5 Ways PPC Campaign Structure Can Increase CTRs

December
10
2011

Posted in:
Adwords, Local Search Marketing, Pay Per Click

The Best Click-thru-Rates Comes from Great Account Structure

If you’re relatively new to ppc, this claim can seem rather bold. I promise you the title is not misleading or just to ‘get the click’. Account structure involves clearly defining the purpose and settings for each campaign and ad group in an account.

The most commonly talked about aspect of click-thru-rate involves the actual ad copy matched up with the right keyword. In order to right good ad copy it is imperative to understand who you are targeting, but it is even more important to understand what the user is searching for at that moment.

Better Click Thru Rates = Higher AdWords Keyword Quality Scores = Lower Costs Per Click

1. Day Parting

Let’s start at the ad copy level. Consider the following concept: a good ‘Call Now’ search ad during the day is probably a terrible ad at night. Why, because most users aren’t expecting to call at night. If your business can actually handle at a late night call it would need to be explicitly stated in the ad in order to be effective. The solution would be to Create a separate mobile campaign and choose effective day-parting. The remaining campaign should still consider day-parting for times of night when the click-thru-rates drop off significantly.

2. Call-to-Action:

The call-to-action itself is an important distinction. To save time, many account managers rely on a single campaign to handle each area for desktops and laptops, tablets, and smart phones. It has been shown the smart phone users do not convert at the same as displayed in the following article: Mobile conversion rates lag behind tablet. Users searching on a smart phone are far more likely to call a business than complete an online form. Why go against the grain?

3. Match Types

Once the right ads at the right time of day are established comes the keyword factor. Matching ad copy with keywords should be obvious, but different match types may confuse the issue. The biggest question is “What search queries are triggering your ads?” Phrase and especially Broad Match attract a much wider variety of search queries than Exact Match. The search query ‘auto loan rates for good credit’ could trigger the keywords “auto loan”, auto loans, auto loan rates, or even +rates for +auto +loans (broad match modifier being used).

4. Add More Keywords

That’s a lot of weight for each of those keywords to service. How does one write ad copy for all of the myriad search queries a keyword could service? Add more keywords, separate the ad groups, and use negatives. If a more general keyword, such as “auto loans”, isn’t performing well, but it’s being triggered for ‘bad credit auto loans’, the account may lose the ability cover that search query effectively if the bid for that keyword is dramatically lowered If the keyword ‘+bad +credit +auto +loans’ is added there is no longer a need worry about that concern. Keep checking the search query reports to find new keywords to add, block, or move to another ad group.

5. Campaigns as Silos:

The same match type problem may also create inappropriate ad serving. The keyword “home mortgage” may be triggered for the query ‘home mortgage refinancing’. The search intent of ‘home mortgage’ is more likely to informational to find rates or explanations for a home purchase loan. On the other hand, the rates and information regarding refinancing of a home are very different. The account may be able to service both, but the customer needs are different. This is handled easily by putting the keywords in separate campaigns and using a few well-placed negatives to funnel the queries into neatly divided silos. Caution: excessive use of this technique may create significant gaps in queries for which the account is triggered.

Each of these concepts can be broken down further, such as making sure the sitelinks are written well for the individual campaigns. However, that should be enough information to get started re-considering the entire account. After all, the click-through-rates depend on it.

Written by Kevin Adams,

Director of Client Services and Paid Search Marketing Director at smbSEO

Tagged with: account setup • Adwords • campaign structure • dallas ppc • mobile ppc • paid search • Pay Per Click • ppc • ppc dallas

Google Further Enhances Mobile Ads with Click-to-Call and Google Voice

August
2
2011

Posted in:
Adwords

Google Enhances Mobile PPC Ads on Smartphones Google Voice Call Extentions

Google AdWords, Google’s advertising platform, really has their fingers on the pulse of the future of mobile search. Their latest targeting option allows phone numbers in an advertiser’s text-based mobile ads to be ‘Click-to-Call’. This is one of several changes Google has made to bring more business to their advertisers. The advertiser would be charged the same as a click to their website.

In the first half of 2010 Google added Ad Extensions including the Call Extension that created a click-to-call option beneath their mobile ads. A large number of accounts adopted these Ad Extensions to great success, but many less experienced search marketers haven’t gotten around to these features.

