Thursday, April 30, 2009
BIGLIST SEO Blog Reviews 040909
The week is nearly done and Spring is nearly here. Unless of course, you live in the “Never Summer Land” of Minnesota, where we’re apparently destined to enjoy a balmy 35-50 degrees indefinitely. Â Take a break from your daily dose of social media overstimulation and work focused multi-tasking to check out a new batch of [...]
Why Facebook’s Fund Raising Reminds Me of NBC’s The Office
Does anyone else see the similarity between Facebook’s attempts to raise additional funds and last week’s episode of The Office? A quick re-cap. Michael Scott’s paper company is offered a buyout by his old employer. On their way to the negotiation table, everyone is eager to ensure that Michael Scott doesn’t reveal that his company is [...]
25 Must Read Social Media Marketing Tips
The benefit from a firm grasp of social media for companies is impossible to ignore. Whether you work in marketing, advertising, public relations or interactive, there are distinct competitive advantages for both individuals and businesses from a better understanding of the social web. This post provides specific advice from in-house social media marketers including: Dell, Comcast, [...]
Take the Trackur 60-Second Reputation Monitoring Challenge
There were two driving factors behind my launch of Trackur: Existing online reputation monitoring tools were too expensive. Most social media monitoring tools couldn’t be set-up without first studying for a PHD–or getting a 60 minute tutorial from someone with a PHD. Over the past year or so, we’ve worked hard to add valuable new features to Trackur, [...]
Building Complementary Services: A Powerful Long-Term Social Media Marketing Strategy
A fundamental aspect of marketing is to gain the attention of a target audience and engage or redirect it in a way which fulfills specific objectives, such as a positive increase in reputation, legitimacy, mindshare, exposure (visitor traffic), sales and captured leads (subscribers, users, clients etc). In terms of online marketing, social media channels offer many opportunities. Some webmasters focus on setting up profiles with self-serving user generated content [...]
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Building Complementary Services: A Powerful Long-Term Social Media Marketing Strategy
Ask.com Adds Site Links
Aside from bringing butlers out of retirement, Ask.com has been working to improve its search results. This week Ask adds Domain Navigation (what Google calls Site Links) to the first listing in its organic results. Here’s how it looks for a search for Disney: Not really earth-shattering, is it? On the one hand, I’m glad Ask is [...]
SES NY: Improve SEO Through Blogs & Feeds
Do you have a blog? If so, a panel today at SES NY shared how to improve SEO results with your blog and its RSS Feed. Michael Gray, Owner of Atlas Web Service, shared the following tips to increasing SEO value with your blog. 1. Don’t write blog titles that suck Bad titles lack keyword focus, are [...]
Search and Tech Giants Named to Help Government Set Policy
TechCrunch reports that Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt and Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, Craig Mundie have been named to President’s Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). The council is designed to help the President and Vice President form policy related to science, technology, and innovation. The council has an impressive roster of [...]
SEO Copywriting: Lure The ‘Bots - Don’t Become One
Copywriting, and all of marketing really, represent that beautiful intersection between business and creativity. Those of us lucky enough to find our way into this niche find that, amazingly, we can actually make a living being creative. Granted, the work we create may not always grab the attention of our hipster friends, but it will put [...]
Forget Skynet! Computers Still Too Dumb to Spot Flu Outbreak
John Connor would be relieved to learn that we don’t yet have to worry about our super-computers rising up against us–apparently, they’re still only as smart as the humans operating them. Case in point, Wired reports that despite the thousands of computers at Google’s disposal–and over 10 years of data analysis–it wasn’t able to identify an [...]
Charting Effective Search Engine Optimization
[Editor's Note: Today we have another entry from Dana Larson, Content Promotions Supervisor at TopRank Online Marketing, on a structured approach to starting search engine optimization.]Â Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a necessary component of any successful business website. The internet has become the primary resource for information on virtually everything, from goods and services to [...]
