Social Media Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. have delivered enough measurable success to early adopters to demonstrate that there is gold in them there tweets and updates. 

In fact, it appears nearly every business is jumping on the bandwagon in some capacity to create a social media account for their company, organization or themselves.

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc are driving business to your competitors websites through updates, friends and followers.

How will you leverage Social Media Marketing to impact the bottom line in 2010?

The greatest weakness still appears in meaningful integration of social media into the marketing mix…for a return on the investment of time, resources and budget. ROI can be achieved, if you have a sound strategy and social media marketing methods and measurements in place.

Click to Read the entire story>>Why Social Media Must be part of your Integrated Marketing Strategy for2010.

Traditional media concepts of Reach and Frequency apply very well to Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms.

I’ve been studying social media accounts for some time now and the similarity between broadcasting ontraditional media and social media platforms Twitter and Facebook:

• Those who have more Friends and Followers, get more Replies, Mentions and are Retweeted (RT) more often. (Frequency)
  
• The more often you receive Replies and RT’s, the more new People you reach, and the more Friends and Followers you acquire. (again, Reach)

Remember the Fabrege Organics Shampoo Commercial from the 1970’s? (I know, now I’m REALLY dating myself). This commercial provides a visual for WOMM (word of mouth marketing) that has sustained for decades. In fact, you can view it on YouTube:

Faberge 1970’s Organic Shampoo Commercial Video You Tube

However, to the many hundreds of thousands of corporations, businesses and individuals using social media to develop relationships with customers, strategic partners, employees and employers, Reach and Frequency will play a  vital role in reaching target audiences in a meaningful way.
(meaningful = ROI)

Tips to To Promote Reach and Frequency Using Social Media:

• Be True to Your Brand (whatever it is)
• Post updates that are Relevant (create qualified audiences, even easier when you optimize social media updates)
• Be Consistent (to build a following)
• Be Diligent (update frequently)
• Be Gracious (build relationships)
• Sustain and Value 1 to 1 Relationships!

More on meaningful social media conversations to follow.

Will you Look at the Reach and Frequency of YOUR Social Media activity differently?

Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others are often dismissed as trivial pursuits by corporate executives and business marketers…but would they consider $3 million dollars in revenue trivial?

Dell Generates $3 Million Dollars in Sales From Twitter

In June 2009 Dell reported that they’d earned $3 million in revenue from the microblogging social media website Twitter. How can a site that only allows messages of 140 characters or less pack such a wallop for the PC manufacturer?

Dell reported they were able to use Twitter to post coupons, announce new products and drive traffic to the outlet store. Now this didn’t happen overnight. However if you are wondering if now is the time to get serious about marketing on social media, consider this:

• It took 18 months for Dell to sell their first $1 million from Twitter.
• From January to June 2009, they generated $1 million dollars.
• Dell generated an additional $1 million from people who clicked from Twitter to Dell Outlet, then to Dell.com and made a purchase.

Click to Read the Rest of the Story . . .>

Learn more about the demographics of Twitter here:
Making the Case for Marketing to Baby Boomers on Twitter

To learn more about Social Media Marketing,
visit our FREE Social Media Marketing Guide

Join me on Twitter!
Rebecca Murtagh as “Virtual Marketer” on Twitter
Karner Blue Marketing Twitter Account

This morning I checked out a Mashable Post via Twitter that made me chuckle. The tweet read:

What Google REALLY Thinks of Twitter! http://tinyurl.com/nc5spx

Actually, the post which came to my Virtual Marketer Twitter account via Tweets from  @PerryBelcher and @RichCurrie  made me laugh out loud!

This is hilarious…and at the same time an exceptional (some might say tragic) example of how important content is to Google search.

To make sure this wasn’t fabricated, I went to Google.com and keyed in the same keywords:  twitter is
(go ahead, try it!) The same keyword suggestions appear from Google:

Twitter is...

You can’t help but laugh initially. However, if you’ve read my previous Blog posting: Making The Case for SEO Content you’ll recognize HOW these results ended up ranking so high in Twitter results on Google is NO ACCIDENT.

