Hello All,
I am sure if any of you watch any TV now-a-days, there is definitely a new online phenomenon going on that everyone is crazy about.. Twitter.com. Twitter is a simple online tool that allows anyone to publish a post in 140 characters or less. It gives you the ability to create your very own online network by either "following" other members, or allowing them to "follow" you. There are some people who have a following of thousands of people, most notably celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, who won a competition against CNN in attaining one million followers!
Twitter is fascinating to a lot of people, especially working professionals and baby boomers who do not use popular social media networks like MySpace or Facebook that have a much younger, college orrientated audience. Its simple to use and effective. Twitter is also is mirrored with a mobile application which allows you to view, post, and reply to your followers from your smart phones. Cell phone updates account for over 70% of Twitter activity, therefore making it a very powerful and unique application that attracts people "on the go", especially working professionals.
Now, as a business owner, figuring out how such a new and popular online application can help marketing efforts can, at first glance, seem very tricky. How can you convey a strong marketing message with only 140 characters or less? And, more importantly, what tactic is useful in doing so?
Depending on your marketing campaign online, Twitter can either become a burden or a gold mine. It all varies on what your goal is. If you are trying to gain a marketing base, Twitter can be your answer. Rather than spend hundreds of dollars buying opt-in email lists, with the risk of becoming a spammer, Twitter can give you a vast audience who are guaranteed to see any marketing message you convey.
Twitter now allows the ability to post pictures, hyper links, and even media links that are very useful and can spread a viral message almost instantly. For example, with the recent movie release of 'Bruno', studio execs credited Twitter on its almost 40% audience decline the day after the movie was released! Many people "tweeted" bad reviews about the movie, consequently costing the producers of the movie millions of dollars. As you can see, Twitter can become both a blessing and a nightmare, varying very much on what you market and what your product performance is.
For companies that offer services, Twitter can become a useful informational tool that can let people know of new promotions, areas of business, or of recent company news. Usually, people on Twitter follow others whom their friends are following, so such a trend can become useful if you have current or new customers following.
One of the biggest problems with businesses and Twitter is that they do not have the time nor know how to add new followers. Obviously assuming that you have to go out and find people to follow you, most whom you never met, can seem like a very tiresome burden. But, as I said before, Twitter has the ability of becoming the ultimate viral message. If you add one person, chances are their friends will follow. So, becoming active, answering direct questions regarding your posts, and checking back regularly with new postings will almost surely help grow your audience at a steady pace.
Twitter may not work for you, and you may not have the time to Tweet all the time. But, if you currently employ a social media marketing campaign, using Twitter as a TOOL to promote all your Social Media efforts can work wonders, improve your audience, and give you a great Viral tool that can save you tons of money!
Showing posts with label Social Media Marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Media Marketing. Show all posts
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Friday, May 1, 2009
How to submit your viral marketing message to your social networks
Intro:
Your social networks are linked to an audience that is open to hearing your message. Your social accounts belong to groups, forums, and message boards that are ready and able to send your message instantly to all recipients, anytime.
Viral Marketing through Social Media is a lot more effective than email marketing. Emails are not guaranteed to be opened, or read. More importantly, the email is not guaranteed to be sent to inbox’s more than 50% of the time. With Social Media, you are assured that your message will reach your audience, so it is your goal to make and structure your message to be as effective as possible.
Tips:
1. Keep your message less than 200 characters (about 4 sentences)
2. Do not use the words “free”, “sale”, “limited time”, or “buy”
3. The best way to get your audience to respond is to offer a tip, advice, blog article, or information. A direct pitch or call to buy will more than likely get someone to turn away, as many companies do this and thus, the viewer will categorize you with the spammers who sell every day.
How to create and send a viral campaign:
Create a marketing message to your audience
a. The most critical component of your viral campaign is your outgoing message. What do you want to say? Who is your customer? What information are you using to bring them back to your “landing page” (page you are going to link them back to on your website).
