Coffee can tell a lot about people.
Which coffee do you like? Well show me your coffee and I will tell you who you are. Take a look here in this SlideShare. And if you like it go and like and share it 🙂
All the best to you – time for my coffee,
Henrik
I am very happy to show you all this infographic. It shows how 36 key Internet behaviours play out across mulitple devices.
Its all broken down into four key categories: Social, Publishing, Content and Services/App.
And yes Tablets now driving the online content consumption.
It’s made by the guys at GlobalWebIndex. Click on the picture to see it larger.
Enjoy, Henrik
Let me show you step by step how you can increase your online marketing ROI by over 30 percent just by using this free technique.
Do you know that you can get a very deep insight about who visits your website? And they don’t even have to sign up for a newsletter or fill out a form. That is possible. And the best part is that it’s absolutely free.
In fact B2B companies can find the names of the companies who are just browsing your site. And you can get a list telling you which pages they are looking at?
Well I am sure some of you already know that. But let me show you have to set up your Google Analytic step by step.
Normally B2B companies don’t have as many visitors on their site as B2C companies. And the traffic volumes are very often much too low to extract any useable data for the company.
On the other hand – typically a B2B visitor will spend more time on a website than a B2C visitor.
A lot of the B2B companies are using the Google Adwords to drive traffic to their site – but the prices for these online ads are getting higher and higher. Most of the traffic to B2B have an interest in the company’s product or service, but most of them are leaving the website again without buying anything.
Step by Step
Okay let me show you the trick step by step.
First you need to open your Google Analytic and choose the “custom reporting”, and choose “+new custom report”.
Now you should be ready to build your report.
First write a title for your report, and a name for the content.
Choose the “explorer” box.
Now to the fun part. From the blue metrics box you select
Just choose one at the time. Now in the green dimension drilldowns box you you will select:
Remember to pick them in that order.
Now we are almost done. Just click the save button.
Now try and run the report
First you get a view with the countries.
Click on one of the countries. Now you will see a list of all the service providers for each one of your visitors.
Some of your visitors are from Internet service providers or universities but if you scroll down the list you will start to see visitors who are accessing you from identifiable corporate networks.
Now click on a company name and you will see which pages they have been looking at.
You can’t see which person who has been looking at your site, but maybe the sales team has been working on a customer, so they probably know a person from the company. Or you can go to your LinkedIn account and see if you can find the names of the persons working in that company..
Now you can go back to edit your report. You will see the word Filters.
You will need to add some filters so you can read rid of the some of the internet service providers or universities. So you will get a list with the company names.
Another great feature is that you can send this report automatically to your mail or your sales departments mail every day or every week.
This report is an excellent tool for detecting early interest from a larger organization. Now be sure you use your knowledge and contact the company. And as I wrote in the beginning – some companies have increased their online marketing ROI by over 30 percent using this technique.
Good luck
Henrik
When you design your website you will have to be creative. But a good looking website alone will not help you to sell your products or service. You will have to convert your visitors to buyers. Let me show you 5 great tips for better conversion.
I love everything about SEO – but if I get a lot of visitors to my site – and they don’t buy anything it really doesn’t matter. I need to convert visitors to buyers.
No matter if you want your visitors to sign up for your newsletter, download a PDF or to buy a product.
So I let introduce you to some marketing techniques you can use when you are designing your website.
Prevent Choice Paralysis
This phenomenon is very useful to know about. Don’t give your audience too many choices to choose between. To give a choice is great. But don’t overuse it. You will confuse the buyer. If you confuse the buyer they might just leave you right away.
Make it easy to be a visitor on your site. If you want your visitors to sign up for a newsletter (I want that on my site here) be sure you have a visible call to action.
If you are writing about a product tell which one of the choices you like the most. With your design you can make your suggestion product picture bigger than the other ones. Make it with another background picture.
There is no doubt that SEOmoz wants you to buy the PRO version of its program right. They are telling you want to do. Just by using different colors. And you only get 3 choices.