The takeaway:
Good or bad, whatever people are saying about you (and what you say about yourself online) WILL be visible for the world to see on Google search, so it’s especially prudent to have a Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Campaign in Place…and crises management, when things don’t go as planned.

A professional search engine marketing firm can help you with a proactive SEM strategy, if your search results aren’t what you’d like them to be.

Despite how much most entrepreneurs, marketers, public relations and even copywriting professionals read and agree how important it is for website copy to be search engine optimized  into SEO content, it is rarely executed effectively. This is not merely my opinion. Sadly, it is fact, backed up by website analytics data and conversion of sites pre and post SEO.

The best way to understand HOW to SEO your website content is to understand the reasons WHY it is important.

1. Search engines algorithms, especially Google and Yahoo, depend on text crawlers.

Indicating that the more search engine optimized your website content (copy) is, the better idea the search engine has of who you are, what you do/offer and where you are located (for local search)…and subsequently, the better your site will fare, or rank among other websites in keyword results.

What you can do to Insure you have search engine friendly website content:

• Make sure your website has actual text for content. The easiest “litmus test” is to attempt to highlight the text on a website page with your mouse. If you cannot highlight it, as you can with copy within a text or WORD document, chances are pretty good that content is invisible to the seach engines.
• Another method is to “view source” of a page (or every page) of your website. If you don’t see the content in that page full of code, neither do the search engines, it’s that simple.
• Insure that there is ample “text” or data for the search engines to crawl that identify “who, what, when, where, how” as they relate to your goals and objectives.

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2. Search engine crawlers SEEK text, LIKE new copy, LOVE frequently updated content.

Website content is most valuable when it new content is added often, or updated frequently. The main mission of Search engines is to provide the most qualified result to those seeking a result. So, it makes perfect sense that search engines will be attracted to new and frequently visited content, especially when it is search engine optmized and adds to the overall “weight” of the website in the eyes of the search engines.

Search engines are naturally attracted to optimized Blogs, Articles, Press Releases, News, Website Pages, and other website content.

Unfortunately, static sites that do not have engaging content, are less likely to attract links from other websites, or entice visitors to return after their first visit…both of which are important to website SEO and conversion.

What you can do to improve the value of website content:

• Use blog, news, articles or some other type of frequent updates that enable you to communicate with your audience, using the keywords and phrases your audience will find relevant.
• Create a schedule to regularly add, update and search engine optimize content.
• Seriously search engine optimize your content. This requires far more than “sprinkling keywords” and adding meta data. (learn more about “how to SEO your content” below).

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3. Search engine keyword queiries are not all PC based. 

To be optimally successful, your website should be optimized for search engine accessibility via mobile, text to voice, ADA and other searches. One of the easiest, most effective methods to improve the performance of your website to every type of user over time is to balance design with function, and include real text as the foundation of website function. Text is the most universal, easily adaptable and most effective way to convey your core message on the nternet.

That’s not to say that website design and programs aren’t as vital to your value proposition and differentiating you from competitors, but if you want to improve site performance over time, over many browsers and throughout search engine algorithm changes, text as content is a mighty powerful and timeless weapon.

What you can do to improve SEO across multiple browsers and platforms

• Refer to bullets in #2 and you are well on your way!
• There are additional, more advanced techniques that we can address in a separate post.

Want to learn how to search engine optimize your website content? SEO Copywriting Secrets  <click to learn more!

…a powerful, easy-to-follow workshop, coaching and consulting program designed to help you develop SEO content.

Rebecca Murtagh is a recognized expert in SEO, SEM, internet marketing and social search marketing and trains corporate teams and individuals how to finesse their natural talents to support high-performance results using proven methods developed over the past 13 years.

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Next post:

The importance of Usability for Optimum ROI

(beyond what most businesses are thinking about!)

It  happens every day. A copywriter creates beautiful, compelling marketing copy that is then pushed through the corporate review process…first to the marketing manager, then to the director, then to the VP, possibly the company president, back through another round of edits and then it is presented to the website designer or webmaster to be pasted into the website.