Log into your relevant account groups
a. All of your accounts in your social media network have an audience based on groups. For example, LinkedIn will have various groups you are a member of that are from different background and interests. Targeting groups individually, or in smaller groups, will get you a better response than simply sending out the same message to all.
Ask for feedback on your message if possible
a. Are you sending out a link to your latest blog? Offer feedback from the client. A good example is: “How to lose 10 pounds in 10 days. New blog article I wrote, please read it and let me know what you all think!”
As you can see, the message is centered on the new blog article. Thus, the article is your selling point. As viewers link back to your article link and read it, your blog article thus becomes your selling point and will attract potential customers. Thus, again, your message and landing page are key.
Setup your landing page and make it work for your viewers so it can sell for you.
a. As you can see in previous steps, the main function of your message is to bring viewers over to your website. Your landing page, the page they will first see and link to, is thus your selling tool once the marketing message does it job. Be sure it is a page that coincides with your marketing message. For example, do not talk about a new article and then link the viewer to your shopping cart. Pick an appropriate time to launch your campaign.
a. Picking and choosing when to launch your viral campaigns is very important, yet hard to first predict. The best times to do so are usually in the mornings and evenings, when online user activity is at its peak (8a-10a, 5p-8p).
Do not send out too many messages to your audience
a. If your campaign is either successful or unsuccessful, you will be eager to send out a new campaign. Be very cautious in doing so. You do not want to tune out viewers, or get flagged by the social network community as a spammer. One message a week is ideal. Use your Blog
a. Your Blog is your best tool in order to both build an audience and gain more traffic to your website. Blog Articles are very powerful in that it can captivate a viewer into buying or subscribing to your product or service.
Benefits of your Social Networks
Your social networks are linked to an audience that is open to hearing your message. Your social accounts belong to groups, forums, and message boards that are ready and able to send your message instantly to all recipients, anytime.
Viral Marketing through Social Media is a lot more effective than email marketing. Emails are not guaranteed to be opened, or read. More importantly, the email is not guaranteed to be sent to inbox’s more than 50% of the time. With Social Media, you are assured that your message will reach your audience, so it is your goal to make and structure your message to be as effective as possible.
Tips:
1. Keep your message less than 200 characters (about 4 sentences)
2. Do not use the words “free”, “sale”, “limited time”, or “buy”
3. The best way to get your audience to respond is to offer a tip, advice, blog article, or information. A direct pitch or call to buy will more than likely get someone to turn away, as many companies do this and thus, the viewer will categorize you with the spammers who sell every day.
How to create and send a viral campaign:
a. The most critical component of your viral campaign is your outgoing message. What do you want to say? Who is your customer? What information are you using to bring them back to your “landing page” (page you are going to link them back to on your website).
a. All of your accounts in your social media network have an audience based on groups. For example, LinkedIn will have various groups you are a member of that are from different background and interests. Targeting groups individually, or in smaller groups, will get you a better response than simply sending out the same message to all.
a. Are you sending out a link to your latest blog? Offer feedback from the client. A good example is: “How to lose 10 pounds in 10 days. New blog article I wrote, please read it and let me know what you all think!”
As you can see, the message is centered on the new blog article. Thus, the article is your selling point. As viewers link back to your article link and read it, your blog article thus becomes your selling point and will attract potential customers. Thus, again, your message and landing page are key.
a. As you can see in previous steps, the main function of your message is to bring viewers over to your website. Your landing page, the page they will first see and link to, is thus your selling tool once the marketing message does it job. Be sure it is a page that coincides with your marketing message. For example, do not talk about a new article and then link the viewer to your shopping cart.
