Is Facebook A Time Suck Or A Viable Marketing Strategy?

If you are a small business owner, your title could most likely also include IT department, marketer, blogger, web designer, financial officer, and HR.  (And those don’t include other titles that you may hold such as husband, wife, father, mother, child…)  With all those titles also come responsibilities and those responsibilities come with their own time requirements.  As a small business owner, one of the hardest things to do can be deciding where your time is best spent.

We have been trying out a lot of different marketing strategies lately.  Each one requires their own special amount of attention and time devoted to them.  We started this blog, we are also social networking using LinkedIn and Facebook, commenting on other blogs, Social Bookmarking using StumbleUpon and Digg, as well as keeping up with all of our other marketing that we have been using previously.  One of the things that we are forced to make decisions on now is which of these marketing strategies is worth our time and which of them are what I like to call a huge time suck.

A time suck is something that devours a lot of your time but that does not give you a lot in return.

In order to weed out the time sucks in my life, one of the questions I have found myself asking is:

Should I spend the next half hour loading applications to my Facebook or working on my next article or blog post?

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Avoiding Social Media Faux Pas

My last post talked about how social media is a great way for you to increase brand awareness.  The more small businesses realize this, the more they will jump into the fray of social media marketing.  Inevitably when people start using social media they are going to make a few mistakes.  It is the natural progression of things when trying to assimilate to any new culture.  And be rest assured, social media circles do have their own culture.  Here are tips to help you avoid some rookie mistakes:

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Increasing Brand Awareness With Pull Marketing

The very first post that I wrote for MarketMe was Pull Your Customers With Your Online Marketing.  In it I talked about how many of the online marketing strategies, namely social media, in use today are pull marketing strategies.  This means that you are putting yourself, your message, your business out there on the net and your potential customers are able to pull information about you.  Recently UKSmallBusiness left a comment on that post and something that stood out to me was that he referred to branding as push marketing.

My first instinct was, “Yes branding is push marketing.”  But, then as I thought about it I realized that is not entirely true.  When most of us think of ‘branding’ we may think of direct mail, television commercials, or billboard type advertising with a large and in your face branding approach.  However, branding also exists in online pull marketing, it just may not seem as obvious.

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The Key To Successful Business On The Internet

Welcome Freedom800® Freedom To Succeed™ Readers!

It is often easy to think that the technology alone will drive our business. This is wrong and has always been wrong. It will be wrong in the future. The key to successful E-Commerce is not about the E, the Electronic part. The key is the R-Commerce, the relationship on which the commerce is based.

When small business owners look to get established online, their focus is often on the technology. They contemplate which hosting plan will be best for their website, how their going to access their email, how their market and promote on search engines, etc. But what they tend to forget in this process is the importance of the relationship with who it is their selling to.

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Analysis Paralysis In Internet Marketing

One piece of advice you will find very frequently when it comes to Internet marketing is to analyze everything - analyze your site, your traffic, your responses, your CTR, your ROI, etc. ad infinitum.  While all of this analysis is important in order to gauge what is going to bring you the most success, it is possible to get analysis paralysis.

Analysis paralysis occurs when you get so caught up in the numbers, data, charts and graphs that instead of using them to make the right decisions, you can’t make any decision at all.  There comes a point where you have to stop analyzing and take action.

When you feel that the numbers are starting to overwhelm you and you don’t know which way to go, take a step back and consider these things:

• What will most enhance the customer’s experience?  One of the things that can get lost in all of the numbers and graphs is the customer experience.  Although what the numbers are showing you are the customers reactions to what you are presenting them, many people forget that human element.  Take a step back from the data and think about the people to get a better grasp of the big picture and make a decision on where to go next.
• What is the worst thing that can happen?  Many times people get analysis paralysis because of fear.  Fear of making the wrong decision will stop people in their tracks.  Many of the changes that come about due to data analysis of your ad campaigns, landing pages and the like are small changes.  It is not likely that by moving a graphic from the top left of your landing page to the top right of the page that your business will go bankrupt.  However, it is possible that you will see enough change that you can optimize your landing page for the best results.  Don’t let fear stand in your way of success.
• Take it one thing at a time.  The sheer volume of information coming at you can give you analysis paralysis before you even get started.  Don’t try to tackle it all at once.  Take one report on one aspect of your marketing and work it start to finish before moving on to the next thing. 