SES NY: 8 Tips to Boost SEM Results
In the last session of the day, attendees were rewarded with 8 awesome tips to boost Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Results in a sponsored session  ”Wpromote Workshop: 8 Things You Aren’t Doing That Will Boost Your SEM Results”.  Using real-life examples, this session promises to teach attendees the secrets top online marketers are using [...]
Social Media Influences
Anyone actively involved (in a productive way) with social media as a marketing, PR or customer service communications channel started somewhere. Since it’s a social activity, that means a high degree of influence from others already mastering the channel. It’s no mystery that one way to quickly gain knowledge about and adapt to something new [...]
Tips for Better Business Blogging - SES New York
SES New York did pretty well  considering many conferences are feeling the effects of business budget cuts. Publisher and VP Matt McGown stated that over 5,000 people attended 2009 SES New York. Social media often folds well into search marketing and blogging represents a great example of the intersection between creating optimized content and a platform [...]
Improve Public Relations with SEO & Social Media
The media relations landscape has changed as traditional publications have downsized, re-focused online or been eliminated altogether. Fundamentally, Public Relations serves two groups: Â The companies that pay for representation and the journalists, analysts, reporters and increasingly, bloggers, that rely on PR professionals as a source of news content. Ad dollars shifting online combined with changes in consumer [...]
Digital Marketing on the Social Web: Blog Now or Pay Later
Companies world-wide are looking for more creative, high impact and accountable marketing.  To find out how marketers were allocating their marketing efforts, we ran a poll of our 18,000 Online Marketing Blog subscribers to get a handle on what the top digital marketing tactics would be in 2009. Poll respondents cast 1559 votes for their 3 top digital [...]
Upcoming PR, SEO, Social Media Marketing Events
 April has been a relatively quiet month for TopRank speaking events but May will rev things up a bit with the following Public Relations and Direct Marketing industry events focusing on Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing topics. I’ll also be presenting on SEO for publishers locally this week at a private event for MSP [...]
PR Measurement Interview with Katie Delahaye Paine
Katie Delahaye Paine is a renowned expert on public relations and social media measurement.  She runs an award winning PR Measurement consultancy KDPaine & Partners, blogs, Tweets, speaks at numerous conferences and writes both a newsletter and contributes a column to PR News and other PR industry publications. Measurement is inherently core to many forms of [...]
How do you measure business blogging success?
I recently completed developing and recording 2 modules for a business blogging program with the DMA. Â One of the most interesting portions (in my opinion) of the material addressed measuring blog success. There’s no one right answer because the purpose for business blogs can vary from branding to sales. Since bloggers often read other blogs, I’m [...]
SEO & Social Media Roadmap
Despite company marketing budgets on hold or in a state of ambiguity, businesses are scrambling over social media, trying to figure out how to boost sales and keep the customers they have.  SEO is an online marketing tactic that’s been tried and true for well over 10 years and is still earning its stripes in [...]
SES NY: 3 Approaches to Social Media
Thinking about social media? Or are you waist deep and need some help? A session today at SES NY highlights different approaches to social media, its purpose and how and why you should get involved. Li Evans, of Key Relevance, hammers home the need for social media strategy within her presentation. Social Media - done for the [...]
Top Ten SEO Tips for PR Professionals
Over the next 10 business days I will be posting a series of SEO tips focused mostly on how to employ search engine optimization tactics for online PR benefit. This Top Ten SEO Tactics for PR Professionals series is centered around a presentation I am giving at the PRSA Digital Impact conference. If you’re attending [...]
Adding Social Media to Marketing & PR
[Editor's Note: This guest post coverage of a recent Marketingsherpa webinar comes from TopRank's SEO Designer Thomas McMahon and Account Coordinator Kristen Hebert.] Are companies engaging in social media? Are they monitoring their brand? What’s a social media press release? These were a few of the topics covered in Marketingsherpa’s recent “Engaging Bloggers, Journalists and Customers” [...]
