Category: TWS Blog

Business strategy is more complicated than three simple steps, but you can encapsulate the basic movement of business planning by looking at it in three general phases.

Perhaps in the future we will look in deeper detail at some of the specifics in each of the three steps, but for now we will end our long stretching series with the final general step – Evaluation.

The earlier articles (for your reference) may be found here:

• Introduction
• Step 1: Formulation
• Step 2: Implementation

By way of review: the first general step in business strategy is formulating the strategy itself. The second step is then the process of implementation. Once you have drawn up a comprehensive plan and put it in place, the final stage, evaluation, is one of maintenance.

The Important Questions

Businesses cannot simply put a plan into place and expect it to run itself. As with any plan in any field, business strategies must be constantly evaluated. Some of the important questions to ask include –

• Is the plan effective?
• Is it proving suitable?
• Is it reaching the stated goals?
• How is the plan falling short?
• How is it failing?
• Are the people on the ground implementing the plan correctly?
• Can it be improved in any way?

Every aspect of the plan must be tracked and scrutinized. This will allow the business owner to make the necessary adjustments in strategy and implementation to fine tune the overall plan and make it what the boardroom envisioned. Just be careful – constant evaluation does not mean literally every day. A plan must have time to come together and have effect. Depending on your business, this could be anywhere between several weeks and several months.

Strategic Modification

Once you have allowed sufficient time to pass, and gathered enough data to get a good idea of the impact of your new business strategy, it is time to determine what, if anything, to modify. Again, this could run from one extreme to the other: from barely changing anything at all, to throwing the new strategy out in its entirety and beginning again from scratch.

If the plan was formulated properly, it should not need to be wholly tossed, but rather modified to one extent or another. No matter how much time and research and money and effort go into formulation and implementation, no business strategy is perfect. You can always find things to make better. Always. Be humble enough to see the holes in your initial plan, and then do due diligence to determine the best way to fix the problems.

This evaluation stage is never ending for a well run business. You should always be evaluating the plan you have in place, formulating ways to make it better, and implementing those improvements. So the general cycle repeats itself over and over again, and with each repetition, your business strategy is coming ever closer to meeting your initial goals (unless you determine those goals are the thing that needs changing!).

Final Review

Formulation – invest the needed time and money to evaluate where your company is now, set both short and long-term goals, and draw up a good strategy for achieving those goals.

Implementation – put your plan into action. This may require anything from new training to new products, and often requires new advertising and approaches to make this step successful.

Evaluation – use any tools and data you have at your disposal to determine how closely the implementation of your business strategy is matching the formulated vision. Tweak, re-implement, and repeat.

Dr. William R. Boulton has provided an excellent resource which comments on the steps of Business Strategy from a slightly different angle, and which is definitely worth your time – Strategic Analysis Model. [http://www.auburn.edu/~boultwr/html/strategic_analysis_model.htm]

For years now content marketing has been the talk of the town so to speak, and 2014 is in many ways no different. Content is still king, and a content marketing strategy is essential for doing well in Google Search. Continue reading “Content Marketing in 2014”

Google’s authorship program, announced in June of 2011, has seen steadily increasing adoption over the past couple years. Basically, authorship markup is used to connect an author, via their Google Plus profile, with content they produce online. Continue reading “Google Authorship Overview”

In this third article of our business strategy series, we look at implementation of a new business strategy for your company. In our last article we explored the development of a formal strategy for your particular business. Once you have all of the details sorted out and the plan is finalized, the next logical step is putting the new strategy into action.

The steps in implementation can be broken down many different ways, but we will consider them in three large groupings – resources, management, monitoring.

1. Resources

Perhaps the largest piece in implementing a new business strategy centers around your organization’s resources. To do something new, you must have the resources to do it, and they must be put to good use in order to be effective. Some of the things which must be done might include: setting up a budget for the new strategy, allocating money for the implementation (everything requires money), purchasing or developing new technology, developing new products, training new and/or existing personnel, and managing time.

Good management of your resources is the foundation for a successful business strategy implementation. If you fail to set aside enough money or properly train people, for example, then your new ideas will fail because of poor preparation and resource control. Starting from the very beginning, be sure to carefully and wisely manage your resources in a way that undergirds success.

2. Management

Anything going on in the world of business needs management, and this is particularly true with the implementation of a new business strategy. When you have a new plan, newly trained people, new products and/or services, then you need highly qualified management to ensure that everything goes as planned. During the initial roll out of a new business strategy, there needs to be a clearly defined chain of command in your management structure.

When doing something new, there’s always the chance for things to go wrong, so there need to be people on the ground who can direct and fix as needed. Each person needs to be clear on exactly what their task is in the new structure, and management can help keep each person doing what their position requires. Having quality management in the field during the implementation stage of a new business strategy is critical, and can help steer your organization around unforeseen bumps in the road.

3. Monitoring

Monitoring is closely related to management, but is not necessarily the same thing. As a new business strategy is put in place, there need to be established ways to monitor this implementation, ensuring that every particular step is happening when it needs to happen, where it needs to happen, and how it needs to happen. This stage does not involve tracking the results of a new strategic plan – that’s for the next blog post.

Monitoring is simply the oversight needed to make sure the plan is being worked out in the real world according to the models and plans from the development stage. Sometimes this monitoring can be done by management, but often it needs its own department, reporting to management about progress and noting potential issues along the way.

As your organization implements a new business plan, it’s important to remember that consistency and involvement are key. Everyone has to buy into the new plan, from ownership to management to employee. If the chain breaks at any point, then the new strategy can falter and even fail. So as you prepare to implement the plan, take the time to make sure people understand it, can do it, and even get excited about it. After all, you’ve crafted this new business strategy to ensure the continuing success of your company – the people putting it into action need to be just as settled with it as those who put it together.

Next up in our business strategy series we have Step 3: Evaluation.

First of all we’d like to wish all of our readers a Happy New Year 2014! We saw a lot of changes last year in the world of SEO, online marketing, social media, and beyond. Continue reading “Happy New Year & What 2014 Has to Offer”

We’ve covered a range of topics since we started blogging regularly near the end of September 2013. This has been something of an experiment to discover whether producing quality content, on a regular basis, could have a positive impact on the number of visitors we see on our site.

We saw some impressive numbers in the first two months:

• 24% increase in overall unique visitor traffic
• 770% increase in traffic from social media
• 24% increase in direct traffic

Some of our more popular posts have been on the following topics, which we’ll summarize briefly.

Google Hummingbird for Business

Probably the biggest piece of news in 2013 has been the new Google Hummingbird update. Google reported that Hummingbird was it’s most significant search algorithm update since 2001, well over a decade ago. Basically this update signaled that Google has moved from being a search engine to being an answer engine, and it’s now more social.

Rather than everyone getting the same search results for a particular query, Google is moving toward giving answers to your queries that are relevant to you. For businesses this is an important distinction to make because it means the content they produce has to answer questions, and be relevant to their audience. See our more complete Hummingbird analysis here.

The SMO of SEO

Social media optimization has really taken hold in 2013, and we predict its continued importance in the years to come. Given the more social nature of Google with Hummingbird, optimizing our content on and for social media has risen in importance as well. Experts are now saying that SMO is part of SEO.

For example Google indexes each G+ post directly so you’ll see links directly to social posts show up in your search results. Not only this, but Google has also been indexing publically available Facebook posts for some time now. Social activity is taken into account by Google when ranking content so the more popular on social our content is the better it will likely rank in search results. Check out our post for more on social media optimization.

An Introduction to SEO

Google has not abandoned its core search engine ranking system however. We covered some of the basics to this core SEO in two blog posts here and here. Keywords and keyword research continues to be a key component to ranking success in 2013. Keep in mind rules of thumb like use your keyword once for every 100 words of content, and be sure your content is generally between 600-800 words in length. Also keep in mind that it’s important to use your keyword in strategic places throughout your content. We also recommend building your websites in WordPress, and installing the SEO by Yoast plugin. Finally always include some media, photos or videos, in your content for extra SEO juice.

Google Hangouts for Business

Google Hangouts on Air (HOA) have been a very successful part of many businesses online marketing efforts in 2013, and we predict these will be ever more important in the coming year. We’re actually seeing Toyota adopting this feature, and taking things a step further by integrating HOAs into their sales process for the 2014 Corolla.

HOAs provide excellent SEO opportunities because of the automatically recorded YouTube video with its opportunities for keyword placement. HOAs can also be spun into additional content with the video included for further engagement. Check out our Google Hangouts for business post for more.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our year end review, and look forward to a successful 2014! We’ll be posting once more before the years out, and as always are looking forward to your comments. For more check out our blog where we post regularly.

Today we return to the theme of Business Strategy, beginning at the beginning – the formulation of a company’s strategy. Without proper preparation, evaluation, and planning, even the best plans and strategies will fall flat.

To devise a strategy that will work for your particular business, you must approach the process with as much information as you can gather, and perhaps most importantly, with honesty. An honest evaluation and look to the future are vital in the formulation of a business plan.

