The Essential Facebook And Twitter Marketing Approaches is a post from: #1 Melbourne SEO Services Company

How many businesses do you know of out there that are using Facebook and Twitter marketing smartly?

Social media marketing is still finding its “level” somewhat but it seems to me that many businesses misinterpret the opportunities that Facebook and Twitter provide. So below we try to clear that up with some guidelines for the essential approaches involved – and they ARE different.

Essentials Of Twitter Marketing

Twitter is all about engaging with your clients and other people – in 140 characters or less!

The idea is that through Twitter you can disseminate quick information, often in text message style short-hand. This allows you to keep your customers up to date with what’s going on and to share industry news – the shortened URLs provided by the likes of bit.ly allow you to send links to others easily and effectively now.

The purpose is to engage with your customers; you don’t have to follow everyone who follows you but it’s great to stay across the comings and goings of leaders within your industry, for example.

If there are particular topics that are relevant to your business you can search Twitter to see what conversations are happening – and you can choose to join the ones that interest you.

Like most social media marketing, it’s not about pitching your products and services; it’s more about introducing yourself to the crowd, engaging with them and making the human connections; the offers can come later!

Essentials Of Facebook Marketing

Many of the essentials of Facebook marketing are similar, with a few important differences.

The biggest difference is that, with Facebook, you are trying to ratchet up the level of interest and engagement with your “fans” using richer media than merely text and links. You can really build a community of followers if you use all the tools at your disposal and concentrate on providing interesting, informative and fun content on your fan page.

You may have a personal page as well as a business page and give different people access to them; your real-life friends may be on both, some clients may be on both, but others you will want to keep only on the business page.

Your personal page is a good way of giving glimpses about you, the person, rather than you the business.

It’s important to take care with naming your “business” Facebook fan page. For example we opted for the “SEO Mastermind” name rather than “Mellbourne SEO Services.”

This is for a very good reason: people come to Facebook to engage with other people and to find out news and what’s happening; they don’t come to be sold to; in fact they will reject you if you bombard them with offers all the time.

This is where many businesses go wrong – it’s not about how many offers you provide, but when you provide them; take time to get to know your followers first –communicate and converse with them, bond with them and provide them with content – then they will allow you to weave an offer or two into the mix. Competitions are great for that and we discuss that in a separate blog post.

There is more practical advice on how to use Twitter and Facebook marketing in your online business in the Competition Crusher workshop. You can watch it for free by clicking here.

Learn to do social media conversations.

Questions To Ask Before Launching A Business Social Media Campaign is a post from: #1 Melbourne SEO Services Company

Know the purpose of social media.

Before you rush headlong into setting up your business Facebook and Twitter accounts and launching a massive business social media campaign, take a moment to think.

Social media is NOT for every business and, even if it is for you, your approach will be more effective if you take the time to ask a few questions of your business before committing resources to social media.

1. Do you understand the Purpose of Social Media Marketing?

There is no point embarking on a social media marketing bonanza without knowing what you want to achieve form it; the end goal will be to increase sales, of course, like any marketing – but social media is a very indirect marketing channel.

If you use traditional “push” marketing on social media you will probably fail; you need to “pull” your clients in to you by providing relevant, informative content and engaging with them on their own terms and in their chosen places.

How prepared are you for that?

2. Is the Back End in Order?

Usually we use social media marketing to drive customers towards a website. Unless that website has a good retention rate and can convert traffic into sales then what’s the purpose of getting traffic?

You need to ensure all your “back end” online systems are in place to guide traffic seamlessly and effectively through the sales process once they land on your site.

How is the usability and navigation of your site? Is your web video all embedded and working? Are your opt-in boxes and auto-responders all in place for capturing leads and communicating with them?

Get this part right BEFORE you start getting serious about Facebook or Twitter!

3. Do you have the Time?

Social media marketing requires ongoing management because communication, engagement and spreading great content are the key ingredients of successfully creating a community.

Are you prepared for answering questions promptly? If you get a question on Twitter from a customer you need to treat it seriously or you could lose them.

This is just one example of the commitment it will take – creating content for your visitors will take even more time and resources.

4. How will you Measure ROI?

Any marketing campaign needs measuring tools in place to gauge its success. How will you measure the effectiveness of your social media presence?