Google also offers their Google Voice service as a call-tracking option in AdWords called Call Metrics. Each tracked call would cost an additional dollar and would provide some basic call stats such as whether the call was answered, duration of call, and time. They have recently expanded this to all of their advertisers http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/07/now-all-us-and-canada-advertisers-can.html.

Google has also announced that the call-rate (the likelihood that a user seeing the phone number chooses to call that number) will become a core componenet of the Quality Score for their mobile ads. To remove any confusion, advertisers that include their phone number in their ads as well as using the Call Extension will default to showing only the phone number in the ad.

Mobile is changing rapidly, but Google continues to provide their advertisers the options to keep up with these changes. I’m personally going to test using the Call Extension as well as ads with the numbers in the ads.

Google’s Official Letter
Dear AdWords Advertiser,

If you currently have a phone number in your ad text or have plans to start adding your phone number in an ad, this is an important notice that in the coming weeks, we will be launching a new enhancement to AdWords ads that will impact charges on clicks to these numbers.

To help our mobile users connect more easily with advertisers, all non-clickable phone numbers displayed in AdWords ad text will be automatically converted into a Click-to-call number. Currently when advertisers enter a phone number directly into their ad text instead of using Call Extensions, the phone number is not clickable and will not generate a call. This can be a frustrating experience for mobile users who attempt to initiate a call to this phone number.

The new Click-to-call enhancement ensures that all phone numbers shown in AdWords ads are clickable and allows users to easily place calls from their mobile device. If your ad text includes a phone number, you will begin to receive clicks and calls on this number once the enhancement is enabled in your account. As with phone calls placed via a Call Extension, you will be charged for clicks on your phone number that result in a call.

Please note that AdWords policy does not allow for phone numbers to be inserted into ad headlines. As with all Click-to-call ads, advertisers will be charged when a user either clicks on the headline or the phone number listed in the ad. Please see below for additional information regarding this change.

Which phone number shows?

If you are currently using both Call Extensions and a phone number in your ad creative, only the newly clickable phone number in your ad creative will show. This is designed to help reduce user confusion from seeing two potentially different numbers. If you would like your Call Extension number to display, simply delete all phone numbers from your existing ad text by following these steps. You’ll also receive an additional line of ad text displaying your phone number if the Call Extension is used.

Measuring results

You’ll be able to review how many calls you receive on the clickable phone number listed in your ad text for each campaign, ad group, keyword and ad on the “Campaigns” tab in your AdWords account. Just select the “Click-type” option under the “Segment” drop down and view your report. Please note that since these are not calls generated from a Call Extension, they will not be reported in the Extensions tab reports.

Recommendations for featuring a phone number

You can simply leave your phone number in your ad text and benefit from this change which will automatically make your phone numbers clickable and enable users to call you. However, to get the most value from click-to-call, we recommend that you remove your phone number from your ad creative and create a Call Extension with your phone number directly.

This has several benefits. With a manually created Call Extension your number will appear as an additional line of ad text which frees up space in your ad creative for other promotion. In addition, when you create a Call Extension, your phone number appears on a separate line in the ad, and you’re able to take advantage of other powerful enhancements such as Vanity Numbers, Call-only and Call Metrics reporting.

Tagged with: ad extentions • click-to-call • dallas ppc • dallas ppc expert • google mobile ads • google voice • ppc consultant dallas

What is SEO?

July
30
2011

Posted in:
Local Search Marketing, Search Engine Optimization

What Is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a method designed to improve the flow of visitors to a website by achieving a higher ranking within search engine result pages (SERPs). In reality, the majority of Internet users rarely search further than the first few pages of results. Considering that traffic is the lifeblood of any website, low visibility within leading search engines can spell disaster for webmasters.

Since users perceive the top ranking websites as trustworthy authorities within their niches, those sites tend to generate a significantly larger stream of traffic. For this reason, obtaining powerful positioning is an integral part of a successful and sustainable SEO strategy. In fact, the implementation of organic SEO techniques yields remarkable benefits.