There are three general steps involved in putting together a quality Business Plan: analysis, setting objectives, and finally the detailed plan.

I. Analysis

Whether you are beginning with a new business or formulating strategy for an already existing company or new product line, the first phase of the process is in analysis. You need to look at as many variables as possible during this initial phase. Break down your company in detail – internally, externally, situation, location, finances, past performances, etc. Break down your competition, as well as you can, in this same detail.

Study your market; study your industry; study the larger markets and trends. The ultimate goal here – to be able to see your company as it really is. If you have an inaccurate estimation of your company at the end of step one, then none of the other phases will matter. This is where the above mentioned honesty comes into play – an honest evaluation and analysis is crucial. We cannot stress this enough; take the time and use the resources needed to do this step properly.

II. Setting Objectives

Once you finish the analysis phase, you then have the chance to set goals and objectives for your business. Many companies try to set goals first, but then you have no idea how realistic or achievable your goals might be. Goal setting comes after analysis – you see where you are, and then you can make plans for where you want to go. Often, in analysis, companies find out things about themselves which are surprising!

Objectives will be formed in multiple ways: long-term goals, short-term goals, overall objectives (internally and externally), financial goals, etc. Often these will be framed as mission statements, vision statements, or company statements. So objectives will span several planes, including horizontal (over time) and vertical (building on one another).

III. The Strategic Plan

The objectives which you set in step 2, after a careful consideration of the information you gather in the analysis stage, should in themselves suggest a strategic plan. The plan itself merely provides the specific ways that you will go about achieving your objectives. What projects or programs will you implement to achieve your ultimate goals? If your company wants to increase sales, for instance, then your strategic plan will need to lay out exactly what steps you intend to take to increase your sales.

The strategic plan will be based on the analysis, which will have considered such questions as – what is your competition doing that is successful? what are you doing that you know is not working? what is no one doing? what has worked in the past? what are the markets showing for the future? You can then take the answers to these questions and decide what your specific company, in your particular situation, can do to achieve your objectives.

Final Phases

As you are in the final phases of fine-tuning your plan, there are three final questions to consider.

1. – does my plan make sense?
2. – is my plan feasible?
3. – will this plan be acceptable to all parties involved (employees, consumers, investors, etc.)?

Finally, keep in mind during this phase that your plan is not set in stone! As we will see in Steps 2 and 3, the plan will be constantly revisited and modified as needed. You want to put together the best plan possible, this is no excuse to cut corners early (which will inevitably derail your efforts from the beginning), but do not get caught up by the “myth of perfection” – the chances you will get every possible piece of your plan exactly right is somewhere near 0%, even with the best teams and analysis in the world. Formulate the plan with all proper preparation and caution, and then move forward.

Our next article will look at the second step in Business Strategy – Implementation.

Social media has become such a part of most of our lives that life without it seems a distant memory. It’s tough to imagine that Facebook has only been around since 2004 – that’s just 9 years ago. Interestingly, LinkedIn is slightly older, launched in 2003, making it just 10 years old. Twitter is slightly younger at only 7 years old, launching in 2006. Pinterest is a relative baby at 3 years old, and Google+ is younger still, at only 2 years of age.

Facebook is certainly the largest, and more active, social network available today with 1.19 billion active users. What may come as a shock to some is that Google+, the youngest of the bunch, comes in second by active user count with 540 million. Twitter, considered by many to be Facebook’s runner up, has only 232 million active users, just behind LinkedIn with 259 million active users.

What Active User Means

There are several different ways active user can be defined. Some active user stats come from daily active users, and some from monthly. More often than not stats, like those above, are referencing monthly active users. This means that a person has taken some action with the social network in question within a given month.

The action can be as little as clicking a like button, which doesn’t even have to take place on the actual social site. This means that we’re not talking about 1.19 billion people checking their Facebook pages every day, not even every month. What we’re talking about here are the number of people who interact in some way with a social network on a monthly basis.

Another Way to View Social Media

Another very interesting way to view social media is to look at social widgets. These are the interactive buttons you see on websites, and are part of what make up the active user stats we’ve been reviewing. The perspective here is to look at the number of top websites that use these social widgets.

A recent Moz article takes a look at the top 1,000,000 websites, and which social widgets they use. Here we see Facebook in the lead with 260,816, and the Google Plus One button coming in second with 164,531 sites using this button.

Social Media Perceptions

A final perspective is what people perceive to be the most active social networks. Watch ESPN for any length of time, and you’ll see mentions of Facebook and Twitter fairly frequently. This kind of perception based evidence tell us that people, the man on the street, don’t really perceive Google+ as being in the number two position.

Not only is Google+ in the number two position, it’s actually almost doubling Twitter in active users. We believe that perceptions take time to change, and that appears to be the case with social media. For example, Google+ has recently seen mentions by network TV shows such as Chopped on Food Network. Ted Allen says: +1 if you’re watching an all-new Chopped at 10|9c! Also Toyota recently began using new Hangout on Air features on Google+ to sell cars.

After putting together a few blog posts on branding (here and here), we thought it might be helpful to look at the overall picture of Business Strategy. Branding is certainly an element of Business Strategy, but it is only one piece of a much larger and more complex puzzle.

Every business needs a strategy in order to succeed. As obvious as that sounds, many businesses either operate without a realistic or sustainable strategy, or they operate with no real strategy, or they operate with a seriously flawed strategy. Any of these mistakes will make it that much harder to have a successful business. A sound strategy will help you take your business where you would like it to go, and it will help you evaluate along the way so that you can make changes when needed.

Today we will look briefly at what we mean by “Business Strategy,” and also give you an idea of some of the upcoming blog posts that will relate to this larger idea.

Defining Strategy

Business Strategy essentially encompasses everything that your company does to reach its business goals. Even in a simplified definition like that, we can already see that multiple things are assumed, such as the notion that your business has stated goals which you are trying to reach in specific ways. Too many businesses try to jump into strategy in the middle; this almost always fails because strategy is a building which needs a firm foundation, and then is put together piece by piece.

There are three major stages of Business Strategy:

• formulation
• implementation
• evaluation

We will look at some of the aspects of each of these stages in upcoming articles.

Business Strategy Formulation

Formulation is the first stage of Business Strategy, and it is exactly what it sounds like – this is where you put together the actual pieces of your plan. When you sit down to formulate your strategy, you will review things about your business like identity and general mission, and you will also want to measure where your business is now. You can then take these pieces of information and reach a list of goals or objectives – once you see where you are, you can concretely talk about where you would like to be, and how long it will take you to get there.

Finally, in this first phase, you will come up with a plan, or strategy, for getting your company to achieve these stated goals. We could simplify this process by saying: In the formulation phase you figure out where you are now, where you would like to be, and how you would like to get there.

Implementation

The next two phases, Implementation and Evaluation, are a bit simpler to briefly talk about, but just as crucial to the success of your strategy. In the Implementation phase your company will be doing things like setting aside money for the plan, choosing people to be in charge of the plan, and deciding exactly how to put the plan into place. This phase also might include new training and organizing, and obviously integration into the already existing flow of company policies and procedures.

Evaluation: Final and Ongoing Step

The final step, Evaluation, is something you will then be doing on an ongoing basis throughout the duration of the particular strategy you have put into place. Evaluation simply means that you must see how well the plan is working, and is it bringing you closer to your stated goals, and do things need to be modified in order to work better. Quite often we need to tweak implementation because our evaluation shows us that some things could be better – and this is perfect! Remember, the goal is reaching company objectives, not just having a plan and sticking to it.

More in depth articles on each of the three phases will be coming soon, so if your business needs help with planning and strategy, stay tuned!

Next up Business Strategy Formulation.

Optimizing your website for mobile is becoming less of an option and more of a requirement than ever before. The number one issue reported by mobile web users was slow load times (Gomez). This statistic is followed closely by the fact that the study found 46% of mobile web users were unlikely to return to a website if they had trouble accessing it. Perhaps worse is that 57% of this group would not recommend that site if they experienced trouble with the site.

These statistics highlight an underlying trend. That is if your website doesn’t have a mobile first strategy, or at the least a mobile minded strategy, your company will be left far behind the competition. Consider if that 46% number, which was from research in 2011, grew to 60% or 70% or even more. That would mean your company needs to seriously consider mobile optimization, or face the inevitable consequences.

Black Friday & Cyber Monday are Going Mobile

Further, we can see the importance of mobile growing when we look at Black Friday & Cyber Monday sales year over year from 2011 to 2012 in this infographic. Here we see that online sales from a mobile device climbed 16% in 2012 from the previous year. On Cyber Monday 2012, 18% of online shoppers checked out deals on their mobile device, and 13% of those actually made purchases directly from that mobile device! These numbers are up 12% and 7% respectively.

Looking at the above numbers from last years Black Friday & Cyber Monday, compared to 2011, we can see some definite trends continuing. It’s a fair bet that these trends will continue in 2013, 2014 and beyond. Projections for these deal days in 2013 have around 18% of consumers making purchases from their mobile devices, compared with around 14% in 2012.

