Exact Target reports that Twitter users are more likely to post regularly to blogs, more likely to post product and service reviews, and more likely to share coupons on coupon sites. We’re also more likely to write articles, post videos, contribute to wiki’s, and comment on other people’s blogs. This rings true for me, because as a Twitter user, I like to find interesting or educational tidbits that I can share with my readers.

I found the statistics above on Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim, a site I follow in Google Reader. They could have just as easily come from a short post and link on Twitter. Either way, I’m sharing with you here, and I’ll share this information on Twitter and our Zero To Sixty Marketing Facebook page, and a variety of other sites. Other people do the same thing, and that’s how online content gains wings.

What does this have to do with your local business? Give us something to talk about! Post your in-store specials to Twitter, offer recipes, how-to articles, tip sheets, etc. If it relates to your product or service or offers something of value, share it on Twitter, Facebook, and directly on your blog. Doing so multiplies your message and provides more opportunity for your readers to expand your reach. Get it right, and it’s free viral promotion for your business.

Are you on Twitter? Let’s connect! Just click the link or look for @ShariV. Please include your Twitter address in your comments, below.

Why should your small business be blogging? Your interaction with viewers, or lack thereof, may be the only thing holding you back from more sales. While the importance of a website is crucial in our tech-crazy era, a website that has the ability to update information through blogging will outperform in sales when compared to a company website that doesn’t. There are other ways to add updated material continually to your site, and many have value, but a blog adds something more.

Your blog allows your viewers to get to know you. Over time, if they like what they’re reading, they’ll continue to return to the blog posts and begin to comment and share your material, most likely online. The more frequently your company name and message are mentioned online, the better. And when someone decides to link back to you, you’re rewarded with a level of authority from Google that will start to move you up the page. Good stuff, right?

Read more about why your small business should be blogging on The Richardson Copywriter.

Image Credit: svilen001 on stock.xchng

What one company learned the hard way

Did you post photos on your Google Places listing? If you haven’t, consider this: one company didn’t, and the photo that was included was a poorly shot photo of the home of a customer who posted a review.

The review was favorable, the photo was not. Many times, these details seem insignificant until they are seen from the outside looking in. When you’re filling out the details of your business listing, the photos, videos, and reviews play a big part of your overall appearance, but may not seem like they need to be added now. Problem is, if you put it off for another day, another day comes and goes without your listing being completely finished. Images help your viewers understand where you are, who you are, and what products you offer. When you connect with the public on line in this way, you become a reality. You cease to be only a link on a page and become something they can identify with.

The same thing holds true for video. A brief video, a commercial or a tutorial piece is a nice way to connect with your viewers while letting them know you’re interested in offering what they want. Make it funny, and you’ll find it uploaded to YouTube.com, FunnyorDie.com, or a several other video streaming services. People love to share video content. When you’ve properly linked up your website to your small business listing, and posted a video that others want to share, you’ve made positive changes to your online presence that will increase your website visibility. It’s a great strategy.

No one wants their business to look less appealing than it should. These small details put you in the driver’s seat when it comes to your company’s appearance. Most listings require that your photo be no larger than 1MB, but generally you are allowed to add more than one. We suggest using the maximum number of pictures that represent you favorably. Remember that a picture’s worth a thousand words. A video – well, that’s a whole other story!

Do you have an image on your listing? Why or Why not?

Related Post:

Case Study: Small Business Listing

It’s fun to focus on the new and different, but it’s important not to forget the tried and true. Small businesses have established themselves and grown in the marketplace since the dawn of capitalism, not just since the birth of Facebook. Along the way, what works and what doesn’t work has been studied and written about. Effective marketing has been dissected and diagrammed. It’s true that HOW we get the job done has changed, but the timeless principles relating to market, message and media are still the foundation for success.

With that in mind, today’s post begins a new series. We’re going to look at those timeless principles and relate them to how we market today. What nuggets of wisdom can we glean from the advertising giants of the past? What can we learn from today’s experts? Note that I didn’t say “from today’s self-proclaimed Internet marketing ‘gurus’ who like to brag about working from home in their pajamas.”

