

Be careful that your title and heading aren't too far removed from each other. The last thing you want is to get the visitor to click into the page and read a heading that doesn't match up with their expectations.

A good heading tells people what they can expect from the content that follows. What information will they learn? What benefits will be presented? What solutions will you provide? The heading needs to project and give enough information that the visitor wants to keep reading without providing so much that they don't feel they need to.

A good example of this is "Good headings help you increase search engine rankings." This seemingly tells me just about all I need to know. On the other hand, "How to write headings that increases search engine rankings," gives me a reason to keep reading. I know I'm going to learn something that wasn't given away in the headline.

Make Your Content Compelling

The headline draws people into the content, gets them interested and makes them want to dive into what you have to say. Therefore your content needs to not disappoint.

Don't skimp. Allow your content to go wherever it needs to give the reader everything that they want. The only time you can have too much content is when it get's in the way of the sales process rather than promote it. Keep in mind, when readers have enough to make a decision, they'll stop reading and do what they came to do. If you don't have enough content to convince them then they won't take the action you hope them to.

Site visitors come in a variety of personality types and personas. In order to speak your audience's language you must hit a lot of different key points. Some people want to know about you, some about your products or services and others care about your qualifications. Others don't care about that at all and want to know how the product or service benefits them specifically. Still, others may want to know your history and are looking for signals of trust.

If you leave any of these out then you'll lose some potential conversions. And these and these are just the tip of the iceberg. Be careful, however, that you don't spread yourself too thin. You can't please everyone, but you can do a reasonably good job of figuring out who is your primary audience and make sure you are hitting the key points for them.

Write what you need to convince the majority of your audience and no more.

Seek Opportunity

When it comes to working keywords to your content there are plenty of opportunities to add your targeted phrases without mucking up the content. Look for these opportunities, but don't jump on every chance to throw in a keyword just because you can. Good writing means using keywords conservatively.

Every paragraph is full of keyword opportunities but if you added every keyword possible then you're in real danger of keyword stuffing. The last thing you want is for your keyword rich content to have too many keywords in it. Your visitors that came looking for a site based on the keyword they searched for will have a difficult time getting past the over-stuffed keyword content. Your keyword filled message will be lost due to the over use of keywords in the keyword content. (Get my point?)

Internal Hyperlinks

As mentioned above, good content isn't just about keywords. It's about giving the visitor what they need. Sometimes you can't give them all they want or need on a single page. Sometimes you talk about something else that you can't address fully without going wildly off point. This is where the magic of hyperlinks come in.

Too often people are afraid to "clutter up" their content with hyper links. They have a point, but only to a point. You can go overboard on the hyperlinks, but too few hyperlinks is worse than too many. Give your visitors the avenue to explore the site outside of the navigation. If you mention something that is explained elsewhere link to it. If you mention something that you should provide more information in a full context, write a new page of content and link to it.

Links let people explore and find other things they are interested in. Things that help them earn confidence in you, things that give them more information, things that teach them new things. Without the links these important areas of your site remain largely hidden, even if they are found in the site's navigation.

Make it Pretty

Long paragraphs of content may get all the right points across but they are booooring to look at. And visually boring easily translates into just plain dreary to read. Make sure your text looks good. It's not the job of the copywriter to add images, but that doesn't mean the copywriter can't make it easier to read.

Good use of headlines, sub-headlines, paragraph headings and section headings can go a long way to making your content easier on the eyes. You can also use bullet points, content boldings, italics, hyperlinks and numbered lists also make the content look better, easier to read and more digestible.

The content of a website is one of the most important factors in achieving top search engine rankings. But it is an even greater factor in ensuring the website performs with visitors. Without good content a site will fail both with engines and visitors.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Best Keyword Ranking Tools for SEO by WordStream

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:53:22 -0600

by Sage Lewis

Best Keyword Ranking Tools for SEO - Wordstream did a nice job showing us some of the free and paid search engine rank checking tools out there. If you haven't updated your rank checking tool recently (or in the past several years) you should check out what is out there now.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

How to Create a Text Marketing Campaign

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:20:55 -0600

by Sage Lewis

American Express OPEN Forum has a good article on how to create a solid text marketing campaign. This gives you some good, concrete tips on how to get started.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

How can small businesses measure offline sales?

