If you’ve already taken the leap of faith into the daunting, scary world of social media, then you will know that not only is it a very busy environment, but that it can suck a LOT of time out of your busy day. Not only do you need to think of something engaging to say, but you need to figure out the best way to get your message out to as many people as possible. All the while, making sure you don’t bombard your audience with 50+ updates a day.

Whether it’s to discuss industry news, some great new tool or technique you’ve discovered, or even to liveblog at a press conference or tradeshow you’re attending, the world of social media continues to offer a fantastic way to connect with your audience. That audience can consist of existing customers or subscribers who are eager to hear what you have to say, but it can also be those sitting on the fence wondering if they should take that incredibly important ‘next step’.

When I say next step, I am talking the conversion of interest to engagement. That could mean your Facebook page receiving a new fan, your Twitter account receiving a new follower or a retweet, but at the end of the day, your ultimate goal is a sales lead. This is what everyone hopes to achieve from social media, but it’s how they manage, interact and engage with their audience that determines if it will pay off in the end.

With so many avenues with which to reach out to customers, it can be difficult to choose which to use. There are the staples: Facebook, Twitter and to a lesser extent LinkedIn and Foursquare. But there are others that may appeal to your demographic. For instance, if you are in the entertainment industry, Myspace or Stumbleupon might be worth looking at. If you are in the news or media industries, aggregation sites such as Reddit or Digg would be highly beneficial. The point is, there is something for everyone, but not everything will work. Stick with the basics first and branch out as you see fit.

Management

So… you’re social media campaign is now underway. You’ve got a few blog ideas ready to go and have a handful of Facebook fans and Twitter followers (so what if most of them are colleagues and friends at this point). Now what? Litter their walls with non-stop information? Sure, unless you want them to actually read and share your posts.

Scheduling, or at least timing your posts strategically will help ensure you get the most eyeballs for the buck. Late Friday afternoon is statistically the busiest period of the week, but you can’t always hold your breath until then. To start, sticking to 2 or 3 Facebook updates per day will suffice, and the same goes for Twitter updates. You want to display to your audience that your identity has a heartbeat, but isn’t going into shock.

Once you get into a rhythm, you might become overwhelmed with the number of screens open, and go cross eyed looking at statistics from a handful of different sources. This is where social media management tools come in handy. There are a handful of them available, and range from free, to ad supported, to freemium, to enterprise level.

• Tweetdeck.
  A fantastic desktop application tool (and Google Chrome App) that allows for the posting of Facebook (Profile and Page), Twitter (multiple accounts),  LinkedIn and Myspace status updates, and even Foursquare geo-location updates. The ability to integrate with Bit.ly (for shortening URLs and tracking interactions) and to schedule updates for future, timed posts is also available and is very easy to implement. It is also available for nearly every mobile device.
• Hootsuite A very robust web-based management tool, mainly web based (with a mobile app). Highly customizable stream views, and built in monitoring/tracking with custom reports.
• Seesmic
  Very similar to Tweetdeck, featuring web, desktop and mobile based management, it streamlines the social media implementation process. Depending on your UI preference, you may prefer this over Tweetdeck.

Tracking and ROI

After all of that hard work, it would be great to see how effective it’s been. Tracking, analytics and ROI measurement will be able to provide this. Making sure the tools necessary have been installed and are correctly tracking all available data is the first and most important step.

• Facebook Insights
  Enabled by default, Facebook’s Insights provide analytics and the data necessary to display the interactions between you and your Facebook page audience. Accounts are FREE (obviously).
• Tweetmeme
  Allowing users to quickly retweet your articles, blog posts or site content is possible by integrating the Tweetmeme button into your site. Most popular CMS systems have a Tweetmeme plugin available.
• Bit.ly
  The ability to track how many times a link you’ve shared is valuable, especially to gauge the clickthrough rate and effectiveness. Services such as Bit.ly also shorten a link, to make it easy to share and so it won’t take up as much real estate in the notoriously small Twitter update window. Example : http://bit.ly/iAYUzM links directly to this article. *ahem* Feel free to share! Also, bit.ly accounts are FREE.
• Sproutsocial
  A feature rich web based tracking tool. Integrate your Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and Foursquare account into one centralized system for very easy to view reports and statistics. The ability to manage multiple accounts is very handy as well. Accounts start at $9/month with a 30 day free trial.

Check out our other related articles :

• How to run a social media campaign in 4 hours a week
• No time for social media? Think again.
• How to build your social network.

You’ve heard it all before. “We can promise you will rank #1 on Google in a week!” or, even better is “If you don’t rank #1 on Google, you don’t pay!”.

What these companies don’t bother to tell you, is that they will get those ranks for keywords you don’t want, don’t need and didn’t ask for. Also, once your website receives those thousands of promised visitors, what will you do with them? Since they were most likely sent to your site via irrelevant or VERY vague keywords, you need to make sure they don’t hightail it.

