Hi, thought I’d do something different today and do a Video Blog (or Vlog as they are called).

Enjoy!

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Congratulations!  You’ve now thought about keywords and should be beginning to see the impact they can have on your online success.  But doing the research is only half the puzzle — now you have to use them. 

The first step is to review of your list of potential keywords  and keyword phrases and pick the one or two, but no more than three, of them to target.  You may have a list of 25 potentially dynamite keywords, but you cannot effectively go after all of them at once.  For each keyword or keyword phrase, think about how you would use it in a headline or sentence.  Sometimes keywords pop up that have a decent number of searches and almost no competition — because they are almost impossible to use in regular language.  You can choose to target those — but understand that it will make your job just that much tougher.

Before you do anything else, pull up a Google search box and type in the keywords or keyword phrases you have chosen.  Make note of the top ten results.  You want to be one of them within the next 60 to 90 days (or sooner).

Now get to work on your copy.  If you have a traditional website, ideally, all three keywords will appear on your website’s home page:  include all of your keywords at the top of the page; put at least one keyword or phrase in a headline or a subhead; at least one or possibly even two of your keywords or phrases should be in the first paragraph of the page; and make sure you add at least one in the last paragraph of the page.  If you can make the targeted phrase a logical hyperlink to another page in your site, Google will give you bonus points in your search rankings.  Note:  Make sure your keywords are in text, not artwork.  If your headlines and subheads are graphics and not text, Google may ignore them.

Make sure you include one, two, or all three of your targeted keywords in your page’s title and meta description and of course, include them in your web headers as meta keywords.  You can target different keywords on different pages of your website if each page is indexed separately.  That may be a little advanced for a basic website, but it’s something to keep in mind.

If you are using a WordPress or other blog format as your platform instead of a traditional website, you will want to make sure that each post has one or two keywords in it and that your targeted keywords are included as Categories and Post Tags.   If you have added an SEO plug-in for your WordPress blog, make sure you include your targeted keywords in your Title and Meta Description.

But don’t stop with your website or blog.  Now go into every directory your site has been listed in and re-write the description to include your keywords.  Pull up your profiles in LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook and add your keywords.  Begin a concentrated, targeted online campaign emphasizing those keywords.  Try to use those targeted keywords in your Twitter updates, on your Facebook wall, in articles submitted to article directories, and in press releases.  Add your website or blog to different social bookmarking sites and include your keywords in your profiles.

Finally, set up Google alerts to track your keywords or keyword phrases.  As you start to use the phrases more and more, you should start to see your site or marketing efforts pop up.  This will give you an idea of where Google is recognizing the phrase and you can adjust your copy or marketing efforts accordingly.

Give it a shot.  I would love to hear your success stories in a couple months.

Here’s to your success,

Trina

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SPEED NETWORKING IS NEXT WEEK.  RSVP at http://gemstonebiz.org today!

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I had the privilege of presenting with Andrew Catapano of mywebWOW!com this morning at the Short North Business Association’s Educational Seminar series.  We had a small but engaged crowd.  They had lots of good questions.

I was going over the four Cs of successful online marketing – Content, Conversation, Community, and Commerce, but what is apparently burning in everyone’s minds is Twitter.  And more specifically, they were hungry for a nitty-gritty take-me-by-the-hand-and-show-me-a-strategy session on Twitter.  Well, I wasn’t quite prepared for that much detail but I’ve thought about their questions today and maybe this will give others struggling with those same issue some ideas.

So, in response to Joe Spinelli of Spinelli’s Deli, who very bluntly said a) I don’t know what to tweet about; and 2) just tweeting about sandwiches and the specials of the day is boring;

here are some possible Twitter campaign ideas.

