Synergy of Search and Social Media

"Research has shown that display ad exposure can lift consumer response to paid search."

This research refers to paid search activity, but it seems fair to assume that organic search activity would be influenced in the same way. The point to take away from this article is that your marketing efforts through different approaches support and enhance one another. It is not a good idea to conduct all your marketing efforts through a single vehicle. The success that you have in each approach reinforces the success that you have in other approaches.

To put it another way, look at all the tools that you have available to promote your site and make use of several of them simultaneously rather than putting all your eggs in one basket. Your web site itself, is the core around which your other marketing revolves. This core effort is then supplemented and strengthened by your activities with blogging, newsletters, article publication, press releases, social media sites, reciprocal links, and, yes, even paid Internet ads! Plan to use several of these tools in concert based on your personal and business characteristics and capacities to support different approaches.

While our focus here is on Internet tools, don't overlook the importance of what you do in more traditional marketing through your use of business cards, letterhead, brochures, promotional gifts, and networking, which also reinforce your online marketing efforts. A well managed mixture of approaches could be more effective for your business than a single-minded focus on one strategy alone!

How to Build Links Fast: 101 Tips & Strategies

"Link Building... Time-intensive. Frustrating. Sometimes confusing. Yet Unavoidable. Because ultimately, it's still the trump card for higher rankings."

The authors of this article have provided a very useful list of ways to get links for your web site, and illustrated it by starting with a tip that really works! This blog post proves that it works!

Reviewing this list is definitely worth your time. You won't find every item useful for your own business, but there are plenty of things that can be very helpful to you, and work in your specific environment. Within the 101 items on the list are about 30 bad ideas pointing out bad practices, so be sure that you note the point in the list where it switches from things-to-do to things-to-NOT-do!

You do need to go through the list to get the details, but I will summarize some of the key ideas here.

• Become an authority and create lists. There are a number of specifics listed in this general concept, but the basic idea is to put something on your site that is worth linking to. Observe that I am proving this concept by blogging about this list and linking you to it!
• Use PPC judiciously. This is the most interesting idea I have come across giving a reason to use PPC ("Pay Per Click")! The idea is that, after you have created a "link magnet" (see the first point!), you promote that page by purchasing some keyword phrases that will get traffic directly to that information. If it works for you, you will get a lot of leverage for the money spent on PPC.
• Use news and syndication. We talk about this technique all the time in our search engine marketing clinic. The list provides several specific ideas that you can use in pursuing this approach. Basically, you are planting links all around the web with this approach.
• Directories, social media, etc. Many directories can be really helpful to you, and all social media are becoming much more important and useful.
• Join local organizations that provide links. Many professional associations include a link to your site on the membership lists. Look into these in your business field and consider local chambers of commerce, networking groups, etc., etc., etc.....

There are many more concepts in the list, but this should be enough to give you the idea. Near the bottom of the list, the authors switch to telling you things to avoid. Many  of these just have to be tongue in cheek to fill out their total of 101 ideas, but many of them are practices that used to work or techniques that people actively use today, but that can get you in trouble if you get caught at it. These are worth your time to review, but make sure you have mentally switched gears to put a big "X" through each of these points as you absorb them!

Addendum: I posted this article on 10/3, and set up a PPC campaign to send traffic to it. On 10/17, when I checked my traffic, this page had ten times the pageviews of the next highest page on my blog! I have to believe this works!!

Improve Your Newsletter Performance

Many factors go into the creation of an effective newsletter, but deliverability is one of the more important. If your newsletter does not reach your subscriber for any reason, nothing else that you have done in the newsletter to enhance your business will matter.

Two good articles from Constant Contact describe the elements that contribute to better deliverability for your mailings.

The first article discusses the steps that ISP's take to identify "spam" on the Internet, and the steps that you can take with your mailings to avoid that designation and get your mail through the system.

The things that are examined to identify spam include:
1. The number of complaints made against the IP address
2. The consistency in numbers of email sent
3. Unknown user rate
4. Spam trap hits

The second article points out some good mailing practices you should observe to help your clients recognize your mailings in their Inbox as legitimate correspondence that they should look at.

These suggestions include:
1. Use a recognizable "from" name
2. Use a clear subject line
3. Make it relevant
4. Keep a clean list
5. Authenticate
6. Offer confirmed opt-in

One of the things that we often emphasize in our clinic presentations is the importance of "building a community" around your web site. Having an effective and dynamic newsletter can be a significant component of this strategy. Read these articles for more detail and a better understanding of how to make your newsletters work for your business!

Review: Bloomba Good for Searching E-Mails (TechNews.com)

"For my personal e-mail I use a year-old program called Bloomba that's been called the Google of e-mail. Version 2.0 is out this week and adds calendars, which are also searchable. "

First time I have heard of this program, but it is interesting because it offers a lot of what Google Gmail does, without the entanglements. On the other hand, you have to pay for it! I have started using Gmail myself, primarily for receiving newsletters. It gives me the ability to search them for keywords for research, and it takes away a lot of the clutter from my regular e-mail program. Searching is also way (way, way...) faster than searching my old e-mail (I use Eudora 6.1, have for years, and like it).