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:47:24 -0600

by Mike Moran

Often, I work with businesses trying to determine the return on investment for their online marketing. For e-commerce companies, it's not that hard. They can use their Web analytics to see how many people are coming to the site and how many actually convert by checking out. But what if you sell offline? Then it's not so easy.

Just about any company can put a special phone number on their site that appears nowhere else. If anyone calls it, you know they came from your Web site, so you can tie that eventual sale back to your Web marketing.

Image via Wikipedia

Small B2C companies need to find a way to link their online activity to what they do offline, often that involves some form of couponing. If you allow your online activities to discount your prices, or add a free gift, or provide some other service, just require the customer print out the coupon and present it when they buy.

For B2B companies, it's usually more complicated, although couponing can work for them too. For many B2B businesses, they do face to face or phone sales through their own sales teams, or, more commonly for small B2B firms, manufacturer's representatives. They usually find themselves passing leads that they hope the sales people will close.

At big companies, they follow these leads with a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, where the lead is tracked at every contact point and evaluated as to how close they are to a sale (and what can be done next to get them over the line). Most small businesses don't have such systems because they are expensive, but in recent years some very inexpensive CRM systems have appeared that give small businesses a way to use CRM, too. Highrise and Zoho CRM are both used by small businesses to track their prospects through to a sale. If you can hand off your online customer activity to your CRM system, then you can follow your online marketing to sales, just like the big boys.

Many small businesses fail to close the loop from Web marketing to sales because it is hard. But that omission keeps you from knowing which marketing activities are working and which ones aren't. If you make this extra effort to track your sales, and your competitors do not, you'll have a leg up on them that will supercharge your online marketing.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

SEO 101 - Part 11: Everything You Need to Know About SEO Copywriting

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 06:13:06 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

Copywriting

No SEO is complete without good content. You can stuff keywords into the text all you want, and that might be okay to get you some decent keyword rankings for a time, but it won't do anything to improve the long-term success of your business.

A website without good copywriting is a sports car with an engine that doesn't run. It doesn't matter how pretty it is, the content is what is needed to provide your visitors the information they need in order for you to make the sale (or conversion, or whatever else you want your visitors to do.)

Understanding Copy

To the search engines the content on the page is just a bunch of words. Without making this too complex, the engines analyze the words in an attempt to determine what each page is about. If the web page covers too many different topics then it makes it difficult for the engines to determine which topic is prominent and deserves ranking. It creates a dilution of focus.

The search engines have analyzed millions of web pages and from that have been able to gather significant knowledge of the human languages. They have an idea of how words and topics work together. It's not really about the number of times a keyword is used but the focus of the content. If you use a word or phrase too much then it'll be seen as manipulation. Too little and it's not enough to be relevant. Write as much or as little text as is needed in order to make the point you need for your visitors.

Draw Them In

SEO copywriting isn't all that different from normal copywriting except that you have to pay particular attention to keywords. Actually, non-seo copywriting would be better if keywords were paid attention to anyway. Not for search engines per se, but in order to use the key phrases that attracts and appeals to the readers. In that light, SEO copywriting and "normal" copywriting would be no different.

There are four basic things that the content of each of your web pages must do, regardless if its the home page, a category page, a product page, an article or a blog post.

Grab Attention

If the reader hits the page and the content is unable to get and keep their attention, then all is lost. They move on to another page or another site and you lost the possibility of a conversion.

Appeal to their Needs

Once you have their attention then you have to make your case. The simplest way to do that is to appeal to them on their terms. You already have what they want, but you have to write your content that shows them you understand their needs.

