Google and 'social signals'

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Two years ago social media were mostly just for fun. Now Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on are used by millions of businesses across the world to drive traffic, win loyalty and build brands. 

Google and other search engines are starting to take 'social signals' into account when ranking websites in the search results pages. But are they using social signals per se? No. It's actually subtler than that. When you Tweet a link to your Twitter community, for instance, and a bunch of people click on the link, your site experiences extra traffic. Apparently it's the extra traffic that search engines respond to, not the social signals themselves. 

So it's important to make sure your website benefits from social signals. How? When you Tweet a link on Twitter, make sure the content you're linking to sits on your website. If you upload a photo to Twitter instead of your site's own directory, for example, all that lovely 'link juice' flows to Twitter, not your website. 

There are countless social networks to choose from, and they wax and wane in popularity. If you're running a small business there's no way you can get down and dirty with all of them. It takes time, effort and creativity to do it properly. It's best to choose your weapons and stick with them rather than trying to spin too many social media plates at once. Pick a maximum of three networks and stick with them, and you'll stay sane as well as eventually making a decent-sized impact! 

Here's a list of the types of content that you can broadcast in an effort to encourage traffic, bookmarks and back-links: 

• blog posts
• articles
• white papers
• ebooks
• images
• infographics
• fresh site content and redesigns
• landing pages
• competitions
• new products
• bright ideas
• revolutionary information
• contentious stuff

It's all about link bait. Link bait is the kind of content that people love to link back to, re-Tweet or whatever. If you choose Digg as one of your social networks, people will 'Digg' content they like, which pushes it to the top of Digg's front page. Much the same goes for Reddit. StumbleUpon lets you 'stumble' around on the internet and 'like' content based on your interests. Every network performs differently, and each has their own personality. 

Happy networking!

What is direct marketing? And is it relevant online?

Thursday, February 16, 2012

The internet is a fascinating commercial landscape to operate in. Search engines test numerous new variations of their search algorithms every day. Online businesses rise and fall. Social networks spring up then die back. New technologies, tools, platforms and widgets pop up and take us by surprise. It's a proper moveable feast. 

Luckily, whatever the marketing medium, us humans behave in much the same way when we're buying stuff. Which means direct marketing is just as relevant online as it is offline. 

So what is direct marketing? 

Direct marketing drives attributable sales. The words and design push readers towards a buying decision. You provide at least one response mechanism in your campaign. You include strong calls to action. People buy as a direct result of seeing your advert or email, auto-responder message or web page. And you can track them back to their origin, establishing what return on investment you have or haven't made on a campaign by campaign basis.  

Brand advertising is about creating brand, service and product awareness and nurturing desire, in the hope that you'll eventually fall in love with a brand and buy what's being advertised. TV adverts are usually about brand building, as are posh ads in glossy magazines. If there's no 'ask', it isn't direct marketing. Car, cosmetic, retailer, food and fast moving consumer goods adverts don't usually end with an appeal for the viewer to 'call this number and buy now'.

When you think about it, every business website is a miniature exercise in direct marketing. Most online businesses want people to respond directly to the site's content by either phoning, emailing or buying instantly. Very few business websites these days are simply 'brochure sites' with no purpose beyond passive brand support.     

One of the best things about today's best content and customer management platforms is the way they take direct marketing principles and practices into account up front. You don't need to set up a separate account elsewhere to run email campaigns and set up a suite of auto-responder messages. There are facilities for data capture and manipulation. You get a load of integral stats so you can track exactly what's happening, when and why. All in one place. Which goes a long way towards getting your business in good direct marketing shape. 

Ask Chris about Adobe Business Catalyst. When your business sits on ABC, it's as easy as one, two three!  

Looks matter - Why savvy small businesses redesign their websites regularly

Thursday, February 09, 2012

Great design is about much more than beauty. It's also about functionality. And, whether we like it or not, there's an element of fashion too. All you need to do is keep a weather eye on Twitter and you'll notice a constant stream of people announcing site redesigns. Follow a few links and you'll notice how different websites look these days. 

Yesterday I ran across one of those text only sites from the very early days of the internet. Weirdly it was still ranking in Google, but that's another story! 

The page had a white background with four different text sizes and four different fonts, one of which was Times Roman. Which is a lovely font. But it looks very odd in an online context when almost everyone uses sans serif fonts for readability. Big, bright blue headers were emboldened and underlined, with red subheads and black body text. No illustrations or images, no interactivity, no columns... just a page that looked exactly like a very amateur, poorly formatted Word document. It was extremely nasty to look at and didn't exactly encourage trust. Quite the opposite.

Whether you consciously realise it or not, when you spend time online you become accustomed to the way new sites look and over time, ageing sites start to look old fashioned. 

A redesign can make your site work better, load faster and provide a much more enjoyable visitor experience. It can make your sales conversion process smoother, more efficient and more logical when your designer brings the latest technologies and tools into play. A redesign can even help boost your site's visibility in the search engine results by using the latest coding protocols and taking SEO into account automatically. 

