February 19, 2010

7 Tips: How to Market on LinkedIn

Filed under: LinkedIn,Online Marketing,Social Media — Tags: — Scott @ 9:44 pm

So you’ve heard about people doing B2B (and B2C) marketing on LinkedIn, but where do you start? Here’s a list of 7 good tips to get you started marketing on LinkedIn.

  1. Fill out your personal profile. You should fill out your profile like it’s an executive bio, so include past companies, education, affiliations, and activities. The easier you are to find the more connections you can make and the more chance you have of finding that key contact.
  2. Link to your personal profile. Include a link to your profile as part of an email signature; the benefit is that the link enables people to see all your credentials.
  3. Let your profile help with SEO. LinkedIn allows you to make your profile information available for search engines to index. To do this, create a public profile and select “Full View”. Also, instead of using the default URL, customize your public profile’s URL to be your actual name.
  4. Join industry groups. Search for and join industry-related LinkedIn groups , even if there is no activity within them. The icons for those groups will show up on your profile which tells people at a glance that you are involved in your industry and presumably knowledgeable about it. It also creates a connection between you and anyone else who is a member of that group. If the group is active, join in the conversation where appropriate. This is an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise.
  5. Post news. Many groups allow you to post links to news articles intended to spark conversation. More often than not, conversations do not arise from these links but that doesn’t mean that no one pays attention to them. Like status updates, this function can be used to position yourself as knowledgeable in your field. But think before you go down this route. Before you post anything, ask yourself if what you’re about to share is truly valuable to the group.
  6. Pose questions on “LinkedIn Answers”. If you want to make connections with a specific type of person, you can use LinkedIn’s Answer feature to try and attract them by posing a question the LinkedIn audience. Think about the type of person you want to reach and then formulate a question for which you think that person would have an opinion about that they’d like to share. LinkedIn ‘Answers’ is a great way to engage the sorts of people you want to begin a dialogue with.
  7. Answer questions on “LinkedIn Answers”. Answer questions posed by others. This, again, is another aspect of LinkedIn that can be used to demonstrate your competence. Only answer the questions for which you know the answer intimately. If you are truly helpful to the person, they’ll consider assigning you as the best answer among the group. Your answer but also the fact that it was the best answer will be displayed on your profile. With this method you can both demonstrate your, and by extension your company’s, expertise but most importantly it provides you an opportunity to engage the question asker (someone clearly interested in the area you’ve just demonstrated your knowledge in) AND any and all people who read the question and your subsequent answer.LinkedIn Answers: http://www.linkedin.com/answers
    LinkedIn Groups Directory: http://www.linkedin.com/groupsDirectory

If you have other great ideas, please share them in the comments below, or email them to us and we’ll post them here for the benefit of the community.

September 2, 2009

11 Successful Social Media Case Studies

Filed under: Online Marketing,Social Media,Uncategorized — Tags: — Scott @ 11:44 am

A client actually sent this to me today. It’s a great document with 11 successful case studies, as compiled by the gang at Marketing Profs.

Click to: Download 11 Case Studies Document

August 31, 2009

Bing This: Major Changes and Search Optimization for Bing

Filed under: "Best Of" Lists,Online Marketing,Search Engine Optimization — Tags: , — Scott @ 9:45 am

We’ve been getting a lot of questions about optimizing for Bing. So to separate fact from fiction, and to provide some helpful tips, we thought we should address a few frequent questions.

Q: What is Bing?
A: Bing is Microsoft’s recently re-branded search platform. Microsoft calls it a “decision engine”, rather than a search engine. Although, it’s really still a search engine. Micosoft used “Live.com” as their search platform in the past, but now you will notice, live.com redirects to Bing.com.

Q: Does MSN search use “Bing Technology”?
A: Yes, MSN search actually uses the Bing search algorithm, and actually drops the searcher into a Bing results page. So no, you do not need to optimize for MSN any differently than Bing.

