As I research companies’ marketing strategies and campaigns, I review how effective they are with their SEO and SEM and make recommendations for improvement. When I recommend Facebook, some question, “Do I really need a Facebook business profile?”

We’ll get into some quick stats in a minute to let you decide. Because what you’re likely to conclude is, it isn’t whether you need a Facebook business profile, but how should you go about interacting with prospects and customers there. See, many businesses who claim Facebook isn’t doing anything for them are businesses who engage on Facebook in ways that don’t work.

For example, do you act the same way when you go to a live sports event as you would a play? If you were to stand up and cheer for your favorite character or harass the villain in a play, how do you think the other people in the theatre would react to you? Do you think you are creating appropriate opportunities for the audience to want to get to know you? What if you then wanted to sell that same group of people something? Do you think they would buy? Not likely, right?

Facebook Stats

Today, Facebook gets more traffic than Google and Yahoo. According to comScore, they overtook these two search engine behemoths back in August 2010, and not just for Google.com and Yahoo.com, but for all of the sites they own combined.

There are over 600 million people on Facebook and more than half sign on EVERY day.

People spend more time on Facebook than any other website in the world.

So can you leave Facebook out of your marketing strategies? The obvious answer is, “no”.

However, a very important question to ask to make sure you get the most out of your marketing strategies and tactics on Facebook is, “What do people use Facebook for?”

86% – See what my friends are up to
79% – Sent a message to someone
70% – Posted/updated my profile
65% – Looked at profiles of people I didn’t know
59% – Searched for someone that I used to know
55% – Wrote on someone’s profile page
53% – Sent a friend/connection request
51% – Read a blog or a journal
47% – Listened to music
40% – Watched a video

As a business owner or manager, what do you see is glaringly absent? (Queue the Jeopardy music …)

And the answer is … BUY SOMETHING

Businesses on Facebook

So does this mean Facebook is a waste of time for businesses? Let’s take a look at some of the brands that are active on Facebook:

Nike
HP
Notre Dame
Mayo Clinic

I could go on with a lengthy list. There are B2B and B2C companies active on Facebook. There are sports companies, colleges, computer companies, and hospitals. The point is, Facebook isn’t just for one type of business; it has opportunities for all businesses to provide a social presence and connect with prospects and customers. You just need to use it as the audience likes to interact in this environment.

You Need Leads and Prospects Before You Get Customers

People go to Google to search for products and services much like using the phone book. People go to Facebook to hang out and communicate with the people they know. This distinction is very important to know so you develop appropriate marketing strategies using Facebook. How and why people (aka prospects and customers) use Facebook should alter your approach to getting their attention and engaging them in conversation.

Like with any quality marketing campaign, you shouldn’t get started without answering the following key questions:

1. Who are you targeting?
2. Where are they hanging out?
3. Why are they there?
4. What interests do they have?
5. How do you get their attention in a positive way?

If you don’t take the time to answer these questions, you will likely launch a very broad campaign. And broad doesn’t mean you’re casting a wider net to catch more clients; it means you’re casting a wider net with wider holes that they will slip through because you are throwing out a very bland message that doesn’t address their biggest problem or want. So why should they care?

If after reading this you have questions about your Facebook business profile, leave a comment below or contact me so I can help you connect with your target audience on Facebook and get them to know, like, and trust you .. and ultimately buy from you.

All the Best,

Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide

While some people may still be in a funk over their team not making it to the big game, others are buzzing in anticipation about the outcome on Sunday February 5th when Super Bowl XLVI will pit the New England Patriots against the New York Giants in Indianapolis, IN. Plus, expectations are high as usual for entertaining commercials. While the Super bowl and its much-publicized commercials are far from new, the Super Bowl committee’s inclusion of social media for fan interaction is.

The Super Bowl’s Social Media Command Center

With expectations of 100,000 to 150,000 fans showing up in Indy for this annual football game, there are going to be questions about pre-game, game day, and post game lodging, eating and events, especially considering many people may be traveling to the area for the first time. Plus, since the stadium can only hold 70,000 lucky fans, there are going to be many other football fanatics who want to share in the experience while they’re tailgating or at a local sports bar even if it is only through Facebook, Twitter or other top social media sites like the new Google +.

Instead of sitting on the sidelines in this social interaction, the Super Bowl committee chose to establish a 2,800-square foot commend center in Indianapolis earlier this week. They have a team of 50 people engaging football fans in conversation and creating content to promote events around the game and the local Hoosier hospitality. All fans have to do is go to the main Super Bowl XLVI site to get involved.

Sports Fan Love Their Social Media

If you’ve ever been on Facebook or Twitter during game day, you’ve probably seen a number of posts from your circle of friends cheering on their team to victory virtually. Sports fans are some of the most intense social media participants. Want proof?

