April 2010

This list is loooonggg and long overdue

Anyone who was at or spoke about #f5expo – all in one place.

(And..if you missed my search engine optimization & paid search marketing talk or my talk on local marketing, follow the links!)

Follow away!

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8am: Coffee…I need coffee… This is my first industry event experience, and somehow I’m late.  But first things first:  I need a Starbucks.

9am:  Clutching my Starbucks like it’s my life, I’m trying to figure out why there are in excess of 500 people in the line to register, even though I’m technically running a half hour late.  Apparently, there’s something wrong with the registration session, so anyone who has the confirmation email on their email-bearing electronic device can use that to get in.  The opening keynote starts in 10 minutes.  Awesome – I made it after all!

The opening keynote was given by Todd Maffin, and opening remarks made by Lindsay Smith.  I liked hearing what Todd had to say.  “Working less, getting more done” is all the rage right now, but Todd made an honest, candid case for taking things one step at a time, abandoning multi-tasking, and working no more than 8 hours a day.  I also liked his theme:  “Taking Back Crazy”.

10.30am: First session; “Social Media Metrics” with Darren Barefoot, Kris Krug, and Alfredo Tan.  They covered the basics of how to measure your social media presence and general sentiment.  It was informative but covered very little I didn’t already know.  I guess the discussion panels are meant for people looking to gain an overview of things that aren’t their expertise.

12.45pm:  Lunch Break.  Well, lunch started earlier than this, but I just wandered around and looked at trade booths.  By 12.45, I had wandered back out into the hall and ran into Brian Wong, a friend of mine from UBC who was on the App Development discussion panel later on.  We were talking for about 5 minutes when I realized… that the guys he was standing with were none other than affiliate marketing guru John Chow, and Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes!  Whoa.  I feel a little bit star struck, but they’re both very friendly and easygoing guys.  After a bit more running into people I know (and meeting a few I didn’t know), lunch break ends.

Rest of the afternoon:  I attend 2 more discussion panels, Cost Effective Video Marketing and Mobile Marketing:  The App Explosion, before I realize that discussion panels really aren’t my thing.  I go back to the trade floor and see Adam presenting to a standing-room-only crowd.  It looked to me like the mini-presentations in the trade show area were more popular than the discussion panels.  There are massive screens showing tweets about #F5EXPO.  The tweets’ general consensus was “#F5EXPO:  fun times, basic stuff.  Oh, and registration fail”.   It’s amusing to see dozens of opinionated tweets on one giant screen.

3.45pm:  I head home.  I wasn’t able to get in to see Malcolm Gladwell, so I grabbed another coffee and left.

Because this was my first time at an event like this, I didn’t even have time to blink because there was so much to see.  Rubbing shoulders with the Who’s Who of the internet marketing world also made for an exciting day.  Overall, I thought that the conference went over very well.  Despite registration woes, everyone managed to get in and learn, mingle and network.  I didn’t enjoy the discussion panels as much as I thought I would; I wish I’d spent more time on the trade show floor, watching the smaller presentations.  Also, the biggest thing I learned was this:

People attend trade shows to make connections and socialize.  The best place to pick up industry buzz, make connections and learn something worthwhile is in the hallways outside the expo rooms.

Probably a basic concept that most people would have known, but even so, I felt like it was well worth it for me to attend.  I can’t wait for the next one.  See you there!

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This is the second of my two talks delivered at www.f5-expo.com last week.

(Follow this link to see my talk on local web marketing.)

Grab the SEO & PPC talk on slideshare here:

SEO and Paid Search: An Intro

Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing continue to be the main sources of website traffic for most businesses but if your company is just starting out on the web, what should you focus on?

In this session, you’ll learn the answer to that question as well as:

• Why search is so powerful & how to take advantage of it
• How to get started with SEO & PPC
• And how to make money using search: a tried, tested, and true formula

Why Search is so Powerful

Search is a powerful tool for businesses because it gives you the ability to show up in front of your potential customers at exactly the point in time when they are looking for your products and services.

It is also powerful because huge numbers of people use search engines every day. In the end it has to do with timing, relevance, and numbers.

Each of us has multiple “information needs” throughout the day. We have questions to problems, we have things we need to buy, and a million things we need to learn about. Typically we use search engines to satisfy these needs, to find answers to our questions, and to find products that satisfy our desires.

Because search engines like Google are very good at giving us what we want, and fast- we’ve become accustomed to using them, almost to an extreme.

Getting back to why search is powerful to you as a business owner:

If you show up in front of people at the exact moment in time they’re looking for something AND what you’re site is showing up for is targeted, timely, and relevant to what the user wants, you have an excellent chance at starting a relationship with that visitor, generating a sale or getting that visitor to take some type of meaningful action with your business.

Contrast that to traditional advertising:

In the past, we’d have to hear about over and over again in order to know about it. We’d see it on TV or in a print publication multiple times.

By taking advantage of search engines, you put yourself in front of people only when they actually have an interest in what you have to offer and are actively looking for a solution to their problems. That’s power!