An attractive, modern, crisp website with a nice, simple flat structure can do wonders for your bottom line. If your site is more than three years old, it's high time you took another look. 

Our Chris is your man, and he designs directly onto one of the planet's best back end CMSs, the marvellous Adobe Business Catalyst platform. 

Google's new privacy policy

Thursday, February 02, 2012

There's been discontented rumblings about Google's privacy policy for ages, so it's good to see a new, simpler, more straightforward policy released last week. 

What's been the problem? It's all about targeting. Imagine how big the internet it. It's vast. Absolutely huge. Search engines need to figure out which sites come top on the first page of the search results, and which belong lower down in the results pages. As t'internet grows, it becomes more difficult to 'decide' because the market is so crowded. So they've been bringing targeting into play, tailoring the search results to your 'behaviour'. 

Which sounds OK... or does it? When you think about it, maybe not. Targeting involves working out what you like and giving you more of it. Which is fine except you end up only seeing the stuff you like, a sort of abbreviated internet based on your preferences and search behaviour. At the end of the day it means you never see stuff you might dislike... but which could be fascinating. 

Targeting in this way restricts what you see when you search. And the more rebellious amongst us don't want to be cosseted in this way. We want to see the internet in all its horrid glory, not an edited version decided upon by Google.  

Google might be amazingly good at targeting content to your habits and preferences, likes and dislikes. But bear in mind that it's only as good as its algorithms, and algorithms are nowhere near clever enough to suss out the complexities, vagaries, eccentricities and subtleties of human behaviour. So its good to know that their new privacy rules make it much easier to switch off the targeting side of things. 

You can turn off personalised search in a few clicks, opening up your search experience again so you see more of the real world, without interference. If you have a Google account, you can reject personalised search via the Dashboard. 

Google also uses cookies to figure out your preferences, present 'relevant' adverts and track user trends. Luckily you can re-set your browser to refuse cookies or let you know when one's been sent. You can also view and manage your advert preferences via their Ads Preferences Manager and opt out of their Doubleclick advertising cookie. 

Last but not least, when you stay signed out of your Google account instead of remaining signed in all day, your searches aren't as heavily personalised.  

Although it's new and shiny, Google's updated privacy policy is still a bit of a work up and there's a lot of information to trawl through. Thankfully it's in reasonably plain English, which helps. But it'd be better still if Google simply added a 'yes' or 'no' button to their home page, so we could opt out of all personalisation with one click. Maybe one day!   

Social Media Cheat Sheet

Friday, January 27, 2012

I came across this rather useful infographic and thought others may find it useful too. It's a bit tricky to read at this size so click the image and it will take you to the original large version.

Top seven common sense tips for website excellence

Thursday, January 26, 2012

When was the last time you lingered longer than you needed to on a website simply because you enjoyed being there so much? 

If you have a favourite site, why do you like it more than similar sites that do or sell the same stuff? Is it because it looks better, sounds better, is full of useful stuff or a dream to navigate compared to competing sites?

It's worthwhile analysing your favourite and least favourite websites to see what you can learn, then applying your conclusions back to your own site. 

Here's seven top tips to help you achieve website excellence:

1. how fast does your site load compared to your competitors, favourite sites and least favourite sites? If it takes longer than average, the usual culprit is football pitch-sized images. Take a look at your images and cut the file size right down so they load like s*it off a blanket. Or so the saying goes! 
2. is your layout a nightmare of complexity compared to other sites? If your site has got out of control and you can't see the wood for the trees, it's probably time to pare it back and simplify your online offering. There's an added benefit: simple sites load and perform better on mobile, smartphone and tablet screens than complicated sites
3. check your site code using a free tool like Html Tidy, which cleans up extraneous bits of code, corrects mistakes and formats your pages so they're optimised for search engines 
4. how many words do you have on each page? Does your sales message go on and on or is it so short it doesn't give the full story? A good average to aim for is 350 words per page, which seems to suit human readers and search engines perfectly, but at the end of the day you need to make your sales argument in as many words as you need to do a great job of it... no more and no less. What does 'a great job' entail? It means expressing what you need to say clearly and succinctly, in as much detail as people need to make a buying decision
5. what does your site sound like? Are you using Plain English, with a capital P, as dictated by the Plain Language Society? Or has a load of jargon and business speak crept in? It doesn't matter whether you're operating in a business-to-business or business-to-consumer landscape. People are people, whether or not they work in business, and plain language always sells better than gobbledegook
6. how fresh is your site content? Very few of us work in a sector that stays static as the years go by. Most businesses go through changes and your site should reflect the changing landscape, promoting the fact that you're on the ball and keeping up with the likes, dislikes and demands of your target market
7. ditch Flash content. Adobe has stopped supporting Flash and it's time to stop using it altogether. Which is no bad thing since flashy, whizzy bits of animation aren't anywhere near as important to buyers as good, basic, solid, commercially powerful content

Use benefits to strengthen your sales message

Thursday, January 19, 2012

The most powerful sales messages focus on features and benefits. 