Usability and Brand Experience

In our last couple posts, on business branding and company branding and design, we covered some basics as well as strategies for building a brand. That brand must be maintained, and consumer confidence will quickly lessen if their mobile experience isn’t top notch. Circling back to the Gomez study, we find that fully 74% of mobile web users are willing to wait more than 5 seconds for a page to load before leaving a site.

If your mobile page takes longer than 5 seconds to load you’ll be losing 74% of your mobile traffic. Interestingly 77% of top North American companies, from varying markets, have web pages that take more than 5 seconds to load. This spells enormous opportunity for your company!

Building the Mobile Experience

Providing a mobile optimized experience for your customers has never been easier. Simply paying attention to the need for a mobile site is more than half the battle. One option is responsive design. A responsive design delivers a consistent user experience across devices. Another option is to build a fully mobile version of your site, and technologies like Jquery Mobile make this option very attractive as well. Getting those mobile load times under 5 seconds is an attainable goal.

Get optimized for mobile now! It’s a very actionable goal, and will future proof your business. If the technical aspects to mobile optimization aren’t your specialty, hiring a professional is an excellent option.

Once you have made the investment to learn about your target audience, the ideas for branding imagery begin to be narrowed down. See our article ‘Business Branding’ http://thinkwebstore.com/business-branding/) for more general information on the branding equation. When the concepts for your company brand begin to become clear, it’s now time to bring in the design team. A good design team is there to receive your ideas about how you want to brand your company, and then take those ideas and turn them into effective communication.

Choosing Your Design Team

Choosing a design team is a very important part of the branding equation. If you are to be successful, the design team has to buy into your ideas, and you both have to be on the same page. That does not always happen! And when the client and the designers do not see eye to eye, then the work suffers.Take your time to choose the right design team. Visit them, interview them, look at their past work, test out some of your ideas to see their reactions – do your due diligence to try and find the team that will fit you and your project best.

Once you have found your design team, you then get to share with them your vision for the branding of your company. This conversation could include most anything: your company message, imagery you like or dislike, ideas you discarded along the way, your audience, information about your products and services…the more you can give your team in the beginning, then the better they can design. The designers then take all of the information that you unload, and they begin to turn your ideas into images and/or words.

Branding with a New Logo

The first piece to be designed for your brand will be your company logo. Your logo is the most central and foundational piece of branding design. Every other piece of advertising that you do will be based on the look/feel/color/energy of your logo. So your logo should definitely follow the rules listed in our last blog post – it should fit what you do, it should immediately convey a message, it should be accessible to your target audience, and it should be something which will immediately begin building brand recognition. Your logo will be on everything, so take the time and spend the money to have it done right! A well done logo which follows all of the “rules” is a powerful piece of advertising even when standing alone.

Website Design for Your Brand

The second thing to do is your website design. Again, this design will be based on your company message, your logo design, and also configured according to the branding philosophy that you have developed for your company. For many companies, the first place potential customers encounter them is on the web. This means that your website has to do a great job of representing your company. The design and content should both communicate and instill confidence in your visitors. You cannot be there when people visit your site! That is obvious. So make sure:

• that the site is consistent with your company image;
• that the design communicates your message and overall site content;
• that the site looks good (i.e. the design is professional and attractive);
• that your site is intuitive and easy to navigate;
• that the site answers the important questions people will want to know, and does it in a place and a way that is easy for the user;
• that your contact information is easily found on every single page of your website.

There are many more things we could say about website design, but if you’ve followed through the general branding steps and the proper logo steps, then you’ll be applying those same concepts on your website design.

Content Drives Traffic, Leads and Sales

The next thing you can do, once you have both a logo and website design, is begin designing “light content” pieces. This includes items like business cards, letterhead, social sites, print/online ads, etc. All of these are important for getting your company out in the public eye. No matter how small we think an item might be, a business card, for example – the same rules of design should apply. If the only advertisement a person sees is one that does not represent your brand well, then all of your effort is wasted. So take the time, and the resources, to ensure that each of your design pieces properly represents your brand to your potential consumers.

Finally, you can design your “heavy content” pieces. This includes things like brochures, booklets, packets, etc. We also recommend hold off on these heavy content designs, if possible, for a very practical reason – once you have printed something, it’s done. And it’s expensive. So we often suggest that people massage and revise their core content on their website, where reviews and revisions are much less costly. Then, once you feel good with your brand presentation on the website, you can pull from there to populate the heavy content design pieces.

Branding for Success

Branding, as we have said in these last 2 posts, is critical to your company’s success. Design, or the actual execution of your company’s branding ideas, goes hand in hand with this success. So if you are beginning a new company, or revamping an existing one, take the time and the effort at the front end to develop quality branding and designs. These things will be in front of the public constantly – you will not regret the extra time spent at the beginning to help develop a proper image for the long run.

Let’s begin with what seems to be a self-evident statement: good branding is of vital importance in the growth and success of your company. Though this statement seems obvious, if you look around at the “branding” of so many companies, there are certain things that have been entirely overlooked or ignored in their branding process. Today we hope to cover some basic, general things that should be considered when considering your company image.

In General

To stand out in the increasingly competitive modern market place, businesses need effective, well-executed branding strategies. This does not mean relying on tricks and gimmicks, but rather, developing branding that is accessible, attractive, meaningful, and memorable to your customer base. We build relationships with brands, so your image should be one that people can build that relationship with. This, of course, requires research; you must know your target audience, and what types of imagery will best connect your business with them. Remember – your audience is NOT everyone! No business is marketed for everyone. Know your business, know your niche, and build your image around that knowledge.

A Few (Vital) Rules to Remember

1 – Your company image, or brand, must fit what your company actually does. Sometimes quirky branding works for companies, but it more often backfires. The general rule is to brand your company in a way that reflects the actual products/services that you offer, making it much easier for your audience to effectively identify you, and begin to build a relationship with you.

2 – Your brand should also say something which is immediately recognized by your audience. Again, sometimes the “can you figure this out” branding model works, but not usually. One of the general rules we often give clients is quite simple – your branding should answer your customer’s first question. If people see your image and still have to ask “what do you do,” more often than not, you have already failed.

3 – Your branding must also be accessible to your audience. You do not have to choose a tired cliche to make this work! (In fact, cliche fails as often as the meaningless quirky option.) Find something which will connect your audience intimately with your brand and with your product, and then run with it.

4 – It is VITAL that you remember this final “rule”: you are not Coke. You are not Apple. You are not Toyota. These large companies have a brand recognition level that most of our small to mid-sized companies could never even dream of, and this recognition means that they get to do things which simply will not work for the rest of us. Coke, for instance, can run a long commercial about whatever they would like, stick a Coke logo at the end, and the branding has worked. This type of “content-free” branding will not work for the rest of us. So as you are zeroing in on your actual branding imagery, remember that your branding will be used to market your business, and that the primary form of marketing campaigns (for most of us) involves content. Your branding will be a huge part of the time-intensive process of building the relationship between your brand and your consumers that will help your company succeed.

Now that we have covered some of the basics of business branding, our next article will look at how to incorporate your company image into the actual designs that your business will use to reach your public.

What

There are so many ways that businesses today can reach out to their audience – television, radio, print, online ads, public space ads, etc. But there’s one type of reach that is growing both in popularity and influence, and also seems to be doing a particularly good job of connecting businesses to potential consumers – blogging. Blogging is one of several forms of marketing that can be lumped under the term “content marketing.”

Blogging has been popular for quite some time, but until recently it was mostly used by individuals. Over the last several years, business have more and more realized that blogging can also be a great tool for them to use. People will take the time to read good blog posts, so if a business can figure out how to properly use this medium, it can be a great asset in their overall marketing strategy.

How

There are some simple things to keep in mind in order to make your blogging campaign a success. People have become very good at ignoring direct advertising, so that’s not how blogs are approached. The ideal is to create and nurture a relationship with your reader. This is how blogging became so popular to begin with – the writers developed relationships with their readers, and therefore the reader (potential client) wants to stay around to continue seeing where the story might go. This is also the model that a successful business blog will take.

Create content which is interesting, helpful, relevant, and valuable for your reader. Readers engage with content that provides meaning, so as you write posts around the various services you provide, be sure to give specific information and address specific questions. Give your audience something that matters. This type of content helps build the relationship because by providing information and being helpful, you are becoming their expert in your particular field. Then, when they need the services you provide, they will come straight to you, their expert.

We always hear “create shareable content,” and above is how you do that. Content which is meaningful and important is much more likely to be shared by your audience with their friends, co-workers, on social media, etc. Sharing is crucial, because this is really how you get the word out; this is how blogging works. And if you figure out how blogging works in general, then you can fine-tune it to work for your company.

Why

The obvious answer to “why?” – because it works! A well done blog connects with potential consumers and clients in a way that almost no other medium can do. Content marketing (like blogging) is also part of many types of online marketing such as social media marketing (with people sharing great content), SEO (Google ranks great content), PPC (you need great landing pages for high quality scores), and inbound marketing (great content is what drives your traffic).