Organic techniques direct traffic to a website naturally, with long-term effects. It is no secret that search engines crave relevancy, which is why it is so important to maintain your website with content relevant to profitable search terms your target audience use. When you maintain relevancy, you effectively give search engines the food they need to keep your website on top. In addition, relevant content attracts quality backlinks, which help preserve your strong positioning.

Continuously creating, and sharing relevant, engaging, and valuable content is commonly known as content marketing. The unique content you publish and distribute serves several purposes. Besides attracting backlinks that increase your web presence, content marketing can help you increase direct sales, generate leads, cultivate brand loyalty, retain the attention of your readers, boost customer retention, maintain long-term positioning, and improve website accessibility.

Likewise, local SEO offers similar results. As Internet users refine their search criteria to include geographical locations, it has become crystal clear that local search marketing is crucial to the survival of many small to medium size businesses. It is no longer effective to target purely on a global level when many Internet users are searching for specific types of businesses within their local communities.

Local search engine optimization employs useful tools such as Google Places, Yahoo Maps, Bing Maps, and business directories to create an online presence. Your target audience will have access to your company’s details within seconds of conducting a search. With local SEO you not only attract targeted prospects, but the right keywords will deliver traffic actively searching for your services, and products right to your website. This technique allows you to make valuable connections with prospects online, who might buy offline.

Ultimately, content marketing and local search marketing amplify the effectiveness of your SEO campaign. If done correctly, it provides you with a competitive advantage that outlasts that of your competitors. These optimization techniques work constantly, which means your business benefits 24/7.

If gaining a decent search engine ranking is a constant struggle, and you are failing to attract qualified and organic traffic, let the industry experts at smbSEO.com help you achieve the results you deserve. Now you can make the most of your marketing dollars and take control of your search engine rankings with solutions that work by signing up today!

Tagged with: dallas seo consultant • seo dallas • what is seo

Why Does My Business Need Local Listing Optimization?

June
17
2011

Posted in:
Local Search Marketing

What is local listing optimization?

Local listings are a big part of Google’s current business plans. In 2007 the search engine announced that 73% of all searches were for local businesses or activities and since then it has focussed on bringing this type of result to searchers, even for generic terms. Searches for general terms such as ‘estate agent’ or ‘pizza’ now bring up details of those businesses close to your location, so making the most of local listing optimization can be hugely beneficial. Checking which of your services or products brings up a list of local businesses can be a good way to decide what to focus your attention on to increase your visibility.

Being sure to have a full address on your website can make a huge difference. It’s not unusual to see a business listed highly for ‘[city] restaurant’ but not show up at all for ‘[suburb] restaurant’, because their focus was just on one listing.

If your business has more than one physical address – not including PO boxes – you can add all these to your website, but it’s best to have as much detail as possible, a page for each location works well, rather than a footer that has a list of all the places your business operates as this can look spammy to both users and search engines.

With the increase of smart phones, on the go searches for nearby businesses, restaurants and other amenities, all based around the location of the user’s phone, are on the increase meaning local business listings are going to continue to grow as a way of pushing traffic.

Benefits

Filling in a local business listing fully and honestly, without keyword stuffing, can prove hugely beneficial. Make sure you complete each section – the ‘categories’ section is often missed out to huge detriment of the offending business – and take time to research each answer. Including a valid phone number helps Google verify your physical location.

Local listings often appear in universal search results, even when the searcher doesn’t specify a location. Google can work out their location and offer what it thinks are useful local services for their needs. These results generally appear above the organic search results, so even if your on page SEO is perfect, local business listings can easily leapfrog your organisation and all your hard work.

Local business does not necessarily equal small business. While local listings can give a huge boost to one-store, family-owned businesses, it can also help multi-national companies with locations across the globe.

All major search engines offer their own version of local listings with different features. Signing up for all three is recommended and, depending on the search engine, you can add videos, coupons and photos with your listing.

Risks

Google has very strict quality guidelines for local listings, so be sure to follow these closely lest you end up banned from search results. For example, services should not list every location they work in and businesses should not include keywords in their addresses or company name (unless they’re actually a part of the the registered name).

Rating websites, such as Qype and TripAdvisor, are beginning to shape listings as Google takes note of how users are rating companies, so if you’re offering a poor service (even just on Twitter), people can grade you down which will have an adverse effect on your rankings.