1)       At the restaurant, have a laptop computer set up and encourage patrons to go over and tweet about coming in for lunch/dinner.  Make sure they mention your @Twittername.  Every 20^th Tweet mention (or 50^th or whatever number feels right for your crowd) gets a Free Dessert, or free cup of coffee, or free appetizer – some type of reward.  Promote it on Twitter (but not on Facebook or LinkedIn – make it a Twitter exclusive).  Have signs in your restaurant window.  Have the wait staff encourage Tweets.  As they are leaving, ask if they would Tweet about their good experience.  Someone would have to be checking Hootsuite or other application regularly to count the number of mentions, but it’s an easy type of campaign to measure.  Then, announce every winner with a Tweet that mentions their @Twittername.  Do this once a week.  The more you do it, the more reaction you will get.

2)      At the art gallery, promote an “Artist Answers Questions” event where the Artist responds to questions that have been sent in via Twitter.  Again, have a computer on hand so anyone who is in the gallery live still has to submit their question via Twitter to get it answered.  Promote it on Twitter to your community and to the Artist’s community and to any art-related groups for 10 days to two weeks prior to the event.  Start collecting the questions.  At the end of the event, send Tweets thanking everyone who participated and mentioning their @Twittername.  Maybe award virtual prizes for “best question” “funniest question” or “best stumper question.”

3)      For any kind of business, offer a discount or reward to anyone who calls the office or comes into the store and asks for “Larry.”  Only promote it on Twitter.  It could be anything of value.  Maybe a 25% discount for mentioning “Larry.”  They have to spend money to get the discount, so that’s good.  Or a $10 Visa gift card.  They have to give you their name, address, and email address in order to claim their prize.  That’s good, too.  And then, of course, you would send Tweets announcing everyone who “earned” a prize.   For a twist, maybe announce on Twitter that everyone who appears at X location at 6:00 p.m. with a nametag on that says “Larry” will be entered into a drawing for $200.  Do this for a week to 10 days and see what kind of reaction you get. 

4)      Choose a charity, like Operation Feed or the MDA Walk/Run, or Race for a Cure.  Send Tweets encouraging your followers to come to your location to drop off food, or sign up to sponsor a racer.  Offer a Buy One Meal/Get One Meal Free with every donation of 5 cans.  Again, every time someone drops off a can or signs up as a sponsor, mention them in a Tweet.  Make it a Twitter exclusive campaign and see what happens.  Do a different charity every quarter, or maybe even every month.

5)      Have a “We Love our Customers” Tweet day.  Promote that you are going to thank all your customers starting at 9:00 a.m. on X day.  Get as many of your customer’s @Twitternames as you can and on the appointed day, send out Tweets praising and thanking your customers for their business.  Send the Thank You Tweets continuously for 24 hours. Track how many times those Tweets get retweeted.  Wouldn’t you want to do business with a company that publicly thanked its customers?   Other people will want to, too. Do this once a quarter. 

These are just ideas that came to me this afternoon.  Depending on your target audience, there are so many creative, imaginative ways you can a) use Twitter Content to b) create Conversation to c) encourage your Community to d) increase your Commerce (the 4 Cs of social media success).

I would love to hear about your Twitter campaign ideas or stories about Twitter campaigns that worked or ones that flopped.  Leave your comments below.

Here’s to your success,

Trina

P.S.  It’s not exactly the same presentation, but I’ll be speaking on a similar topic at next week’s Abundance Marketing Series.  I’m going to be reviewing strategies on how to better manage your online content (hhmm, let me see, could one of those strategies be to hire me to write your blog, articles and press releases?).  I’d love to see you there.

RSVP at http://abundancemarketingpro.eventbrite.com

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One of my tasks as a small business consultant is to keep up with best practices in different fields, like online marketing, so I can better advise my clients on what they might consider doing.  So this week, I’ve been studying Twitter, trying to figure out how the best of the best make it happen.  So I began following Ashton Kutcher and CNN.  And I have to admit, I have been amused, intriqued, and entertained far beyond what I was expecting.  I also started checking out all the Twitter analysis sites, like Twitter Grader, Twitter Analyzer, Tweet Stats, Twitter Stats, Twitter Counter.  I put in all kinds of queries, and viewed a lot of Twitter feeds, both personal and business.

