Posts Tagged ‘internet marketing’

A friend of mine asked if I could explain how to use Facebook for marketing purposes. This is an interesting question because you really need to use Facebook for a while before you really get it. But I’ll take a stab at explaining it.

When all is said and done, marketing on Facebook is a lot like marketing anywhere else. If you start trying to interrupt people, you’re going to get lackluster results. Basically, you’re going to get ignored unless you can provide a relevant message or experience.

But, as a company trying to gain some mindshare, there are a few things that you can try.

1. Build a “Page”

Difficulty: Low
Potential for Results: Low

For lack of better terms, Facebook has what they call “Pages.” Users can create a Page about anything, but they tend to mainly be about companies, products, movies, musicians, and sports teams.

After you create a Page, Facebookers can “Become a Fan” of your company or product. Depending on how much effort you want to put into this, you can push updates to Fans and allow for discussion and some other items to be posted.

In my eyes, this is pretty ineffective unless you have a brand that people are willing to make tattoos out of. Is your brand a religion? If not, you’re going to have a Page best described as a “ghost town.”

2. Build an Application

Difficulty: High
Potential for Results: High

This is probably the best way you can get Facebook users’ attention, but this is the most difficult. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it!

A Facebook application is a program that you develop on your own web server that allows for a richer experience on Facebook. Usually, the best applications tie into the social nature of Facebook itself. For example, iLike has a Facebook application that automatically shares what users have recently listened to in iTunes. Users can also dedicate songs to each other and meet people who are going to concerts in the area.

The first difficulty is in first coming up with an idea for an application. Let’s face it: your brand may or may not be a good candidate for this sort of thing. A great place to start is to brainstorm if there’s a way to mimic your product or service on Facebook. If your product already has a social nature to it, then it should be easy to figure out a good way to represent it.

The next difficulty is in building the application. You’ll likely need to hire a talented web programmer to build something for you, and then you need to maintain and improve your application over the long haul.

A word to the wise. An ideal Facebook application will bring attention to your brand, but it also shouldn’t intrude on or annoy users. Think of a Facebook app as a passive entity that subtly keeps users thinking about your brand. Or it extends a service that you already offer. In other words, it probably won’t make the sale for your business, but it does buy attention.

3. Socialize on Facebook

Difficulty: High
Potential for Results: Low

The last approach is to create a personal profile on Facebook and reach out to people in the network that you build. You can’t create a profile as a company, so you’d need to be a representative of your company.

The problem is that Facebook is a haven for people that don’t like to be interrupted. If you take this route, expect to work hard for few results. Most Facebook users are not interested in wasting their time on people that they don’t know.

There is even a term for it: Facebook whores are people with massive friends lists, filled with relationships that are either nonexistent or very shallow to begin with. I don’t think that you want to represent yourself that way professionally. But it is your choice!

Am I missing any ideas? Is your company a candidate for Facebook? Feel free to ask questions or discuss in the comments.

Aaron Wall made a great point about the difference between articles and blog posts. Also some interesting discussion in the comments. (Especially the link to an article about the same subject by Jakob Nielsen, which I read at the time and then promptly did not apply to my situation.)

I’m sure that there are some industries that still need new blogs. But I currently sit in an industry with too many. Internet Marketing is probably one of the wortst industries to be a blogger in because there is so much noise and so many echoes about the same topics.

I don’t fancy myself as a top blogger, but I do enjoy it. I also feel that I have important stuff to say, so I’m going to treat that stuff differently than a blog post. This blog should be for bite-sized ideas, not lengthy articles.

For those of you who have been following along, that means that my mini-series about running an AdWords campaign is not going to be a series of blog entries, but rather a series of articles. Something didn’t feel right about the idea of the mini-series. I’m glad that I could figure it out.

I am going to write a mini-series on setting up and running a fake Google AdWords search campaign. Think mini-series like The Jacksons: An American Dream, only with an abusive blogger instead of an abusive father.

Chances are, your advertisement isn’t going to run smoothly when you start it up. I’m going to help you reduce your chances of wasting money. Believe me, Google is definitely ready to collect it.

Here are the steps that I will describe and illustrate:

1. Keyword research
2. Writing ad text
3. Creating landing pages
4. Maintaining your campaign
5. Reporting and metrics

How generic would this be if I didn’t have something to advertise? So, to make things interesting, I will be creating a fake campaign for marble toilets. And I’m going to DOMINATE. Just you watch.

Google likes for you to think that advertising on its AdWords platform is simple. Getting started on AdWords is easy enough, but getting great business results from it is not easy at all.

I’m not going to cover the exact mechanics of running an AdWords campaign in this post, but I am going to tell you what you should expect.