Copying Marketing Copy to Website Content is one of the biggest copywriting mistakes you can make…here’s why:

1. People don’t consume content on the internet the way they will read offline marketing material, such brochures, reports or ads.

On the internet, you have only seconds to engage the user and prompt them to act, whether it be to another page, pick up the phone, or respond to a call to action on the site via form, survey or sale.

How To Translate Offline Copy to Website Content:

• Break content into bite-sized pieces.
• Leave white space to allow the eye to find what they are interested in reading.
• Use the interactivity of websites to let the reader continue the “pre-qualifying” process by giving them choices.
• Integrate interactive calls to action.

Remember, the Internet is a highly interactive medium that we have truly just begun to leverage. The more control you give the reader in consuming the content, the more relevant their experience will be on your website…And the easier it will be to convert them from a visitor to a customer!

Next Post: Making the Case for Search Engine Optimization of Website Content

I’ve just returned from a week-long trip to Ireland with a luxury-travel client. The trip was full of introductions, casual conversations, formal dinners, sales presentations and lots of informal interaction.

In a down economy, or in the height of economic growth, it is still people who make decisions about what consultants, companies or vendors they will forge business relationships with.

Among a diverse group of professionals, one common thread became dominant…Those who had forged business relationships earlier were fiercly loyal and happy to share their experiences with others. Those who were being introduced to new business opportunities most definitely cared more about the PEOPLE behind the business than anything else. They wanted to know they could trust that professional or company to respect, and further, their success with each sale…whether it be a product or service.

We all learn this and many of us live our day-to-day lives and businesses with genuine interest and passion for doing the right thing and delivering what we promise to our clients. However, because I was exposed to professionals from across North America with a wide variety of backgrounds, this was a fabulous reminder of why people choose WHO they will do business with.

My trip included interaction with 5 Star luxury property owners and management teams, among other travel professionals. I found that given the opportunity to relate to them on a personal level was significantly meaningful in establishing a friendly, warm and open dialogue. I was able to engage them on a personal level, because they knew I cared about a mutually beneficial, quality outcome from our efforts. Most hugged and kissed me upon my departure. Of course, culture will always play a part in how familiar your relationship with a business person will be. And, the Irish are known for their warm and friendly spirit…but I must say I have clients across the North America who treat me like family…and whom I am proud to work with.

Think about it…given 2 businesses with the similar qualifications, would you choose the one that sold you and could care less about your success, or the one that has “adopted” your business, clients and success as a measure of their own and is driven to help you succeed?

I hope this reminds you of why people will choose to work with you today. Let your passion shine through and let people see who you really are and what you care about.

Do you find being genuine and invested in your clients easy and profitable?
Please share your thoughts and experiences:

First I must say, I LOVE what I do. I am passionate about what I do for a living. In fact, I’ve been accused of being obsessed with growing my business over the past few years, which I am grateful (very grateful) to report is successful and quite rewarding!

Although only a part of our business focuses on SEO, there are SO MANY people claiming to be SEO experts that many businesses are unsure of whom to trust with the search engine optimization of their website. I do my best to educate and assist clients in getting the most from seasoned experts in the field by doing free seminars, as well as paid training, workshops and consulting for corporations, associations and entrepreneurs throughout North America and beyond.

I have certainly done my time. I’ve tested theories, been a practicing marketer for over 20+ years and in the internet biz for 13 years.  I’ve developed a historic perspective and working methodology after being actively involved in the e-business strategy, website planning, design, copywriting, promotion, advertising, search engine optimiztion, marketing, PPC advertising and longterm management of countless websites. (really, I haven’t even tried to count how many). I have led the development of $1million dollar sites as well as start-ups and consulted companies with every kind of static or dynamic site in between.

(this is not a commercial, there is a reason for me stating this I promise, please read on! : )As an expert judge for regional, national and international websites, internet advertising and integrated marketing competitions, I have first-hand exposure to websites and their performance data from around the world.

Over the years I’ve developed confidence in what I do and know based on metrics and performance. I live it each and every day and the metrics prove I know what I am doing…I, and my team, deliver results!