I can’t say this is definitive, but as I review my notes, I think I have identified seven things businesses, both big and small, should do on Twitter to make it a more successful platform.

1.  Target a niche, talk to that niche, develop a niche.  So I started research this week at Dell.  I was fascinated by fact that Dell has 34 Twitter accounts, each aimed at a specific market.  Now that’s smart marketing. And each account only follows other Dell accounts — Dell Twitter managers do not read anyone else’s Tweets, except other Dell Tweets.  But between all the accounts, they have over 1.5 million followers.  Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t need to know what coupons Dell is offering on what accessories every day, but apparently a lot of other people do.  But each Dell Tweet account manager develops their own following and interacts with their own audience.  They are all different.    

2.  Another lesson from Dell is to use Twitter as a customer service tool.  A lot of the Dell Twitter managers (most of whom are happily pictured on their account pages) have running dialog with customers about back-ordered inventory, end dates of sales, how to special order items, and other customer service issues.  It’s very much like a public live chat.  But it does demonstrate Dell’s willingness to engage and reflects well on their customer service philosophy.  I definitely have a stronger feeling of trust in Dell after reading their Tweets.  That’s an effective use of the platform. 

3.  Have a mix of offers, information, replies, and personal Tweets.  Don’t just Tweet “about” your business, throw some offers out there.  Don’t just send people to other blogs or articles, Tweet about your own business and send them to your own website or blog.  If a customer or client asks a question, respond.  Ask your customers questions and ask for feedback.  It’s OK to have some personal Tweets (just got off the plane in Orlando) but there has to be more if you are presenting yourself as a business.  Mention other people, reTweet, reply.  The more you mix it up, the more engaged your followers become in you and  your brand.

4.  Do not use one of the standard Twitter backgrounds — make your own.  Make it professional, make it reflect your brand and your personality.  I find it odd that I’m recommending this, because really, you mostly see your Tweetstream’s Tweets, not their pages, but as I was researching, I could almost tell if I was going to be impressed by their Tweet activity the second I pulled up their profile.  And most of it was the first impression of the page background. And of course, it goes without saying that you MUST have a photo or logo, not one of the ugly Twitter default icons.

5.  Include photos and videos. The most influential Tweeters use a lot of photos and link to a lot of videos.  It adds interest, it gives the reader a fuller idea of who and what you are about.

6.  Make your profile description match your activity.  If your profile says you are a small business consultant, your Tweets should be about small business things — not ceramics.  If you say you are a mortgage banker, I expect to see Tweets about the financial markets, or home sales, or government regulations, not puppy housebreaking.  Oh sure, throw a couple Tweets out there about your personal struggles with the next Marley, but if that’s all you are going to Tweet about, then make it a personal Twitter account and don’t expect to drive business.

7.  Mention your Twitter handle in all your other online activities and drive people to Twitter to follow you.  Once I found some Twitter accounts I liked, I went to their Facebook, their LinkedIn, their websites, anywhere I could, to see how they were promoting their Twitter activity.  And it turns out that the ones I liked were promoting it a lot.  SO, you can find me on Twitter as @SuccessPointer.  Go ahead, follow me.  I’ll try to engage some of you in conversation. 

That’s Twitter.com/SuccessPointer.

It’s pretty clear that there are no hard and fast rules to using Twitter as professional networking tool, but I think incorporating these 7 characteristics into your Tweets will help make it as effective as possible for your small business.

Here’s to your success,

Trina

P.S. 

  Heather Tapia’s Why2 How2 Abundance Marketing series starts TONIGHT at 6:00 p.m. at Raisin Rack in Westerville.  For more information and to register, go to http://AbundanceMarketingPro.eventbrite.com

P.S.S.  Registration continues for SPEED NETWORKING, coming May 18th at The Meeting Place.  Go to Gemstone Partners to officially register.  It’s going to be fun.  Also, if you have a book, a discount, a do-dah of some sort that you would like to donate as a Door Prize for the event, let me know!  I love to promote my friends and their businesses.