There are tools such as Google Analytics that can show you where your website traffic is originating, but measuring the effect on your branding and online reputation, for instance, is harder to gauge.

5. Are you just doing it because of the Buzz?

If you are planning a business social media push because you’ve heard the buzz and assume that’s what you SHOULD be doing, then hold fire.

This is not a good reason; you need to understand what it is, the opportunities it provides and all the drawbacks before deciding if it’s the right approach at the right time for your business; there may be other priorities!

There is a lot of marketing advice that tends to “jump on the bandwagon”; you’ll find in the Competition Crusher workshop at www.crusherworkshop.com that you get real, practical tips on all aspects of online marketing, based on practical experience and know-how rather than hype!

Why Social Media Marketing Is The Future Of Your Business is a post from: #1 Melbourne SEO Services Company

The “naysayers” who question whether social media marketing is worth the time and effort may be missing the point slightly.

Businesses need to start getting the point fairly quickly because social media is growing exponentially and its influence is increasing.

Many of the doubts come from people who expect to sell more directly from social media marketing, but it’s not necessarily about that.

It’s more about the buzz it can create, the fact that you are engaging with your audience and the positive effect it can have on your online presence and your rankings – all of which then lead to increased sales.

“Socialnomics”

In the book “Socialnomics”, by Eric Qualman, the author asks the question about what would be considered more valuable – recommendations from robots (search engine bots working to algorithms) or recommendations from friends?

Of course we value the word of our friends more, because we know and trust them.

This idea is literally changing the face of the web, combining search and social elements quite rapidly to provide more tailored, more relevant and more trusted results – which is the currency that search engines deal in.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with Google’s strategies in 2011.

The Google Example

Google has witnessed the rise of Facebook over the past few years to the point where it knows it’s dealing with a monster!

To be fair, Google hasn’t only just realised this – they’ve tried in the past to launch applications like Google Buzz and Google Wave which died a death.

But the release in 2011 of Google Plus is proof, if proof was needed, of the level of threat (and the corresponding opportunity) Google senses from the rise of social media.

Google provides the internet with some of its greatest minds, so if they are getting serious about social media then it’s a sure sign that the future of the web lies in that direction.

They have seen big players like MySpace almost disappear in Facebook’s wake, so they are clearly taking steps to make sure that the same doesn’t happen to them.

Obviously they don’t come much bigger than Google but, even so, Google Plus attracted 10 million people within 2 weeks of release; it took Facebook well over a year to get that many members.

Next year we will doubtless see further Google integrations between their search engine, Google Plus, Gmail, YouTube and other Google products.

How Does This Affect Your Future?

You may already have a social media presence, but there’s probably more you can be doing in terms of engaging with your customers, building your credibility and authority through great content and encouraging sharing amongst followers.

Social media marketing is clearly going to be a major player in search in the years ahead so it’s best to start participating now – not necessarily to instantly make money from, but to build your online presence. That should pay rich dividends further down the line.

Using a blend of the new marketing methods with the more “traditional” online approaches is the best idea; you can get further great pointers with your business marketing strategy in the Competition Crusher workshop. Just click here for more info.

It's time your business goes social.

How To Use Contests In Your Facebook Marketing is a post from: #1 Melbourne SEO Services Company

Facebook marketing is attempted by many but succeeded at by relatively few.

Often its focus is misunderstood, leading to a lack of impact. A good Facebook marketing strategy should revolve around creating highly relevant, compelling content that resonates with people, encouraging them to share and feeding new leads into your sales funnel.

Running contests are a great way to get things moving and we look at a typical way of doing this below.

Online Photography Business Example

An online photography business wanting to use Facebook to promote its services is in a strong position because photos and videos are great visual media for grabbing people’s attention; both can be used to good effect on Facebook.

Assuming you already have some contacts on your business Facebook fan page, how about running a contest amongst your followers?

For a photography business it would be something like a “Cutest Baby” contest where your fans can upload images of their baby; the photos are all tagged so their friends see them and they are encouraged to vote for that photo, with the winner getting the most “Likes”. This helps to spread the photos (and your business name) virally.

The winner gets a free photo shoot. But it doesn’t stop there. This is just the beginning of creating a sales funnel through Facebook – remembering that the end goal of all marketing is to create more leads for your business.

Building Your Sales Funnel

With our website we might have a free report, white paper, video or other giveaway that people opt in for so that we can gather their email address and add them to our sales database for future marketing campaigns.