What's the difference? 

Say you sell website design services. A feature of your service might be that you design sites on the planet's best content management system. The benefit? Your customer can manage their new website easily and quickly without expert help, saving a great deal of time and money and putting them in full control of their online presence. 

Another feature might be that you've got twenty years' graphic design experience behind you. The customer benefit? The end result is so beautiful that it reduces site visitors to tears of admiration and joy... so much so that they simply can't resist buying.

Features and benefits belong together and support one another. But have a rummage around t'internet and you'll see an awful lot of sites focusing on features with not so much of a sniff of a benefit. This is good news for the people who get it right because it gives them a significant commercial advantage in a competitive landscape. 

Using benefits and features in tandem makes it easy to get a compelling, logical rhythm going and build an unbeatable sales proposition: 

• Because our product does X, you get Y
• Unlike other products, which only do A, we do B as well. Which means you enjoy A and B all in one go, saving time and hassle
• If you're a discerning customer you'll love our D, which delivers the best E experience this side of Mars
• Our P service means you get the best Qs in the market... every time     

You get the picture! 

The top 5 marketing New Year resolutions for 2012

Thursday, January 12, 2012

2011 was a bumper year for marketers, potentially one of the most exciting and fast-changing years since t'internet went mainstream. Bearing in mind everything that happened last year, what are the top five marketing resolutions for 2012?

1. Resolve to get your site in shape for the ongoing mobile revolution in 2012: mobile web hit the big time in 2011 and 2012 will see more of the same. You don't necessarily need a special mobile site. It depends how your existing site displays on a small screen. In an ideal world your site will be so simple and 'flat' in structure that it already displays perfectly well on smartphones and tablets.  
2. Get your conversion analysis act together: 2012 saw online marketing continuing to mature as, like generations of direct marketers before them, online marketers discovered the value of analysing visitor and conversion data. Familiarising yourself with your webstats puts you in a position of power. Including tracking in every campaign, in one form or another, is vital if you want to plan your marketing properly and allocate your budget sensibly. You need to know which marketing initiatives work best.
3. Keep your eye on Social Media Marketing: you might want to dive right in during 2012. Or just keep your eye on how things unfold. SMM is still very new and the jury's out as to whether it's the best way to spend your marketing energy. There's nothing wrong with holding back until the social media picture clears
4. Treat keywords with respect: search engine algorithms are much more sophisticated than they used to be. They can spot keyword stuffing a mile off. Which is good news all round. Keyword-stuffed copy sounds like shit, pardon my French, and while it used to give sites high prominence and win more visitors, it didn't exactly have a beneficial impact on sales. So feel free to write really well in 2012, pleasing search engines and human visitors!
5. Aim for the best possible quality online content: Google carried out thousands of algorithm updates over 2011. The most noticeable, named Panda and Caffeine by the SEO industry, were concerned with 'quality' and 'freshness'. And you can bet your last quid that updates in 2012 will also have quality-related aims like freshness, usefulness and relevance at their heart. Resolve to put the visitor first in 2012 and you won't go far wrong.

Effective marketing in one hour a day

Thursday, January 05, 2012

Unless you're a marketer by trade, marketing your business is probably one of your biggest day-to-day challenges. 

Thank goodness for elephant sandwiches. Allocating an hour a day to marketing is a sensible way to achieve a reasonable amount within a reasonable timescale with minimal stress and strain.

Here's just a few of the things you can do to improve your business's online and offline profile in just one hour. It's amazing what you can achieve in just five working days! 

1. create and schedule in two blog posts for the coming week
2. write a press release and distribute it by email to your local free/paid press and national trade publications
3. add your business to twenty or more online directories using a simple semi-automated directory submission tool like easysubmits.com
4. create and populate a Facebook page for your business
5. maintain your Facebook page

Here's five more. After a fortnight you'll already have a considerable amount of positive, useful, solid marketing activity under your belt. 

1. set up a Twitter account and follow your first 100+ prospects
2. edit two of your website pages so your sales message is absolutely spot on
3. research and identify your top five key words or phrases for SEO 
4. write and distribute two online articles 
5. set up your first Google AdWords or Bing Pay Per click test 

Some interesting marketing-related stats from 2011

Thursday, December 22, 2011

It's been an 'interesting' year. If your business has survived the economic chaos you must be doing something seriously right! Here's some stats from 2011 to whet your marketing appetite and provide informed inspiration for 2012.

The state of the B2B creative and new media sector:

• 55% of new B2B media agencies surveyed said that, in their opinion, their market was 'strong'
• only 10% of agencies were NOT offering social media marketing services, compared to 25% in 2010
• responding B2B agencies reported an average 15% increase in gross annual income over 2010

The state of social media marketing:

• 78% of B2B organisations surveyed are already engaging with social media marketing
• 6% have employed staff especially to handle their SMM activity
• 22% have allocated a dedicated SMM budget for 2012