Latest Event Updates
Facebook: It’s More Than Toast – 5 Conversation Starters for Business
Last week, I was on the Mark Johnson Show talking about internet marketing and of course, the typical questions came up: why do I care about a picture of somebody’s toast? A lot of people don’t “get” Facebook; what does her toast have to do with me selling my stuff? Every good sales pro knows: people buy people. They buy the storyteller, toast and all. Facebook is all about storytelling. Blogging is about elaborating on the story. You sell when your story’s compelling enough to convince your customer that you’re The One.
So you don’t think Facebook fits in your business model? Maybe it doesn’t – not every personality works for Facebook. Many balk at the idea of having to set-up a personal page in order to start your Facebook business page. For that client, LinkedIn may make more sense. For clients who don’t have a lot to say, a Twitter account may work better. Yes, take your comfort level into account, but more importantly, find out where your customers hang out. When you can envision your customers, you’ll have a much better chance of reaching them and making it easy for them to buy from you.
Facebook Conversation Starters:
Here are 5 Tips to help you start a conversation on Facebook:
- Like Your Clients – If you’re not following your clients on Facebook, why not? If you’re a B-to-B business, “like” their business pages. If you’re B-to-C, your business page cannot follow an individual, however, give them a reason to like your page.
- Offer Incentives – I offer $10 off my Got Clicks Tweak consultations for clients who “like” my page. Thank those who take advantage of it.
- Comment on Client Pages – Facebook is not all about you – once you “like” client pages with your own page, go ahead and comment on their feeds. Ask questions that will help them get clients.
- Share – It doesn’t hurt to share your client’s page with your Facebook fans. Chances are, they’ll appreciate it so much, they’ll be more than happy to reciprocate.
- Contests – I created a contest landing page that I change out on my Facebook page. Here’s a video to show you how to do it:
R.I.P. Google Keyword Tool
One certainty in Internet Marketing – change is inevitable. I had done a webinar a few months ago called, “Niche not Noise” and turned it into a free e-book and video to show people how to brainstorm new business ideas and hone in on keywords to trigger a search for customers to find you. Recently, I learned the Google Keyword Tool was no longer available, except if you setup Google Adwords. I’ve created a video tutorial on using the new Keyword Planner which you can watch in this little 5-min ditty below:
A tool I mention in this post is Market Samurai. I find it gives me A LOT more information than the Google Keyword tool ever did. I loved it so much, I signed up as an affiliate to share it with others who struggle with finding the right keywords. There’s a free trial you can sign up for HERE. I highly recommend this tool.
Please let me know of any tools you use out there so that I can pass it along to others.
In-Depth Content – An Excuse for Verbal Diarrhea?
Have you ever endured a department head meeting monopolized by that one person who speaks for 20 minutes without saying much of anything? That’s my concern with the latest In-Depth Content craze. It’s original intent was to be a warehouse for white papers. However, seeing the Twitter #indepthcontent hashtag bandied about shows some marketers are mistaking crap for content. “How to write #indepth content that Google Loves” boasts one early adopter. What about what you love? What your readers love? Yes, if it takes 900, 2000, 60k or 100k worth of words to say it, by all means, do it -but don’t write for the sake of writing what Google loves, write with a clear purpose in mind.
- Write with Purpose: What idea are you trying to get across? Do you have a different point of view that’s interesting?
- Write in Service: Are you writing to solve a problem or are you writing for Google? The key to great content is knowing who you’re writing to and why you’re writing in the first place.
- Write for Engagement: Does your topic encourage conversation?
- Write Strategically – Who are you talking to? Are you sharing your writing with those who care? Are you writing to those who need to hear your message?
Honing in on who you’re talking to makes the writing flow. Writing in service comes from the heart – there is no better content than articles written from a place of service. Writing for engagement is the art of the storyteller. If you’re stumped on how to make your content engaging, go to your local diner sometime and just listen. You’ll spot ’em a mile away; they have the whole lunch counter enthralled with a story that’s just as juicy as today’s bacon and cheeseburger. It’s a story worth repeating to your family at home, at the water cooler at work, only now LinkedIn is the watercooler, Facebook’s your family at home. Knowing who will be interested in your story is the basis of smart, strategic marketing. If you need help figuring out your messaging, I’d love to work with you.
Afraid You’ll Tank Your Business? Read This…
- The most strategic step in effective marketing that most businesses neglect
- The 7-7-7 Principal – Learn how to turn your passion into profit.
- Useful tools to research your business idea to see the number of potential customers searching for your particular product or service.
- How your audience finds you.
- How to create your USP (Unique Selling Point)
- 8 Must-have tools to discover your special niche- and how to use those tools.
– BONUS: Marketing Budget ROI Worksheet
The Marketing Budget ROI worksheet is really helpful. I use it with new clients to figure out how much to spend for each new customer you bring in for your product or service. You can find that in the back of the e-book. This is all free – it’s a recording of a webinar I did on this topic a few months ago coupled with a 20-page excerpt from my book, “Niche not Noise.” I just brought out the meat-and-potatoes so it’s a useful working document for you. The upcoming book will be filled with interviews from clients and others who have successfully created and marketed a niche business. I’m really excited about what I’ve learned so far and I wanted to get this in your hands as soon as I could so that more people can be enjoying their business instead of closing it down.