Monetising through Facebook works on the same principle – we need to capture details of new leads so that we can follow up and market to them.

With contests, we can follow up with all entrants by sending them a coupon for a discount for a service or a free consultation, for instance.

Generating Further Leads

In the photography business used above, perhaps the coupon gets them in for a free planning session for a photo shoot; suppose this leads to a photo shoot which we get them to announce by “checking in” on an iPad at reception – so it appears in their friends’ feeds and all their contacts know that they’re at your business doing a shoot.

When they return for the viewing and collection we can get their consent to upload the photos again with tagging – this again makes sure the pictures appear in friends’ feeds, spreading them far and wide, creating more engagement and possible new leads amongst friends; we can also create slide videos with programs like “Animoto” and then upload the video to Facebook so it’s working for us in a new format that can be shared amongst contacts too.

We can take this a step further by creating a referral scheme whereby they can take coupons for their friends and distribute them; or you can make a special offer directly to any friends that have made comments on posts.

Make sure you get testimonial videos from anyone that agrees to your coupon or offer and these can be used for further marketing purposes in the future.

You see how the marketing effort spirals? Most businesses out there can come up with a Facebook marketing strategy that uses similar principles; photos and video are especially popular for sharing and can really help to promote our business.

Want to see how we do Facebook marketing and social media? Join us at our Facebook page by clicking here.

Try running a contest as part of your Facebook marketing strategy.

Need Information? Try Social Media Sites is a post from: #1 Melbourne SEO Services Company

Social networking is constantly changing and becoming more and more real-time. With applications like Foursquare and Facebook Places, you can even keep up with where your friends are. And with the real-time application of sites like Twitter, there’s no doubt that social networking websites will change the way searches are done on the internet.

Let’s start with Facebook. You have your real-life friends who have their own pages. Then you may have friends you’ve never met in person but you’ve only spoken with online. However, you can figure out which of those friends has the same tastes as you by checking out the things that they “like” on Facebook. So Friday rolls around and you want to check out a movie. Simply post, “Is Inception a good movie for Friday night viewing?” Within minutes you can have plenty of responses from people you know – and more importantly, people you trust.

Lots of people play online games, and most of those have forums where people can go and talk about the games they’re playing. But they usually have a “general topic” area where people can chat about anything, and this is another place you’ll see personalized recommendations. Want a cosmetic surgeon you can trust? Log on to your forum and ask people you know. Wouldn’t you consider this a little more valid than the page ranking from Google?

Then you have aggregator sites such as Digg.com and Reddit.com. As with other websites (like the forums mentioned above) the users develop a sense of community and can talk among themselves with people who have like interests. And again, these people come to trust the recommendations of one another, especially when it comes to advertising.

With sites like these you have a few choices: you can post a link to something you like so that you can share the site (and your recommendation) with people who are like-minded; you can read up on what everyone else’s recommendations are, along with the reasons for those recommendations; or you can simply ask. With the number of members these sites have you should have no problem in getting responses, and since these sites are essentially moderated by the community that visits them the crap gets called out and voted down to the bottom.

There is also a book called Socialnomics by Erik Qualman that talks quite a bit about this topic. David did an interview with Erik which you can check out here.

So where will Social Media and Facebook be in five or ten years? It’s really hard to say, but one thing you can bet on is that social media sites will play a crucial part in how we find our information.

What Can A Facebook Business Page Do For You? is a post from: #1 Melbourne SEO Services Company

Are you on Facebook? If you use the internet, you probably are. And you’re also probably aware of how many other people are using Facebook. But did you know that Facebook also provides some of the narrowest-targeted advertising out there?

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past five or six years, Facebook is the current front-runner of social media. Everyone has a Facebook page – Julia Gillard, the Pope, your neighbor, your parents – more than 500 million active users.

Facebook allows its users to “like” certain things – Lord of the Rings, Led Zeppelin, Ferris Bueller  (Bueller, Bueller, Bueller?)– and tracks those likes for use in advertising. Add that to the personal data that Facebook tracks and you’ve got a very narrow target. Have a product that you want to show to people between 24 and 29 who like Stephen King books and listen to Morrissey? Facebook can help you get that advertising pushed right to their pages.

