Google held their presentation in a large auditorium enough to capacitate the whole lot of us and focused their first presentation on trends in the industry. This is the one piece of information I took from it. Social media and mobile marketing is not a fad. Paraphrased and not that I thought otherwise but if Google says it, it must be true… right? 

So we broke for lunch, killed about an hour and a bit talking to people and what not, then we (Google conference attendees) were separated into two groups, by choice of course. Beginner or advanced? Not that I claim to be an expert on AdWords, I chose the advanced seminar hoping to pick up some tidbit or gem that I could take back to the office. Nope. I had to double check again to see if I had entered the beginner room by mistake.

I don’t know who they were targeting with their presentation because it wasn’t helpful enough to people who have some sort of understanding, yet I heard from a couple of people with no understanding that it was very confusing and too heavy on the lingo that means nothing to them. It’s Google… one of the most recognizable brands in the world… I thought this was going to be the be all and end all of seminars. Oh well.

I’ll sum it up to my top ten benefits to make it a little easier of a read for you since this post is already getting too text heavy.

My Top 10 Benefits of Google AdWords

1. Allows you to be seen on Google
2. Cost effective way to market your business or products
3. You chose how much or how little you want to spend
4. Your position on Google is not determined by how much you spend, but rather by how relevant your ad is to your target and how many clicks you receive
5. All of your ads are completely customizable in terms of what text or link is displayed. If you’re running ads on the Google Content Network, your ads can even have images and video.
6. All of your ads are completely targetable by keywords, location, even time of day. If you’re running ads on the Google Content Network, you can even target your ads to certain age demographics.
7. All of your ads are easy to track to see which ones are performing well and which need to be revised, allowing you to spend your dollar wisely
8. AdWords software is very user friendly and will allow you to make it as complicated or as simple as you want
9. Google provides tools to generate keyword ideas, they let you know how heavy the competition is for each of the keywords you are targeting, recommend pricing points and much more to help you maximize your money
10. It will boost traffic to your website and create more brand awareness

Okay a little weird, but they thoroughly enjoyed it and it went on for months. My kids, who were key characters in the story, got great pleasure out of cleverly avoiding the cleansing from the Bucket Lady on a nightly basis.

You might say that it was my first pre-internet blog. It was original content that resonated with my listeners, who looked forward to the next release and shared the story with their closest friends. Moving forward, we’re now telling our story to a vast audience, eager to listen and share information too…if it’s relevant.

What’s involved? Personally I take a few hours every weekend to create my blog for the following week. After a while it becomes a habit. You let recent events shape the article and relay something you find interesting and others might too. Blogging is a big contributor to our significantly increased rankings on Google. Like any new initiative it takes time, someone in your organization needs to champion the cause and collaborative writing across your team is a big help.

Lee’s quote for the day, “It is better to have blogged and not been tweeted then to never have blogged at all.”

"629,000 results. Wow. And all this time I thought that Googling yourself meant the other thing."

What do you do when you are puzzled by something? You google it, like everyone else, since Google is the dominant search engine. Today millions of business professionals are only willing to reach as far as their keyboard for the answers they need. The question is will they find you? Do yourself a favor, Google yourself and find out if you are on the first page. If you’re not, here are some things you can do to increase your visibility on Google:

1. Update your employees’ profiles (photos, bios, links to their online profiles)

Web analytics reveal that the most viewed pages are the About Us and Contact Us pages. Why is that? It is driven by genuine human curiosity. People want know who they are doing business with, their names and faces, and not only that, they want to contact them too!

2. Blog, Blog, Blog.

As highlighted in our previous blog articles, there are many benefits in blogging. You can write about the things your customers want to know, share your insights in the market, and anything else that may interest your clients.

3. Incorporate Social Media on your site.

Social Media creates much larger audience groups for businesses. The Internet is a public and social place and having social media incorporated within your website means you are connected to more people more topics and subjects, thus increasing the chances your website will be picked up by Google’s search engine.

What else do you need? Commitment, Commitment and Commitment! It is a full time job to maintain your website and do it right. Update your website, blog and social media frequently, as a less active site is not going to rank well on Google.

B2B companies are ahead of their B2C rivals when it comes to social media adoption

• 81% of B2B companies maintain company-related accounts or profiles on social media sites versus 67% of B2C
• 75% of B2Bers participate in microblogging (eg. Twitter) versus 49% of B2Cers

Source: Business.com – 2009 B2B Social Media Benchmarking Study (http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007404)

And the FTSE 100 are just plain running scared of Twitter

• Just 16 of the FTSE 100 companies are using Twitter, despite the fact that 20% of Tweets contain a reference to a product or brand

Source: Virgin Media Business (http://ow.ly/1gDTf)

But CIOs could well be the biggest blocker to social media adoption

• 54% of CIOs prohibit use of social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, while at work

Source: Robert Half Technology (http://rht.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=131&item=790)

Use of social media by B2B companies is validated by B2B buyer perspectives

• 93% of business buyers believe all companies should have a presence in social media
• 85% believe companies should not just present information via social media, but use it to interact and become more engaged with them