We have real-world businesses, whether they be home-based or brick and mortar. We have families, employees or independent contractors who count on us, and customers who depend on us to get the job done right the first time. Somewhere along the line, we know that to grow we HAVE to make time to market our businesses. In other words, we don’t need hype. We need to spend our limited time doing those things that have been proven to work. Even as a virtual marketing firm, where our specialty is to help YOU market your business, we struggle to find time to market ourselves consistently.

Today’s question strips away any assumptions. It’s as basic as you can get.

Have you identified your target market? You may feel that everyone has a need for your product or service, but that’s not the same thing. To market effectively and be COST effective, we need to know exactly who’s attention we’re trying to gain. Take a few moments to write down everything you can think of about your target customer group, including: age, gender, location, health, profession, interests and affiliations. Seriously, do this little exercise today. Next Monday, we’ll start with that very important data and move onto our next timeless marketing tip.

What is your biggest marketing challenge? We’d love to hear from you in the comments, below:

Photo Credit: Lin Pernille on flickr

I bet if you were hanging out with your friends or family and a controversial subject came up, whether you voiced it or not – you’d probably have an opinion about it. Conversationally, it’s a plus to be able to debate opinions or discuss facts in a give and take manner. Some folks can’t do that. But if you’re the entrepreneur who generally reads our blogs, you can probably hang with the best.

If you have ideas for business – something not agreeable in the mainstream – instead of sitting there with your opinion safely tucked inside your head in a box labeled, “not politically correct,” I want to encourage you to take action.  Take a risk by doing or saying something out of the norm that can be useful to others. It could be the thing that makes your business stand out.

I talk about my Dad a lot. He’s been fighting cancer for a couple of years so he’s on our minds around here. Growing up, he would talk about peer pressure, and he would tell us that people loved to have something to talk about, there was always going to be somebody that everyone would put on a pedestal. He said that if we desired that position, many opportunities for compromise would take us down until we were just like everyone else. Instead, he suggested, we should be ourselves the best we could be and not conform our opinions and behavior  based on what everybody else thought. If that behavior brought attention our way, we’d soon see others imitating us.

It is okay to be different, to look at things differently, and to market ourselves differently. It’s actually the only successful way to do it.

Unless you buy a franchise … but even then, you’ll have to take a stand on something once and awhile … and they’re mongo-expensive. I think that might have been how garlic-Parmesan chicken wings began. Or the Slurpee.

Take a stand. Someone in your industry is standardizing stupidity in some way, point it out and do it entirely different. Just because people have become used to a dumb way to do things doesn’t mean your company has to be run that way.

Have you been told that what you’re doing won’t work? Have you resigned yourself to redundant or useless practices merely because that’s how its done? Are you listening to your gut, or following your nose?

Look, we don’t believe a ton of what marketers are saying these days. So much ridiculous, unrealistic B.S. is associated with social media marketing and SEO – there are simply smarter ways to do those things that need to be done. I don’t want to work 14 hours every day, do you? Secret: you don’t have to.

In your business, get rid of stuff that ties your stomach in knots. Oh, occasionally those times will come up, but if those types of things are happening on a regular basis, find a better way to do them or cut them out. Don’t do business in a certain way just because that’s all you know. Figure out how to do that thing smarter.

To wrap it up: have an opinion, take a stand, figure out how to do that thing better, and listen to your gut.

And when someone asks you, “Where do you stand on that?” you’ll be able to respond with less irritation, and more inspiration.

How do you feel about the marketing strategies you’re hearing online? Do you find our posts informative or helpful? Do you think we sound just like everyone else? Leave us a comment, we’d love to hear from you.

Here’s another example of the design process … Web site design, this time. We’ve just rolled out a new Web site home page design for Sprue Brothers Model LLC. Sprue Brothers is an online hobby retailer for scale model builders. The “sprue” in the business name is significant. All plastic scale modelling parts arrive on a frame called a sprue. The store’s logo reflects this and now so does the Web site.