How to take advantage of Search

So how do you take advantage of search?

It comes down to showing up in the right places.

What I mean by this is your website needs to show up when people do a search for your products and your services or information related to your business.

Step #1 Know Your target market

When it comes to any marketing you ever do, the most important thing you can do is understand your potential customer’s needs, wants and desires. You need to get inside their heads and understand what problems they have, what their fears are, and what the itch is that your product or services will satisfy.

Step one then is market research or customer research. By doing this kind of research, you’re going to begin addressing step 2 which is:

Step #2 Your keywords (actually your potential customer’s keywords!) are key.

When it comes to search and paid search, everything starts with keywords.

Keywords or key phrases are the words and phrases people type into search engines like Google in order to search for a result. Every time we type a search query into a search engine, our hope is that we will quickly find the most relevant piece of information to what we are looking for.

So keywords are where you start when it comes to showing up in search engines. Keyword research is the process that you use to figure out what terms and phrases your website should be showing up for.

You can get started on keyword research by checking out Google’s free keyword research tool. Just Google the term: Google Keyword tool.

Step #3 SEO & PPC

Once you have a very good idea of who you’re trying to reach and the terms and phrases they use when they think of your business, the next thing to do is look at getting your website to show up in the search engines of your choice for the terms and phrases your target market is looking for.

There are two main ways to do this: SEO & PPC

SEO refers to search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is the process of working on a website (a.k.a optimizing) to have it show up in a search engines search results for a given search term or a variety of search terms.

There are things you can do to a website to make them easier for search engines to “read” and find and there are also things you can do such off of a website that can help your rankings. These are known as on page and off page factors.

• Title of your blog posts
• Title of each web page
• Content of your web pages
• Meta Description tag
• H1 Tags
• Etc.

PPC refers to pay-per-click marketing. PPC is the process of showing ads along side the search results. Typically, in Google, Youtube, Yahoo and Bing, the top 4 search engines, ads show up on the right hand side of the page next to the search results. Sometimes they also show up at the very top or the very bottom of the page depending on how many advertisers there are and other factors.

The idea with Pay-per-click is that you can show your ads to as many people as are searching for the keywords you’ve chosen but you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad. Because your ads only show when the keywords you choose are searched on, your ads have a much greater chance of being relevant to the person doing the search.

In the past impressions were what mattered most. Today, impressions are important but more important are clicks AND even more important are conversions. Clicks are when someone sees your ad and finds it relevant or interesting enough to click on it. Conversions are when they visit your website as a result and actually purchase something or fill out a contact form or take some other measurable action.

Clicks mean website traffic.

Conversions mean sales, leads or sign ups.

Both are important but ultimately it’s conversions we’re all after.

How to get started with SEO

Your goals: remember, it’s important to always keep your target market, your customers in mind when optimizing a site.

What they are looking for is what you need to show up for.

Content

The content of your website is important for two reasons. First, it’s what your prospects and customers will be interacting with when they visit your site. Your content needs to answer their questions, solve their problems, make them feel good and build belief that your company, your products and your services will make them better off.

It also needs to persuade them to take action, for example: purchasing your products or completing a contact form.

The second reason content is important is that it can be read by search engines. Now, this is not a big deal on its own, remember, it’s only important to us because millions of people use search engines every day and we want to get in front of a portion of those people.

So how do you get started on your content?

Open up MS Word and re-write your website to do a better job of answering your customers questions and prove to them that your company can scratch their itch! (aka: satisfy their needs, wants, desires-)

Then submit your updates to your webmaster or make them yourself if you manage your own site.

The other thing you can do is to add relevant content to your website regularly over time.

Links

Links from other websites are important as they can bring you traffic from other websites and possibly improve your rankings in search engines. Typically, the more links you have from relevant websites (websites in your industry for example) the better. Search engines have long looked at links as a vote for your website- an indication that your site is important.

A way you can start building links is by talking to anyone you know in your industry, or in related industries who runs a blog or a website, to link to your site.

Code

The code of a website can be optimized as well. Optimizing the code of a site is beyond the scope of today’s talk. However, there is a ton of information about this online.

If you want more information on optimizing the code of a website, please email me or message me on Twitter and I’ll send you a few links to great articles on the topic.

How to get started with Pay-per-click Advertising

Probably the simplest way to get started with PPC is to hire someone to create and manage a campaign for you.

The next best way, if you want to get your feet wet, would be to visit http://adwords.google.com and watch their introductory video and read their intro material and then go through the steps of opening a Google Adwords beginner account.

Adwords gives you the option of starting a simple, beginner style campaign when you first get going.

Note: before you start, it’s best to invest time learning about how to do keyword research. Google has a free keyword research tool that will help you get started. Google the term “Google keyword tool” to find it.

How to make money using search: a tried, tested, and true formula

1. Market research + Keyword research = Targeted Relevant Content*
2. Targeted Relevant Content + Targeted links = Targeted Traffic
3. Targeted Traffic + Relevant Calls to Action** = Conversions (sales & leads)

Summarized: Traffic + Conversions = Sales

That’s it!