As with any form of SEO, local listings need constant attention, otherwise it’s likely you can drop from them or be replaced by more involved companies. Being active and regularly adding coupons or photos can help with this. Citations – other sites listing your company and address – also help power your ranking.

Black hat companies may offer to get your listing at or near the top in a very short time span and some even deliver on this promise. However, many of them get blacklisted from Google and this can have permanent damage to your company and address.

If your address isn’t properly configured your business headquarters or shop location can show up incorrectly on Google Maps, which can confuse and irritate customers who are trying to find your building. Having this implemented properly can be hugely successful according to research which shows many users research online and buy on the street.

Tools

Some SEO companies offer a service to show what terms your company shows up for in the local listings, rates how well your listings are optimized and what you might want to do to improve your rankings.

Tagged with: categories section • detriment • generic terms • google • local business listings • nearby businesses • physical address • physical location • searcher • smart phones • universal search

Why Does My Business Need Google Analytics?

June
16
2011

Posted in:
Analytics

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics allows you to track visitors to your site and their behavior. It shows you where they came from, what keywords they used to find you, where they went on your site and how long they spent there. You can use this data to help shape your marketing strategy: If a lot of your traffic is coming from a particular source without any effort on your behalf, what would happen to the number of visitors if you focussed on that area a little? Are you targeting the right keywords? Should you put more effort into optimizing images, videos or social media?

The analytics package is one of Google’s most popular and well used tools and as such is constantly being updated and upgraded to keep it leading the pack. Nevertheless, there are competitors lurking who you may want to investigate as well although many of these require a small monthly payment.

Benefits

Google Analytics is a free service and offers many of the same services, and many more in some cases, than its paid competitors. Feel free to drop in and out of your account to check on figures or set up weekly e-mail reports to have information sent straight to your inbox.

You are given information on almost every aspect of user behavior. If your site isn’t converting well, you can find out where people are leaving your site so you know the best pages to make tweaks to. If any of your pages have high bounce rates, you can be pretty sure there’s something not quite right on there.

Geographical data can lead to new business opportunities. Plenty of visits from Lithuania but you don’t offer postage to eastern Europe? More traffic from Darwin than Sydney but you don’t have a store in NT?

Working hand in hand with AdWords, you can see exactly how effective your advertising is and when your wording is at its best or worst. You can also check how your SEO changes are working out by comparing time frames to see the difference before and after a tweak.

You can see how many times people land on your 404 page and how these people are getting to that page. If it’s from internal links you’ll want to get that fixed straight away, if it’s from external sources you’ll want to

Drawbacks/Alternatives

Some people oppose Google’s stance on collecting data from your site. Alternatives, such as Piwik, have sprung up as a result and many praise the speed of this open source analytics package.

Google Analytics focuses purely on your main site and your traffic. Search engine marketing now encompasses so much more than this but your social media offerings are not covered by this service. Clicky offers details on your Twitter page and followers, but is only free to sites with fewer than 3000 page views.

GA groups all your traffic sources together, so if you want to differentiate between image searches and regular searches you have to set up filters to make this happen. With Mint these differences are separated naturally and the site also gives you handy feed subscription details, although the is a license fee for use.

Although quick, Google doesn’t provide details of users in absolute real time. Reinvigorate lets you watch users land on your site and you can then follow their progress to see where they go, what they click on and if they buy anything as it happens. Add to that a funky heat-mapping technology and you’ve got yourself an impressive package. Monthly fees apply.

Chart Beat, another paid for site, shows information in two main sections – real time and historical data. Useful tools such as scroll mapping (which shows how much of each page a user scrolled down, where they paused etc), page density and Twitter stats coupled with fancy graphics and charts make this a valuable tool.

Tools

EpikOne allows you to make notes within the analytics package, which is useful if more than one user has access to the account. Leave details of programmes you’re running, anything you’re testing or monitoring and details or new priorities or goals.

LunaMetrics is a Firefox plug-in that copies goals from one profile to another. There’s also a Firefox add-on that allows you to draw information straight to Google Docs, rather than having to download.