Analysis is a very important aspect of Internet marketing success because it allows you to continually optimize your marketing to get the best results.  That is if you can avoid the analysis paralysis…

Savvy Marketing in the Information Age

Last week we received an email that read “Please review my site www.HotelBookingPro.com. Would appreciate an unbiased honest opinion. Be gentle”. Although I’m not really in the web design consulting business, I have been at this for quite some time now and noticed some things I thought might be of benefit to anyone looking to start a business online.

My first impression, before I even looked at the web site, was that the request is very vague. When asking someone to evaluate your work, whether it’s your business plan, stationary, brochure, logo, website or whatever, make sure you’re specific in asking what it is you’re looking for. If you just drafted a logo for your business, don’t ask “What do you think?”, but rather, “Do you feel this logo represents my business? Why or why not?”. Ask with a purpose. Help the person evaluating know what it is you’re looking. This way the person evaluating can focus in on your goal and give you more constructive feedback.

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What Writing A White Paper Taught Me

Back in December I told you about a book I had read called Writing White Papers by Michael Stelzner and that I was going to try my hand at doing just that.  Well I am finally done.  Writing this white paper was different than writing anything I have written before.  During the process, I learned a lot about how to write a white paper (thanks to Stelzner’s book) and I was also reminded of an important lesson that should be applied to any writing that you are doing - you must identify your ideal reader.

The first thing I had to do in writing this white paper was to identify who I was writing this paper for.  What was interesting about this exercise was that I did not identify them in a general ‘this group of people is my target market’ kind of way.  I actually imagined the one person that would be the most qualified lead that I could generate from this white paper - my ideal reader.  In doing so I could ask myself what this one person was like and what would be important to them.  I could identify the benefits of our service that would most appeal to them and make sure they were highlighted in the paper.   This process was very helpful to me.  It allowed me to really focus on what information should be included in the paper and in what tone and manner it should be presented. 

The difference between identifying your your target market/audience versus identifying your ideal reader can be seen in this example:

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8 Worst Company Domain Names Ever Created

The foundation of any Internet business is arguabily the domain name. It’s more than just your virtual address, it’s your identity. It’s the way your customers remember your business. When companies decide to market their businesses online, they usually choose a domain that represents their company or product name. On the surface, that seems like the best route to take, but that’s not always the case. It’s always a good idea to have others look at your desired domain choice for a different perspective. Failure to do so may result in a name that suggests more than you bargained for…

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What Is The Purpose Of Your Website?

One of the things that I come across all too often is a small business website that has been put up just for the sake of having a site up.  They probably heard that they must have a “presence on the web” and so they get their nephew, who knows a little html, to design a one page site for them and they throw it up.  What the small business is probably not aware of however, is that when someone finds their site and it has no useful information and it appears as if their nephew made it, that visitor will be turned off to the point where they would have been better off not having the site at all.  

The importance of having a website for your small business goes beyond just throwing something up so that you can say you have a website.  You have to define the purpose of your website and build it accordingly.  Defining the purpose of your website will determine the layout and design of your site.

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Does Article Marketing Really Work?

A few years ago, in our pursuit of an inexpensive (free) Internet marketing strategy, we decided to try article marketing and in August of 2005 I published my first article.  Since then I have written over 40 articles.  There have been some articles that brought in a lot of traffic to our websites, others that helped us rank organically, a couple that got picked up in print publications, another that led to an interview, and others that didn’t do much at all.