Having earned the respect of organizations, associations and clients aound the world as an expert in my field, I train C-level executives such as CEOs CMOs, CIOs, and profeesionals such as website architects, programmers, marketers and administrative assistants how to leverage their website to improve the bottom line.

My credentials are respectable enough to gain the business, yet once we get into the process, I am always shocked by the occasional client that resists the SEO process…wanting dilute it to what they’ve read or learned about in dribs and drabs.

Why am I sharing all of this you may wonder?
Because there really are professional, ethical search engine marketers out there…not just the SEO’s pushing the latest gimmick. Far too many gurus, marketers and yes, even clients underestimate the value of experience and the marketing perspective when it comes to effective search marketing.

Truth is,  the limited perspective gained from reading a few books and purchasing web, or even SEO services for a handful of websites is NOT enough in today’s complex internet landscape to define a strategy or challenge that of someone you chose and hired to assist you. Yet, there seem to be an increasing number of folks out there promoting how simple SEO is, when in fact, it is a truly complex, involved marketing channel, just as direct mail or email marketing can be.

What I wonder is why someone who admits they have limited knowledge would go through all the trouble to find and hire a consultant for services if they were going to undo all the work?

Chipping away at SEO when implemented as a methodology is like knitting a sweater, then pulling apart the yarn of a sweater from multiple directions…it is no longer a sweater, but rather a mere remnant of what it once was.

If you hired someone to build a house and decided to remove the roof and windows, would you blame the builder for the rain and wind coming in to the house? This is much like hiring an SEO consultant, or any consultant. Sure, there is always room for customization, challenge and some compromise. However, a reputable professional that has earned your business deserves your trust unless they give you reason to question their methods.

An Example:
Because search engines like Google are predominantly text crawlers, SEO should be text focused. Despite this basic rule, clients and marketers seem to feel compeled to challenge the rules of the search engines.

News flash: Your search engine marketing consultant has nothing to do with the way search engine algorithms process content and data on the internet. In fact, the sole purpose of ethical SEO’s is to assist you in appeasing the everchanging search engine landscape. They are putting YOUR best interest first when optimizing copy to encourage crawling, indexing and keyword visibility. In fact, be thankful if they ARE optimizing your content as most SEO’s won’t touch content!

Search Engine Optimization, when done properly, will optimize the site to sustain algorithm changes over time.

True search engine optimization requires a far more labor intensive effort than mere meta data or plugging in some keywords. In fact, Long Tail SEO has become the preferred SEO Copywriting method of choice for our SEO firm as it has proven itself to bring otherwise missed clicks by making the site more visible to prospects the way THEY are search the web.

I’ll step off my soap box for now, but leave with you this thought…if you believed enough in someone to entrust your business and pay them, why would you undermine their efforts? There is nothing to be won by any party when a site fails to reach it’s potential visbility on the search engines.

Trust and win I say! : )

Many SMBs, entrepreneurs and start-ups are skeptical about the value and relevance of social marketing to their goals, epecially when it comes to Baby Boomers.

Contrary to popular belief from those not yet engaged in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., Social Marketing sites actually have a highly active baby boomer, educated demographic.

Some opinions interpreting the same demographic data below would have you believe that Twitter users are young adults. I beg to differ.

Fact is, Social sites are attracting the most savvy internet users (and buyers) on the Internet.

Demographics of Baby Boomers on Twitter:

A Baby Boomer is said to have been born between years 1946 and 1964. Today, Boomers are approximately 45 ad 63 years of age.

Recent Quantcast data from January 2009 (shown below) defines the following demographics of Twitter users:

52% of Twitter user are 35 or older (including 50+).
This datapoint is significant.  If ages 35-49 represents 31% of Twitter users with an additional 21% age 50+, why is everone thinking that Twitter is for teens and young adults?

53% Female
47% Male

Baby Boomers are most definitely on Twitter!