Are you ready? I can’t wait for you to get started. This is the most important step to business success. Please set aside an hour to watch the video, review the e-book and take plenty of notes. Believe me, one hour of your time is worth the investment; especially when you could save yourself from wasting thousands of dollars on a business that has no client base.
Don’t let me keep you – GO GET STARTED!
Fell Off Page 1 on Google? Here’s Some Help with Penguin
Were you on the first page of Google last year and suddenly fell off in January? Your website may be one of the casualties of the Google Penguin algorithm. The rumor mill’s rumbling that another Penguin update may be on the horizon. Others feel it’s a constant likened to the Panda updates that happen monthly. One of the best explanations of the Google Penguin penalties was done by Noble Samurai in their Beat the Penguin checklist. They do a beautiful job explaining the Penguin update, what it is and what it’s trying to achieve.
What Do Links Have to Do with Penguin?
A link is a url directing readers/customers back to your desired website. Before Penguin, many internet businesses used back-links (links going back to your website) to help with ranking in the search engines. It used to be the more relevant links you had going back to your website, the higher Google would rank you. Soon, link farms were developed selling links to different websites. People went crazy with it and started linking to irrelevant sites – a big no-no for internet marketing.
Link building
As Noble Samurai points out, there were several ways businesses built link strategies: Guest blogging, commenting on other people’s blogs, press releases and building squidoo lenses and hub pages.
Over time, the links would increase and often your page would rank higher. NOW… you need to be very careful about the links you build and how they impact your ranking. The nature of your link network can actually damage your rankings.
Link patterns that can harm you:
There are 3 kinds of links that the Penguin update focuses on:
1) Brand Links – These are links that mention your website url, product name or company name in link anchor text.
2) Target Links – these links are specific keyword phrases you’re trying to target in search engines. (Using the example in Noble Samurai’s awesome video, a press release using your keyword phrase “learn to play chess.”)
3) Generic Links – These don’t specify a website, it’s just a generic term such as: “Click here to read some tips on playing chess.”
Too many target links can cause your site to be kicked out completely. The ratio that’s being kicked around the marketplace is if it’s over 50% target links, put a fork in you – you’re done; you ‘ll be hit by penguin.
Target links less than 30% – you’re okay.
Yes, change stinks – I agree. Quite frankly, I won’t go so far as to say ALL links are BAD – however, I believe the ratios are what you need to pay attention to. Just like the battle that rages about keywords – some camps are saying they’re not relevant anymore. My opinion is if they weren’t relevant, why would Google Adwords’ bid price be based upon the keywords, quality score and page relevance? How would customers find “Annie Sloan Chalk Paint” in your shopping cart without typing in the right keywords? Oh, yeah… that’s another blog post I feel coming on…
The WORST thing you could do is start deleting your blogs or walking away from your online business altogether. The BEST thing you can do is take a deep breath, review your strategies and look at what you need to change. You can’t do the dishes if you can’t see the dirt. If you need help walking through all of this, I’m happy to step you through it with the Got Clicks Tweak. I’m a good dish washer.
Backlink Backlash with Google’s Disavow Link Tool
Aside Posted on Updated on
The clarion call sounded over the weekend as SEO marketers took to their clients’ websites to feverishly tear down link builders off websites. Back in April, Penguin waddled its way onto the SEO landscape penalizing websites for poor quality links. Many websites found it almost impossible to recover from these link-based penalties. This past Wednesday, (Oct.17th), Google announced the much anticipated “Disavow Links” tool in Google Webmaster Tools.
The good news? The tool gives webmasters the ability to tell Google to “ignore” specific links and domains from poor quality link sources. So if you got slammed by Penguin, this is the tool for you. It essentially deletes the poor quality links that are harming your website.
The bad news? By giving webmasters the ability to report bad links, this tool could be harmful to sites that make it too easy to get a link back to your site. Old school backlink sources have been:
- Forums
- Blog Comments
- Article Directories
- Press Releases
- Website Directories
- Social Bookmarking Accounts
The worry on the street is the possibility that a penalized domain may also penalize any other sites that it links out to. Noble Samurai’s Eugene Ware blogged about the disavow tool and what to do about it over the weekend – great article and worth a look.
I also checked out The Search Agency’s webinar, Ghosts of SEO Past – Grant did a great job spelling out what’s out and what’s in for search engine marketing.
What’s Out?
Grant’s webinar had some great information on what’s on the way out:
1) Stuffing:
Keyword stuffing is where you stick keywords into your meta tags or the content itself for the sake of putting the keyword into your content. Now, keywords have their place, however, stuffing a keyword that has a high volume of clicks, (let’s say the word “sex” ) when you’re selling flat irons (unless they’re very sexy flat irons…) is not the best tactic. Remember, your keywords need to be relevant to the content (“Sunbeam flat irons”)
2) Spinning:
Spinning is replacing 1 word in text (ie burlington real estate,colchester real estate) and keeping all the rest of the content identical. Make sure all of your pages contain unique, relevant content.