Top Ten SEO Tactics for PR Professionals
Over the next 10 business days I will be posting a series of SEO tips focused mostly on how to employ search engine optimization tactics for online PR benefit. This Top Ten SEO Tactics for PR Professionals series is centered around a presentation I am giving at the PRSA Digital Impact conference. If you’re attending [...]
SEO Basics: 6 Tips for Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools is a free service that provides a wealth of information directly from Google. Once you have verified a site with Google, they’ll give you access to all sorts of information. Here are just a few features of Google Webmaster Tools: 1. Errors Google Webmaster Tools will show all sorts of errors with a site. [...]
BIGLIST SEO Blog Reviews 040909
The week is nearly done and Spring is nearly here. Unless of course, you live in the “Never Summer Land” of Minnesota, where we’re apparently destined to enjoy a balmy 35-50 degrees indefinitely. Â Take a break from your daily dose of social media overstimulation and work focused multi-tasking to check out a new batch of [...]
SEO Tactics For PR: If I Could Only Do One Thing…
“If Ihad to pick only one thing to do with my web site to improve it’s search engine visibility, what would it be?” It’s a question that comes up often and most people asking it expect that there’s one right answer. The trouble is, as web sites and situations are different, so is the “just one [...]
25 Must Read Social Media Marketing Tips
The benefit from a firm grasp of social media for companies is impossible to ignore. Whether you work in marketing, advertising, public relations or interactive, there are distinct competitive advantages for both individuals and businesses from a better understanding of the social web. This post provides specific advice from in-house social media marketers including: Dell, Comcast, [...]
Comprehensive Guide to Social Media Marketing from Marketingsherpa
Review of the 2009 Social Media Marketing & PR Benchmark Guide from Marketingsherpa A new report on social media has been released from Marketingsherpa with Senior Analyst, Sergio Balegno, as lead author.  Over 1,800 marketing and PR professionals responded to the survey resulting in one of the most complete, data supported guides on social media published to date. There are numerous books, [...]
SES NY: Improve SEO Through Blogs & Feeds
Do you have a blog? If so, a panel today at SES NY shared how to improve SEO results with your blog and its RSS Feed. Michael Gray, Owner of Atlas Web Service, shared the following tips to increasing SEO value with your blog. 1. Don’t write blog titles that suck Bad titles lack keyword focus, are [...]
SEO Copywriting: Lure The ‘Bots - Don’t Become One
Copywriting, and all of marketing really, represent that beautiful intersection between business and creativity. Those of us lucky enough to find our way into this niche find that, amazingly, we can actually make a living being creative. Granted, the work we create may not always grab the attention of our hipster friends, but it will put [...]
Charting Effective Search Engine Optimization
[Editor's Note: Today we have another entry from Dana Larson, Content Promotions Supervisor at TopRank Online Marketing, on a structured approach to starting search engine optimization.]Â Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a necessary component of any successful business website. The internet has become the primary resource for information on virtually everything, from goods and services to [...]
SEO Tactics For PR: If I Could Only Do One Thing…
“If Ihad to pick only one thing to do with my web site to improve it’s search engine visibility, what would it be?” It’s a question that comes up often and most people asking it expect that there’s one right answer. The trouble is, as web sites and situations are different, so is the “just one [...]
Are You Tracking Your Marketing Effectiveness by Channel?
Most companies doing internet marketing take the multi-touch approach and use a variety of channels such as blogging, seo and more recently social media to generate interest in their products and services. But at the end of the day their traffic charts look like this:
What Does This Chart Tell You About Your Visitors from Your Email marketing, or Social Media Marketing?
The answer is absolutely nothing. Here's how I envision a conversation would go at your office coffee station:
You: Visitors are up this month!
Colleague: Oh Yeah? How come?
You: Umm...not sure. I think it was the email. I'll have to check to be sure.
To control your marketing you have to be sure. Here are some ways you can improve your tracking of channel effectiveness:
1. Go Granular
Your visitor graphs should like this one below, (fondly known as the mosaic) where you can see the volume of visitors you are generating from various marketing channels. If you had this graph, your answer to the colleague at the coffee station would be, "We drove a higher volume of direct traffic to our site this month. Our site and brand name are really out there!"