Source: Cone Inc – Social Media in business (http://ow.ly/1dLqJ)

And that’s because the B2B buying process is fundamentally changing

• 9 out of 10 buyers say that when they’re ready to buy, they’ll find you

Source: DemandGen Report

• Over 70% of purchases are restricted to established vendors or are heavily dependent on Word of Mouth recommendations

Source: Buyersphere ebook, Enquiro (http://ow.ly/YbQm)

• More than 8 out of 10 IT decision-makers said word of mouth recommendations are the most important source when making buying decisions

Source: Forrester Research, How to take B2B relationships from Indifferent to Engaged: Jan 2009

• 59% of B2B buyers engaged with peers who addressed their challenge, 48% followed industry conversations on the topic and 37% posted questions on social networking sites looking for suggestions

Source: Genius (http://www.genius.com/marketinggeniusblog/2767/a-glimpse-inside-the-mind-of-the-new-b2b-buyer.html)

Yet there are differing opinions as to where search comes into play in the buy cycle

• 7 out of 10 buyers say that they start their buying process at vendor sites, not Google

Source: DemandGen Report (http://ow.ly/1d82N)

Versus

• 93% of B2B buyers use search to begin the buying process

Source: Marketo (http://bit.ly/9O6pix)

If you think C-level executives aren’t active online, you’re sorely mistaken

• The Internet is the C-Suites top information resource (74% of C-Level executives say it’s very valuable)
• 53% of C-level executives said they prefer to locate information themselves
• The C-suite first turns to mainstream search engines (63%) to locate information
• 6 out of 10 C-Suite executives conduct more than six searches a day
• Executives in IT are the most prevalent users of the Internet for information gathering

Source: Forbes Insight – The Rise of the Digital C-Suite (http://www.forbes.com/forbesinsights/digital_csuite/index.html)

Client marketers are warming to the idea of social media, but many are still to act

• While 92% of client marketers agree that it would be unwise to ignore social media, 63% do not have a social media strategy

Source: The B2B Barometer (http://www.b2bbarometer.co.uk)

The relationship between Marketing and Sales in B2B organisations still remains fractious

• Sales generate 53% of their own leads and marketing contributes just 24%

Source: 2009 CSO Report (http://bit.ly/7EbaHS)

• 90% of marketing deliverables are not used by sales

Source: The New Rules of Sales Enablement (http://tiny.cc/jXRxX)

• 49% of B2B marketers confess to not measuring ROI

Source: The B2B Barometer (http://www.b2bbarometer.co.uk)

And if you still don’t get the whole social media thing, it’s worth bearing in mind…

• 89% of journalists make use of blogs while conducting their online research and 96% turn to corporate websites
• 56% said social media was important or somewhat important for reporting and producing stories

* Note: We have used and abused the above information, as the author insisted. A special thanks for the folks at Earnest Agency.

1. Over fifty percent of the world’s population is under 30-years-old.
2. All but 4% of them have joined a social network.
3. Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the United States.
4. Social Media has overtaken pornography as the number one activity on the Web.
5. One out of eight couples married in the United States last year met via social media.
6. Years it takes to reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…
7. Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year.
8. iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
9. We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it. (Ok, maybe some of us do have a choice).
10. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s third largest ahead of the United States and only behind China and India.
11. Yet, QQ and Renren dominate China.
12. 2009 U.S. Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction.
13. 80% of companies use social media for recruitment; Percentage of these using LinkedIn 95%.
14. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females.
15. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the populations of Ireland, Norway, or Panama, which are in the couple of million.
16. Half of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook … people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
17. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé, some universities have stopped distributing e-mail accounts.
18. Instead they are distributing electronic readers such as eReaders + iPads + Tablets.
19. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
20. The second largest search engine in the world is YouTube, though its not really a real search engine.
21. While you watch this 100+ hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube.
22. Wikipedia has over 15 million articles…studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English.
23. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs, a majority of them are inactive, but this is NOT one of them.
24. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth.
25. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $1,712.32 per hour, which is a lot more than I make.
26. 25% of search results for the World’s Top twenty largest brands are links to user-generated content.
27. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands.
28. Do you like what they are saying about your brand? Do you even know what they’re saying about your brand? You better.
29. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them.
30. 78% of consumers trust recommendations given to them by their peers. 22%, don’t.
31. Only 14% trust advertisements.
32. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI.
33. 90% of people that can TiVo to skip through advertisments, do.
34. Kindle eBooks Outsold Paper Books on Christmas, but they didn’t outsell Chocolate Easter eggs on Easter.
35. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation.
36. 60 millions status updates happen on Facebook daily, two of which came today from our two blog posts.
37. We no longer search for the news, the news finds us, via RSS and other formats that is.
38. We will no longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media.
39. Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.
40. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like Mad Men Listening first, selling second.
41. The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in five years, unless you’re a really bad businessman.

Check it out while you can, it will disappear by tomorrow. Happy Gaming!