We have used our own blog as a way to do a bit of research into this notion. For example, in the first 90 days of our blogging (inbound marketing campaign), with just 2 posts per week, we have seen an increase of 28% in overall number of visits to our website. This kind of increase is amazing, and can be attributed entirely to following the above “rules” about how to manage an effective and impactful blogging campaign.

Today we’re recapping a series of posts centered around online advertising and online marketing. These two are growing in importance, and will continue to shape our business success in 2014.

We’ve covered pay per per click (PPC) advertising. Google AdWords PPC advertising. Email marketing for business, and it’s amazingly high return on investment. Online video marketing, and finally we covered how social media optimization (SMO) relates to search engine optimization (SEO).

Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC ads are setup on an auction system, and are a way for companies to pay for advertising in search results from search providers such as Google or Bing. Some of the key elements to PPC ads are as follows:

• pay attention to bid adjustments (don’t over or under pay for clicks)
• keyword research (as well as negative keywords)
• high quality, keyword focused landing pages
• quality scores are critical
• the relationship between keyword, ad text and landing page
• better quality scores lead to higher ad rank, and lower cost

While PPC advertising campaigns can be expensive, keeping in mind the above guidelines will set your company on the right path to PPC success.

Email Marketing for Business

Email marketing has a proven track record of success, and is one of the most established forms of online marketing. Interestingly, email marketing is more relevant today than it’s ever been because of it’s personal nature. The web is becoming a more personalized experience, and email marketing fits well with this model.

One of the most appealing aspects to email marketing for business is the high return on investment (ROI) that it delivers. For example, email marketing averages a revenue more than double the amount spent to generate it. This from a Marketing Sherpa survey finding that the ROI on email marketing was 119%, or more, for business.

Your keys to email marketing success are:

• keep your content valuable and high quality
• your emails should be a go-to place for helpful content
• they should build a relationship between you and your clients
• should present your company as the expert on topics

Online Video Marketing

Video marketing is not only engaging, and highly sharable, but because of these it has real SEO value as well. It’s no secret that Google tends to rank video content more highly than textual content, and this can be very advantageous for online marketing. For example, we’ve recently seen Google Hangouts on Air videos rank very well in Google search for some competitive keywords, and almost immediately.

Not surprisingly Google favors YouTube over other video, and a recent Marketing Land article outlines how YouTube videos are 8 out of 10 videos in Google search. YouTube videos work very well with SEO because they have titles, and descriptions into which you can place your keywords. Be sure to keep your video content helpful, and of a high quality for success with online video marketing.

The SMO of SEO – It’s all Changing Again!

Social media optimization (SMO) is now a key component to your successful search engine optimization strategy. With the recent release of Google’s Hummingbird update we’re seeing increased weight added to social signals. In a recent Search Engine Land article Eric Enge, a well respected leader in SEO, wrote, “With Hummingbird, Google now has the infrastructure to better process social signals (among other things).”

With social media signals taking a more prominent role in search engine optimization, the value of social media optimization has never been higher. These two, combined with PPC, form a solid search engine marketing campaign.

With a combined strategy of pay per click, email marketing, video marketing, and social media optimization, your company will have the kind of integrated online presence necessary for a strong bottom line in 2014.

Social media optimization (SMO) has been around a few years, but recently has taken on a new depth of meaning. Joshua Berg, an expert in this field, is now saying that social media optimization (SMO) is part of SEO, and he’s exactly right. Originally, SMO simply referred to driving traffic to your website or blog from social channels. We’ve come a long way since then! Now SMO is a growing piece of the SEO puzzle.

Continue reading “The SMO of SEO — It’s all Changing Again!”

Online marketing takes many different forms, and knowing which to choose is important. We’ve covered search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC) advertising, email marketing and native advertising. Today we’re going to cover another very effective form of online marketing: video marketing.

Video marketing has many advantages, particularly when it comes to SEO and search rankings. Studies back in 2009 showed that video ranked 50 times higher than traditional text based content. Obviously we’re in a much different world now, but recently we’ve seen recorded Google Hangouts on Air (HOA) rank on page 1 of Google for some fairly competitive search terms.

YouTube Video for Online Marketing

With any discussion of video marketing comes a discussion of YouTube. Marketing Land discovered that 8 out of 10 video results in Google search came from YouTube. There is an obvious connection between Google and YouTube because Google owns YouTube. As long as the YouTube content provides a great search experience that’s what Google prefers to serve.

YouTube has many other advantages as well. For example you can place your keyword in both the title as well as the description text of your videos. Branding is another important aspect to video marketing, and YouTube offers some great editing features which can be used to brand your videos. Using your logo in video helps build brand awareness, associates your brand with high quality content and helps to personalize your brand.

Provide Value with High Quality Content

As with all content marketing it’s important in video marketing to provide value. Valuable content is helpful, sharable, generates positive buzz and has the opportunity to go viral. When your content helps people, they talk about it, and they share it with their friends. Google pays more attention to content they determine people find value in. High quality video generates more social signals, such as comments and plus ones, and these social signals are part of Google’s ranking algorithm.

Annotate your Video and Spin off Content

YouTube also provides annotation features, which are clickable links that overlay your video. It’s a good practice to use annotations at the beginning and end of your videos with links to your external website, and to subscribe to your YouTube channel. In order to put an external link in an annotation you’ll have to enable your account for external annotations. Here’s a video tutorial on to do just that.

Video marketing is a powerful way to spread your message, and video lends itself well to spin off content. For example you can take a video you’ve recorded, and embed it in a page or post. Then write an article based on the content of that video. Now you have an entirely new piece of content that is very valuable. Whatever your online marketing goals, video marketing can be a very effective part of them.

Stay tuned to our next post, in this online marketing series, we’ll be covering social media optimization (SMO)!

Today Mississippi-based wireless provider announces it will offer 1 Gbps fiber Internet to nine Mississippi communities including Batesville, Clinton, Corinth, Hattiesburg, Horn Lake, McComb, Quitman, Ridgeland and Starkville.

Pricing for this service starts at $80 a month or $140 a month for Fiber Internet and digital TV. If you’re already a C Spire customer you will receive an additional $10 off per month. 1 Gbps Internet is 100 times faster than most current home Internet speeds.

Here’s the C Spire press release in its entirety:

C SPIRE REVEALS FINALISTS FOR ‘GET FIBER FIRST’ CHALLENGE – BRINGS FIBER TO THE HOME DEPLOYMENT ONE STEP CLOSER TO REALITY

Cities and Towns Across Mississippi Answered C Spire’s Call-To-Action and Joined the Race To Make 1 Gigabit Internet Access Available To Their Residents

Ridgeland, Miss (Nov. 4, 2013) – C Spire announced today the nine Mississippi cities that will be finalists for the nation’s first and only statewide roll out of ultra-fast 1 Gbps broadband fiber to the home Internet service.

The nine communities who will be participating in the initial phase of the historic broadband initiative include Batesville, Clinton, Corinth, Hattiesburg, Horn Lake, McComb, Quitman, Ridgeland and Starkville. These cities and towns were among 33 municipalities that submitted formal applications late last month to be the first to bring the technology of tomorrow to their communities today.

From Southaven to Gulfport, cities responded to C Spire’s Get Fiber First Challenge, which began in

September when the company announced a statewide initiative to deploy ultra-fast 1 Gig Fiber to the

Home Internet in cities and towns that best showcase their passion for securing service that’s 100 times

faster than national average broadband speeds.

All of the applicants developed creative, aggressive campaigns featuring rallies and town hall meetings,

local celebrations, door-to-door canvassing, mobilization of neighborhood groups and homeowner

organizations, dedicated websites, social media campaigns and even stadium and freeway billboard

advertisements.

C Spire had initially hoped to name multiple cities as finalists, but because of the strength, quality and

comprehensive nature of submissions by so many cities, the company decided to increase the number

of partner communities to nine during the first phase of the initiative.

The finalist cities were announced during a news conference at C Spire headquarters with Mississippi

Gov. Phil Bryant, a host of state and local elected officials and representatives from the Fiber to the

Home (FTTH) Council Americas. Bryant acknowledged the historic announcement by presenting a

proclamation declaring Monday, November 4 as “Get Fiber First” and “Gimme Fiber” day in Mississippi.

“We’re proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with a company that cares about the future of Mississippi

and is investing its resources to ensure that we become a leader for U.S. technology investment,” Bryant

said. “Fiber to the Home technology will make our towns and cities stronger and more attractive places

to live and work.”

C Spire also announced pricing for its ultra-fast Internet and related digital television and home phone

services. The 1 Gbps Internet access will be available for $80 a month, $100 a month for combined

Internet and home phone, $140 a month for Internet and digital TV and $160 a month for the entire package. C Spire Wireless customers will receive an additional $10 monthly discount on all

packages.

The finalist cities were selected by a C Spire review panel that considered factors like proximity to the

company’s fiber optic infrastructure, community mobilization capabilities and incentives to speed up the

construction process and reduce overall costs. The application review process was monitored and the

Individual and overall results tabulated by Ridgeland-based Horne LLP, one of the nation’s top

independent public accounting and business advisory firms.