Subliminal Suggestion
Have you heard of this before? It was a big hit in marketing a few years back. But you can still use some of the elements.
Newer research shows that it really didn’t help that much anyway and most of the sneak messages were eliminated.
A very famous example that everybody is still talking about is about a hidden ad picture in a movie, and suddenly everybody in the cinema wanted to buy that product. Well this wasn’t true I have heard.
But you know – the advertising industry is still using some subliminal messaging, and you can use it for your website design too. Today, you can meet subliminal messaging for personal development, when trying to stop smoking and a lot of weight loss aids. You can still buy theses CDs and DVDs commercially.
When you are choosing your pictures for your website, you must think about what kind of messages the pictures are sending. Choose pictures that embody your message or feeling. Don’t just use the first picture you find – think carefully about your use of pictures. No stock photos (please).
You get 2 different feelings here right with the bikes. One picture is selling adventure the other picture is just selling a bike.
What kind of messages do you want to send to your visitors?
Show the Product
Out in the real world (yes you can still sell products in the real world I am told) you can see and touch the products. Sometimes you can smell it too.
In fact I am sitting right now eating strawberries – I can taste them, smell them (I tell you they are awesome). But how do you want to sell strawberries on the internet.
Well show your product. We can’t make smell (well I have read about a way to do that on the internet too – but that’s another post) so we will have to show the product. Maybe make a video. What about a 360 degree photo.
A lot of companies selling software forget to show the product or the screen dumps. Show it – show lots of pictures.
Often people are making their judgments based on how the product looks like. Appearance is important – it’s an indicator of a product’s usability. This is also known as the aesthetic-usability effect.
This product is Rank Tracker. But the company has shown it in a kind of physical box. A great way to show a virtual product right?
Design and let People Try It
It is becoming more and more popular to let people try the product. Maybe try it for free 30 days or a limited version of the product.
People will get used to the product and after the trial period they just need to have it right? If you want the full version you will have to buy it.
This is really a great way for software products to sell.
I know – this is not a design element. But you can still get a lot of conversions. And get your sale.
Aweber which is a newsletter software (I use this software – awesome) has a sign up for just 1 dollars and the first month free. Then you will get your first sign ups with this program – so why change after 1 month?
Design by the Gutenberg Rule
I love this rule. The Gutenberg rule. Johannes Gutenberg was a German blacksmith, printer, publisher who introduced printing in Europe. His invention of mechanical movable type printing started the Printing Revolution (Wikipedia). If you haven’t heard of him – go and check him out.
The theory is that a reader uses his mental path when he is viewing a design. This is called reading gravity. Here in the western world we read from left to right and top to bottom. So with this knowledge we can make the Gutenberg diagram.
So we read a page or design from “Primary Optical Focus” and end up in the “Terminal Area”. This is why it’s good to have a call to action in the bottom right instead of the bottom left. Let me show you an example here.
Market Samurai (great program about finding the right keywords) have a free trial for download.
Remember now we are talking about elements. Of course you can use colors and pictures to control your readers’ eyes too.
13 elements your home page must have
Go and check out this post too about 13 elements your home page must have. You will love it.
Free Marketing Giveaway
Remember to sign up for the newsletter and get free 3 eBooks with lots of tips and tricks about SEO, SEM, Social Media Traffic and Link Building.
And go and sign up for our new SeoCustomer Group on LinkedIn and join the conversation.
All the best to you …
Henrik
We all know there are two kinds of people right? Those who love the Beatles and those who are lying. But The Beatles is much more than great music, culture and old history. The Beatles is also SEO. Let me take you down memory lane and show you how The Beatles can help your search engine optimization. So here it is – SEO The Beatles way.
I just found this interesting video from Matt Cutts from Google talking about what will happen the next few months in terms of SEO for Google.