VKI Studios has created a script that lets you keep up with how many people are using the social media buttons on your articles – how many likes, stumbles, diggs etc.

Tagged with: Adwords • darwin • e mail • eastern europe • geographical data • google • lithuania • mail reports • marketing strategy • new business opportunities • time frames • tweak

Why Does My Business Need A Flickr Account?

June
16
2011

Posted in:
Search Engine Optimization

What is Flickr?

Flickr is a photo sharing website owned by Yahoo. The site has a range of different profile options and allows you to share photos and videos with the Flickr community. Tagging and geolocating your images helps people find them more easily and there are many groups you can join to share your best shots and discuss the theme of the group.

Your profile allows you to advertise (within reason) your company – name your profile after your business or website address, put a bit about what you do in your blurb and include your official URL to make sure people know who you are and what you’re about.

Having your photos stored on Flickr makes them more accessible to internet users and also frees up space on your server. Be sure to link through to your Flickr profile from your main site – this shows that it’s authentic and also give customers and potential customers a look into your company.

Benefits

Sharing photos helps to show the personal side of a business. Had a great team bonding exercise? Snap away and publish on Flickr. Thrown a great Christmas party? Record the evidence and put it online. More and more job hunters want to know what it’s like to work for a company before they consider applying and this is a great way to show them.

Share behind the scenes images of the interesting sides of your business. If you’ve filmed an advert, show everyone what went into making the ad, how people prepared, what the set look liked etc. Show the process of creating your product or working through your service – give people an idea of how you do what you do, show the things they normally ignore or take for granted.

With so many groups set up on Flickr – by interest, product type or location – it’s easy to find a set of people with a clear interest. If your photos match the topic of a group, it’s a good idea to join and share your work. Be sure to read the group rules and make sure you’re there to share and interact, not just to dump your uploads and hope something good comes of it.

It’s possible to use Flickr as a monitoring tool to see what people are saying about you. Search for your company or product name to find photos uploaded. You may find people praising you or you may find people uploading images of your shoddy work. Be sure to act appropriately, apologetic works much better than the big man who demands a photo be taken down.

Images provide a high percentage of incoming traffic to many sites, so if you can build up your online portfolio you increase your chances of attracting more visitors to your photos and your homepage. Be sure to give your photos titles, descriptions and tags to promote them as best you can.

As well as sharing your images with the community, Flickr is an easy way to share pictures with the media who may want to run a story on you, your company or your services.

Risks

Flickr imposes a monthly limit on how many photos you can upload every week. If you think you’re going to use this site a lot, it’s possible to pay a fee to upgrade your account to unlimited usage.

There’s a fine line between professional organisation that knows how to have fun and putting in appropriate material online. Make sure whoever’s in charge of uploading to your public account knows the difference.

While it’s acceptable to add images of your latest products, be sure that you focus on the image rather than the product, its price and how it can improve the customer’s life. As with any social network, users are there to join a community, not to have salesmen trying to ram products down their throat.

Joining the community by adding photos to groups and commenting on other users’ photos is encouraged, but be sure to do this in a friendly, rather than a businesslike, manner. If you leaving comments just to put your name on screens or your link in discussions, people will soon start to tire of your antics and you’ll find yourself banned from groups.

Flickr operates a strict no-commercial policy. While you’re allowed to upload images that may be of interest to the community, if you’re seen to be trying to sell a product (listing prices, availability, sales details etc) it’s likely your account and any work you’ve put into it will be removed.

Tools

A desktop photo uploader is available from the Flickr website. This tool makes it easy to upload, tag and organise photos while running in the background of your work.

There are plenty of plugins and widgets available that will automatically show your latest Flickr uploads on your company website or blog.

It’s possible to download and backup your photos by using a third party application.

Tagged with: blurb • christmas party • flickr • group rules • internet users • personal side • photo sharing • profile options • share photos • sharing photos

Why Does My Business Need A YouTube Account?

June
16
2011

Posted in:
Video Production

What is YouTube?

Owned by Google, YouTube is the web’s most popular video sharing website and the fourth most popular site overall. Although it carries a bit of a reputation for users uploading copyright-infringing material, the site is also a haven for video makers, producers and companies sharing original work and is used by some of the world’s top brands.