“We are truly impressed with the overwhelming show of support for C Spire’s Fiber to the Home

deployment and the tremendous interest and demand for making this service a reality for the residents

in these communities,” said Hu Meena, president and CEO of C Spire. “The positive response we’ve

received only strengthens our determination to bring 100-times-faster Internet, and the limitless

possibilities that come along with it, to as many people as we can because we know that this service has

the power to transform our state into a hub for technology investment and economic growth.”

Meena said C Spire plans to continue working with the cities that were not selected in the preliminary

round and will share best practices and improvements that promise to make the process easier, faster

and better for subsequent challenges. “We want to ensure that all of our communities remain actively

engaged in the process and keep the demand and excitement alive for upcoming phases,” he said.

Officials with Fiber to the Home Council Americas also participated in the news conference after

announcing in September that C Spire had been chosen as the North American showcase initiative for its

inaugural “Gimme Fiber Day” award.

The award is part of an annual event and celebration to honor the achievements of Professor Charles

Kao, who pioneered the use and development of fiber optics in telecommunications, and showcase how

fiber optics have positively impacted communities around the world and what policymakers can do to

accelerate its deployment and adoption.

“We are incredibly excited to be recognizing C Spire and the state of Mississippi during our inaugural

Gimme Fiber Day celebration,” said FTTH Council President Heather Burnett Gold. “Increasingly,

communities and companies around the U.S. are recognizing the power that FTTH brings, and we’re

glad to be celebrating in Mississippi, a state that has not traditionally led the digital charge, but where

individuals, communities and technology companies like C Spire recognize that they must take control of

their own broadband destinies to secure a high-tech future.”

“Fiber to the home is a transformative technology, serving as a platform for innovation and a whole new
Internet experience,” Meena said. “We thank the Fiber to the Home Council for this honor and look

forward to showing them the power of Internet at the speed of light as we turn up service soon in the

first C Spire Fiber cities in Mississippi.”

Now that the finalist cities have been selected, the next phase of the ‘Get Fiber First’ Challenge kicks

into high gear. As this stage gets under way, elected officials and community leaders will be rallying

their respective communities to quickly pre-register homeowners in designated neighborhoods at

percentage levels that will qualify them to be the first for C Spire’s build out of the service.

As soon as a critical number of neighborhoods have reached their percentage goals in an individual city,

C Spire plans to begin construction in those areas – so there is a possibility that work could commence in

more than one community at the same time, said Gregg Logan, senior vice president of C Spire Fiber.

Logan said pre-registration in the nine cities begins soon when C Spire launches an updated Fiber to the

Home website – www.cspire.com/fiberhome – with functionality that shows Individual neighborhoods

in each community and the percentage of residents who are needed to sign up for the new service.

Residents will be asked to make a $10 refundable deposit and provide credit card information when

they pre-register. The website also will feature detailed, interactive maps of neighborhoods in cities

showing progress each one is making toward turning their area “green” and qualifying for build out of

the service.

Logan said C Spire hopes to start turning up 1 Gig service in the first C Spire Fiber neighborhoods by

the middle of next year. The service is expected to pave the way for improvements in the areas of

healthcare, education, civic life, municipal services and economic growth.

To learn more about C Spire’s Fiber to the Home initiative, as well as to discover how you can help

your community get to the finish line first by pre-registering, visit www.cspire.com/fiberhome for more

details.

About C Spire

C Spire is a diversified telecommunications and technology services company that provides world-class customer

service and a superior comprehensive suite of customer-inspired wireless communications, high-speed Internet

access and a range of other telecommunications products and services to consumers and businesses with a

personal focus. This news release and other announcements are available at www.cspire.com/news. For more

information about C Spire, visit www.cspire.com or follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/cspire or Twitter

at www.twitter.com/cspire.

Our current ‘blog series’ has been about online advertising and marketing. So far we’ve done a brief survey of different forms of online advertising, and then we narrowed the field to look at pay per click (PPC) advertising generally, and Google AdWords specifically. These are only a few of the approaches a business can take to online marketing, and today we’ll take a look at another widely used and very effective form of online advertising – Email Marketing.

Email Marketing has been around for a long time, and it is a proven and efficient way to market products and services to potential consumers online. With the web moving toward a more personal, semantic experience, companies are also looking for ways to advertise more personally to individual consumers. Email marketing is personal because it arrives in someone’s private email inbox, addressed to them and containing information which is (hopefully) relevant to their life.

High Return on Investment (ROI)

From a practical business perspective, Email Marketing also has incredible return on investment (ROI), averaging more than double the amount actually spent. Of a group surveyed by Marketing Sherpa, the overall reported ROI from Email Marketing was an astonishing 119%. Organizations which sent fewer than 100,000 emails a month reported even higher ROI, 139%.

For a little better idea of the value and influence of Email Marketing, in this article from Marketing Land, they do a little bit of marketing comparison – only organic search accounts for more customers than Email Marketing; customer acquisitions from Email Marketing are dramatically higher than Facebook and Twitter combined (6.84% vs <1% combined); email is also more likely to be shared with friends, accounting for 50.8% of new visitors referred to companies by their friends.

Key to Successful Email Marketing

The key things to remember in Email Marketing is 1) keep your content valuable to your potential clients, and 2) don’t overwhelm your consumer base. Provide people with valuable content in your emails, content that helps establish you as their expert, or their “go to” place – this kind of content helps cement the relationship between your brand and your client. Just be sure not to go overboard, constantly filling up people’s inboxes with meaningless emails. Let this proven form of Marketing work for you and your company, and you’ll be happy that you did.

In upcoming posts, look for overviews of additional forms of online marketing. Diversifying your marketing approach by incorporating some of these various forms of advertising will pay big dividends in the end, if done correctly.

In the world of Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, there’s no doubt that Google AdWords is king. Nearly 70% of all search traffic goes through Google, giving them the ideal opportunity to sell ad space on their site and become the leader in PPC. AdWords works on a bidding system, matching up user search terms with advertisers who are bidding to have their ads displayed for those particular relevant keywords. Because of the bid system, advertisers are able to get their ads to display for the lowest possible bid prices, making AdWords a very appealing method of reaching the consumer.

Putting Together AdWords

On the surface level, putting together copy for AdWords is very simple – you are allowed three lines of text to “make your pitch” to your potential audience. Coming up with those short lines of text, however, is quite involved. First, advertisers must spend time doing keyword research, to figure out which keywords are relevant for their ads, and to decide which keywords they want to focus on. Google provides some good tools, like the Keyword Planner tool, to help with this research.

Once keywords are chosen, the AdWords copy must be written to match these keywords. At the next level, a vital but easily overlooked step, is that then the content on the landing pages must also be matched to the keywords. The greater the relevance and similarity between keywords, ad text, and landing page text, the higher quality score Google will award your ads. Ads with higher quality scores make better ads, and therefore have the higher chance of being displayed in better locations on your search results page. The high quality score also saves the advertiser money, because those high scores mean that lower bids will still land the ads in prime locations on the results page.

The results of Google’s AdWords system are several: people are shown ads which are highly relevant to what they are searching for, advertisers are able to connect with potential customers at the lowest expense for them, and Google is making billions in profit.

A Little More Technical

When you get into AdWords, there are a few other things that are good to know. Ads are organized into campaigns, ad groups, and then the ads themselves. There are two main types of ad campaigns: Search and Display. A Search campaign will display ads next to Google search results. A Display ad campaign will show ads on other websites that have space set aside for displaying Google ads. Google recommends that you split up your budget, with about 70% going for Search, and 30% for Display. Each ad group can then have multiple ads in it, and it’s good to have 3-4 different ads in each group so that Google can analyze each one and see which has the highest quality score.

AdWords is a huge player in online advertising today, and its potential is truly only beginning to be tapped. Getting in on the action early will mean that you can learn the technology and methodology from the beginning, learning and growing and changing with AdWords. This will also leave you positioned to take greatest advantage as each new phase of advertising potential is uncovered and unleashed.

At the top of new and emerging forms of online advertising lies Pay Per Click (PPC). Most people have probably had some exposure, at minimum, to this topic, which is such a new form of advertising that some industry experts say we’ve barely even scratched the surface of what can be done with PPC. But there are some things we know now, even early on, to help craft and maintain PPC ad campaigns.

PPC is basically when certain sites, particularly search engines like Google and social sites like Facebook, allow people to buy listing space which appears next to certain non-paid results. The sites are simply selling real estate on their pages for advertising.

PPC Advertising Basics: Bids, Quality Scores and Landing Pages

PPC advertising is a fairly simple concept at a high level. Basically, companies pay for ads on a 3rd party site, but only when those ads are clicked. The amount paid per ad is set up on an auction system; so basically you set bid prices you’re willing to spend per ad click, and if you’re the highest bidder, your ad gets displayed.

There’s a little more to PPC than bids. The other main component is what’s called a quality score. Basically, a quality score is determined based on the relationship between keywords, ad text, and landing page text. If your keywords match the ad text, which in turn strongly relates to the text on your landing page, then your ad will have a high quality score.