What motivated them to search for what you offer? By clearly re-iterating the need, you are then in a position to show that you have the solution. Go into great detail on why your solution is the right one and then move on to explain all the benefits of selecting you as that solution.

Ask questions

Questions make people think. Often times asking a question first and then providing an answer is far more effective than just providing an answer. Question make your readers consider what they are reading and then seek an answer to a question that they didn't even know they had.

What kind of questions should you ask? Just go back to the basics. Who? What? When? Why? Where? How? Each of these can provide an avenue for a good amount of additional information that may be important to the reader.

Inform

Finally, your content must inform. The visitor has to walk away having learned something valuable. And not just about you or your product or service, but about them as well. The visitor needs to know that you have exactly what they need and you must provide enough information to justify making a purchase from you both intellectually and emotionally.

Ways to inform are to show how your product or service can make their lives better, give them more time, money or freedom. You can also give them ideas on how to use your product or service which gives them additional incentives to make the purchase.

Five Rules of Copywriting

There are five basic rules to writing good website content that is appealing to both visitors and the search engines.

1. Avoid graphics in text.

Search engines are not so good about reading text in a graphic format. They are getting better at it but I think that it will always be problematic, especially when it comes to busy graphics or non-standard fonts. So for now, and the foreseeable future, it's a good idea to keep your text outside of graphics.

You also have to consider the user. Some users search with images off or the small screens of their mobile phones. Text in those graphics may be difficult or impossible to read. If the content is worth reading then it's worth ensuring that it is in the most readable format.

2. Think users before engines.

Your visitors come first. The search engines don't buy from you, they don't write comments, and they don't retweet your message. People do. The search engines only want what people want so give the people what they want and the search engines will, in most cases, reward you for that.

3. Write enough content.

How much content is enough? Only you know that. You need to write enough content to make the points you need and no more. Each visitor needs a different amount of content to read in order to be convinced. don't leave anybody out.

4. Target phrases not words.

People rarely search for words, they search for phrases. Knowing what those phrases are is essential to writing content that speaks to your visitor's desires. The phrases also put the words into context and give meaning to what the visitor is really searching for.

5. Don't force it.

Writing your content using the rules above should work naturally. Don't force anything if it just doesn't work. If you're trying to work in phrases that are not a fit for the page, then move those phrases to another page. If you're trying to produce content that will speak to different kinds of visitors, don't be afraid to break content off into other sections of the site such as articles or tutorials. This goes back to writing for the visitor. Meet their needs first and foremost and don't try to force anything that doesn't work.

As I said above, SEO copywriting isn't all that much different than standard copywriting. It's all about creating good content that appeals to the visitors and meets certain criteria in terms of keyword usage. In Part 12 I'll go over some key examples of how to write good content that is good for engines and users alike.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

"I don't have time for Facebook and Twitter"

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:10:54 -0600

by Mike Moran

Social media is free, but what's the catch? Time. We only have so much time to spend putting our message out there, but we don't want to limit how many people can hear what we have to say. This problem comes up in many ways, but the simplest is the dichotomy between Facebook and Twitter. Many folks decide to spend the bulk of their social time on one or the other, with relatively few people using both. If Google Buzz catches fire, this fragmentation might only increase. What's a marketer to do?

Image by luc legay via Flickr

Let's face it. There's no real difference between "friends" and "followers," nor between ""status updates" and "tweets." And why would you decide to spend all your precious social media time updating one venue and not the other, if your customers use both of them? But how can you double the amount of time you spend in social media updating both?

You don't have to. I decided that I prefer Twitter to Facebook so I have every tweet I send out mirrored as my Facebook status. And I do the same thing on LinkedIn. I haven't taken the plunge on Google Buzz yet, but I'll probably do the same thing there, also.

If someone wants to see what I am up to, they can use their favorite method to keep up and I only have to update once. I know people using FriendFeed to accomplish the same thing. In each of your social media lives, you can set up these mirrors to make sure that your customers can keep up no matter what network they are in, while you only need to update once.