Before and after screenshots are below:

Before Website Redesign

New Home Page Design

My husband (and team member), Gerald, came up with the idea of sprue borders. Our graphic artist, Scott, took the concept and ran with it. I put it together as a working Web site. Despite a few technical glitches, this was a fun project that came together quickly. It’s also one that will continue to improve over time. Gordon, we hope your new landing page serves you well.

Have you looked at your Web site lately?

Is your Web site in need of a face lift? Believe it or not, most Web sites would benefit from a makeover every couple of years. It’s not only the look of a site that can become quickly dated, but also the technology running the site. If you’re doing your own Web site coding in Dreamweaver or FrontPage, and you’re not a code geek, your site is also likely accumulating excess bits of code … stuff that doesn’t really seem to cause any problems now, but give it time … it will.

So take a few minutes this week to review your Web site from the eyes of a first time visitor. Does it portray your business the way you’d like it to? If you’re using a blog rather than a static Web site, is your blog installation up-to-date? Do your links all work? And if you know what you’re doing, take a look under the hood and check your HTML coding. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, ask me.

Another Reason to Subscribe by Email to Inside Line

We’ll have a free gift for email subscribers to Inside Line this week. Mum’s the word … can’t tell you what it is until it’s ready to go, but I will say that it’s NOT some bonus offer for buying some guru’s Internet marketing course. In fact, it’s not even educational … just something to use and enjoy, and the only string attached is that you must be a current email subscriber to Inside Line. Are you an email subscriber yet?

No doubt, you’re being bombarded right now by every sales call imaginable, most of them trying to sell you either search engine optimization (SEO) services or advertising space. Since the second week of January, our phone has rung daily with someone selling one or the other.

Since, like most of us, you’re probably considering your next purchase of ad space, let’s focus on advertising today. Yes, it’s a HUGE topic, so we’re going to take it back to its most basic premise: Advertising is Salesmanship.

Let us emphasize the point. The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. It is profitable or unprofitable according to its actual sales. It is not for general effect. It is not to keep your name before the people. It is not primarily to aid your other salesmen.

“Treat it as a salesman. Force it to justify itself. Compare it with other salesman. Figure its cost and result. Accept no excuses which good salesman do not make. Then you will not go far wrong.” ~ Claude Hopkins, Scientific Advertising

This is an especially important point for the small business owner to remember. We can’t afford to waste dollars with advertising campaigns meant to spread awareness of our businesses. Before we consider any advertising campaign, we’d better be reasonably sure that we’re making a good investment, one that will make the cash register ring repeatedly.

Mr. Hopkins goes on to say, “There is one simple way to answer many advertising questions. Ask yourself, ‘Would it help a salesman sell the goods?’ ‘Would it help me sell them if I met a buyer in person?’”

Remember that when a salesperson calls on a prospect, he or she is speaking to one individual. Do the same in your advertising … focus on one typical buyer, not the mass of people you hope will buy your product or service. When composing your ad, speak to the one man or woman who is likely to want what you sell.

Dan Kennedy lists 10 rules for advertising in his book, “No B.S. Direct Marketing: The Ultimate, No Holds Barred, Kick Butt, Take No Prisoners Direct Marketing for Non-direct Marketing Businesses.” (Don’t you love that title?) I have them taped to the wall directly above my monitor and I refer to them often. I won’t repeat them all here, but I’ll give you a preview:

• Rule 1. There will always be an offer or offers.
• Rule 4. There will be tracking and measurement.
• Rule 5. Whatever brand building occurs will be a happy by-product, not bought.
• Rule 9. Results rule, period.