A landing page is simply the page that your ad links to. Landing pages should be highly relevant to your ads, and the keywords in each ad should appear on the landing page. It’s important to be a bit technical here with the number of keywords, and the number of total words on these landing pages. More on this later.

Proceed with Caution: Don’t Overspend on PPC Campaigns

As great as PPC campaigns can be, businesses should proceed with caution. This caution is needed because PPC can become very expensive, and bring in little to no new business if done improperly. Setting up an effective PPC campaign takes time, effort, and knowledge.

In order to avoid overspending on PPC campaigns, do keyword research. Keyword research will tell you how much traffic a given keyword will likely generate. Here’s where you’ll need to get a bit technical. Take your top 3-4 keywords (those most directly related to your product or service, and with the highest potential search traffic) and write ads based on each keyword. Make sure that each keyword appears 3-4 times in the body of your landing page.

For search engines to consider your content of good quality, your landing pages should be between 500-800 words in length. Your keywords should appear 1 time per 100 words. This ratio is important because you need good keyword density, but it’s also very important not to overstuff your content with them. Using the above information should give you high quality landing pages, that will perform well.

Negative keywords are also important. Negative keywords are basically those keywords you don’t want your ads displaying for. These are very important when cutting down on wasted ad spend. Some examples are educational materials, job seekers or free/low cost, etc. Obviously if your products/services are related to these topics these aren’t going to work for you.

Stay tuned to this pay per click advertising series. Our next topic will be on Google AdWords!

As the internet marketplace has exploded in popularity and revenue, businesses are gradually moving more and more of their marketing and advertising budgets into online marketing. To effectively use that money, business owners need to understand advertising on the internet – what it is, what it isn’t, what it can and can’t do, and especially what forms of advertising are most effective for reaching their target audience.

We can subdivide online advertising into many particular categories – search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), email marketing, local online marketing, banner ads, social media optimization (SMO), online video marketing, pay per clicks ads (PPC) like Google Adwords, and others. So here is a brief touch on many of the different marketing types available for your business to attract customers online:

Online Marketing Categories

– we’ve already looked at the basics of SEO in two articles here on our blog (here and here)

– email marketing is a great online marketing method, with tons of research showing effectiveness, and many resources showing how to best use email marketing in your industry. We plan to do an article on this in the near future, but until then, a good resource to get started with is this Search Engine Watch article.

– local online advertising is more important than ever before because of people using their mobile devices for search, and the up and coming semantic web. A good article on this can be found at Search Engine Land here.

– banner ads, though considered by many to be fading in effectiveness, can still be used successfully by many businesses. A good resource to get started thinking about them is this Resource Nation article.

– SMO, social media optimization, is a great way to advertise online, and falls outside of the ‘norms’ that most companies focus on, so it has even more potential as a largely untapped resource. SMO will help get traffic to your website, but you have to be sure you have good landing pages ready to make the conversion, turning your ads into dollars. We’ll be looking at this more in depth in another article, but here’s a good place to begin getting your head around SMO in this Social Media Today article.

– Online Video Marketing is a great way to boost traffic for one simple reason: people love videos! Figure out a way to use video in your marketing campaigns, and you’ll immediately have the upper hand on many of your competitors. This Social Media Examiner article gives great advice for using online video marketing.

Pay Per Click

And finally, pay per click (PPC) advertising. PPC is an outstanding way of bringing in clients and customers for your business. PPC is scalable, allowing you to spend just as much money as you can afford to spend. You simply set up your ads, set your budgets, and let the software handle the rest. Then, as revenue grows, you can increase both your budget and your business.

We’ll be discussing PPC more in depth in our next post, so stay tuned!

As we saw in our last blog post, the internet is moving quickly to personalize data for the end user with the shift toward semantic search. With any new feature, businesses want to position themselves to make good use of technology, and this is no different. Taking advantage of the semantic web for your business takes a lot of effort, but as our examples last time showed, that work pays off with big dividends at the end of the business day.

Businesses with little to no web presence can still show up in semantic search, but to really compete with other businesses in your industry, you need a strong web presence that is enhanced with optimization specifically geared toward semantic search. Things as simple as local listings and online reviews can boost your showing in semantic search – these things let Google know who you are, which helps them match you to an individual’s needs or wants.

Building Relationships

A company’s reputation, trust, and authority are all crucial to performing well in the semantic web. Companies can build these things using something like Google Authorship, which is designed specifically to connect a person with their content, thereby helping establish reputation, trust, and authority. Companies should also focus on producing quality content that is interesting, helpful, and sharable with others. This type of content is valuable, because it allows others to see the expertise and knowledge that your company brings to the proverbial table. Content like this will get people to naturally interact with it, which will drive online traffic to your business, which also helps build your authority and reputation as a business.

With the semantic web now in play, social signals have never been more important to your business being found online. Since the semantic web is personalized, the way that people interact with your social sites (shares, comments, likes, etc) will then go on to potentially influence the type of semantic search results that their other social friends might receive. If my friends are commenting on a particular restaurant and I then go to search for a place to eat, there’s a good chance this restaurant will show up in my search, since my friends have established it as a place they also enjoy going to eat.

Getting Personal Again

Because of various forms of communication – web, email, cell phones – much of human communication has been de-personalized over the last 10+ years. Semantic search is bringing personalization back. With this crashing return of the personal, businesses now need to be a trusted face in the mass of other faces so that people will recognize and choose them time after time. The local business owner has a distinct advantage already, since his relationship with his customers is personal by nature. He can then carry over this relationship and simply be himself online, bringing reality into the semantic web. Small businesses also have an advantage right now, since they are typically more adaptable and can change more easily to embrace this new focus in their online marketing.

Tying it all together

There are real ways that companies can now position themselves to take advantage of all that the semantic web is now offering them and the people they serve – but this also requires a bit of change in tactics for many companies. Areas are of increasing importance that perhaps have not had much focus for many businesses lately – online reviews, Google Authorship, and a strong social presence – these things are now not only nice additions to SEO, but vital to semantic search success. Helpful, valuable, and sharable content will also continue to be important – so if content writing isn’t something your business can do well on its own, there are many professional content writers available who can help you take better advantage of the semantic web.

Semantic Web and Semantic Search are both terms which are getting a lot of attention in the online world, and particularly in advertising. At their essence, both of these terms refer to the notion of an individual’s online experience being tailored, or personalized, particularly for them. The web is moving from being a place of generic information to a place of answers, where who you are plays a central role.

Semantic Search is Personalized Search

So, Semantic Search is a personalized form of search – semantic search tries to understand exactly the information you’re looking for so that the search can answer your question. This differs from the traditional search operations of the past, which primarily sought to match your keywords with keywords in web content, thereby giving you a list of sites that you might be interested in. Everyone who typed in the same keywords would see the same results in this older search model. Semantic Search is now providing us with meaningful, personalized results that have the goal of actually answering the questions we ask. The author of Google Semantic Search, David Amerland, says of the semantic web, “It marks the transition into a new phase of the Web, where we stop searching and start finding.” (http://www.forbes.com/sites/netapp/2013/07/23/semantic-web-big-data/)

What does this semantic search actually look like in practice? Let’s say a person searches: “What’s the best Sushi restaurant in New York?” A semantic result to this question would take into account information about what the searcher’s friends consider to be the best Sushi restaurant, what the best reviews are saying, and what the critics have said. The result would be tailored for the searcher. The results may not contain the keyword, “best Sushi restaurant in New York,” but given Google’s understanding of the intent behind the search, the answers given would better answer the question asked. Depending on other factors like the time of day and the searcher’s exact location, the results may change from information about Sushi restaurants to perhaps reservation numbers for places close by.

Understanding the Semantic Web

Because of factors like those we saw in the example above, it’s very important for business to understand the semantic web, how it functions, and what their place is in it. Any business can show up in these searches, regardless of whether they have a website, how old they are, or if they are ready to be seen by everyone. Even with very little or no online presence, the semantic web can drive new customers to any business. The data on every business is constantly growing, so one big thing businesses can all do to ensure best results in the semantic web is making sure the information about them online is current and accurate.

The web is becoming increasingly personalized every day – by understanding the semantic web, businesses will ensure they are positioned to make the most out of this development cycle. However, understanding is only half the battle. To really engage the semantic web, businesses need to know how they can take advantage of the semantic web.

Check out our next post! We outline exactly how businesses can take advantage of all that the semantic web has to offer.

Extending your SEO

Many websites use WordPress, and if your company is we recommend installing the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin. This plugin does an outstanding job helping you remember all the key points of SEO by giving you detailed alerts and an overall page SEO rating for each page. For example another key component to successful SEO are links both outbound and internal. The Yoast plugin will remind you to add links to your content if you’ve forgotten. Links help improve the overall quality of your content by lending credibility, and helping readers know where to find further information on the subject at hand. Google is very open about its commitment to ranking high quality content, and when your company provides it your content will rank better.

Another reminder that the SEO plugin will give you is to include images in your content. Images provide visual breaks for your reader making your content more readable. There are also more opportunities for your keyword placement in the alt, title and description. Google also provides image search where your images will be indexed. Google image search provides another channel for search traffic to your site.

The Plugin will also remind you to fill out your meta description, and will provide a text entry box for you to do so. Here is yet another opportunity to use your keyword, and supportive keywords. Where possible place your keyword as early in the meta description as possible. If you’re considering meta keywords don’t. Given the amount of abuse this property saw early on search engines ignore them, and so should you.

Social and Google Authorship: The Basics Plus

Google uses over 200 factors when considering how to rank content, and 1 of them is social signals. We don’t know exactly what these social signals are, but there is evidence to suggest that comments, +1s and reshares of your content on Google+ are seen as positive social signals which will improve overall ranking. Also keep in mind that YouTube is social, and comments on your videos are seen as positive social signals as well. For local SEO reviews are very important, and highly weighted by Google.

Google has an Authorship program where authors are officially connected with the content they produce through a Google+ profile. There is a lot of debate over whether Google is actively ranking content produced by high authority authors, but Google has openly said that this is not the case. Google’s John Mueller confirmed that Authorship is not a ranking signal in this Webmaster Central video from late September 2013.

There are a lot of indications that Google would like to become better at understanding authority, and then begin to rank content accordingly. Google’s Matt Cutts has stated that Google is getting better at understanding authority, and will continue to do so. However there are current benefits to authorship. For one you are future proofing your search rankings, and building an Authorship history on which to stake your authority reputation. For another, and more immediate benefit, your search results will appear with your image next to them. Studies have proven that links with images next to them receive more clicks than those without.

In conclusion the best SEO advice given by the experts time and time again is to produce high quality content. We wrote a blog post, Content Marketing for Small Business, on using high quality consistent content to drive traffic, and increase search rankings. Google has made it clear in its Webmaster Tools Ranking article, “In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by creating high-quality sites that users will want to use and share.” Put your users experience first, and your SEO will be on the right track.

Given the major changes we’ve recently seen Google take with it’s upgrade to Hummingbird (see this article for a more complete description of Hummingbird), we thought it wise not to forget the basics of search engine optimization (SEO). Many have said that because of Hummingbird and the semantic web, that SEO is dead. However, given the fact that Hummingbird has been in effect for well over a month, and we’re not seeing any major ranking changes occurring, traditional SEO is not dead.

Why should businesses care about SEO?

Search engines can drive a lot of valuable traffic to your website. If your company is monetizing with paid advertising, search engine traffic tends to be more likely to click ads. For companies monetizing by selling goods and services, search engine traffic is highly qualified. This means that the people who find your website through search engines are arriving already wanting to see what you’re offering.

Foundations of SEO

Keywords and keyword research are one of the fundamental foundations of SEO. A keyword is the word or phrase entered into a search engine, and is where search begins. When writing content, determine which keywords you are intending to target. Start by doing some research into which keywords are actually being searched. Google offers a free tool called the Keyword Planner, which allows companies to perform very targeted keyword research. See this post for a short tutorial on using the Keyword Planner.

Once you’ve chosen your keywords, and done your research, it’s time to incorporate them into your content naturally. Be careful not to overuse keywords. A good rule of thumb is to use 1 keyword for every 100 words of content you have. Also use synonyms and supportive, also called secondary, keywords. Here is a list of the key places you should include your keyword:

-Post Title
-Post Permalink
-Alt text for images
-In your post content (about 1 in 100 words of content)
-In Sub-headings

Choose a main focus keyword for your content. This focus keyword is generally different than the focus keyword of your homepage. A lot of search traffic will be coming directly to your content pages, and not to your homepage, so make sure to target each content page to a specific set of unique keywords. The title of your content is considered a very important element to SEO, and should contain your keyword as close to the beginning as possible.

Where to Go From Here

By following the above guidelines you will position your content well for high ranking in Google search. There is no magic to this process just simple, actionable steps. However simply following the above steps won’t get you to page 1 of the search results. That kind of ranking takes dedication, and a willingness to work very hard. Your content will have to be outstanding, and you will have to produce it consistently.

Stay tuned for the second installment of this two part basic SEO series in our next blog post!

Native Advertising

There are so many new buzzwords in business and advertising – content marketing, SMO, inbound marketing, B2C – and today we’ll take a look at another of the quickly rising stars in advertising : Native Advertising. This is a particular approach that we have used here at Think Webstore since the beginning, and now it is apparently catching on in the larger advertising world.

What Is Native Advertising

The principle behind Native Advertising is actually quite simple – write a story about your industry or product (or your client’s industry), and use this story not only to inform the public, but also to advertise your particular product or services. The term ‘Native Advertising’ signifies that these ads seem like part of the usual content of the publication, hence native, but they also work as subtle yet effective ads for business. These stories can certainly be used online, but often are most effective in actual publications, in magazines or newspapers. Native Advertising is catching on nationally, but we have found that it is particularly useful on a local level.

What Native Advertising is Not

There are a few distinctions to make when thinking of Native Advertising – it’s not exactly the same thing as Inbound Marketing, and it’s definitely not Advertorial. Inbound Marketing has the main purpose of driving the potential client to contact with the business, whether through website, phone calls, etc. While all advertising has that as a general goal, the finer point of Native Advertising is the attempt to connect with potential consumers by providing them with true and useful information in the context of a publication that they know and trust; to become an expert for your reader.

Any articles written for such publications not only have to be helpful, but they also have to pass editorial muster to make it into print – the articles have to be real. Native Advertising is also not Advertorial writing. Advertorials are thinly veiled ads that purport to be articles – these types of “articles” would never be published in the types of quality places that businesses would want Native Advertising to appear.

How It’s Done

The success of Native Advertising lies wholly in the article you write. There are some ‘rules’ that we follow here at Think Webstore to help ensure that our articles work for our clients:

1) The article must be true. Native Advertising ties into a company’s content marketing here – you must provide your audience with information that is both true and valuable. This gives people a reason to read your article, and to share it with others. An article that’s not true and valuable will fail every single time.

2) The article must tell a story. People need a story, something to give shape to the article. Popular storylines include things like ‘David vs Goliath,’ the little guy taking on the big guy and winning, or if you are operating locally, then the ‘local success’ story is always a twist that works.

3) The article must then subtly incorporate the company for which it is being written. This can typically take the form of an ‘expert quote;’ the company (or company rep) is quoted within the context of the article as an expert on the topic. Immediately this gives credibility, and as people read the article, they have an expert at hand to go to. This is one of the reasons that Native Advertising works particularly well on a local level.

Now It’s Your Turn

Not everyone is equipped to do their own Native Advertising, but it is an approach that works for just about any business in just about any industry. Perhaps you have someone in the office who can give article writing a shot? Let them do a bit of research, and see what they come up with. But be very careful – a bad article can do much more damage than good! There are also companies out there who specialize in exactly this type of advertising, and your best bet (for most companies) is to find someone to help you strategize and carry out some Native Advertising for your business.

Native Advertising is like getting an advertisement in front of a potential consumer, and having that consumer read all about you, and they don’t even realize that ‘advertising’ has just happened! You become their go-to expert in your field, and there’s no greater achievement than becoming the expert for your public. In our over-saturated media culture, there’s no better way to get yourself in front of potential customers.

What does Google Hummingbird mean for business? Google Hummingbird is the most significant upgrade to Google search in over a decade. This is not your typical Panda or Penguin update to the already existing algorithm. Rather Hummingbird is a complete overhaul, and actually replaces Google’s previous algorithm.

Google Hummingbird is based on the idea of semantic search. Previously search relied only on keyword match, which would bring up webpages containing the keywords in your search query. With the Hummingbird upgrade, Google has gone from strings to things. That is, your search queries aren’t treated only as a group of keywords, but rather Google attempts to understand the meaning of your query. Hummingbird is trying to answer questions and not simply match keywords with documents.

Google Hummingbird for Business

So what does the Google Hummingbird upgrade mean for business? Actually, according to Google, Hummingbird has been in effect for about a month now. Although it was officially announced on September 26th, 2013 in conjunction with Google’s 15th Birthday. Most businesses have been engaging in the recommended best practice of producing helpful high quality content, and for these businesses Hummingbird will have a mostly neutral effect on traffic.

Google Hummingbird, because of it’s semantic nature, presents businesses with the opportunity to display expertise or authority in a particular field. This kind of expertise is what Google is positioning itself to understand with semantic upgrades like Hummingbird. Expert content will perform better, that is gain better exposure, than content with low expertise. Part of this is because highly authoritative content will perform better in the social web which is an integral aspect to the semantic web.

As part of Google’s move toward the semantic web they have removed access to keyword data. This is a signal to businesses that keywords are taking a back seat, and this provides opportunity to businesses. Using Google Hummingbird for business, companies will have to become more involved on social media to find out what their customers are interested in. Building trust between businesses and potential customers becomes key to Online success.