*For our purposes content can mean website content and the content of your advertising.

**This assumes you have something to sell at a profit!

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Last Wednesday (April 7th) I spoke at www.f5-expo.com, a Vancouver based social media & internet marketing conference aimed at business owners and people new to online marketing.

I presented on two topics and mentioned to the audience I’d post my presentations online so they could download them.

This is the first presentation on local marketing.

(Follow this link to see my presentation on search engine optimization and pay-per-click.)

Enjoy!

Local Marketing

In this session you will learn “free” and paid ways to get local customers ringing your cash register.

Tip: Want to grab this on slideshare.net? Here you go!

Topics will include:

1. What local marketing really is, who should use it and what it can mean to your business
2. Which local site is red hot right now and how you can take advantage of it
3. How savvy companies are using social media to rock the local social web
4. Advice on tools you can start taking advantage of today to get in front of your local customers

What local marketing really is, who should use it and what it can mean to your business

Local marketing is the process of marketing & advertising to people in the geographic area you do business with via the web and mobile devices.

LM is hot today as it’s easier than ever before for businesses of all sizes to reach out to customers in their immediate vicinity. More and more business owners have also woken up to their need to be found easily by their customers online.

Another reason it’s hot is because of the trend right now of people flocking to the web to write and read reviews of businesses close to them.

Some typical ways your business might get in front of local customers include:

• In search engines via Local SEO & geographically targeted PPC advertising
• In social networks through advertising or social media campaigns
• Via mobile applications or mobile searches
• On third party local directories such as Internet Yellow Pages sites or city focused directories and portals

Which local site is red hot right now and how you can take advantage of it:

Without a doubt, Yelp.com is one of the hottest locally focused social sites on the web right now. Yelp.com is a site that allows anyone to sign up, create a profile, and begin reviewing and talking about businesses in their local area.

While restaurant reviews are the focus of many yelp users, more and more businesses outside of the dining industry are showing up in yelp. And it can help just about any business to have positive reviews by customers posted there.

One of the ways you can get started with local marketing is to take advantage of Yelp’s free business owner’s account. A business owner’s account allows you to create a business page where people can post reviews of your business.

One of the advantages of this is that you can interact with your customers and potential customers as they post reviews, almost in real time. If by any chance you receive a negative review, you can get involved in the conversation and address the issue as soon as it happens. This is a great way to show people you’re aware, listening and interested in solving their problems.

Another way Yelp enables you to get started with local marketing is by giving you the ability to show locally targeted ads to customers in your area.

The last thing I’ll say is that Yelp is here today and every hour on the hour they’re giving tutorials on how to use their site for your business.

How savvy companies are using social media to rock the local social web:

Savvy business owners have caught on to the local trend and they’re taking advantage of the wide variety of tools and services out there. They’re insuring they are investing some time and money showing up in the right places online. This means they’re making sure their business is showing up where people are spending time online- specifically, websites and services that are focused on or tied to a location.

Here are a few specific examples of tools business are using to rock the social web here in Vancouver:

Facebook Advertising – Advertise based on geographic location: your ads only show to people in areas you specify. Promote events, share information, create apps and more. You also setup locally focused fan pages and setup and promote local events.

Yelp – Claim your business listing, post your business hours, add photos and most importantly join the conversation about your business. You can also advertise to people using Yelp.

Foursquare – promote special offers that require people to actually drop by your store front. There are several coffee shops and restaurants using Foursquare in Yaletown right now to reward customers who drop by and check in.

Advice on tools you can start taking advantage of today to get in front of your local customers

In addition to the services mentioned a moment ago, here are a few more powerful tools you can use to be found by customers locally:

Google Local Business Center

LBC as Google calls it is probably one of the first services you should sign up for. It’s likely that you already have a Google account or that you are using Gmail or another Google service which makes signing up for LBC easy.

LBC is free and enables you to show up in the local search results complete with posting the location of your business on Google Maps.

In addition to gaining visibility in Google’s search results that you might not have had before, LBC allows you to post coupons to motivate customers to shop with you, and also allows you to post useful information about your business.

One other important benefit is that -like on Yelp, people can leave comments and feedback on your business.

Google also provides a great reporting dashboard that enables you to see useful information about how your customers are finding you.

To claim your listing, visit http://Google.com/local/add and sign up.

I’ve got two more things for you, that you can do to get started with local marketing:

The first is: Google Adwords

• Local keywords
• Geotargeting
• Local address tag feature
• Content network

Don’t Forget Your own website!

Remember to post new content to your website and to give this content a local focus. Talk about upcoming events you’re involved in, include your address and local phone number on all pages of your site.

Make sure it’s quickly obvious that you are a locally based business. You can do this by including your phone number and address on every page, using local imagery, or by spicing up your web copy with locally focused terms and phrases.

Summary

• Establish a local presence on social networks by advertising and by getting involved in the conversation
• Take Advantage of Google’s LBC
• Use Google Adwords to target more people when they are searching
• Work on making your website more friendly and obvious to local customers

Questions? Post them to the comments section.

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