1. In 2011, the only event to receive more Facebook posting than the Packers winning Super Bowl XLV was the death of Osama Bin Laden.
2. There were 9,420 tweets per second about the Denver Bronco quarterback Tim Tebow’s 80-yard touchdown pass in overtime to beat the Pittsburg Steelers outpacing other notable news like the Royal Wedding and the passing of Steve Jobs.

What does the Super Bowl and social media have to do with your business?

Although your business may have nothing to do with football or the Super Bowl, there are some lessons you can learn here about the importance and use of social media in your marketing plan.

First, regardless of your industry, your prime prospects and customers are spending time on social media sites engaging in conversation sometimes for hours a day. If you aren’t engaging them there, your competition likely is. Who will your prospects and customers remember when they are researching products and services and making buying decisions? Get involved. Engage in conversation. Get them to know, like and trust you. Get them to buy.

Second, if your target market is already engaging in conversations about a specific topic or event, don’t take a passive role; take charge. Create an event around the scenario. Provide quality content. Ask engaging questions. Include bonus offers. Your prospects and customers will become fans. And fans are loyal, vocal supports.

If you are a social media rookie and want to compete at the championship level with SEO and SEM, don’t let fear and frustration hinder your success. Social media is integral to growing your visibility, credibility and profitability.

All the Best,

Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide

Most SEO experts will tell you that having quality external links is probably the best thing you can do to help your branding site rank well with the search engines. But exactly what are external links and how do you need to manage them?

External links are hyperlinks that point from one domain (the source) to another external domain (the target). They can be links coming from external websites back to your site or they can be links going from your website out to another website.

Here are three things you must consider when you set forth on a strategy of increasing your number of external links.

1. Understand how search engines and human visitors determine the quality of external links.

While you have greater control for creating outbound external links than inbound links, both strategies require you to focus on certain types of sites if you want to benefit from the best SEO practices, and if you want to create the best experience for the prospects and customers visiting your site. Here are the characteristics the search engines use to consider the quality of the external link (and in many cases, so do your site visitors):

• The popularity of the linking page
• The relevancy of the content between the pages
• The trustworthiness of the linking domain
• The number of domains linking to the target page
• The anchor text used in the link
• The amount of variations that the source domain uses as anchor text to the target domain
• The ownership relationship between the two domains

2. Embed your links into keyword-rich anchor text.

When linking from your site, when possible, embed the hyperlink link in anchor text that matches the target keyword phrase for the page. For example, we are writing a blog about external links so we would embed the link into the phrase “external links” like I did at the beginning of this post instead of anchoring it to a phrase like “click here” or some other non-targeted keyword phrase.

3. Check your external links occasionally.

The Internet is a dynamic, virtual marketplace. Sites come and go; page URLs change. The links you create today may lead to sites that no longer exist or have pages with new URLs tomorrow. As a result, you may have a number of links on your site that don’t provide any value to your prospects and customers visiting your site. Plus, linking to dead domains or to pages that no longer exist can hurt the usability of your site and its SEO. Here is a Text Link Checker Tool you can use to check if your external links are still connected to active pages so you can make adjustments accordingly.

All the Best,

Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide

Social media can be a rewarding experience for a business, but it can seem like a daunting task or a waste of time if you don’t know how to approach it efficiently. Social media sites give you the opportunity to connect with your target customers, engage them in conversation, ask for their feedback, incentivize them to purchase , and create a great opportunity for generating virtual word-of-mouth (which is still be best form of marketing).

Here are six tips for setting up a social media strategy that rocks.

1. Do your research.

It’s amazing what information you can find that will help you create a more effective marketing strategy with better targeted messages if you do a little research. This is especially true if you are a social media novice. There are a wide variety of social media sites for you to use, but where do your customers hang out? Which sites are your competitors using and seeing positive results? What kind of posts are their customers responding to?

2. Start simply.

You’ve probably heard you should set up a Facebook fan page. And a Twitter account. Don’t forget LinkedIn. You need to post videos to YouTube, too. Have you set up your Google+ business profile yet? Don’t forget to Digg. AAaaarrrgghh … it gets overwhelming very quickly, especially if you’re doing it all on your own. You need to simplify your strategy. First, only focus on those social media sites that will have an impact for your business. If you do the research mentioned above, you’ll know which sites offer you the best potential for ROI. Generate success with one or two sites first before you move on to any others.

3. Have a plan.

It’s amazing how many small and medium sized businesses want to get started with social media without a plan. They get anxious because they know other businesses are having success using social media and they feel that they’re showing up late to the party. So they rush in, start chatting away, and then wonder why no one is showing any interest. If you don’t think you have time for planning, you might as well run out of your front door and start talking to everyone on the street to see if they want to buy from you. It will have the same lack of impact, but at least you’ll get some exercise.