Let’s look at the rest of the data:

74% don’t have kids
I’m guessing they mean IN the house.
This indicates that Twitter users may have a little bit more discretionary time ( and money) on their hands to  participate in social media and become your next customer!

51% make $6oK or more per year
All the better to purchase with!

63% went to college
17% of Twitter users went to Graduate School, indicating that the Twitter user base is educated, and presumably intelligent.

Age of Twitter Users Baby Boomers

A recent Pew Internet study stated that younger, lower income adults were Tweeting.  However, the data provided indicates that  the median age of a Twitter user is 31, making the Twitter user demograhics closer to LinkedIn than Facebook.  The median age of a MySpace user is 27, Facebook user is 26 and LinkedIn user is 40.¹

Since that study in January 2009, a mere 4 months ago, Twitter traffic has surved to 10 Million unique visitors.

Comscore recenty released a Twitter Study.  The data that indicates that the majority of Twitter visitors around the world were 35 years old or older, This matches industry assessments of Facebook users.

The study by ComScore noted that 45-54 adults are 36 percent more likely to visit Twitter, followed by 25-34 yr olds, who are rank at 30 percent.

are baby boomers using Twitter and Facebook?

Bottom Line: Baby boomers are embracing Twitter!

Social marketing, although continually evolving, is a viable source of clicks from Baby Boomers, even if you are a local or regionally focused business. (a totally separate post).

Remember, whether you are targeting Baby Boomers or any other demographic:

SEO, internet and social marketing is more than on-site Optimization and Clicks. For ROI, each click should be the beginning of a user-experience…with a human being!If you are targeting Baby Boomers, you now know you have a rich audience on Twitter.

1 -The median ages of users of various social network sites can be found in “Adults and Social Networking Data Memo” January 2009, as recorded in a May 2008 Pew Internet Project survey.

Thoughts…Feedback, Comments??

How important could speech video and audio be to your website?
Very important indeed, if the direction Google has taken with speech from YouTube videos is any indication.

Google Begins Indexing Video
In September 2008, Google Labs launched Gaudi to index speech on videos uploaded on You Tube during the 2009 Presidential Election to “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. Although Google stated that the scope of this Google “gadget” was restricted to the US election, they acknowledge that this is just  “first step”…as an “experiment platform where we can learn what features make the best user experience for people looking for spoken content on the Web.” Can the spoken word across the web be far behind?

Should Your Audio and Video be Search Friendly?
The audio, video, video blog or podcast featured on your website is as searchable as the text you write, today, even if it is not currently being weighted as much as the traditional components of SEO (meta data, content, links, etc.)… I am confident it is coming.

Most organizations do not consider optimization when generating audio or video content.

Predicting the Future of Seach Engine Optimized Video
If you read my post from Web 2.0 San Francisco last year, you may realize that I’ve predicted the indexing of verbal and video content for some time. In fact I’ve been asking people for months if they’ve search engine optimized their company video demos, testimonials, promotions, podcasts and audio voice-overs. They have been looking at me rather blankly, but chances are they are about to learn much more about this as search engine results begin to display video containing content relevant to specific keyword terms…even if that content was never intended to be indexed.

Search Engine Optimized Video could become the next great tool for the competitive marketer.
These developments indicate that the content of audio and video will become a more significant factor in search engine marketing, and the way we leverage it as SEO practitioners, marketers and businesses could mean having an upper hand, or being left behind in the dust.

SEO Audio and Video Content 
Speech-to-text and text-to-speech technologies havce existed for some time on the open market through companies like Voice Corp’s “Podcaster” solution that enable conversion of an RSS Feed from blog to a podcast on the fly making it easy for you can listen to blogs like this one!

If you care about SEO for your website and business from a competitive rank and traffic perspective, you may already understand how multimedia such as audio and video can positively impact conversion rates.

How to Optimize Audio Video for Search
Now may be good time to review your audio, video and multimedia content on your website and out on the internet.

Will it serve your goals?
Is it optimized?

How will you integrate SEO with video, blog and audio for your business?

 
Need help optimizing an upcoming script, demo or podcast?
Contact an SEO content specialist and you’ll be well on your way!