2. Analyze the Entire Funnel
Using the data from HubSpot Marketing Analytics I take this granular analysis a step further and create similar graphs (below) to understand what channels are delivering the most leads and, more importantly, what channels are delivering customers!
Remember, channels that are driving sales and business for your company are the effective ones -- where you want to invest more of your limited marketing dollars. Besides direct traffic, looks like the blog and webinar channels are driving customers in the example below!
3. Measure Conversion
While your marketing channels may be driving a healthy volume of visitors, leads and customers every month it is important to track the conversion rate of each channel on a regular basis to see if they are performing consistently.
In the example above the conversion rate for the Webinars channel (green) dropped for several months -- December through February and regained some momentum in March. At the same time, the blog consistently delivered a reliable conversion rate month over month. I can look at these charts and make pretty reliable estimates for leads for future months.
4. Track Business Results
At the end of the day, the job of marketing is to help drive business success. You should be able to look at each individual marketing channel and understand what is the yield for the effort and dollars to convert some number of visitors to customers. If you know how a channel performs you can make informed decisions about where to invest more energy and dollars to get an even higher return.
What strategies as you using to track the effectiveness of your various marketing channels? Please share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments!
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Social Media Influences
Anyone actively involved (in a productive way) with social media as a marketing, PR or customer service communications channel started somewhere. Since it’s a social activity, that means a high degree of influence from others already mastering the channel. It’s no mystery that one way to quickly gain knowledge about and adapt to something new [...]
Improve Public Relations with SEO & Social Media
The media relations landscape has changed as traditional publications have downsized, re-focused online or been eliminated altogether. Fundamentally, Public Relations serves two groups: Â The companies that pay for representation and the journalists, analysts, reporters and increasingly, bloggers, that rely on PR professionals as a source of news content. Ad dollars shifting online combined with changes in consumer [...]
Upcoming PR, SEO, Social Media Marketing Events
 April has been a relatively quiet month for TopRank speaking events but May will rev things up a bit with the following Public Relations and Direct Marketing industry events focusing on Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing topics. I’ll also be presenting on SEO for publishers locally this week at a private event for MSP [...]
How do you measure business blogging success?
I recently completed developing and recording 2 modules for a business blogging program with the DMA. Â One of the most interesting portions (in my opinion) of the material addressed measuring blog success. There’s no one right answer because the purpose for business blogs can vary from branding to sales. Since bloggers often read other blogs, I’m [...]
SES NY: 3 Approaches to Social Media
Thinking about social media? Or are you waist deep and need some help? A session today at SES NY highlights different approaches to social media, its purpose and how and why you should get involved. Li Evans, of Key Relevance, hammers home the need for social media strategy within her presentation. Social Media - done for the [...]
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Adding Social Media to Marketing & PR
[Editor's Note: This guest post coverage of a recent Marketingsherpa webinar comes from TopRank's SEO Designer Thomas McMahon and Account Coordinator Kristen Hebert.] Are companies engaging in social media? Are they monitoring their brand? What’s a social media press release? These were a few of the topics covered in Marketingsherpa’s recent “Engaging Bloggers, Journalists and Customers” [...]
SEO Basics: 6 Tips for Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools is a free service that provides a wealth of information directly from Google. Once you have verified a site with Google, they’ll give you access to all sorts of information. Here are just a few features of Google Webmaster Tools: 1. Errors Google Webmaster Tools will show all sorts of errors with a site. [...]
Comprehensive Guide to Social Media Marketing from Marketingsherpa
Review of the 2009 Social Media Marketing & PR Benchmark Guide from Marketingsherpa A new report on social media has been released from Marketingsherpa with Senior Analyst, Sergio Balegno, as lead author.  Over 1,800 marketing and PR professionals responded to the survey resulting in one of the most complete, data supported guides on social media published to date. There are numerous books, [...]
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