Adding videos to your repertoire of marketing tools can lead to a huge upsurge in your site traffic and press coverage. YouTube is big on sharing its videos and anything uploaded on the site can be shared on Twitter, Facebook and many of the smaller networks with a few clicks.

It’s also possible to comment on videos and get feedback from your customers that way and many companies use YouTube as a way to hold contests with a bit of pizazz.

General use of the site is free, but by becoming a YouTube Partner you can get extra benefits such as customising your profile page, generating revenue and keeping hold of the copyright of videos you upload. Becoming a partner is also said to boost your video up the searches made on YouTube.

Benefits

There’s a lot of talk about videos going viral – that is that they become so popular everyone has seen them and talks about them – but this is easier said than done. If achieved, your business will enjoy the limelight of the internet and articles, Facebook fan pages and like after like will find its way to you on YouTube. The problem, however, is that what goes viral is rarely a deliberate act and is more likely to be made by an individual than a company.

YouTube is not only a great platform for sharing your video with users of the site, it’s great for hosting large videos that would otherwise eat into your hosting space. These can easily be embedded on your homepage, your blog and be used by others, further spreading your message.

Having a host of videos helps with your SEO as you can take advantage of universal search results. Google continues to experiment with what it can place on the pages of search results and videos, especially from the site it owns, often feature prominently.

Use videos to show a more creative and personal side to your business. Instead of releasing a press release with your CEO’s words in print, film him and embed that with your PR. Film ‘how to’ videos or speakers at a conference to share your expertise on your industry.

When looking for videos, most web users head straight to YouTube so it makes sense to have your content where they’re likely to find it. This will increase your exposure and your chances to connect with your customers.

Risks

Going viral works both ways. Create something terrible that you’d rather forget about and it could quickly spread round the world. Still, there’s no thing as bad publicity…

If you don’t sign up as a partner, the copyright and distribution rights for any video you upload are handed over to YouTube.

Many people watching videos on YouTube are there to do so for pleasure. There’s a fine line between joining in and trying to takeover by posting business-related videos there.

Although comments and communication is encouraged, there are many people who may take the chance to badmouth your company or product. How you deal with those comments, and how many times they are read, can have serious implications for your company. There’s also no control over the related links that YouTube decides to show with your video and they may show videos that people think your company is suggesting which you’d rather distance yourself from.

Make sure that you upload videos in high quality that reflects well on you. Check your upload as soon as it’s online to make sure it gives a good representation of your company. Low level quality videos often get stopped before a user has finished watching them.

If you use music or any clips in your video, be sure that you have the correct permissions or that they are royalty free to include these.

Tools

YouTube editor is an online tool that makes minor tweaks to a complete video. You can’t edit individal frames, but you can tweak the brightness, contrast and iron out the bumps created by an unsteady hand.

As well as the Google Adwords tool, there’s a tool available specifically to help you find keywords for your videos, using data specific to YouTube to help you rank better on the site.

Tagged with: deliberate act • fan pages • google • limelight • marketing tools • pizazz • SEO • universal search • video makers • video sharing website • youtube

Why Does My Business Need A Twitter Account?

June
10
2011

Posted in:
Search Engine Optimization

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a one-to-many social-networking site set up in 2006. Users send messages (tweets) up to 140 characters long to answer the question ‘What are you doing?’ These messages are seen in the timelines of the user’s followers and, if the profile is public, can be viewed by anyone.

By far the most chatty of the social networks, Twitter can help a business build up strong relationships with people you may otherwise have no way of getting in touch with. For best results, it’s recommended to have both a Twitter and a Facebook account (but to send different messages on each), it’s okay (but not required) to send a few tweets a day, and that you should vary your tweets between promotional, industry comments and conversations. If all you do is send messages about yourself and your news, sales and products you start to be seen as a spammy account and in turn you will begin to lose followers.

Self-serving links are okay if used sparingly but the SEO value of these links is debated. The majority of Twitter’s core pages are set with the ‘no follow’ tag, so no link juice will follow naturally. No follow links do still seem to provide some value, but obviously not as much as the do follow ones. There is also the chance that your tweets will be taken away from Twitter (such as in an RSS feed) in which case the new site may allow links to be followed, thus giving you some SEO value.