Top priority: gathering intelligence

The first thing to expect from Google AdWords is that you can’t predict what’s going to happen until you’ve let your campaign run a little bit. I’ve set up dozens of campaigns and found that some perform wonderfully out of the gate, but some will perform so miserably that it almost seems impossible to get a return on your investment.

Sometimes you enter a space with no competition and get great prices on clicks. Sometimes you enter a space so competitive that it’s very costly to even get in the first 8 spots.

It can take anywhere from a month to 3 months to get enough data to know how to improve your campaign. I like to think of this data as an investment. If you analyze your first 1-3 months’ worth of data correctly, you gain some valuable intelligence for improving your results.

AdWords is not a short-term activity

Like your website, AdWords campaigns need to be optimized. It is not a “set it and forget it” affair. Just letting destiny take its course is going to cost your business a lot of money with nothing to show for it.

Like I said, any intelligence that you gain for the purpose of optimizing your campaign is an investment. Why is that? Once you’ve reached a certain level of optimization, you can just let the campaign run. All of the work that you do to figure out which keywords and ads drive the best business can just run on its own for a while.

With AdWords, there’s always a changing landscape of competition, so you do need to keep an eye on things. But it certainly does feel good to let things run for a while, knowing that you’re getting a much better ROI than your competitors.

Most search marketers don’t know what they’re doing

I know that this makes things tough on you as a business owner. Who can you trust? As a search marketer myself, I’ve tried scratching the surface in conversations with other professionals in my industry. I’ve discovered some awesome techniques for improving AdWords lately, and none of my colleagues seem that interested in putting in the elbow grease to run these techniques and save their companies some serious cash.

Unless you’re set on becoming an expert search marketer yourself, you’re going to have some major trouble. My rule of thumb: if you’re not paying someone who questions Google’s intentions, you’re probably paying someone who’s only interested in collecting your money. If you’re paying someone who is confident that the campaign is going to run peachy out of the gate, then they obviously don’t have much experience.

One of the biggest opportunities any company has on the Web is to own a conversation. There are small tribes of passionate people forming all around the world. They need a place to talk about their very specific interests, problems, and triumphs. This happens in what we call web communities, or “social media” sites.

I’ve worked with a lot of people that believe that if you build, they will come. Putting up a forum or a blog is only the first step. (Or maybe the second step.) Anyone can do that. If you think that’s all that it takes, then you’re not the unique flower that you think you are.

Practicing what I preach

A few months ago, I adopted and revived a community called ColdFusion on Wheels. It’s been a great experience. The community is a group of people that wants to see something special happen. Most importantly, they want to be a part of something special.

How did the community form? Did someone put up a forum about an existing product? No. A few guys have worked hard on building a piece of free software, and that’s what everyone talks about.

It’s also been a very challenging experience for me. There is no visible benefit to volunteering my time, so it’s hard to stay motivated and to contribute myself.

The takeaway

Any successful web community needs to be based on an asset, and the conversation needs to be interesting. Be it about a book, a church, or a music group, some work needs to happen first. And in most cases, your product is not going to be worth talking about on its own.

Remember, if it was easy, then everyone would be running a successful community.

SEO Black Hat came up with a great tip about writing effective headlines: mimic tabloid headlines.

Think about it: tabloid headlines must grab your attention immediately to get you to make that impulse buy. Sound anything like internet marketing? Hmm… Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been focusing a lot on optimization lately.

If you think about it, there are 2 ways that you can increase business results on your website. You can pay more to throw more traffic and more eyeballs at it. Or you can optimize its content so that visitors are more likely to become customers.

One of the key benefits of web content optimization is that it has long-term results. When you pay for an advertising campaign, that only lasts for so long. Optimization efforts produce results long after you’re done.

Here are a few tips in getting started in optimizing your website.

Read the rest of this entry »

What questions do you have about running a web site? SEO? Internet marketing in general?

You have questions, I have answers!

Over the course of my career, I’ve been obsessed with best practices. Be they best practices for writing code or for separating responsibilities, I’ve always had dreams of running that well-oiled marketing and technology machine.

If you’re just starting out in working with an internet marketer, you may be a little uncomfortable in knowing what your role is vs. what your internet marketer’s role is. You don’t want to come across as a micro-manager, but you also own the work that you’re paying for, right?

From my side of the table, here’s what I see as the line in the sand for responsibilities. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a serious question to ask yourself. How much do I rely on Google for my business’s success? If Google banned your site from their search results today, what would happen to your business? You probably have a serious problem if Google rankings determine whether you live or die.

You hear stock analysts preach about “diversifying” your stock portfolio to minimize risk. Following that same sound logic, you should ask yourself, just how diverse are my marketing activities?

Here are some alternatives to Google that you should consider. Read the rest of this entry »