3) Redundant Content Creation
Using a keyword URL Target with redundancy is a no-no:
home rentals http://www.client.com/home rentals.html
homes for rent http://www.client.com/homeforrent.html
4) Paid Linking – It’s the new ‘Just Say No.’ Just don’t do it.
5) Bad linking: If you do too much internal linking, if it looks spammy, and you’ve over-optimized your site, you get dinged in rankings.
So What DOES Work?
Google’s getting very savvy when it comes to social media. In fact, I’m starting to see the term “engagement” bandied about quite a bit. So let’s take a look at what will work:
1) Relevancy
This has been Google’s mantra since the beginning. Does your page title match your metadescription? Does it match the content on the page? Will I find what I’m looking for when I click on your page?
2) Content
Content is king. It’s not redundant, cheesy, or peppered with useless keywords. It’s relevant, engaging, inspiring, useful, entertaining.
3) Engagement
This is what’s new in the SEO “babble.” (although it’s as old as time and should be on top of the list:) Engagement. “BUY NOW” “WATCH” “LEARN MORE” are the buzz words. Engaging your clients to take an action is core to selling online. Google’s watching how you engage, not just with lead capture, but also with social media. Are you asking for a call to action from Facebook to click on a page to learn more? More importantly, are OTHERS asking for the engagement? Is it viral?
4) Results
How can you know if it worked if you don’t even bother to measure the result? Having Google Analytics on your website is paramount to knowing whether your clients are getting your message, if your website is helping you in reaching your goal. Are you engaging clients or is your bounce rate off the charts? If you can’t make heads or tails out of your Google Analytics, look me up and I’ll be happy to walk you through the reports you need to review to see how your website’s performing.
What to Do?
If you’ve given great content, if your page titles and meta descriptions clearly describe what I’ll find on your page, great! Give yourself a biscuit. If you’re having trouble with ranking, need to understand how to orchestrate your internet marketing better, I’m happy to help you out with a Got Clicks Tweak.
Ready, Willing and ABEL…
I don’t usually do much on August 15th. I keep to myself. I brood. I remember – (or try to remember stuff…) My mother died 27 years ago today of breast cancer. I gave the eulogy at her funeral and it was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I haven’t been back in that room until a couple of months ago when I delivered a remembrance of a dear friend from my radio days who met me – 27 years ago when I was mourning the recent loss of my mother. Funny how life circles, isn’t it?
I have been asked to volunteer for numerous cancer events throughout my radio career, and I always did them – happily. Yet I did them from a safe distance wearing the cloak of my radio persona and guarding the young woman who mourns the fact her mother never saw her daughter walk down the aisle, never saw her grandson, never saw her daughter become a powerful mover and shaker in her own right.
I never liked when people would say “your mother lost the good fight.” “Too bad she lost her battle to cancer – so young.” I never saw it as a ‘battle’ of any sort – I saw it as a cruel disease brought on by not speaking your truth. So sometimes the rhetoric of the October Breast Cancer Awareness month was lost on me. Not that I didn’t want to help in some way – that I always was up for. But I resented “losing” anything – especially my mother. I played the commercials, showed up to the events, but never really let my heart get involved. Until now.
I met Kristin Baker at a seminar I was teaching on “Facebooking for Bucks.” She asked great questions and when I asked about her company, she said “I own Abel and Lovely – it’s about a lifestyle; an attitude. We’re doing the T-Shirt Project to help the Vermont Cancer Center.” The cynical marketer in me kicked in and I thought: Yet another company marketing cancer. Then I saw the photographs. Then I felt the energy from Kristin and it all made such perfect sense. The message is simple: I AM Abel and Lovely. Period. There was no battle to be won, no pity, no pious venture. This shirt was worn by women with grit – a steely ‘I will not go quietly’ quality that I just found so incredibly appealing. So I paid my $20 last week and waited for my shirt to come in the mail. I unwrapped it last night with the simple white tissue paper and a “Thank You” sticker placed carefully in the center. I put it on, scanned my image. And I cried.
Kristin’s mission, like her company, is simple: She’s inviting as many Abel and Lovely women (and men, for that matter ) to don this simple T-Shirt, stand locked arm-in-arm October 6th on Burlington’s waterfront and capture the essence of the moment in a snapshot. Pretty cool, eh? A portion of the proceeds benefit the Vermont Cancer Center and Kristin assures me the T-Shirts are organic, Vermont-made and Vermont loved.
So as long as I am ‘abel,’ I will tell as many people as I can about my friend, Kristin, about her company, Abel and Lovely, and about my mother who did not lose a battle, but instead, through the way she lived, instilled in me a fierce independence that I hope I pass on to her grandson.
If you’d like to join me Oct. 6th on the Burlington Waterfront, it’s pretty easy: Buy your shirt here, and show up around 9am in front of ECHO. Oh yeah, and wear your shirt! My buddy, Sandy, from Brown and Jenkins Coffee will be serving a free cup of coffee to those who show their Abel and Lovely shirts.
Cheers to all the Abel and Lovely people who have entered into my life. I wear this t-shirt proudly in your memory, Mom. Love you.
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