Now, I find even though I update in only one place, that I still have trouble making time for more than a few tweets a day, but there isn't anything I can do to help with that.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Google Adds Sidewiki Control to Google Webmaster Tools

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:04:58 -0600

by Sage Lewis

Search Engine Roundtable has reported on a new feature in Google Webmaster Tools. You can now update your Sidewiki profile in your tools section. Learn what Sidewiki is and how you can use it to your benefit.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

B2B Marketers Making Huge Increases in Social Media Spend

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:59:25 -0600

by Sage Lewis

Marketing Pilgrim reports that B2B Marketers will see a 490% Increase in Social Media Spend by 2014. But there are other really interesting stats to be found in this report as well.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Matt Cutts Calling for Link Spam Reports

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:16:23 -0600

by Sage Lewis

Matt Cutts has recently put out a post calling for us all to turn in link spam. Learn what he and Google are up to. This has interesting implications for you to consider.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

The Fallacy of Search Engine Marketing Only

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:37:20 -0600

by Scott Buresh

Allow me to offer a pre-emptive caveat - I own a successful search engine marketing company. Like most businesses, we are constantly trying to expand our client base - primarily through using the same search engine and internet marketing methods that we deliver to our clients. A quick search on terms such as "search engine optimization company" or "internet marketing company" on Google will demonstrate that we practice what we preach. As I write this, on a "clean machine" (one with all browser settings reset and cookies removed), my search engine marketing company ranks number 1 on Google for both of these phrases and the plural forms of the phrases. Based upon your past search tendencies, your specific location, and whims of the Google Gods, your mileage may vary, but you should find us near the top of the SERPs for those and hundreds of other related terms.

The Value of Integrating Different Internet Marketing Methods

The point here is not to boast - these results are due to the collective efforts of my expert team, not solely my own expertise. The point is to back up my contention that we practice what we preach and that the vast majority of our leads come from the internet marketing methods we apply to our own site. However, there has been much debate over the years in the search engine marketing community about whether it is proper or even hypocritical for a search engine marketing company to use other forms of advertising unrelated to internet marketing. The naysayers generally have a common argument: a quality search engine marketing company "shouldn't need" to engage in any forms of offline marketing. Depending on the goals one has for their search engine marketing company, this may actually be true for some. A smaller boutique firm or an independent consultant may have all the leads they ever want from their internet marketing methods. They may even be turning business away while they make blog posts about how companies such as mine shouldn't need to look offline for additional business opportunities.

However, this again relates directly to goals. If a search engine marketing company has capacity even after they maximize their online leads, and their business plan calls for maximum growth, what is the issue with engaging in other forms of marketing? As long as other marketing channels provide an acceptable ROI, I do not buy the argument that you "shouldn't need it," no matter what your situation.

The metrics are obviously what are important. It has been our experience that our own internet marketing methods provide us with, by far, the highest ROI of any of our other marketing efforts. However, this does not mean that the ROI from our online marketing efforts constitutes the baseline for what is ACCEPTABLE in terms of a return. In fact, we have done the math, and we know that we can afford to pay much more per lead.

Or, to look at this another way, we often work with companies that are embarking upon online marketing for the first time. These companies almost always already have successful offline marketing campaigns in place (after all, they are successful businesses). They are obviously delighted when they discover that their cost per lead or cost per sale with internet marketing is much lower than their other marketing efforts - but does this mean that they decide to shut those other successful channels down? Of course not.

And do we, as a responsible search engine marketing company, advise them that they should shut down those channels and put all of their eggs in the online basket? Of course not. We just enjoy the fact that our internet marketing methods provide the best bang for their buck.

Nobody can deny that the advent of various internet marketing methods has been a game-changer. Some forms of traditional advertising may even be on their last legs. Trade show attendance is down. Magazines and newspapers are in decline. I can't remember the last time a door-to-door salesperson came up to my house* (except those selling a particular religion - but that's a different story).