It must correlate and include the reason the viewer came to your website in the first place. The article, review, or page that you use is thus the cornerstone of your viral campaign. You have already achieved the call to action, coming to your page, now you must close the viewer into an action. Usually a good tool to include in the landing page is a registration form, comment box, sign-up sheet, or contact number.
a. Picking and choosing when to launch your viral campaigns is very important, yet hard to first predict. The best times to do so are usually in the mornings and evenings, when online user activity is at its peak (8a-10a, 5p-8p).
a. If your campaign is either successful or unsuccessful, you will be eager to send out a new campaign. Be very cautious in doing so. You do not want to tune out viewers, or get flagged by the social network community as a spammer. One message a week is ideal.
a. Your Blog is your best tool in order to both build an audience and gain more traffic to your website. Blog Articles are very powerful in that it can captivate a viewer into buying or subscribing to your product or service.
Benefits of your Social Networks
Targeted Customers:
We are reaching out to people that we know already have interest in our product. Instead of casting a wide net we are being specific, giving us a better return on our time.
High Friend Conversion Rate:
You will get at least 30% of people you reach to our profile/bog and can lead to adding you as “friends”. The benefit of this is long haul marketing, as you can put out bulletins, send messages, and directly market to them with announcements or new products.
Creates brand awareness:
For the people who aren’t familiar with the company they can be introduced to you through these social networking sites.
Continued Promotional Value:
The good thing about marketing on social networks is that it isn’t a one time push. It is a sustainable way to continually market to these customers.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
How to Improve your Page Rank on Google
Hey Gang,
I assume your thinking about improving your page rank.. who isn't right? Why search the web for articles or buy expensive software when you can easily do it yourself!
Just use Google's Webmaster Tool's- a free tool that can work wonders for your SEO and Page Rank goals. Because, ultimately, who knows more about how to improve your PR than Google?
A little about it
Page Rank or PR - It's The Holy Grail of webmasters.
I've searched the web and have read many articles describing what the method of Page Rank is and how to use some sort of gadget to improve it instantly. Some of them give clues how to increase this value. It is interesting to me that, for many people, this indicator seems to be a little artificial. Everyone aims for PR10, which means maximum page rank exposure, but few know the real reason. If a website has good content, it will eventually be displayed on top of the searches for interesting keywords even if it has poor page rank!
Useful clues
All articles, blogs and Google tips leads me to the conclusion that the content of your website is the most important factor. Don't try to cheat web crawlers or don’t rely only on exchange links with other websites. If the site is interesting, and content is relevenat, its PR will improve sooner or later. Yes, I know that everybody prefers sooner, but you should do it right from the start.
Some recommendations:
Attain as much external links on the website as you can, on a consistant basis. If people find something interesting on our website, they will link to it.
Create many subpages. Websites with useful content will grow either by content from author, company or community.
Existence in catalogs. Add your website to internet catalogs either related to business or technology. For technology, a good example is to at least attain an absolute minimum with, for example, www.dmoz.org and dir.yahoo.com. Even Google admits that it uses them.
Google Webmaster Tools
Just login to your Google account (or create one if you don't have one). In the section "My Services", follow the link Webmaster Tools. Insert url of your website and press OK.
Verification
Once you create the account, the first step is to verify that you are the owner of the website. There are two approaches. The first is adding a Meta Tag on your home page or, 2, uploading a file with a given random id inside the page root directory. It’s quick and easy - just follow the information’s on the screen!
Diagnostics
After the verification process, we can start exploring information that Google has gathered about your website. This tab allows you to check if, for example, your robots.txt file is correct, and how often the site is crawled.
Statistics
This tab shows search statistics that are related to your website. I allows you to see which pages were crawled by googlebot, what their page rank is, and which of them have the biggest value. Page analysis shows the keywords that Google has indexed. It also shows words used in external sites to link to the site.
Links
This tab is, I think, the most interesting of all. It provides a listing of all urls used in external websites , and much more related to links- even internal links too. Each link is described by number of pages that use it. You can also view details and find the paths to links that are not valid or can't be crawled by Google.