Benefits

Twitter is a useful way to build relationships with people or businesses you normally wouldn’t communicate with. Useful connections can include customers, journalists and industry experts.

Having a Twitter account is a good way to build a community around your brand; to keep in touch with existing customers and make new ones; and to announce special deals, sales and company news. It’s also a good way to keep track of what’s happening in your industry and to see what competitors or similar companies in other cities or countries are doing.

With the right mix of messages, you can build up a reputation of being an expert in your industry. Helping users with problems, giving tips about the industry and sharing relevant news stories (with a short summary of why they’re useful) will see people following you to see what you’re saying about your area of business.

Using the trending topics or the search function you can find out what people are talking about. This is a good chance to help and share your expertise which could end up in more business. Don’t be too pushy or salesy and don’t get distraught if you don’t get any business from it, Twitter’s more about building a profile and a reputation.

Twitter can be a useful marketing tool. Announce to people why your site is currently down or hold a contest that involves users retweeting your message or brand. Some companies have made the trending topics through this method.

Risks

Many companies have made mistakes through Twitter that have seen them receive publicity they’d rather avoid. Furniture retailer Habitat abused the system by adding hashtags of trending topics, completely unrelated to themselves or their industry, to announce a sale. The company blamed the mistake on an intern, but nevertheless received a lot of bad press. Skittles briefly allowed tweets with #skittles to appear, unedited and unchecked, on their homepage which led to scurrilous claims about the effect of Skittles on the human body to appear on their official site.

It’s easy to come across in a negative way: too many tweets (especially with links back to your own site) comes across as spammy, too many irrelevant messages and you might lose business followers, automated tweets can lose personality and give a very robotic appearance to your account.

A whole new vocabulary has sprung out of Twitter (often words beginning with ‘tw’) which can bamboozle many newbies. Twittonary.com has a pretty substantial list of these.

Tools

There are a plethora of tools available to help use Twitter in a more efficient way. Desktop tools allow you to keep track of your account, giving you alerts whenever you receive an @mention or a direct message, phone apps allow you to update your status on the go, monitoring tools can keep track of conversations that mention you or your products and automated tools can be programmed to send out messages at certain times of the day, week or month.

Tagged with: dallas social media consultant • small business social media • social media expert dallas • twitter • twitter consultant dallas

Why Does My Business Need A Facebook Page?

June
10
2011

Posted in:
Search Engine Optimization

What is Facebook?

Facebook is not only the world’s most popular social networking site, as of 2010 it officially became the world’s most popular site. On its way to this feat, Facebook passed the 250million user mark in July 2009, and more than half of those have graduated from college, and the site has continued to grow since then. For years it has been the most searched-for site and last year saw four of the top ten search terms to be Facebook related.

Although often thought of just as a way for people to keep in touch (and create virtual farms), Facebook has constantly been adding more and more features, one key one being business pages. With so many people spending time on Facebook, it makes sense to join them on their preferred territory.

These pages allows individuals to interact with a company, giving them a direct conversational route for complaints, queries and compliments. As with everything online, a speedy response is expected to any direct question.

Benefits

While Twitter restricts you to messages of 140 characters, no such limit exists on Facebook. You’re free to write lengthy status updates and reply to messages in full. Unlike Twitter, where frequent messages are encouraged, social media etiquette dictates that one message a day is normally enough for Facebook.

Facebook is an easy way to keep in touch with customers, to gain new ones and to keep everyone up to date with company news and special promotions.

It’s now possible to obtain a vanity URL, such as facebook.com/companyname, which has good SEO and usability connotations. This is good for keeping your search results brand happy. It’s possible that someone will already be squatting on your name, but if you can prove that they have no real connection to your brand name, Facebook will happily move the URL to your account.

Facebook Ads can be targeted very specifically to make sure only your desired demographic sees your ad: choose to target your campaigns at a specific location, age group, gender etc to make sure the people seeing your ad are the people likely to be interested in your company.

This platform gives great word of mouth advertising. Every time someone becomes a fan of your page, it shows up in the newsfeed of all their friends.