So make a cup of coffee and enjoy the next 7-8 minutes. Best regards,
Henrik
When you hear experts preach the gospel of local SEO, they’re often praising a mixture of on-page and off-page tactics that result in natural rankings. The organic approach always makes a fine option for the simple that it’s cheap (often free) and works incredibly well. With that said, local businesses should not dismiss the value of going the premium route. That’s right. I’m talking about PPC advertising.
If you’ve got the budget and could use the added visibility, paid search is a viable option to consider. Below I have outlined seven ways it can help your local business.
1. Deliver Instant Results
Despite what an aggressive SEO agency might tell you, search engine optimization is not a game of overnight success. The blogs and websites that consistently rank high in Google for multiple keywords — many of them are riding on years of hard work that finally paid off. PPC campaigns are generally easy to set up and deliver fast results. It is possible to see a huge traffic surge mere hours after deploying your campaign.
2. Increase Visibility
Local search grows more competitive by the day, which makes gaining a top spot in the SERPs an increasingly difficult chore. Even with all your hard work in creating solid content, building links, and convincing customers to leave feedback through review channels, there is no guaranteeing where your site will be positioned. Paid search can ensure that your site pops up in the results on the first page, and the better you are at it, the more visibility you create.
3. Boost Company Revenues
Some companies have a regular budget allocated to PPC advertising. These businesses have unlocked the secrets of using it to open another active revenue stream. Paid search is a proven way to create more exposure for new products, sales, events, and other elements that generate revenue. Behind a compelling call to action in your ad, an optimized landing page can be key in driving those prosperous conversions.
4. Align with Existing SEO Efforts
One of the most effective marketing strategies you can employ is one that involves mixing and matching different channels. Integrating your PPC campaigns with organic SEO efforts is a perfect example of this. Just think of the impact you could make if sponsored results are driving in additional traffic on top of the flow you’ve created from your long time optimization efforts.
5. Provide Access to Affordable Advertising
For years, local businesses have been relying on traditional advertising channels such as TV, radio, and newspaper to increase buzz and traffic. While these methods have worked for some, they are generally expensive and for others, questionable in terms of effectiveness. Paid search offers an affordable alternative to traditional advertising. In most cases, you can set your own budget and literally spend only what you’re able to afford on a day-to-day basis.
6. Create an Edge Over the Competition
A little competition is good, but you want to be on the favorable side more often than not. If you get behind too much, you could eventually find yourself out of business. Indulging in paid search advertising is essentially another way to distance your business from its competitors. It might not be a huge edge, but every visitor, subscriber, and customer that the campaign sends your way contributes to an edge you didn’t have over the competition before.
7. Support Local Initiatives
Search advertising platforms have advanced in ways that make them far more useful to digital marketers. A prime example of this can be seen in their rich targeting capabilities. Google AdWords, for instance, allows you to customize your PPC campaigns to specifically target search users in your area. This particular platform offers tools that let you craft your ads based on local criteria such as city, state, or ZIP code, ensuring that you target the right audience.
Keeping an Open and Opportunistic Mind
Most local businesses are small to medium-sized companies with very little extra cash to spare. However, marketing is one expense that can be considered a necessity. If you want decent to good returns, you have to make investments that give you something back. So if you’re writing off paid search, this is the part where I go: “Not so fast!”. Combined with what you’re doing currently, it can be highly effective at helping maximize your visibility and make the most of your overall efforts.
What do you guys think about integrating PPC into local marketing strategies? Is it worth the investment? Let us know below.
Chiko Noguchi is a best practices activist and advocate for a leading provider of email marketing services.
One assumes that a corporate blog has more functions that a blog that is maintained by a hobbyist. The difference between a corporate blog and a commercial blog is that a corporate blog is not really set up in order to sell products.
It may have promotional content posted on it, but its primary aim is to keep interested parties up to date with current information, to keep investors in interest and to help maintain the corporate concern’s public image/online PR.
What can your corporate blog do for you?
It is able to keep investors interested, and there are certain things you can do in order to have investors sign up for your RSS feed. These are the same things that will have people set up Google Alerts in order to see posts such as the ones in your blog.