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I recently started working with a new small business client who, on the surface, seems to be very internet-savvy.   They are blogging, they are active on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.  They have an attractive website.  They are SEO smart so they are getting decent traffic to their site.

The problem is: they aren’t getting any sales off the internet.  They have a presence, yes,  but it’s not translating into dollars.

Can I help them?

In my analysis of their to-date efforts, I opened up their Twitter account and looked at all their 1,061 Tweets (4 to 6 a day for about a year now).  What struck me immediately was that I had no idea whose Tweets I was looking at.  Their picture was their logo, which is fine if you know them, not significant if you don’t.  About half of their Tweets were about the weather or current events, maybe a quarter of them were Re-Tweets of other people’s stuff (which is good if there is some sort of tie-in to you, which there typically wasn’t), and maybe a quarter actually mentioned a product or service they offer.  Every Tweet used a cloaked URL.

In 1,061 Tweets, the actual name of their company had not been used once.

The company name is not terribly long (it’s half the length of Success Point Consulting).   Honestly, it’s probably the same length as the cloaked URL.  “Why use the cloaked URL?” I asked.  So they could get reporting from Hootsuite.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I am all about tracking and measuring.  So I looked at their Hootsuite statistics.  The most clicks they had ever received on any one message over the past 12 months was 48 clicks, and that was a Tweet about support for relief efforts in Haiti.  Those Tweets didn’t go to their website, they went to a relief organization.  The next Tweet with the highest number of clicks got 14 people to click through to a Youtube video that had nothing to do with their company.  The rest of the top ten were 5 clicks or fewer.   Most of their Tweets are going unnoticed and the ones that are getting noticed are sending people to other sites. They are not engaging with anyone.

They are also following 3 times more people than are following them, but that’s another discussion …

So, as an experiment, I set up a couple of marketing-oriented Tweets and used the actual web address of the company’s home page instead of a cloaked url.  The next day, I was going through my usual morning routine in my consulting email account and I saw a Google Alert come through for their company name.  Surprise!  Google had picked up the Tweet that had their company name in it.  This was the first Tweet that had come through to Google Alerts.  The previous 28 Tweets or so since I had started working with them had been ignored.  Ever have one of the “Ah-ha!” moments?  Does a cloaked URL block Google from recording Tweets as backlinks and if we use the full company URL, will we get better ranking in Google?  Is this actually a SEO tip that I had somehow missed in all my previous research?

So I went surfing the web, trying to find an answer.  One place I went was SEOmoz.org, which does list url cloaking as a negative factor for Google rankings.  But I couldn’t find a whole lot of talk on the subject. 

My gut tells me that companies should be using their brand name on Twitter at least occasionally.   I understand the benefit of cloaked URLs and I use them myself, but I’m going to be more selective on where and when from now on. What about you?  If you pull up all of your company’s Tweets from the past year, are they clearly from your brand?  Would readers be able to learn anything about you and your company?  Do you try to use your company name in your Tweets, or do you rely strictly on cloaked urls?

In my mind, the jury is still out and I still have lots of work to do to start generating sales from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn  for this company, but I feel I might be going in the right direction.  I’ve changed their mix of Tweets to about 75% marketing-oriented (I’m actually putting offers in the Tweets, how novel!) to only 25% Re-Tweets and comments on the general nature of the world. 

Please leave your thoughts and comments below.  If you need ideas on how to better utilize social media and other online marketing strategies, please give me a call at 614-753-5979 or email me at SuccessPointConsulting@hotmail.com

Trina

P.S.S.  Another friend, Dr. Gwen Dwiggins, runs an outstanding clinic for autistic children, The Accelerated Learning Clinic, 5158 Blazer Parkway, Dublin.  She is having an OPEN HOUSE on Saturday, April 10, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.  If you know anyone with an autistic child, please pass this information along. 

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