Q: What will change with the Yahoo!/Microsoft search partnership?
A: The Yahoo search infrastructure will be controlled by Microsoft in mid-2010. Until then, both engines will likely operate independently. At that point, there will finally be a pretty serious competitor for Google. So you can rest assured Google is working on some fairly clever things to try and differentiate itself even more by that point.

Q: What are the major changes in Bing?
A: A variety of changes/additions have taken place. Primarily smarter search functionality provides more “rich” results, including more images and better localization with the enhanced map platform. Also notice the specialized channels for things such as travel, which provide quite robust shopping comparison options. Finally, there is much more integration with other MSN and Non-MSN platforms. Do a search for a sports celebrity and see what I mean with Fox Sports stats integration. Or try a celebrity that “tweets” often and see the link to his or her Twitter profile above all of the search results.

Q: Is the advertiser cash-back program still available for e-commerce?
A: Yes, it’s still available. There are some criteria to apply and the process isn’t that easy, but it does provide a solid ROI option since it’s a CPA (cost-per-action) model. You’ll need to be able to maintain your datafeed, be based in the US and meet a few other criteria in order to apply.

Q: What major changes should be made for optimization?
A: We’re working on tests to reverse engineer the elements of primary importance in the Bing ranking algorithm. Here are a few hints (we can’t give out all of them to our competitors, now can we) about what we have found the Bing ranking algorithm likes:

  • Bing likes older domains, plain and simple. bad news for new domains, good news for older ones.
  • Bing likes content (more like it’s bigger rival). More than 300 to 350 words per page has a very positive effect.
  • Bing likes bulleted lists and descriptive word strings, but use subtle optimization.
  • Bing likes optimized page titles, and page specific metadata, more than it’s bigger arch-rival.
  • Bing likes fresh content. a lot.
  • Bing likes relevant outgoing links more than past versions. and incoming links more than past versions as well.
  • Bing likes “personal” information. It’s a unique option for certain optimization tactics.
  • Bing doesn’t crawl deeper pages as well as Googlebot. XML sitemaps will help.
  • Bing doesn’t like pages with an optimization ratio above 3.5% to 4% very much (at least the way Lucid calculates our optimization ratios).
  • Bing doesn’t seem to care much about sloppy code.

August 26, 2009

Mom, are you on Facebook?

Filed under: Facebook,Online Marketing,Social Media,Uncategorized — Tags: , — Ken @ 4:15 pm

Social media isn’t just for the young anymore; it’s also for the young at heart. I have been noticing the rapid adoption of social media by those a generation or even two, older than me.

This past December, I was visiting my family for Christmas and my mother asks me “how do I get on facebook?” I quickly replied back “Mom, you don’t.” Perhaps for selfish reasons. I really didn’t know what to say. Here I am, approaching 30, and have been on myspace and facebook for quite a few years. What were once safe harbors for your college party pics and funny comments between friends, has now become a hub for your entire online life, viewable by every friend and family member alike. And the baby-boomers like my parents, they want in on the action too.

The reality of this adoption didn’t hit me personally until this week when I had different friends say their parents where on facebook. I quickly replied back, “so is my mom”. Being in the online marketing business I started to think more about it. I thought about the people that have “added me” as a friend in the last 6 months:

  • My Mom
  • Two of my Aunts
  • My great Aunt
  • My second & third cousins
  • My older brother
  • My older sister

I think it’s safe to say Social Media is not a “fad” and is probably here to spoil the online photo posting for high school and college students everywhere for generations to come. But also, giving us an unprecedented “in” with the boomer-generation that has been historically tougher to reach online.

How about you? Has your parents added you on facebook yet? If not, beware because it will happen sooner than you might think.

Here is an interesting article I came across today by Jennifer Martinez; an industry author on Online Marketing.

http://gigaom.com/2009/08/25/the-social-web-isnt-just-for-the-young-anymore/

August 12, 2009

Google "Caffeine"

Filed under: Online Marketing,Search Engine Optimization,google — Tags: — Scott @ 7:54 pm

Google has launched a test version of their enhanced search algorithm. We gave it a test and noticed a few things that differentiated “Caffeine” (the project alias) from the traditional Google result engine.

-The results seem to come faster – almost 2x as fast as in the current Google search, although since there are no ads on the test version, it’s hardly a fair comparison
-There seem to be less images included in the new results
-More reliance on keyword “strings” rather than stand alone keywords
-More focus on off-page optimization elements

Here is “Caffeine” (top) and the current Google results page (bottom).

google-caffeine

current-google

Here’s an interesting article with a bit more information.

August 6, 2009

Organic Optimization Process

Filed under: Online Marketing,Search Engine Optimization,google — Tags: — Scott @ 6:10 pm

While working on a presentation, I put together a quick chart to help illustrate the process of Organic Optimization. I thought it might be interesting to share. As you can see, Organic Optimization relies heavily on both on-page and off-page optimization, and is a true ongoing process (at least if you want to achieve good results). Unfortunately, a lot of people are looking for a quick “one-time full optimization”. When we try to explain how that will only help temporarily, it can sometimes cause confusion and or frustration.

The Organic Optimization Process

The Organic Optimization Process

July 6, 2009

Some "SEO's" give SEO a bad name

Filed under: Online Marketing,Scammers,Search Engine Optimization — Tags: , — Scott @ 10:08 pm

I was reading through some general SEO materials before a presentation and I got a bit sidetracked into reading about historical SEO and the changes that have taken place over the years. In the last 6 years that SEO has really become something of a pop phenom, it has changed greatly.

But, some things have not changed…I still get emails from email addresses like “bobjsalquitz@seo-blast-top-ranking.ru” all the time asking if I am missing the boat because my business is not on “the tops of the search engines. guaranteed number 1 ranking. beat Google with secrets of code…”

And the crazy part is that this has been going on for at least 5 years. Look at this article from 2004: Internet Advancement told to refund clients
That illustrates a fine on a firm out of Seattle that was making false promises about “Top Search Engine Positions”. And yet, I still get emails from clients, friends and associates asking me about emails from random people promising the world, or at least top rankings in the world, for $39/year. I guess some things never change.

June 3, 2009

The recession is helping online marketing?

Filed under: Online Marketing — Tags: , , — Ken @ 9:33 am

The marketing world has changed drastically in the past ten years. Today I was thinking about how this has impacted my life. I’m almost 30 and back in the 90′s, I routinely read the morning paper and used the yellow pages for business references what seemed like years ago. Pretty normal things to do. Most people got the news from the morning paper and when you needed a local plumber, you went to the yellow pages. Fast forward to 2009 and life is different. About a month ago the local phone book was sent to my house, I picked it up and put it right in the recycle bin. I also realized that I can’t remember the last time I subscribed to a newspaper. I Google everything from my news to services that I need, like a plumber or even house shopping. Even using the word “Google” as a verb. That’s new.

I had a discussion with one of the Lucid partners about 2 months ago and we both came to the same conclusion…the recession is forcing businesses to take a hard look at their marketing dollars. Many are realizing that they are not getting the return on investment from Radio, Print and TV. Internet marketing is often much more efficient, and is the preferred method of finding a business by most consumers and businesses. 

Having worked in print advertising in the past, I can tell you from personal experience that the newspaper industry has been a slowly dying industry for the past decade as they have searched for ways to prove their worth in a time when most people aren’t really interested in the products they provide. They have tried making up for their print ad rates by selling online ads but it seems as if they are suffering in this arena as well. The more businesses decide to online market them selves, control their own message and not get over charged and under delivered for a newspaper print ad the more this trend will continue.

Here is a quick link to an article with the current Q1 Online News Ad Revenues: http://www.clickz.com/3633951

Are you still wasting money in the Yellow Pages, Print, TV or Billboard advertising? You may want to take a serious look at how much return you are getting with these avenues and how much wasted money is spent on overhead like printing the paper or producing your TV commercial. Online marketing is an effective way to stay ahead of your competitors and make sure your business is running as smoothly as possible.

Let me know your thoughts!

Ken