You have the ability to create a welcome tab, competition pages and all sorts of feature to encourage people to look at, and return to, your page. Traffic also passes to your main page, with Facebook stating a 300% increase in some cases.

Risks

Be sure to create a page and not a profile for your business. This goes against Facebook policy and may see your effort go to waste as your account is deleted.

Without any fans, your business page will not show up in searches. So be sure to like your page as soon as it’s set up.

Pages on Facebook can only be seen by members of the site. Although that is more common that not, be sure to have vital information on another platform to ensure all web users can see your content.

Anyone can become a fan of your page and leave whatever comment they like. While you can remove these posts, and you’re likely to be monitoring the site 9-5 Monday-Friday, any message left over the weekend could be seen by many and have detrimental effects. Comments can be indexed by search engines, so even if you delete the offending post, it might be a while before it’s purged from Google and friends.

Any mistakes or questionable updates will spread quickly around the internet – sites such as Lamebook will capture your error for everyone to see – so make sure that anyone who updates your company page has been well versed in what should and shouldn’t be said online.

Tools

There are plenty of applications available to integrate feeds from elsewhere on the web, whether that’s from your blog, your company news page or other social media outlets. Although this is encouraged, think carefully about linking in Twitter as the frequency of posting on the two sites is very different and this connection may overawe your fans.

You can now place ‘Like’ buttons on your own website, allowing readers to connect to Facebook and show their friends what they’ve been reading and how much they enjoyed it. Simple tricks such as putting a like button at the top and bottom of a story or showing friends’ thumbnails next to the like button dramatically increases interactivity.

Tagged with: business facebook • dallas facebook expert • social media expert dallas • why facebook

Succeeding In Dallas Video Production And Distribution

May
24
2011

Posted in:
Local Search Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Uncategorized, Video Production

Dallas video production and distribution is easier said than done. To prove this point, so many creative wannabes join the fray on a frequency that is starting to be alarming. Call it maybe like some sort of stampede triggered by the economic recession, these people seem to think that going into the video business is the holy grail that can be their claim to fame as well as their bread and butter. This cannot be further from the truth for it would take a great deal of time and preparation to get oneself setup in this business, let alone succeed in it. Although having taken up film in school helps, it is not necessarily a passport to succeeding in Dallas video production and distribution.

Being an artist whether of the natural-born or learned variety likewise helps, but then again it does not guarantee success. The creative eye is certainly needed in the video production business, but in the long run, having the entrepreneurial flair to back it up would be even better. This presents a genuine problem for real artists and especially arts for arts’ sake individuals. At some point in time, these dreamers need to break out from the mold and see the endeavor as running a business, not an experiment in futility or something that will get oneself bankrupt eventually.

The truth is everybody has a dream. For example, before the most successful filmmaker of all time James Cameron (Titanic, Avatar) hit the ground solid, he also had to go through the process of making a living from a great many odd jobs like most everybody else. This illustrates that while it is good to dream, it also helps to be a realist. The book The 50th Law, a collaboration between popular non-fiction author Robert Greene and successful hip-hop music mogul 50 Cent, would be the first to tell that while most triumphant realists start out as being dreamers, the path that they choose to realize their dreams was riddled with realism. A fine example is former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, who championed the cause, claiming that only by facing reality can one ever hope to control destiny.

Thus, keeping one’s feet on the ground while dreaming big is the best way to make a difference in the burgeoning Dallas video production and distribution infrastructure. Some key players in the business like Agora Entertainment aim to restore the lost splendor of Texas as the film capital of the world after Los Angeles stole the crown like the proverbial fire from heaven. No doubt, Dallas in particular has the resources and the political will to make the dream come true, but only time will tell. Spaghetti Westerns could be the ticket that can help the state of Texas gain a foothold in the film industry. Again, however, this is easier said than done. It is only by facing existing realities can a city like Dallas hope to do battle with almighty Hollywood, which is simply one of the biggest economies in the world. It is such a big giant to slay, but by daring to dream while staying practical, can there ever be a chance of victory in the horizon.

Did I forget to mention that SMB SEO does cool company videos like the one above?

Tagged with: dallas video production • dallas video search engine optimization • dallas video seo • small business video dallas