At the end of the day, conversions are the only thing that matter

I cannot stress this enough. Time and time again, I’ll see a company throw thousands of dollars away on organic SEO or PPC campaigns, drawing all sorts of visitors to their (to put it bluntly) pretty crummy site.

What were they aiming to achieve, besides frustrating their visitors with their cumbersome navigation, poor usability, and complete lack of focus? Was there a goal set in place for the visitors? Probably not.

Converting a website visitor, whether they found your website through organic search, a paid ad, or simply word of mouth, is the most important factor for ANY website. Whether you want a new newsletter subscriber, to sell a product, to have a new member subscribe to a free/paid service, have a contact form filled out and submitted, or if you just want a very specific page to be viewed by as many eyeballs as possible, these are all clear objectives and are what drive a website to succeed.

1. Define The Goal(s) Of Your Website
   Surely you didn’t spend thousands of dollars just to have a page to display your address. Make use of the incredibly useful tool at your disposal and decide what you want out of your visitors and potential customers.
2. Track conversions as they occur, and adjust as necessary.
   This entire process would consist of a lot of wasted effort unless it was tracked effectively. Ensure that tools are put in place to accurately measure conversions, whether it’s done through Google Analytics, Call Tracking, or another service. Has it been a while and you haven’t seen much activity? Perhaps another measurement is in order.
3. Reap the rewards.
   If you begin to use your website as a marketing tool instead of a deadweight, you will begin to realize its potential. You will be able to focus efforts more effectively, while concentrating on what’s most important : your business.

I won’t even get into social media and the unlimited potential it brings to the table once you adopt this attitude. That’s for another week

So some of you may have noticed a rather substantial change on Google.com today. As I began to type in the search box, something interesting started to happen.  Instead of having to click Search or press Enter, the window immediately shifted to a search result page, almost seamlessly.

This could have an enormous impact on searches, changing the way users find information and relevant results. Google however,  stresses :

While the presentation of the search results may change, our most important advice to webmasters remains the same: Users want to visit pages with compelling content and a great user experience.

Impressions are measured in three ways with Google Instant:

1. Sites are displayed in search results as a response to a user’s completed query (e.g. by pressing “enter” or selecting a term from autocomplete). This is the traditional model.
   With Google Instant, Google also measures impressions in these new cases:
2. A user begins to type a term on Google and clicks on a link on the page, such as a search result, ad, or a related search.
3. A user stops typing, and the results are displayed for a minimum of 3 seconds.

Users may be more inclined to use Google.com directly for searches from now on, instead of toolbars, or browser URL bars. I know I will.

Search engines and SEO in general are changing on what seems like a daily basis. Algorithms are constantly being tweaked, and what worked like a charm 2 months ago, may be falling flat today. This presents an interesting mix of excitement and stress for most marketing companies, and I won’t lie… we are not exempt.

While I could talk all day long about what could help in the short or long term for a website’s online performance, it might be easier to list what NOT to do. We spend a lot of time researching, analyzing and scouring the web, and we’ve seen some questionable things, so here it goes…

What NOT to do with your website

• Make a site entirely comprised of Flash. Search engines don’t need to find your website.
• Rely on Javascript for all links. You should make it as hard as possible for a search engine to crawl your website.
• Ignore social media completely.  Facebook? LinkedIn? Pfft, they’re just fads.
• Stick with newspaper ads instead of a highly targeted PPC campaign. Proven results don’t mean anything.
• Keep content the same…… forever. Why do other companies waste time writing fresh content all the time?  So what if they are constantly ranking higher?
• Ignore analytics. You don’t need to know where visitors come from, or who is converting to a sales lead. That’s where those expensive newspaper ads come in handy…. right?
• If you DO end up optimizing your website, just do it once. 6 months later everything should hopefully be the same anyways.

Once the <sarcasm> HTML tag has been created, this entire list would surely be contained in it, so my apologies.  Also, sorry about the <sarcasm> joke.

Anyways, this is just scratching the service of BAD choices. It was a lot of fun to write surprisingly, so I will definitely be doing it again. In the meantime, have a look at some of our other related articles :

- SEO Rule #3 – It’s Never Too Late To Promote
- SEO Rule #2 – Focus On Website Goals
- SEO Rule #1 – Content Is King

The world of online social media has exploded during the last few years, with good reason. People can connect with hundreds of thousands of others to discuss and share nearly anything. Whether it’s used to spread the word about a great new promotion or product, to inform customers of some relevant industry news, or if it’s to simply share a funny image you found while browsing, social media allows for a type of connection with customers and visitors in a way that traditional marketing cannot match.

