Posts Tagged figure-out-how
Written on April 27, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: marketing, searchengineguide
by Mike Moran
So, what else is there to talk about? In the past, I’ve hammered home over and over again the need to connect with your customers with information that actually helps them. So, instead of just explaining why your product is better than your competitor’s, why not help them solve the problem that they have in the first place? Give them the information they need to solve their problem and hope enough of them stick around to buy from you.
But there is more that you can do, too. Do you have a cause? Something bigger than just making a profit? Does your company stand for something?
Lots of big companies are allied with public causes that fit with their business goals, but small companies can do that, too. I am sure that you are constantly donating money to the Little League team or volunteering for the Lion’s Club or hanging posters in your window for the theater group, but rather than putting random attention into many things, why not also pick something that you can be really passionate about and emphasize that.
Lawyers can concentrate their pro bono work on some specific cause. Restaurants can donate leftover food to the homeless shelter. Optometrists can send used glasses to third world countries. Financial advisors can teach saving and investing skills at the high school. Women’s clothing stores can donate slow sellers to the abused woman’s shelter. Whatever you do, you can figure out some easy way to share what you know or what you have with people who need it.
Think about what you do and figure out how to get your customers excited about it. Then start talking about that. People will actually care that you are doing some good in the world—and you’ll feel good about it, too.
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Search Marketing Is Not About You
Written on April 1, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: book, chat, seo
Posted by great scott!
Real-time search is all the rage right now, but how can you turn your real-time content into SEO-Friendly material for your sites?
Written on February 4, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: seo
Posted by great scott!
Will Critchlow of Distilled (who recently took over SEOmoz’s consulting business) is back in Whiteboard studios to help Rand discuss how to Choose an SEO consultant–or any consultant for that matter.
Whether you’re a consultant yourself, you frequently work with consultants, or you’re thinking of outsourcing some work for the very first time, you’ll find this week’s video worthwhile.
Written on December 15, 2009 by admin
Filed Under: marketing, searchengineguide
by Mike Moran
I realize that to some, this is a dumb question. I mean, if you have a Web site, why would you NOT optimize it for search? Organic search is the cheapest way to bring people to your site and paid search is the easiest, so it’s a no-brainer for you to recommend that every blessed Web site on the Internet dive right into search marketing, right? Wrong.
So, as you stare into the distance, wondering how to figure out if you are ready for search, what you really want to know is if your site is ready for customers.
Suppose you are opening a small shop on a busy street in town. What’s the first thing that you’d do? You’d order the best merchandise you could find. You’d make sure it was attractively laid out. You’d be positive that you had helpful employees to answer questions and to run the cash registers. In fact, you’d do absolutely every one of those things before taking out a big ad in the local paper, right? You’d never take the ad out if your store wasn’t ready.
But too often, that is what I see on the Web. Folks approach me every day asking for help with search marketing when the simple truth is that their Web sites aren’t ready for customers. The sites might be hard to use. Or have little information. Or have no way for customers to actually buy anything–no online buying and no easy way to move offline.
But still, they want search marketing. They are convinced that the problem isn’t that their Web site stinks on ice, but rather that not enough people are visiting. Trust me folks, if your Web site is awful, you want as few people to see it as possible. Not only won’t they buy from you, but they won’t come back. They might even tell other people how bad it is. That’s not the kind of word of mouth you are looking for.
No, don’t let this advice paralyze you. Some of us are our toughest critics. We see all the blemishes on our sites without noticing what’s positive. Your site doesn’t need to be perfect, but it does need to be good. If your Web site is no good, then sending more people to it won’t be the answer.
So, take a hard look at your Web site. If you can honestly say to yourself that folks arriving at your site can find what they need and figure out how to buy what you are selling (online or offline), and you have the sales to prove it, then you are ready. For you, search marketing really is a no-brainer.
But if your Web site causes customers to faint dead away, or call you on the phone to complain how they can never find anything, you have a bigger problem than search marketing that you need to solve first. Once you do solve it, then search marketing will bring you far more impact than you’d ever dreamed.
Check out our small business news site.
Continued here:
Is your site ready for search marketing?
Tags: a-busy-street ,a-hard-look ,a-small-shop ,advice-paralyze ,figure-out-how ,have-the-sales ,local ,marketing ,marketing and advertising ,order-the-best ,people ,phone ,post ,site ,website
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Written on November 3, 2009 by admin
Filed Under: book, marketing
I tried really hard to figure out how to “fluff-up” this announcement. After all, Microsoft went to the trouble to pre-brief me, but I just can’t say it any better than I can show it.
So here goes.
MSN is going from this:
To this:
Yes, one of the most popular destinations on the web–600 million monthly users no less–is getting a face-lift. Here are some of the key things to note:
- There’s a new MSN logo to go with the redesign.
- There are 50% fewer links on the page.
- The Bing search box is better integrated, because MSN already drives 45% of searches to Bing–something this design will take further advantage of.
- You can view and update Twitter and Facebook.
- There’s more focus on Local–there’s even a new MSN Local Edition.
- As you use the site, MSN will learn your content preferences and customize accordingly.
The new page design will start rolling out today, but most of you won’t see it as the default until early next year. If you’re anxious to use the new design now, you can head to http://preview.msn.com.