Each user’s page has a “news feed”, and this is where they keep up with their Facebook friends. “Bob got a new car”, “Sally is having dinner with…” and so on and so forth. However, many companies now have a Facebook business page as well. You can even add a Facebook “Like” button to your normal webpage. Then when people “Like” your page, any updates you post will show up in their news feed.

This can also be set up to allow people to comment directly on your website and can show which of their friends also ‘like’ your page. And remember, social proof is one of Cialdini’s methods.

The average user has over 130 friends. Wouldn’t you like to be able to have five people on Facebook “like” your page and then tell 130 of their friends about it? That’s a pretty good source of word-of-mouth advertising. Let’s do some quick math – ten people click “like” on your page. And let’s say that each of those ten people has 100 friends (lower than the average). When they click “Like”, it shows up on their news feed, and each of their 100 friends sees this. You just got your name shown to 1000 people, and it didn’t cost you a cent.

Then there’s the targeted advertising; you can choose pay-per-click or by impression – they offer both. And with the range of options to choose from, you can narrow it down to pretty darn specific groups of people and demographics.

Watch out for the latest DVD from Melbourne SEO Services for more information on advertising on Facebook and other pay-per-click methods.

Using Web 2.0 SEO To Dominate Google is a post from: #1 Melbourne SEO Services Company

Using the right SEO techniques, most people can get their ranking high enough to end up on the first page of Google. But in order to completely dominate the first page of Google and have most – if not all – of the search results link back to your page, there are some other tools out there you can use.

No, not those tools…

I’m talking about Web 2.0. The newer breed of sites that are created by user-generated content. Web 1.0 was ‘old school’ (you know, about 15 years ago) and consisted of Geocities webpages full of garish colours and flashing animated ‘under construction’ gifs.

Given the right amount of time and the proper content, you can completely dominate the first page of Google with sites that link back to your money site. It can take a while, but in the long run it’s definitely worth it.

I looked at a list of the top Web 2.0 sites and there are plenty of sites right in the top 20 that can be used to create more of a web presence for you. In no particular order, there are sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Digg, Squidoo, Hubpages and del.icio.us, all of which can be used to send people right to your main website.

Let’s say that you’ve already got your main keyword ranked very high on Google, and all of your ezine articles, blog postings and article directory submissions link back to both your main site and your internal pages. You’ll do pretty much the same thing with the Web 2.0 sites – create links back to your money site. You can link to your internal pages as well, and this can help the links look much more natural.

You can do one at a time or you can choose a few of them – five to ten should be plenty. And as always with SEO, you don’t want to flood yourself out overnight – this should be a process that takes time so, again, it’s all natural and not cheating. And since these will be linked directly to your main site (which you always want to protect) you’ll want to be sure that you’re using high-quality content.

If you’re not yet into the world of Web 2.0 and haven’t created an online presence through these sites, now is the best time to start. Melbourne SEO Services can help you along with this process as well. Check out all of the services we offer, then let us know what we can do to help you dominate Google.

Use Posterous For Unique Content Creation On The Go is a post from: #1 Melbourne SEO Services Company

Pop quiz, hotshot: You’re in your car, right in the middle of a three hour drive. It’s a beautiful day; the radio is playing your favorite song. This is when you do your best thinking. All of a sudden, it all clicks – the perfect answer to exactly what you’ve been trying to figure out.

You need to share this information as soon as possible, but you won’t be near a computer for another hour and a half. What do you do? What do you do?

Answer: Posterous to the rescue!

Posterous.com is a website that will let you upload various types of media via email. Pictures, audio, video – it can all be uploaded from your phone. So you’re in the car and you get that big idea – grab your smartphone, record the audio, then shoot it over to Posterous via email. (Be sure to pull over first – you don’t want to spend the money you’re about to make repairing your vehicle!)

You’ll have your own account and your own page, and the content can then be pushed out to your Facebook page and/or your Twitter page. And as with all things online, new, unique and valuable content is what makes the world go round. Keeping your information fresh and updated can be key to your online success, and this is a simple way to keep it coming.

Eventually, you can take all of your postings from Posterous and combine them – pictures can be added to a Powerpoint presentation, which can then have the audio laid over them. Add in a few video clips here and there, and you’ve got a new video to upload to YouTube (which can create even more traffic back to your website…).

Using Posterous is just one of the tips you can get from Melbourne SEO Services. If you’d like to know more and are ready to move into the online world, click here for a list of services available.