Now you know the page rank principles! After reading this blog post, hopefully you have a better understanding of PR. Since Google is constantly becoming more popular and important for businesses looking to expand their visibility online, knowing these kinds of methods, and understanding them, are king.
I assume your thinking about improving your page rank.. who isn't right? Why search the web for articles or buy expensive software when you can easily do it yourself!
Just use Google's Webmaster Tool's- a free tool that can work wonders for your SEO and Page Rank goals. Because, ultimately, who knows more about how to improve your PR than Google?
A little about it
Page Rank or PR - It's The Holy Grail of webmasters.
I've searched the web and have read many articles describing what the method of Page Rank is and how to use some sort of gadget to improve it instantly. Some of them give clues how to increase this value. It is interesting to me that, for many people, this indicator seems to be a little artificial. Everyone aims for PR10, which means maximum page rank exposure, but few know the real reason. If a website has good content, it will eventually be displayed on top of the searches for interesting keywords even if it has poor page rank!
Useful clues
All articles, blogs and Google tips leads me to the conclusion that the content of your website is the most important factor. Don't try to cheat web crawlers or don’t rely only on exchange links with other websites. If the site is interesting, and content is relevenat, its PR will improve sooner or later. Yes, I know that everybody prefers sooner, but you should do it right from the start.
Some recommendations:
Attain as much external links on the website as you can, on a consistant basis. If people find something interesting on our website, they will link to it.
Create many subpages. Websites with useful content will grow either by content from author, company or community.
Existence in catalogs. Add your website to internet catalogs either related to business or technology. For technology, a good example is to at least attain an absolute minimum with, for example, www.dmoz.org and dir.yahoo.com. Even Google admits that it uses them.
Google Webmaster Tools
Just login to your Google account (or create one if you don't have one). In the section "My Services", follow the link Webmaster Tools. Insert url of your website and press OK.
Verification
Once you create the account, the first step is to verify that you are the owner of the website. There are two approaches. The first is adding a Meta Tag on your home page or, 2, uploading a file with a given random id inside the page root directory. It’s quick and easy - just follow the information’s on the screen!
Diagnostics
After the verification process, we can start exploring information that Google has gathered about your website. This tab allows you to check if, for example, your robots.txt file is correct, and how often the site is crawled.
Statistics
This tab shows search statistics that are related to your website. I allows you to see which pages were crawled by googlebot, what their page rank is, and which of them have the biggest value. Page analysis shows the keywords that Google has indexed. It also shows words used in external sites to link to the site.
Links
This tab is, I think, the most interesting of all. It provides a listing of all urls used in external websites , and much more related to links- even internal links too. Each link is described by number of pages that use it. You can also view details and find the paths to links that are not valid or can't be crawled by Google.
Now you know the page rank principles! After reading this blog post, hopefully you have a better understanding of PR. Since Google is constantly becoming more popular and important for businesses looking to expand their visibility online, knowing these kinds of methods, and understanding them, are king.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
RG Pacific welcomes you to our SEO and Web Design & Development blog!
Hello my friends! Thanks so much for stopping by to our new blog. My name is Ray Galan and I am the owner of RG Pacific, a web marketing and development company in Los Angeles.
I have extensive knowledge in web development as well as marketing, so feel free to ask questions about any topics I cover or maybe certain questions you have regarding your journey in the World Wide Web business arena. My friends, I feel the internet is so interwined now with new trends such as Viral Marketing, Social Media Marketing, and Web 2.0. So it is my goal to teach you survival methods to keep you ahead of the curve and possible roadblocks that block our path to better business online!
I have extensive knowledge in web development as well as marketing, so feel free to ask questions about any topics I cover or maybe certain questions you have regarding your journey in the World Wide Web business arena. My friends, I feel the internet is so interwined now with new trends such as Viral Marketing, Social Media Marketing, and Web 2.0. So it is my goal to teach you survival methods to keep you ahead of the curve and possible roadblocks that block our path to better business online!
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