That’s all!
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The New MSN.com: Less Links, More Social
Tags: advantage-of- ,and-customize ,book ,content ,default ,design-will ,figure-out-how ,focus-on-local ,img-class ,links-on-the ,marketing ,monthly-users ,redesign
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Written on October 28, 2009 by admin
Filed Under: blackhat, seo
Apparently it’s not just working wives who can’t figure out how to combat spam and therefore let crappy projects fall by the wayside as well. Google’s letting their Google Groups rot on the vines. Score another one for the spammers:
Spammers are now spoofing the email addresses of existing group participants to sneak their messages through. Previously you would’ve seen a delightful “FREE MOVIE DOWNLOADS” spam from “freemovies123@gmail.com” - but now you’ll see it coming from existing group users - or even the group moderators themselves. This cheat completely bypasses the moderation system since the spammers are pretending to be pre-moderated users.
Written on October 12, 2009 by admin
Filed Under: marketing
While talk swirls around Twitter on subjects ranging from video to revenue to biz plans and Biz’s plans, there is one that keeps coming up because it is pretty important. How do you search Twitter and mine it for the nuggets of wisdom amongst the wasteland of wackiness?
Last week we told you about the unholy alliance talks that Twitter was supposedly having with Microsoft and Google separately regarding the tsunami of 140 character pearls of wisdom that need to be gathered, catalogued and organized so the world can be a better place because of it. It really is the piece of the puzzle that everyone seems to be most interested in so we’re just waiting for Twitter to figure out how to best monetize it.
In the meantime there will be more ‘little start-ups that could’ like this one reported by TechCrunch, Searchtastic. Now, before I move on I have to say that this is an unfortunate choice for a company name because it will not be mentioned around MP without a smirk due to the use of another word, but I digress.
Like other Twitter search sites, Searchtastic lets you search Tweets for a particular keyword or hashtag. What makes the search engine interesting is the ability to pull up Tweets from weeks or months ago, which Twitter’s own search engine doesn’t allow you to do. Twitter’s search currently lets you see Tweets from a week and a half back which varies.
So the obvious question is “What are these guys doing that Twitter can’t seem to do on its own?” The other question that arises for me after searching for my own tweets is why am I wasting people’s time with my own version of what I feel is important? I need to listen to my own advice and make sure that when I tweet it’s neat and not well …. lame. My apologies to anyone subjected to it. I promise to get better 
.
As for the service, it looks interesting but needs some work. Heck, that can be said about a lot of things on the Internet, right? One recommendation to the Searchtastic crew is to at least put the total number of tweets you produce in a search result set.
So check it out along with other players like Collecta, Scoopler, One Riot and TwitterTroll and discover all of the fun you have missed on Twitter.
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The Search for Twitter Search Continues
Written on September 28, 2009 by admin
Filed Under: Advertising, marketing
Now that Twitter has been able to convince some pretty wealthy folks that their little ol’ 140 character deal is worth in the range of $1 billion it’s time to get down to brass tacks. What does that mean? Since people now have this huge number in their head there will be continued and likely more vocal calls for Twitter to at least reveal some plan to generate revenue worthy of that valuation number. Hey, it’s the Internet though so maybe not!
AdAge is pretty convinced that this is something that needs to be addressed sooner than later.
With the funding, Silicon Valley and the venture community are once again setting their sites on the marketing budgets of American business to support another free “cloud” web service, in this case 140-word bursts of text. Indeed, they’re counting on the exponential growth of advertising revenue in a flat market for a company that — while certainly useful to marketers — has yet to earn its first dollar.
“I think they can build some kind of ad business, but the more relevant question is can they build an ad business worth a billion plus dollars,” said Warren Lee, VC at Canaan Partners. “That would require tremendous volumes of impressions and reasonable conversions. Lots of execution will be needed. Not impossible but unlikely.”
So we have a detractor here. Well, not completely but certainly not thinking that advertising alone will get Twitter from Point A to $1 billion. The trouble is tow fold. First, Biz and the boys have no plans to make any advertising model moves in 2009. As a result there will be more and more time for people to figure out how to use the service for free and then there could be some resistance to having to pay for anything related to Twitter. Twitter is establishing a bit of a mindset that may be harder to break than people think. (Check out Andy Beal’s thoughts on this via BlogTalkRadio).
So what’s next? AdAge’s take is
Mr. Stone said that ads won’t come before 2010 and Twitter’s early-stage venture backers have told Ad Age the ad business, narrowly defined, isn’t that interesting to them. On its site, Twitter touts marketing success stories from Pepsi, Jetblue and Dell, which consist of the brands using the service to connect with fans.
The cash could allow Twitter to make some acquisitions; perhaps one of the URL shorteners like Bit.ly, one or more of the Twitter applications, or one of the many, many firms now making dashboards to manage Twitter for corporate clients.
With a valuation of $1 billion, Twitter’s investors believe one or more of the following outcomes are likely: an IPO or an acquisition at a healthy price.
So can they do it, Pilgrims? If they can do it how will they do it? Put on your Twitter business model cap yet again and tell the world exactly what these folks have hit or miss regarding the future of the world in 140 character chunks.
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How Many Ads Make $1 Billion?
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