Will Social Media Trends Kill SEO? is a post from: #1 Melbourne SEO Services Company

There’s a lot of craziness surrounding the search industry at the moment, and a lot of it’s caused by Facebook. Will the well known social media platform take Google’s dominate position in online search? And should we (SEOers) be worried? I believe that we should be, but only in part, and I am going to explain to you why.

First, let’s talk about the direction in which Facebook is heading. With the implementation of the “like” button, and other features such as automatic page creation on just about any thing that is likeable, Facebook is not just taking over the internet, but they are becoming their own smaller version of it. Here’s what I mean…

If I add to my profile that I work for Melbourne SEO Services for example, instantly, an optimised page is created on Facebook for that business. This leaves this page open for “liking” and the second that I declare that I work for this company, the promotional rollercoaster starts all on its own. This information is then sent your your friends, appearing your their activity feed. In effect, users now receive up to date recommendations from their friends for products, services and just about anything you can think of.

Now, before you go assuming too much, keep reading!

Now, if we look at what Google does. Google simply delivers the best possible result per query based on their own algorithm. If you search for something, then it will query its own index, and produce the most relevant results, not judged on your friends. There is no “like” button in Google, there is a simple measure of link popularity and other on and off page factors that will deem a website being more relevant for a particular keyword or search query.

Which would you consider more relevant to the user… something a robot services up or recommendations from your friends and family? Are the way of recommendations the way for the future? Should we all give up SEO? Short answer is no. SEO still works and provides a positive ROI… that said, we (as SEOers) should be placing more emphasis social media marketing since there is a change brewing.

Google Buzz For The Webmaster is a post from: #1 Melbourne SEO Services Company

As I am sure you would most likely be aware already, Google buzz has arrived. So, what is this new social media application, and how can it work for you? Naturally, when something new arrives in the form of a social media application, I spend some time trying to work out how it can work for me, and for my visitors.

More social media means more social interaction, especially if you are able to talk to your visitors where they hang out. The pure genius of Google buzz is in that statement alone. Think about it for a moment. Since Google has become such a large part of our life on the web, almost everyone has a Gmail account, and out of most people online, a very large portion of them will check their e-mail at least once a day. Since Google buzz is built into your Gmail with notifications being sent directly to your inbox, if someone is following what you do on Google buzz, they are always going to be aware of what you are talking about. And unlike other social media websites, when you are logged into Gmail, you are logged into buzz, and can read a buzz with only one click.

How Can Google Buzz Work For The Webmaster?

This is where it gets a little complex, and the use of RSS comes into play. By now, if you have been using social media for some time, you might be aware of a great little service called TwitterFeed. This is a service that takes RSS feeds, and breaks them down into a format that can be delivered to Twitter, and to other services such as Ping.fm.

For those who are unaware of the standard form of the Google buzz RSS feed, here is the form of the Google buzz RSS:

http://buzz.googleapis.com/feeds/{user}/public/posted

In this case, you simply need to replace user with your gmail ID, test the feed in your browser, then submit this to TwitterFeed so that you can start automatically tweeting from Google buzz. Of course, you can also send notifications out to other services using Ping.fm

What Can Google Buzz Do For Me?

A lot of people at this stage will be sitting back waiting to see if this new social media platform will really take off or not. The bottom line is that if you don’t give it a shot, you are only going to be left in the back of the queue when it actually does take of. Other social media platforms have generally stayed quite separate from e-mail based services, and for Google to incorporate buzz into Gmail, this pretty much says that this is going to work well from the start.

Imagine this. You have something important to say to your followers who live on the other side of the planet and in a different time zone. With Facebook and Twitter, most people tend to look at the most recent status updates and tweets. With Google buzz, they are siting right in your inbox ready for attention to be paid.

Along with this, you can also add connected sites to Google buzz so that if your site updates, it can automatically be fed into your buzz feed for others to find. This is included in your profile setup.

How Can I Start Using Google Buzz?

Buzz is still in the roll out stage, meaning that it is not available to everyone just yet. When it is ready for you, you will be asked when you sign into Gmail if you would like to start buzzing. Simply agree, and you will notice that your buzz will appear underneath your inbox link.

So, are you convinced of the potential of Google buzz yet? If so, do yourself a favor and start buzzing!