4. Vary your types of posts.

Don’t be a boring conversationalist. Just as you don’t want to hear your friends tell you the same story every time they see you, your customers don’t want you to say the same thing every time they connect with you on a social media site. Mix things up. You can use famous quotes as posts, link to interesting stories, posts video, questions and polls, and share posts from other sites you follow. The key is to make sure all of your posts are of interest to your target audience.

5. Track your success.

One of the benefits of marketing on the Internet is the various tracking mechanism available for assessing your success. You can use Google Analytics, QR codes, URL shortening services, and more. These all offer tracking options. Plus, some of the social media sites provide their own tracking reports. Don’t sell your marketing short by only tracking sales. Yes, the ultimate goal is to sell more, but part of your success with social media is to build your visibility and credibility. These are important goals for creating an effective marketing funnel. Are you seeing people join your social media circle of friends? Are they responding to your posts? Are you getting their feedback? Are they sharing your posts with their circle of friends? When you post other profiles’ content, are they responding and doing the same for you? These are valuable aspects to social media that are indirectly tied to sales.

6. Make time. Be consistent. Be patient.

You can’t expect to be a fair-weathered friend on social media and establish strong relationships with prospects and customers. You need to create a schedule whereby you can participate in conversations on your social media profiles on a regular basis. How much socializing is enough … or too much? It will vary on each site, but three to four posts a day is best. If you post less, you’re likely to lack any mind awareness with your target audience. If you post more, you may start turning people off for dominating their feeds.

And above all, you need to patient. Yes, social media can help you gain some quick visibility, but it doesn’t produce sales overnight. The average person is presented with 4,000 marketing messages a day. While social media helps you create visibility, it helps your competition, too. Prospects need to get to know, like and trust you before they buy from you. You need to show them that they should invest the time in this process by creating conversations that benefit them and by proving that you aren’t another pop-up business that posts today, but is gone tomorrow.

If you find it hard to keep up with the recommendations in this post, but you want to be able to take advantage of the benefits of social media, contact SmallBizMedia.tv for a review of their Internet marketing services.

All the Best,

Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide

We live in an age of instant celebrity. From reality TV, to American Idol style stars search shows, and YouTube viral videos, we’ve evolved into an impatient society of mass media consumers. We expect / need something bold and new to catch our attention. With roughly 4,000 marketing messages being thrown at us from TV, radio, billboards, the Internet, and more, brands need to create Super Bowl-esque marketing to become famous.

Or do they?

Patience is a pre-requisite

While this is often the marketing strategy of the ill-advised and the desperate, the successful brands understand they can’t approach their Internet-based marketing with a one-hit wonder mentality.

We’re not recommending you take a boring, tedious approach to building your brand on the Internet. You do need to grab the attention of your ideal customers. However, building a brand takes patience. And it is because many small and medium-sized businesses find SEO (search engine marketing), SEM (search engine marketing), and SMM (social media marketing) as boring and tedious, they often bail before their brands even have a reasonable chance to make their mark.

It takes time to connect with leads, convert them into interested prospects, and get them to vote as customers with their dollars. Consumers and buyers are weary of gimmicks. Before they invest their time and their money, they want to know they are buying into a brand that will grow with their needs. They want to see a consistency of content and engaging conversation in the brands’ online marketing. Fortunately for the realistic and patient marketer, boring and tedious will weed out many competitors.

SEO and SEM is an investment, not instant success. You may have some successes as you start, but rarely does a brand hit the scene and suddenly take over. You can get your quick fixes with some tactics that produce new fans or a sudden surge of interest. However, you need to create your strategies with longer term goals.

Seth Godin agrees

If you think I’m wrong, let me introduce you to a post written on the subject by Seth Godin, the recognizably hairless entrepreneur, author, public speaker, and promoter of permission marketing. Even though his post on Internet marketing success was published a couple of years ago, the principles he discusses in it still apply today. Go figure a guy who graduated with degrees in computer science and philosophy, and has been a successful practitioner of what he preaches would know a thing or two on the topic.

Consider a SEO / SEM firm before you call it quits

While instant success may be tempting, look at the various traps he discusses. One or more of these will likely snare your brand if you aren’t willing to invest in more than your 15 minutes of fame.

If SEO and SEM seem boring and tedious to you, I understand. And I didn’t even discuss the education required to be successful and stay a success. Getting educated on how the search engines rank content, being aware of the new channels for conveying your message on the Internet, and crafting conversation-inspiring content amid all the competition is another investment of time and money. But this is what my SmallBizMedia.tv partner and I enjoy and excel at, so before you simply opt-out from engaging your customers where they spend most of their time, go to my SmallBizMedia.tv site and opt-in by filling in the form on the right of the page for a free SEO consultation.

All the Best,

Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide