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Blogging is Still a Good Complement for Your Small Business Web Site

Bill Ives — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 12:30:42 +0000

Here is useful data from a recent study of over 1,500 HubSpot customers (mostly small- and medium-sized businesses). 795 of the businesses in my sample blogged, 736 didn’t. It clearly demonstrated that companies with a blog have far better marketing results for their Web site. Specifically, the average company that blogs has: 55% more visitors, 97% more inbound links, and 434% more indexed pages. We have certainly found this to be the case with our Darwin Awareness Engine Blog. Others seems find this benefit as well. In the past three years there was a steady increase in company blogs with a rise from 38% in 2008 to 45% in 2009 to 50% in 2010 as reported by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

Kevin O’ Keefe offered some useful commentary on these results through his blog. He pointed out that blogs help with search results. If your provide valuable content you will generates incoming links which supplies more traffic and even better search results. If your provide valuable content your blog will generate a social network for you. People regularly share posts from blogs on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Twitter is my main source for finding out about what is happening on relevant blogs to my interests. I no longer have patience to sort through a RSS feed.

Has Twitter changed these reasons to blog? I think that Twitter complements blogs and does not replace them. Here is a useful post by Adam Singer that goes into detail on this point, 19 Reasons You Should Blog And Not Just Tweet. Twitter offers the sound bytes and blogs can go into depth. As noted in this blog post, many of the most useful tweets contain links to blogs and other content that goes into more depth.

Adam notes: “Unscientific observation: most bloggers use Twitter, but many Twitter users do not blog.” I think these non-blogging Twitters are missing the chance to have a substantial conversation with their audience.

Case in point, the 19 reasons to keep blogging could not be conveyed in Twitter but the title should draw a lot of RTs and click throughs to the actual post. Which is better to be a RT pointer or the owner of the content where the reader ends up? I encourage you to check on Adam’s 19 reasons. I agree with all of them. Blog on.

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Red Bull: Facebook Fan Page Example in Detail

Lisa Braziel — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 13:30:38 +0000

Continuing the series of 26 Facebook Fan Page Examples in Detail, I have taken a closer look at Red Bull’s Facebook Fan Page. Upon first impression, Red Bull carries over its active lifestyle and thrill seeker attitude to its Facebook Fan Page, where tabs and ongoing updates are all about the athletes they sponsor and the extreme sports they each play.

Red Bull Default Landing Tab

As you can tell, the page has ported over to the new fan page design. Prior to liking the page, there is a large graphical invitation that encourages the user to like the fan page. With over 15 million fans, this particular call to action seems to be working.

After liking the page the default tab offers a prominent invitation to “Explore The World Of Red Bull At Redbullusa.com,” and to watch six of the latest Red Bull sponsored videos. It my opinion, it is a little strange that the largest call to action after becoming a fan is to visit the website, instead of continuing engagement with the brand on Facebook.

Red Bull Athletes Tab

The “Athletes” tab aggregates tweets from RedBull sponsored athletes and can be narrowed to view updates from athletes from a specific sport. Although this tab brings content to Facebook, it provides links to visit the athlete’s website, official Facebook page, and link to follow the athlete on Twitter. Again, this user experience drives users once again off of Facebook, but in this case it drives users to several locations instead of just one.

Red Bull Games Tab

The “Games” tab is another custom tab that contains two main sections: the “Procrastination Station” and “Drunkish Dials”. The “Procrastination Station” showcases six games that are launched in a new window instead of played within Facebook. These games accurately reflect the brand messaging but yet again the tab sends audiences to separate microsites for each game.

The “Drunkish Dials” section of the tab includes a collection of drunk messages that consumers have left on the brand’s toll free number. Red Bull uploads its favorites to this tab where others can listen and rate these messages. Some of these are actually quite humorous, and others are simply annoying. Either way, I’m happy to see that this adds fun on Facebook and reflects the carefree attitude of the brand.

Additional Tabs

The other two customized Facebook tabs are “Web TV,” which offers exclusive free round the clock video content like how to break dance, and “Careers,” an outdated job posting tab that has not been updated since 2009. What is refreshing about these tabs compared to others is that they attempt to bring content to Facebook audiences.

Red Bull Content Strategy

As far as content frequency is concerned, RedBull is posting a few times a day every couple of days. This said, engagement from its audience is obviously lacking.

For engagement comparison purposes, we used Starbucks, since the two brands have comparable fan counts. Starbucks’ wall posts consist of a larger variety of content including videos, images, and links to specific pages on its web site, in addition to content about current events and occasions as they relate to the brand.

Red Bull’s posts are on the whole more about promoting Red Bull produced content, including promotional videos and athletes. Although Red Bull boasts 14 million fans, the data above suggests that Red Bull should redefine its content strategy so that the page can continue to keep growing through increased newsfeed inclusions.

What are your thoughts on Red Bull’s presence on Facebook? Please share in the comments below.

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Is Branding The Most Important Element To Business Promotion?

Mike Moran — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 13:30:36 +0000

Marketers often come from two distinct backgrounds. Brand marketers are the ones whose work you see on TV. They are all about branding, brand image, brand awareness–use whatever word you want–and their success has made Coca-Cola and many other consumer products into household names. Direct marketers are decidedly less sexy, traditionally focusing on catalogs or direct mail letters, constantly searching for the next idea that increases response. They are all about sales, and couldn’t care less about brand image as long as the cash register rings. All of which leads to the question, “Is branding more important than direct marketing?”

So, what about brand marketers and direct marketers? Ralph Kiner, the Hall of Fame baseball player, once said, “Home run hitters drive Cadillacs, and singles hitters drive Fords.” So it had always been with marketing, where brand marketers worked for the big names, got the big budgets, and the made the big money. Direct marketers were the singles hitters of marketing, toiling away in relative obscurity.

So, given the dichotomy between brand marketing and direct marketing, many people ask which one is more important. Luckily, the answer doesn’t force you to choose between brand awareness and sales. Despite the differences between brand and direct marketing, brand awareness and sales don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Despite its name, brand marketing is not the only way to raise brand awareness or improve your brand image. Direct marketing can raise brand awareness as well as sales. After all, if more people buy from you, I guarantee that your brand awareness is going up and that your brand trust is increasing. But the opposite is not always true. Trying to directly improve awareness and trust doesn’t always translate to higher sales.

What that means is that brand marketing might be important, but it has limitations. While improved brand awareness can lead to higher sales (and often does), the effect is indirect and hard to measure. And higher brand awareness should be a means, rather than an end. Sales needs to be the goal of all marketing, so direct marketing has a natural advantage over brand marketing.

Especially when thinking about Internet marketing, where direct marketing is so easy to implement, you should almost always lead with direct marketing techniques, assured that those approaches will also lead to the brand awareness you desire.

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Executing Social Plans To Promote Your Business

Lyndi Thompson — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 13:30:42 +0000

Can you believe that 2011 is just around the corner? For all businesses getting social was the theme being sung over and over by their marketing advisors. Tweeting and writing blog posts sounded like a great idea, however it is never the idea it is the execution. Here are 11 things you can start to plan for, create responsibilities in your team to handle and execute in the coming year.

WordPress – You don’t need a super fancy design to make your website great. What you need is a clean site, that allows you and your team the ability to update, add images, events, tweak and tweak content
Blog – Regular blog posts are a way for your current customers, potential customers, business partners and community to get to know your business. Share news, updates, promotions, employee highlights, answer customer questions and share videos. Plus, with WordPress you can create multiple blog posts and schedule out when posts will be posted live.
Email Newsletters – Recommend using MailChimp – Start out with their Always Free Service that gives you up to 1,000 email subscribers, and up to 6,000 emails sent a month. No limiting features and easy reporting.
Facebook Fan Page – Create a page that you can engage with your businesses’ existing fans. Another place to showcase news about your business, upcoming events, photos, and videos.
Twitter – Join in the conversation happening about your business, industry and brands. Starting an account is easy, spend some time listening and getting to know where to engage.
Biznik – Takes a village to be successful. Get to know local entrepreneurs, business owners and more through events, while showcasing your business, skills and interests.
Teach a lesson – Consider taking your business knowledge and expertise to the classroom and offer a class through Teachstreet. Building your personal brand while also helping others learn about your industry or subject.
Update Listings: From Google Places, Foursquare, Whrrl, CitySearch to Yelp spend time claiming your business listings, updating information and adding photos. Monitor the accounts to see what your customers are saying about you.
Get on YouTube: Create a YouTube channel and then bring out your little digital camera. Create short informational videos about you, your business, ideas and questions.
Google Alerts: Be emailed every time Google finds keywords about your business, brand or about you. Find out who is talking and where.
Read & Comment: Find blogs in your industry, where your customers are and give the author feedback, and reflections on their insights.

Looking forward to seeing all of your businesses engaging online with social media, email marketing and by writing great valuable content.

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Promote Yourself Through Facebook Page Optimization

Jen Williams — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 13:30:28 +0000

While the introduction of MySpace and early social networks was greeted with skepticism, there isn’t a single doubter left in the audience these days. Facebook has conquered Google as the most visited site, trounced television as the biggest waste of time, and become the primary way that many people connect. It’s not unsurprising, then, that optimizers have started to examine ways to get a page better ranked within Facebook’s internal search.

The process of optimization is somewhat simple, at least when compared with search engine optimization for websites. You will want to follow these basic steps:

1) Have a highly keyword-relevant page title.

2) Fill out the profile completely with keyword rich content, paying special attention to the “information” section.
3) Add media rich elements, including videos and images, preferably with tags or captions that are keyword relevant.
4) Be active on Facebook. Update your page status, create events for users, and otherwise remain present.
5) Get users to “like” you. The number one factor in deciding which page shows is the number of “likes” it has received, so this step is crucial. While viral marketing is often at the core of Facebook endeavors, the use of strategic advertisements can help the page get off to a racing start.

All of these elements factor into whether or not your site will appear as an autocomplete suggestion within Facebook’s search, or as a result for a fully completed search.

For those who are uncertain of the benefit of Facebook’s search alone, remember that all popular pages on Facebook come with a distinct URL that outside search engines rank by the standard algorithms. With so many inbound links from the “likers” of your page, optimization on Facebook can be a gateway to search engine ranking.

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