The tools have become more user friendly and robust, allowing anyone with something to say, to have their message heard. Below you will find a list of some of the benefits of using these social media tools and which ones may not appeal to your business model. Have a look, think we’re missing something, let us know!

Blog

Examples : WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr

Pros

• Unlimited space to work with. (No 140 character limit here!)
• Ability to offer feature-rich content, such as video, flash, images, etc.
• Will work on anyone’s web browser and most mobile devices.
• Most blogs offer RSS feeds which can be used in RSS Readers, to populate other websites with content, etc.

Cons

• You’ll look at the clock and wonder where the last 2 hours went.
• Writers block exists, even when writing for a blog. Trust me.
• Some HTML knowledge is a must, especially if you want to add any advanced functionality.
• Set a schedule for your posts, because you will need to regularly update.

Facebook

Website : www.Facebook.com

Pros

• 400 million users.  ‘Nuff said.
• Word-of-mouth is the most effective form of advertising, and is a very large component of Facebook, with its ‘fan’ and sharing system.
• Ability to connect with potential customers on a more personal level, through the Discussion Boards, Wall and Comments.
• Integration of Facebook with a blog or website is becoming easier and easier.

Cons

• Frequent moderation is required.
• Don’t disappear for a few weeks, or you might find everyone else has as well.
• While not incredibly important, having a solid friend base will help grow your presence quickly, at least at first.

Twitter

Website : www.Twitter.com

Pros

• Updating your Twitter status from nearly any device imaginable makes it incredibly versatile.
• Analytic tools allow for very robust tracking.
• Integration with Facebook, among hundreds of other websites and tools.
• Nearly instant updates to your ‘Followers’.

Cons

• Limit of only 140 characters, which can be restrictive, especially when including URL’s.
• Fine line between not updating enough and being annoyingly persistent.
• Still regarded as a more tech-savvy tool.

Social Bookmarking

Examples : Digg, Stumbleupon, Fark, Delicious, Reddit, MANY more

Pros

• Potential to reach thousands of viewers instantly, and more through sharing. (Liking, Digging, etc.)
• Certain websites, such as Su.pr (via Stumbleupon) offer their own analytic tools allowing for more detailed information than other analytic packages.

Cons

• Potential time wasters. Spending 5 minutes ‘stumbling’ can turn into 30, VERY easily.
• There are well over 300 similar websites, linking to every one of them can obviously be very time consuming.
• Time spent keeping track of accounts, posts and comments can also add up, fast.
• Links can get overlooked easily.  Make sure you post with an interesting title, and in a relevant subject (if available).
• Unless your website or link can handle it, an influx of thousands of visitors can bring down a server.  This is a nice problem to have though!

LinkedIn

Pros

• The audience is very focused towards business.
• Ability to network with other local industry professionals.

Cons

• It’s very easy for your message to come across as spam. Keep conversation light.

Try it out, you are only denying yourself the potential for something great if you don’t.

While advertising is never a bad idea, it can easily be wasted if the proper tracking measures are not taken. Through the use of online advertising, a wide range of different techniques can be used in order to track the effectiveness of ads.

By far the most effective method is by tracking what are called Conversions.

A potential customer would click on an advertisement (found on Google.com or on another website through the content network) and end up on www.YourSite.com. The visitor would then browse through the website and find a contact form (which if you don’t have, get one!). They fill out the contact form and click ‘Submit’. The act of clicking ‘Submit’ on the contact form acts as a Conversion. The visitor has now taken the next step in becoming a paying customer.

Many businesses have a preconception that websites are notorious for being poor in providing sufficient tracking data. The tools are available, but they need to be integrated effectively and monitored on a frequent basis.

If you have links from other websites, or are running multiple ads, you can add a tracking code to the end of the incoming link. For instance :

• If you have an incoming link directed to : http://www.YourSite.com/ProductPage?ID=456, it may direct the visitor to the correct page, but this will not benefit tracking at all.
• Use the following URL instead : http://www.YourSite.com/ProductPage?utm_source=SiteA&utm_medium=BannerAd&utm_campaign=ProductShowcase

Some services such as Google Analytics and Google AdWords provide tracking services which when setup, can track a range of different conversions, from when a visitor lands on a specific page, to when a visitor downloads a file, and more.

Another tracking service available for both online and traditional advertisers is Call Tracking. What this service does, is generate a unique 1-800 phone number for each targeted ad, which are used by the potential customer in order to call the advertiser. Each time a number is called, it acts as a conversion. This is very effective at determining which method of advertising is more effective and which ad is the most appealing to visitors.

Beginning in December, Glacier-Digital will begin offering this service to all of its SEO & SEM clients. Please contact us for more information.

If you plan on rolling out an online advertising campaign, be it large or small, be certain that the proper tools are in place to track your return on investment. While the ads might do the job otherwise, you’ll never truly know.