What does this mean in terms of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? Well, the answer is quite simple, you should primarily focus on optimizing for Google above all others, but don’t forget about Yahoo and Bing, because if the market shifts unexpectedly, it means that you have your bases covered. We all remember when AltaVista was king back in the late 90’s, only to be driven into irrelevancy by its failed portal attempt and the rise of Google. Whatever SEO marketer you choose, make sure they optimize for Yahoo and Bing as well.

Everybody always says: “Why should I bother?” “What is the ROI?” Or, “It’s not right for my business” and the list goes on. There is absolutely no way to promise a certain ROI, a certain number of viewers or a specific number of sales directly related to these outlets. It comes down to common sense; the larger the presence you have on the internet, the more people will notice your company; the greater the chances of one of these viewers utilizing your products or services. It’s always a numbers game and the more, the merrier.

It will take some time to get used to using the various media websites but after a while you will get the hang of it, and you will be able to keep it updated with minimal effort. There is no sense in getting overwhelmed by the thought of tackling all of this at once. Start with one until you’re able to fully understand how to keep it fresh without spending a lot of time. A company blog is a great start and allows anyone in the business to write about their specific fields, showcasing diversity and allowing visitors to understand all aspects of your business.

Another benefit to using Social Media is that it will eventually increase your page ranking on Google. Setting up a blog and writing original, informative articles that the internet community will not only read, but link to, is a great way to start with Social Media. Again, the more original and unique content your business has on the internet, the more Google will visit your pages and it will assume that your information is more important than the majority. It isn’t exactly easy though, it will take a lot of patience so don’t get discouraged if your pages aren’t getting a lot of hits right away. If you’re posting interesting and informative articles on a consistent basis, the people will come, so keep at it!

Please leave a comment or ask a question, we are happy to help!

Many of these spam comments are posted with a link, that links to the site in which the author is trying to drive more traffic to. There are potential consequences for both the spamming comment poster, as well as the site where the spamming comment is being posted on. Many search engines like original content – content that was explicitly written by you, and not repeated too many times anywhere else. For example, the more original content your website has, the higher it will rank on Google. If you allow comment spamming on your site, you run the risk of making your website less relevant to searches, because the content of your site (the spam comment) is duplicated across many other sites. The other consequence is that to the spam comment poster, in that they run the risk of getting their site delisted from the search engine indexes.

So time now for some tips. First off, don’t approve any comments that you may come across on your blog. Go through all of them with a fine toothcomb, and only approve the ones that address specific items in your blog article. Secondly, if you’re going to post comments on other blogs, make sure they’re unique, well thought out, and well written. Don’t do a copy and paste job, cause it will hurt your blog in the long run.

For comment moderation, blogging software such as WordPress come with an anti-spamming plugin called Akismet. All you have to do is enable the plugin by getting a WordPress.com API key. The majority of the time Akismet will find 99% of comment spam automatically. It’s not enabled by default, so make sure to turn it on.

Happy Blogging from Palmer Marketing …

For example, let’s say you have a potential customer in Ottawa, who sells computer equipment, and needs to ship out a skid load (Less than Truckload or LTL) of computer parts to Toronto. The web savvy customer will type in “LTL Ottawa Toronto” in the search engine, and a bunch of results related to LTL shipping throughout Ontario will show up. Will your company be among them? This is where SEO comes into play. Through the use of strategically placed keywords, well written original copy and other optimizations, your company can achieve a better search result on the web.

Here are some of our Top 10 tips for a successful website, both from a Marketing and a SEO perspective:

1. Strike the right balance between loading speed and visual impact of your home page.
2. Capture your visitors’ interest immediately.
3. Deliver a clear and direct message.
4. Ensure your navigation is easy to use, well organized, and draws on current techniques.
5. Enhance your message with complementary fonts, captions, and headlines.
6. Increase return visits by posting regular updates.
7. Make sure your logo and tagline are well crafted and consistent.
8. Provide immediate access to customer login, language selection, and other popular features.
9. Utilize SEO.
   - Use proper keywords and descriptions on each page.
   - Make navigation elements easily recognized by search engines.
   - Optimize headings and alternate text for images.
   - Ensure your URLs are search engine friendly and anchor texts are descriptive.
10. Gain insight on your web traffic with Google Analytics (or equivalent).
    - Visits – Monitor the number of repeat and new visitors to your website.
    - Bounce Rate – Know how many visitors leave immediately after the first page is viewed.
    - Time – See the average time visitors spend on your website.
    - Traffic – Learn where your top 25 sources of visitors are coming from.
    - Keywords – Recognize the top 25 words searched on Google to get to your website.

Because of the large amount of websites that exist on the Internet, in the past few years many SEO Marketing companies have popped up on the web. A lot of them will claim that they can offer a number one ranking for your website in Google or other search engines. According to Google, this is simply not the case. You cannot buy your way into getting a better search result on Google, but you can however optimize your site so that it has a better chance of showing up near the top of your search results. You can pay to run advertisements on Google through a program called AdWords, but we’ll explore that in a future SEO article.

We’re in the business of creating websites and marketing campaigns that communicate your unique story. Contact us, so that your CEO will get SEO, and that your CFO can LOL.