However, some channels, in our experience, still can provide exceptional returns. Direct mail, done properly, still works for us. Channel partnerships with offline marketing businesses can be profitable. Offline PR, when done properly, provides our search engine marketing company with exceptional exposure and returns. As long as we are achieving acceptable margins on these endeavors, we will continue to use them. And I will continue to stand incredulous when I hear from those who tell me that we shouldn't.

*Unless you count Girl Scouts peddling cookies.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

What To Do When Reviewers Lie About You

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:48:21 -0600

by Mike Moran

When my friend called me, there was a little panic in his voice. He owned a successful, customer-friendly small business, and was generally an easygoing person. But he didn't know what to do. A long-time and loyal customer alerted him to a savage review of his business on an Internet Yellow Pages site. And so now he was turning to me to find out what he could do about it.

I asked him for the details and he ruefully related the story. When he read the review, he immediately knew who the unhappy client was, recognizing some details in the story. He told me that this client had been impossible, constantly changing her mind about what she wanted with no notice, and although he did his best to satisfy her, at the end he had to tell her that he had done all he could for what he had been paid.

Image via CrunchBase

He would have understood if she had honestly expressed her disappointment in him in the review (even though he felt she was expecting way too much), but what irked him no end was that her review attributed egregious bits of behavior to him that were completely made up from whole cloth. He had objective proof that some of her comments were lies.

This isn't an isolated case. Although most reviews are factual, and some small businesses have it coming, there's nothing stopping dissatisfied customers from responding in extreme ways. And the services that post such reviews, such as Yahoo! Yellow Pages and Yelp, don't want to be in the position of having to discern who's telling the truth, letting the "wisdom of crowds" sort things out.

So, what's a small business to do? First, treat your customers well, remembering that they have more power than you think. Encourage your happy customers to post reviews online, so that the wisdom of your crowd is in evidence--that will dilute the power of any one negative review. (Yesterday, I posted some small business social media success stories that you can emulate.) When someone posts a bad review, consider engaging that person online to try to make amends.

Unfortunately, it might require that you develop a thicker skin, because the rudeness of some online reviews might be more than you can bear. One San Francisco bookstore owner was arrested for battery after responding to a Yelp reviewer.

But that's no reason to accept outright lies. When it clearly goes beyond a difference of opinion, and you can prove you've been wronged, go to the review site and plead your case. Show them that it's a lie and ask them to remove it.

That's what my friend did, and Yahoo! Yellow Pages, to their credit, did remove the dishonest review. But my friend learned form the situation. Now, he solicits good reviews and he works harder to satisfy even the nut jobs. It's a different world out there, so make sure you know how to make your way through it.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

126 Million Blogs on the Internet

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:23:26 -0600

by Manoj Jasra

JESS3, a creative agency specializing in data visualization, has put together an amazing video which shows the current state of the Internet. We have highlighted some of the data below, but please also watch the video for yourself (it rivals the Social Media Revolution).

1.73 Billion Internet users worldwide
90 Trillion Emails Sent in 2009
81% of Emails were Spam
126 Million Blogs on the Internet
27.3 Million Tweets Per Day
Faceboook serves 6 million pages per minute
4 Billion photos hosted by Flickr
182 Videos watched on average per month (per user)

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

SEO 101 - Part 10: Everything You Need to Know About Keyword Qualifiers

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:48:03 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

Core Term Qualifiers

Optimizing your website for core terms is only part of the optimization process. The vast majority of searches are performed using longer, more specific phrases. When it comes to keyword research, these phrases are really nothing more than your core terms with key qualifiers added to them.

Using your keyword research tools you can find dozens or even hundreds of qualifiers for just about every core term. Each of these new phrases must be carefully analyzed for appropriateness for your site, whether it targets what you offer and fits with the page's content for which that core term has been applied. Those that don't can either be discarded or set aside for optimization to other pages.