For Further Reading:

• Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins (free e-book download, provided courtesy of The Copywriter’s Roundtable)
• No B.S. Direct Marketing: The Ultimate, No Holds Barred, Kick Butt, Take No Prisoners Direct Marketing for Non-direct Marketing Businesses

Most of the things we do for our businesses, we do out of habit. We have some people that we call, we have direct mail sent out, we post coupons on Merchant Circle, or we post to Google Local online for decent SERP placement and reviews. Those things aren’t enough, and you probably know it, yet when asked what you’re doing for your business, you probably mention those things with an air of ‘I’m doing what I ought to be doing.’

You probably don’t need a marketing coach or a ‘guru’ to help you market your small business, but there are a few things those guys are doing right that you shouldn’t ignore entirely. They seem to know just how to center attention around themselves, and while that never denotes authenticity, having others in your field recognizing your efforts certainly can appear that way. Just how do they do that?

Here’s where the ‘guru’s’ have it, and even though I’m not a ‘guru’ or a marketing coach, I’m going to share it with you free of charge:

They know how to muster up credibility.
Marketers usually blog. They post something about what they do, and they comment on other marketer’s blogs, start conversations, and drop links. How is this practice good for you? By the time their would-be clients get to their site, they have plenty of others in their field endorsing their endeavors. That’s not actual credibility, but it is perceived credibility, a good start. Take some time every day to build relationship with others in your field by leaving a conversational comment on a competitor’s blog designed for response.

They know what promotions, offers, and Web site traffic is working for them.
It’s not enough to just throw information on a page and hope it does well. It doesn’t take complicated algorithms to figure it out, either. If you’re not tracking your efforts and traffic with (at least) Google Analytics, you have no real idea if you’re reaching who you want to reach.

They engage in social media.
Yeah, it’s a time-suck. But even so, limited engagement on social media sites is actually a smart way to engage local traffic, if your local city and state are part of your profile or username. Getting used to it is half the battle. Once in, you’ll enjoy short conversations with others and your list will naturally build over time. If you do more than just post your specials, that is. Respond to ridiculous situations that makes you laugh, or drop your own personal thoughts about a thing here and there. (Advice: Stay optimistic. Why follow a grump?)

Photo Credit: NeeDeeAh’s! Photostream on Flickr

Related Post: Why The Social Media Experts Are Smarter Than You

(PT2) We want our relationships with our customers and readers to be actual relationships, and that requires two-way conversation. We want to encourage them to call, sign up, or click on a link. We want them to tell us what they thought of our products or services. If you read my earlier post on the value of influencing customer response, it’s time to start asking the questions and posing the statements that engage dialog.

Or you can just wait and see if your schedule fills up. (See pic for emotion that follows waiting for your schedule to fill up).

I suggest being proactive by adding these messages to your campaign:

• Has this helped you? We’d love to hear about it. Please email your comments to info@xxxxxxxx
• Please leave us your comments, is there anything you would like to learn about in the future?
• Please take this survey. It will only take 30 seconds of your time.
• Sign up for this promotion using this code: xxxxxxx
• If you purchase during this week’s promotion, every second item will be reduced! Buy now!
• Did you enjoy the last service call or sale? If your friend schedules and keeps an appointment between now and the end of the month, get $$ off of your next appointment.
• I want you to feel great about your purchase and to be totally satisfied because I know you made an excellent choice.

Notice how every one of these suggestions specifically asked the reader or customer to respond in a certain way? Did you notice the persuasive mechanisms at play? Believe it or not, these types of messages increase your response rate and conversion astronomically. You can’t go wrong inciting a positive response, but you can go terribly wrong not doing so.

How Do You Track Your Response Rate?

How do you know if your methods of engagement were successful? Using a customer code as a link to a page on your Web site that is unrevealed in regular navigation is a great way to know that the traffic you’ve encouraged is responding. Set it up and use your Web analytics to find out how many are making it to that page.  Surveys available through a link can really narrow down your information, and offering a discount or coupon for taking the survey is a helpful way to get the highest response rate. If your specials are only offered to those taking the time to respond to the survey, you’ll know exactly how successful your promotion was. Follow our  link to AWeber for the easiest way to track promotions using email marketing that lets your customer opt-in and opt-out, avoiding the spam implications entirely.