There are some that would say that article marketing is no longer a valid Internet marketing strategy.  I strongly disagree.  I say that the new social media environment strengthens article marketing’s ability to drive traffic and increase awareness of a company’s presence.

First, I would like to show you an example of 2 articles that I wrote that have allowed us to rank organically on the first page of Google for our keywords.

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Use RSS To Highlight Content On Your Website

Most of you are probably already using RSS to syndicate your content out via a blog.  However, are you also using it to bring content back to your website?

If you are writing press releases, articles, or have a blog, how are you making this information available to your website visitors?  If you are burying it in a deep link somewhere, your visitors are most likely not going to find it or read it.  If you are using a static link to direct them to the content, they may not be impelled to click it.  Using RSS, you can get this content in front of your visitors in an interesting and interactive way and increase the chances of it being read and acted upon.

Here are 3 examples of how RSS can be used to highlight content on a website:

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ProBlogger Community Consultation Review

Not long ago we decided to participate in ProBlogger’s Community Consultation whereby hundreds of ProBlogger readers had the opportunity to critique Marketme.com and offer their advice to make our blog better. Brandi and I felt that putting ourselves out there and inviting feedback would be the best way to gauge our progress thus far and whether or not we were on the right track.

We received over 10,000 words of advice and suggestions on what we could do to make Marketme.com a better blog for our readers. Although we appreciated every individual’s time and effort to comment, we felt that collectively the suggestions that were made over and over again were the suggestions that we really wanted to focus on.

Here are the top 5 changes that were suggested and what we did to correct them:

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Now Is Gone, But It’s Not Too Late: New Media & Your Small Business

I have been reading a lot of books lately about new media.  A couple that I have reviewed here at MarketMe include Naked Conversations by Scoble/Israel and Meatball Sundae by Seth Godin.  My latest read was Now Is Gone by Geoff Livingston.  As I said, most of my reading lately has been about new media so I was not entirely optimistic that Now Is Gone was going to impart knowledge that I had not already gained elsewhere.

I was wrong to feel that way.  As Livingston states in his book,

“There are many books that cover the actual day-to-day marketing activities in the social media world.  Instead, this book will discuss the general strategic principles and major aspects of social network marketing, providing executives a primer to begin their effort.” 

The hype and buzz around new media has created a stampede of authors, experts, and gurus to tout the wonderful ways that you can use new media to market your business.  However, while telling their readers how to do it, many don’t pause to ask their readers to consider if they should.  This is one of the things that I feel is extremely helpful about Now Is Gone.

Livingston suggests that there are 5 things to consider when deciding whether or not new media is right for your business.

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Helping Your Customers Help You

In a recent post by Jeremy Schoemaker, Customer Support On The Internet, he discusses why he believes customer support on the Internet is not important. This is in sharp contrast to what Brandi recently posted, Are You Playing Hide And Seek With Your Customers?. To summarize Jeremy’s post, he believes customer service and customer support are two different things. Customer service deals with documentation, tutorials, quick responses to billing issues and an easy return policy, while customer support deals with more technical aspects like installing software and product usage. He uses examples such as Amazon, Google and eBay as Internet-based companies that are extremely successful, offer excellent customer service, but virtually no customer support. This leads me to question… are these companies playing hide and seek from their customers or have they developed a system that tends to be more successful in an online marketplace?

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Driving Traffic To The Pod Depot

We recently received this question from a reader:

“I need help marketing my website http://www.thepoddepot.com.  I know that I have great content, but nobody is visiting.  Can you help me or give me suggestions?”

In further conversation with the Mifty, the owner of the site, he said that people are interacting well with the site once they get there, but he is not getting enough visitors.  He would like to reach more people and drive more traffic.

This is a common problem for many small businesses and/or online start ups.  They have a valuable service to offer and a great site but they just can’t seem to drive the traffic.  A couple of years ago our advice would probably have been to bid as high as you can on your PayPerClick ads for your keywords and the traffic will come.  The bad news is that it is not that simple anymore.  The good news is that it is not that simple anymore.

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