How Different is Google Hummingbird

Because of the significance of this upgrade, many SEOs are asking just how different is Google Hummingbird? This upgrade is certainly different, but Google has not thrown the baby out with the bathwater completely. There are still significant similarities between this upgrade, and the previous Google search algorithm.

Page Rank (PR) is still a major factor Google takes into account when ranking content. That is the number of authoritative links to a particular site will continue to be a big part of why a website ranks well. The more authoritative links you have to your website, the better chance your content will have of ranking. Now, however, Google is taking into account all of the words in your search query, and not only paying attention to the keywords.

Google has given some specific examples of how search results look different now after the Hummingbird upgrade. For example, a search for “acid reflux prescription” used to return a list of drugs, but now you’ll see informational results. Another example given is that previously a search for “pizza hut calories per slice” would return results from third party sites. With Hummingbird, Google is smart enough to know that Pizza Hut will have the most authoritative information, and will show you results from that website.

Google Hummingbird for Business: Where Does it Leave Us?

Given that the Hummingbird upgrade has been active for about a month now you’ll likely know already if your business has seen any negative effects. Generally speaking, most websites with good practices will continue to rank as they always have. Google continues to give the same guidance for ranking well that is to produce high quality helpful content, and provide a great user experience. You can find more information here on Google’s search blog.

This video will help you better understand the relationship between your business and Hummingbird, which is semantic search. Semantic search must be understood as an integral part of business, and no longer can search engine optimization simply be outsourced.

Building an Online reputation, building trust and authority are at the heart of semantic search. For your business to succeed with the new Hummingbird upgrade it will have to build this reputation as well as trust and authority.

With the variety of tech options exploding around us, businesses have an increasingly amazing array of ways in which to communicate with both their consumers, as well as other businesses and Google Hangouts for business tops the list of options. Two of the newer modes of tech communications are Google Hangouts and Hangouts on Air (HOA).

A Google Hangout allows people separated by distance to actually gather together in an online video chat. The Hangouts are designed for direct communication between different parties, and are not actually broadcast live over the internet. But, HOAs can be recorded and later posted online for other interested people to view.

Google Hangouts for Business Features

There are many useful features of HOAs, and we’ll cover some of the most important ones here. The video conferencing can accommodate up to 15 total people from anywhere in the world. Gathering that fill of 15 can be done either through private invitations or a public option. A nice feature is that you can join the hangout via an Android or Apple phone (though you can’t start one from a phone, yet). Once you have your gathering, the HOA allows you to use multiple cameras per person, upload documents to share with others in the hangouts, do screen shares, watch YouTube videos, and even use text chat among the HOA members.

Your HOA also provides you with a great SEO opportunity. You can title your video (keyword pickup), increase follower count on G+ as people watch and interact with your video, and the comments left during a live HOA are seen as social signals by Google, thereby increasing the chance that your video will rank highly in search. You can also write additional content to accompany your video, which adds to the total SEO value of the event.

Videos can now be filmed in full HD, and you can drop your videos onto YouTube for even greater exposure, especially through views. People are not so much looking for a polished video coming out of an HOA, rather they are looking for good quality content. Content becomes the key, and if your content is solid, then your HOA becomes a great asset for your company and a great resource for your customers. At the end of the day, any attention your HOA video receives can be used to your benefit – especially to drive people to your social channels, and ultimately to your company website.

Hangouts for Business Uses

In addition to the general “boosting of SEO,” Google Hangouts can be used for many practical purposes. Since you are able to gather many people on the live video chats, Hangouts are great for business meetings and even light consulting work. You can connect with other businesses and even clients who are anywhere in the world, and since you’re actually able to see and talk in real time, the meetings still leave you with the sense of having actually met and interacted in person. You can also record educational webinars, and even focus on a bit of self-promotion by holding press conferences. People typically enjoy having a video to watch (over just a large block of text), so recorded Hangouts and HOAs are great at attracting users to your website, and perfect for relaying important and relevant information to them.

No matter what your initial purpose may be, it’s worth your time to experiment with this great new technology from Google. Choose a purpose or two, record a few HOAs, and test out how they work in your specific industry and with your particular audience. If you have other specific questions, there are many articles out there to help you craft and use Google Hangouts to your greatest benefit. The technology is there – smart business is taking advantage now, isn’t it time your business does the same?!

“Content Marketing” has recently become a major focus for companies working to most effectively use online marketing for their business. The first question is the most obvious: what is meant by the phrase ‘content marketing’? Basically, this means that you use your online content not simply to convey information to your reader, but you also shape and mold this content to make it a major factor in the marketing of your goods or services – and a major part of what content marketers are after are more prominent rankings in Google.

There are some simple rules and suggestions that we can follow to help our content work most effectively for our businesses.

The Content Marketing Quality Factor

Quality content is needed for several related reasons. High quality content is helpful to your reader, which means that they will spend the time it takes to actually read and understand what you’ve written. Having readers stay on your site to read your content also reduces your bounce rate, which is good for page rank in Google.

Quality content is not something that you can just throw together at a moment’s notice. The quality comes from deep research, wide expertise, and is presented in a way which is both authoritative and instructional. If any of the pieces are missing, the quality value of the content, even if very high, begins to be reduced.

The Quantity Factor

New content is regularly needed to continue helping search rankings. Google has a “freshness bias” within their search algorithm, which simply means that new content tends to rank well. If you are constantly putting out new, quality content for your business, then you’ll be doing a great deal of content marketing correctly just in that.

User Experience

We all want our readers to have positive experiences when interacting with our material. This serves both to help develop continuing relationships with consumers of our materials, and Google also positively weights sites and pages that seem to provide users a good experience.

Making Content Work for You

Once you have quality content ready to share with the world, now it’s time to make sure that content works to its maximum potential. Do good keyword research, know the keywords that people are searching for, and make sure to pepper your content with these specific keywords. Try not to only mention important keywords, but make sure that your content gives people answers and information about those topics; if you fail to do this, people will begin ignoring your material as essentially useless.

Time

Making content marketing work for you and your business requires determination and dedication. Throwing out a bit of sloppy material a few times a year will do nothing positive for your marketing efforts. Rather, you need to be consistent in putting out quality material, and following the guidelines above to make sure your content works for you. An editorial calendar can help you stay on target, and spreading out the writing among several good writers can also help keep you on goal.

Content writing is work; there are many people out there who do nothing other than write this type of content marketing material. But you know your business and your industry – so who better to put together content than the experts!

As we’ve seen, all of the pieces come together in content marketing. If you create quality content then that is good for your reader; what is good for the reader then becomes good for you again; and all of this interaction is good for marketing, especially rankings in the dominate search of our day, Google.

Go – create good content!

It’s time for Think Webstore to start blogging! We have touted the benefits of blogging for your business, some of our own employees run very nice blogs, and now we’ll begin our own ‘blogging campaign.’ These new, twice weekly postings will (we hope) have three effects:

Blogging for Results

1 – we’ll make use of blogging, as do many, for Search Engine Optimization/Social Media Optimization (SEO/SMO), just like we suggest others do.

2 – to provide a small study on the effect of regular blogging for traffic to the website of a local business.

3 – the more important point for most of our readers, we’ll begin sharing from the wealth of information that we have gathered from years of our own experience, research, and individual specializations.

Our Approach

To track the success of this campaign, we’ll be gathering some basic metrics up front, and watching these metrics in the coming months. Here’s what we’ll be tracking:

• Website Traffic Increase (overall traffic)
• Search Traffic Increase
• Referral Traffic Increase
• Direct Traffic Increase

This is something of an experiment to see if a local, small business can increase website traffic by blogging twice a week. There have been a couple recent studies of a similar nature, but these took a more radical approach.

The first of these studies consisted of writing 50 posts in 25 days, so not twice a week, but twice a day. The second study, predicated on the first, decided to up the game even further by posting 150 times in 50 days. That’s a staggering 3 posts per day.

We decided to take a less radical approach, one that we think most small businesses can manage with a little organization, and some persistent work. Our 2 post per week goal will be supported by two writers, and an editorial calendar. Obviously we’re not expecting to see the dramatic traffic increases seen in these other two studies, but we would like to provide a base metric for others wishing to understand the effect consistent content production can have on traffic.

Topics

Some of our posts will be one-offs, like this one, and others will grow to be parts of series on various subjects that might interest our readers. We plan to look at topics from Content Marketing to Branding, Social to SEO, and Responsive Design to Business Strategy. We offer quite an array of services here at Think Webstore, so our topic choices promise to be varied and interesting.

Please feel free to leave us comments on Facebook or Google+. Especially valuable would be this – what topics would YOU like to see us blog on?

See you with another post on Tuesday – Topic 1: Content Marketing.

Having external links in YouTube videos has been enabled for some very large select YouTube partners for a long time now, but now it’s for everyone. We all want to have better conversion rates, and drive more traffic to our website’s with better SEO. Continue reading “External Links in YouTube Videos — A Video Tutorial”

A powerful idea that, when applied, can make your marketing and sales efforts sing.

We all know of the bell curve. Most of us learned about it in the context of school where it is often applied to normalize grades.

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