There are also things you can do to keep interested parties reading your blog. You can use your blog to help you attract new members of staff.
There are posts that you can create that will maintain the interest of your competitors, industry experts, academics and potential business partners. There are also posts you can create that will help to improve your public image and online PR.
Give information that downright blurs the line of insider trading
This will keep investors interested. The things you write on these posts are the things that people set up Google Alerts for, and people who are looking to buy stocks and shares in your company will sign up for your RSS fee.
But, to make sure this happens, you need to publish information that is likely to alter your share price.
You will probably be giving press releases on this sort of thing anyway, so adding posts to your blog should not be a struggle. The best thing however, is that you are able to be a little more creative in just how positive your blog post is.
You are allowed to be a little more biased in your direction than you may be able to be on your yearly reports and press releases.
Blog about how well you are doing when your share price starts to rise
This will have investors and interested parties frothing at the mouth. People often try to understand why a share price starts to climb.
People want to get in on the ground floor (so to speak) before the share price becomes too high.
They also want a little reassurance that the trend will continue to go up.
If you explain that your share price has gone up, and then give a possible reason, it will lull investors and interested parties into a belief that you control your own destiny (share price) and that future trends may be anticipated.
Create a blog post about how happy your staff are every two months
This is good for your public image, but is also good for HR purposes.
A post about staff parties, staff events, or staff initiatives will make potential new staff more interested in applying.
You may even offer a place to submit an application at the bottom of the blog post.
You will need to do this sort of thing every two months so that any temporary staff-moral problems do not appear to be as big as they possibly are.
Plus, six posts per year about how happy your staff are cannot hurt your online and offline reputation either.
Post blogs giving information about new developments in your market/industry
This will interest your competitors, industry experts, academics and potential business partners.
You will receive repeat traffic from the people that matter in your industry.
These are also the people who are likely to inform other people about your blog too.
Post a blog about your charitable work at least twice per year
This is a nice and inoffensive way of improving your public image and online PR.
It is not as exploitative as advertising your charitable work, and only mentioning it twice per year does not make it appear as if you are doing it for the positive attention.
You could also make yourself appear whiter than white by showing people how they are able to help the charity that you have been helping.
BIO: My name is Kate Funk. I am an expert in coaching individuals in business networking skills and math tutoring .
When it comes to eCommerce owners, they expect everything to be perfect, professional and favouring them. Before you enter the online market, you must be aware of the fact that there is immense competition on the market and in order to survive it in a good and healthy manner, an individual needs to rely on the best hosting plan.
Gone are those days when you had to break your head for the right web hosting plan, today anything and everything is easily available and just a click away. There are different kinds of hosting plans catering to different needs but what is important to note is that each of these plans caters a particular clan. So, it all comes down to finding a good web hosting for your business. If you take random decisions, certainly it is not going to favour you, because there would always be a risk factor hovering around.
Business needs are best met by opting for a reliable business web hosting plan. However amidst all this, what’s most important is to choose the right hosting plan. Some people follow the recommendations or online search results blindly, which may or may not work in your favour.
The best way to find good web hosting for your business is by keeping a few factors in mind. Of what has been seen, some people had to pay a heavy price for taking a wrong decision, which was certainly due to lack of research. This is where you ought to understand that taking a right decision is always going to favour your business.
You can start by knowing all about the downtime being offered by the chosen web hosting plan. This factor is essential because in terms of good maintenance and healthy performance, reduced downtime is a must. It is certainly hard not to find any service without a downtime but you can surely find a feasible deal offering lowest possible downtime so that there is an easy access to the site.
Secondly, you must brush through the available features; settle down with a business web hosting plan that surely is going to benefit your business. If you can’t weigh on the pros and cons of different features due to lack of knowledge, start by getting to know the basics. The World Wide Web has immense literature on each of these factors, services and in general about hosting.