Take this advice and your readers will be EXCITED to open, read, and click on most anything you send, and look forward to more. How are you encouraging your customers’ response? Let us know what you would like to hear more about and we’ll be happy to respond to YOU.

Related Posts:

Can YOU Influence Customer Response?

Build Your Email List – Jump Start Your Marketing

When no one listens, there’s no use talking at all.

Do you hear me, do you care?

Remember the lyrics to the popular 80’s hit? I just got back from a dinner with a client and it’s all I hear in my head after the conversation we had tonight.  I’m really listening closely to what my clients understand about their message, and in a more ethereal sense, their words.

In my head, the lyrics are, “What are words worth, when no one listens anymore? No one notices, I think I’ll dye my hair blue.” As a chic, I get it. I don’t think that’s so different from a desperate small business point of view. When we’re young, like the song suggests, we’d do anything to get attention immediately, to be noticed – even bizarre to border line nuts.

Let me explain to you exactly why keyword research and word relevance are more important than flash and hype.

Keywords Are Powerful

Online, your words couldn’t be more powerful. You can have all the graphics and keywords, and even a fair number of readers, but to be found by the maximum number of people who need you, it will take more than that. You’ll need a small business marketing strategy. Could you use more customers? Better (paying) customers? More business?

Case in point:

Out of curiosity, I used one of the companies I represent as a model for some basic SEO and Page Rank experimentation. I’ve been doing their media releases and fliers, but not the Web site.  This company has believed that their Web site was optimized. Since competition in their field is minimal, they were easily found on the first page of Google search if you knew what to look for. I learned that not only were they absolutely not searched on for their most prevalent keyword phrases, they weren’t showing at all for the phrases people actually look for.

That blew my mind, because with a Page Rank of 3, you’d assume the keywords were working for them. But they weren’t. Zero traffic on the terms used.

So what to do? Is this a problem? Well, for one thing, if the words you think your customers use, aren’t in fact, the words they use, how will they find you if they don’t already know your specific Web site address? If your business presence online is new, will your market know your exact address?

Long Tail Optimization
Zero To Sixty Marketing decided to use this company as an example to see where we could improve our customer discussions. Using Market Samurai for keyword research, we ran the currently used keywords against long tail options that sounded more reasonable for searchers to use. Long tail keywords are words that are run through a system based on the original keywords and determined to have market merit based on the level of traffic and competition for that word or phrase.

What a difference. We realized the words we ran through Market Samurai, that were not used before, had huge amounts of traffic and very little competition.

What does that mean? It means that many people are surfing the net searching on terms and keywords that apply to this business, but the words weren’t used in tags, bullets, headers, and titles to cause that searcher to find the site. What’s more, very few other companies represented in that niche were using that term to promote their own business. Can you say ‘goldmine?’

What Are Words Worth To You?
So think about that. You may not be an SEO believer, but there’s undeniable merit to a case study like this. The advice I gave this company was to start using those keywords effectively in  posts to blogs, comments, and high authenticity sites. Working outside of the site (link building) to improve keyword strength for the term you want to use while you’re using the words that are already proven, strategically can – over time, cause your unused terms to become more common place, and therefore used. This is a very effective link building exercise, well worth the effort.

Take the time to develop relationships with high authority sites via comments and linking strategies. Use the keywords in such a way that the reader stays on the page to learn more about your quality information, interesting related links, and possibly – hopefully, comment and leave their link so that a relationship does in fact develop. That takes time. And that’s okay, because as in real life relationships, they will matter and become relevant to your business reputation.

So I don’t think you need to dye your hair blue, or anything, that’s just a song.

Picture Credit: danielleblue from Flickr

Related Posts:

Very Basic SEO 5 PT Series,

SEO: Where Do You Find Your Keywords PT 2,

Using Keyword Research Tools PT3,

How Do We Use Those Keywords PT4,

Where Are Keywords Most Effective PT5