Some qualifiers are merely the same core term in different form such as plurals, past tense, active tense, etc. (run, ran, running, etc.) Other qualifiers qualifiers provide additional context for the core term but don't do anything to affect the meaning of the phrase. Other qualifiers will change the meaning of the phrase and may not be appropriate for optimization with the primary core term or page.

If adding the word "discount" doesn't apply to you then that's a qualifier you don't want. If most of what you offer is not discount but you do have a section where you list certain discounted items, then that is a phrase that is better optimized on a different page from the actual core term. Every qualifier added to the core term must be carefully considered to ensure it belongs with that core term or not.

Some qualifiers will also come in direct contradiction with each other. When speaking of Jewelry you don't want to use "cheap" and "vintage" on the same page. There are many considerations like this that must be accounted for before just throwing a bunch of related core term qualifiers on the page.

Segmenting Keywords

There are four distinct keyword segments each representing a different phase of the searcher's buying cycle. After going through the process above you should be left with one or more groups of keyword that can be optimized into a page or several pages. The next step is to take each group and segment them even further based on those keyword segments.

Research: Researchers are at the very beginning of the buying cycle and generally don't know what it is they want. They go to the search engines to find very general information to help them narrow down their options. These are generally the core terms with no or very basic qualifiers. These terms will be optimized into higher level category pages.

Shop: Shoppers have moved to the next phase of the buying cycle having narrowed down their query to the product category level. Searchers are looking at different features and variances between products and deciding on which features they want. These keywords can easily be optimized on product category and comparison pages.

Buy: Searchers who are ready to buy have at this point figured out exactly what they want and now they are just looking for the right place to buy it from. They are looking for the store that meets all the right criteria for a purchase such as brand trust, price, warranties, shipping policies, refund policies, customer service, etc. These keywords can be optimized into product pages.

Info: Info queries are generally the "how to" search terms. These are people not looking to buy but looking for information and education for themselves. These queries are best optimized on blog and article pages. They don't bring in direct customers but they do help you build a strong resource website that draws links and a loyal audience.

Keyword segmenting for information only sites and blogs is a bit different than sites selling products or services. In informational sites all keywords can be used to develop content so it's a matter of determining what kind of keyword content you can produce and what keywords can be targeted together.

Using the same process of elimination from above you can segment all the keywords into three distinct groups.

Broad Topics: People looking for general information have a general topic that they want to learn more about. You must start them with the most general information as these searchers typically are not looking for a lot of detailed specifics.

Specific Desires: These searchers are looking for a answers to questions that they might have. They may be looking for a solution to a problem or the best way to get a desired result.

Immediate Concerns: These searchers are looking for solutions that meet a very specific set of criteria. It's not enough to provide broad, all-encompassing answers, they are looking for something that much more specifically can be applied to their situation.

Keyword ROI

When deciding which keywords ultimately get optimized into your site, you want to keep ROI foremost in your mind. The chart above shows a very general rule when it comes to determining which keywords produce the best ROI.

Phrases with one or two words can often produce a lot of traffic but the conversions from those keywords is often pretty low. That can be made up for with the mass quantities of traffic the keyword brings, but more traffic also means more resources consumed, including answering calls and emails.

On the lower end of the spectrum are five and six word phrases. The convertability of these phrases is very good, but there isn't a lot of traffic so total conversions is very low. These are keywords you want to optimize for but not spend a lot of time on, otherwise you lose any value from the sales they bring.

The happy ROI zone is with the three and four word phrases. These bring in good traffic and have good conversion rates. Focusing the bulk of your efforts here is where you're going to get the most value.

Keep in mind, though, keyword length isn't the only factor that matters in keyword selection. You want to make sure you select terms that are targeted for your audience produce the most profitable sales.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Getting Started on Twitter with a Realistic Timeline

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:28:46 -0600

by Jennifer Laycock

While millions of people and tens of thousands of businesses have flocked to Twitter over the past few years, many companies are still standing in the doorway wondering if they should step inside. Their biggest concern? How much time will they spend and how much benefit will they reap.