Ultimately, settle for a web hosting company that offers client satisfaction and high end customer service. It is not very hard to know if a company is good enough in terms of communication with the customer. The general tone of speech, presentation of services and discussions often give away enough about the company or in general the kind of web hosting.
So, if you notice each of the above mentioned factors or aspects holds a great deal of importance. Not being able to cater to each of them, you are going to find it difficult to get the best hosting on board. Truly, it would ultimately cause hurdles in your business dealings, therefore finding the best hosting should be your primary criteria.
Author bio: I am Michelle Ryan from Manchester. I work as a Freelance blogger. In my free time I review Software and gadgets. I enjoy writing and singing. This article explains about the importance of finding the right business web hosting plan for any kind of business.
Unless one is measuring Twitter marketing efforts, marketing through this medium is a shot in the dark. It is through the analysis of data on Twitter campaigns that you will be able to evaluate and pull insights on whether the operation is benefiting your company or business.
However, Twitter does not offer any way of measuring how a marketing exercise is paying off.
If you are using Twitter, you should start measuring it if you have not already.
Avoid just measuring for the sake of the metrics.
Rather, measure your Twitter activities to learn what is paying off and what is not while at the same time how this can be improved.
There are measurements you can use for your business. This can be done by addressing a number of issues:
* How effective are your Twitter activities
* How to choose the metrics to be monitored
* Calculation of the metrics
* Interpretation of the numbers after getting them
There are many ways of doing Twitter or social media measurement.
You can decide on ongoing monitoring analytics that tracks over time the social media activities. Metrics focused on a campaign can be used where the event analytics have a clear start and end.
Use of ongoing analytics is very important to keep the general impetus of general conversation on a business. After brand setting has been done, let it run; leave it to run on its own and pop in frequently to see what has been happening.
Metrics focused on a campaign will help to understand the impact of targeted marketing strategies and variations from one campaign to the next, depending on the goals each has.
For an effective measure of whether Twitter campaigns are producing results, both measurements can be used.
Establish social goals
Prior to measuring each tweet about your brand, have your social goals in mind.
Know what you are trying to accomplish though the channel. Generate a list of what you want to accomplish from Twitter usage.
It can be used to serve a number of purposes such as broadcasting information, answering customer queries and perhaps engaging a particular community.
Think through what you would like the targeted audience to do with the information; whether you would like them to engage, buy, click, reply, read or share by listing the goals.
Make goal measuring metrics
Match goals to real behavior and actual metrics that are measurable.
For instance, if you are measuring engagement, you must know the most pragmatic engagement form that should be tracked.
Measure awareness by using metrics such as amplification, exposure, reach and volume to know how far the message has been spreading.
Measure engagement by looking at metrics around participants, replies and retweets, knowing how many individuals are taking part, in what form and how often.
In case your aim is to drive as much traffic as possible to your site, track conversions, clicks and URL shares.
Know what people do when they arrive at your site and if they are going there at all.
Measure
After listing the metrics to center on, find the tools capturing the metric and begin measuring.
Twitter lacks a unique analytic tool and you might be required to use third part analytic tools or building your own. Most of these tools deliver results in real-time.
Plan ahead by setting the tracking even before the
Twitter marketing campaign has started or before reporting on the same. You will make it very easy to access all the information needed at a later date.
Monitoring and reporting
The results from the measurement must be reported.
The initial findings will set the benchmark for other measurements in future and the figures need to be shared if you are in a company that has stakeholders.
You need to know how the numbers compare with your expectations, your competitors, campaigns and related commodities.
The analytics are so crucial since it is possible to know how your competitor is doing.
Keep a regular check on the metrics, whether you are busy or not, otherwise all your efforts could be going to waste.
As they accumulate over a specific period, the value of the data will be clear after a number of months have lapsed and new data to compare with it has been collected.
Always remember to carry out careful review of the measurement to know whether anything is amiss, the state of the metrics and whether the entire or a part of the process was unnecessary or superfluous.
It will help in making changes and doing some improvements for the sake of your future Twitter marketing campaigns.