After all, if you talk to anyone who has invested heavily in Twitter, they'll tell you just how much time it can take. It's easy to get sucked into the conversation and it's not uncommon to log in, then glance at the clock a few moments later only to learn hours have passed.

With that in mind, it's important to establish a realistic timeline for yourself to make sure you're only spending the time you need. If you're just getting started, here's a quick five step timeline to give you something to work with.

The idea here is to spend a bit of time at each stage before moving on to the next. Keep in mind, the minutes per day is total, not per activity. This timeline is designed for your average do-it-yourself small business owner who is looking to put a bit of extra effort into social media to see if there are any returns. Ultimately, you shouldn't be spending more than an hour a day on Twitter, unless it's one of your primary marketing channels or you've got a staff dedicated to your outreach efforts there.

Breaking Down the Timelines

If you're just starting out, you'll want to spend more time in the earlier stages of the scale before you move ahead. If you've been using Twitter for awhile and are simply looking to get your timelines under control, then consider moving quickly through the early stages and focusing on breaking your Twitter time into more manageable chunks with specific goals attached.

Stage One: 15 Minutes per day
Primary Goal: Following

In the early stages, you don't need to spend more than 15 minutes a day on Twitter. Run some searches based on keywords and geographical searches and find a few new people to follow. Many of these will follow you back, giving you a starting point of followers to work from.

Stage Two: 20 Minutes per day
Primary Goal: Listening

Once you've found a few hundred people to follow, increase your time to about 20 minutes per day, most of which you should spend scanning the postings of the people you follow and running keyword specific searches for topics related to your business. The idea here is to find out what people are saying so you can begin to prepare a strategy that appeals to them.

Stage Two: 30 Minutes per day
Primary Goal: Offering

After a week or two, you should have a feel for Twitter and what your followers and the community are interested in. This is when it's time to start investing a half an hour in the morning or afternoon. You should still spend most of this time listening, but you can also start to share links to blog posts you're reading or resources you're finding.

Aim to start by sharing a handful of links with your followers each day. For a stronger impact, make use of a Twitter scheduler like the one built into HootSuite to share your links over the course of the day instead of one solid chunk.

Stage Two: 45 Minutes per day
Primary Goal: Sharing

After another week or so has passed, kick it up to 45 minutes. At this point, you may want to break it into three 15 minute chunks a day instead of trying to invest all your time at once. Check for direct replies at least twice a day and respond to any of them that require attention.

Keep finding people to follow, running your searches and sharing resources, but kick it up a notch and start offering more thoughts and opinions on things or news about your business as well. Continue to make use of a Twitter scheduler to allow your thoughts to be broadcast throughout the day instead of in one solid chunk. This will allow you to reach more followers by targeting different times of the day.

Stage Two: 60 Minutes per day
Primary Goal: Engage

Unless Twitter is the absolute core of your marketing strategy, you're likely going to top out at a maximum of around an hour a day. At this point, you're going to do everything you've already been doing, but you're going to add in the goal of being more engaging. This is where you want to start communicating directly to other Twitter members. Offer feedback on their thoughts; thank them for their links...whatever it takes to get them engaged.

Consider checking in for around twenty minutes in the morning, afternoon and evening and make use of the Twitter schedulers to sprinkle your posts throughout the day when you're feeling kind of wordy or have a lot of links to share.

Keep in mind, it's likely not realistic for you to spend an hour per day on Twitter unless Twitter becomes a core part of your marketing strategy. That's ok. Think of these stages as a guideline to expanding your presence and track the results of your effort to determine how much time you can justify spending on the site.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Google Giving Small Businesses a Cheap Advertising Option

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:14:10 -0600

by Sage Lewis

Google is doing a test in the Houston market that is allowing small businesses to affordably stand out from their competition. Watch this video to learn how you could benefit from this.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.