Mitch Joel’s Recommendations

In a recent podcast Mitch Joel (Six Pixels of Separation) had Gini Dietrich (Spin Sucks) on the show where he mentioned how he steps back from making blanket recommendations to clients. There are so many nuances to consider that it takes time to find what makes sense for each client. Again, this may seem like an obvious point but try reading online without recommendations for blogging and being on Facebook and Twitter. These online articles aren’t the same as custom client recommendations. Even so there seems to be such a loud and constant drumbeat that tends to drown out anything else but the one recommendation fits all. There are so many stories of success that it is hard not to think that if you are starting out online you should just do what everyone else is doing. This may not be the best course.

Dominick Does it Different

Dominick Dalsanto of Baghouse has a very inspiring guest posting on Problogger where he describes a different approach. Dominick knows that Facebook and Twitter recommendations are not going to work for his audience.

“middle-aged industrial engineers (a large part of my target audience) looking for ways to decrease static pressure drop across their pulse-jet dust collector at the advanced manufacturing plant where they work are not the types that sit around and go looking for articles on Facebook while they are at work. I quickly realized that while there was a wealth of valuable information on these sites, I needed to adapt it to my unique market, and combine it with more traditional industrial marketing methods to have any success.”

Dominick was getting blanket advice online and adapting it to his particular niche. This same approach is important to consider when trying to get a website to be successful. There is not only the niche but also the size to consider. What might work for your personal branding may not work on a larger scale. This approach is common with sites like Which Test Won where they share results on tests of different approaches to conversions. In the end they always recommend testing for your particular audience.

It may seem obvious that each person’s niche will rely on different approaches but sometimes the simply obvious is overlooked. There is enough advice online that assumes everyone who has a website should also be on Facebook or Twitter. Yet even something as big as Facebook should be questioned.

Google Alerts Always Recommended

Good Internet Marketers recommend clients use Google Alerts. What are Google Alerts? In the words of Google, “Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.” Put simply, it is an automatic search bringing the most recently updated information on a given topic directly to your email inbox. Google Alerts streamlines the collection of relevant online information.

How to Setup Google Alerts

Here are the steps to setting up Google Alerts:

• Go to the Google Alerts page.  http://www.google.com/alerts;
• Put in your search term, type of search, frequency of alert, volume, and then your email (see the dropdown choices for each to clarify what it does);
• Click “Create Alert.”

The setup couldn’t be easier. Everyone should consider setting up such as mentions of their top competition. Monitoring the competition can provide an early indication of online campaign initiatives. Some other possible alerts to include are the following:

• Tracking incoming links to your site (search term should be “link:yourwebsite.com”);
• Blog commenting opportunities or blog post ideas (search term could be any of your key niche keyword phrases);
• Monitor your domain;
• Monitor your name or brand;
• Monitor top keyword phrases.

You can setup up to 1,000 Google Alerts which is more than most people will ever need. Consider updates to existing Google Alerts to experiment and refine towards focused relevancy.

Updating Google Alerts

Update existing Google Alerts by logging into your email and going to: http://www.google.com/alerts. Look over the list of all your Google Alerts and update those that are not producing results, producing too many results, or not producing the right type of results. Consider playing with frequency or result type. Try updating the keyword field with similar keyword phrases found with the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

Managing Fun Google Alerts

Although Google Alerts is certainly a powerful tool, have some fun with it. Consider monitoring mentions of TV shows, movies, celebs, hobbies, etc.

Liked this post? Please Tweet about it using the share buttons below. Have something to say about Google Alerts? We would love to hear your comments below.

How Forums Work

Forums are much like crowd sourcing: You get complete and relevant answers to questions from others online. Forums offer a place for people to ask, and answer, questions within a particular niche, and the most popular and best response usually goes to the top of list. There are forums built around every niche on the Internet. You will always find a forum to join to ask questions. However, you can help build your online reputation by taking a question, such as, “Is this the best time to buy real estate?”, and freely answering it.

Why Utilize Online Forums

Online forums bring you highly targeted, quality traffic. When you are consistently answering questions that are relevant to your business, real estate or otherwise, online communities take notice. Your website gets looked at because people become not only curious as to who you are but, when your answers are good, what else you might be able to do for them. Your answers provide an avenue of trust that, when built over time, results in people referring to you in both online and offline conversations. It is the best way to build “street cred” within online communities that are oriented towards your niche. An added bonus is that you are usually able to get a link back to your website, via your profile, that has keyword-rich anchor text. Just keep in mind that you should generally be participating within online forums for the people, not the search engines.

Find Forums and Message Boards Fast

How to Find Good Forums

Finding good online forums to answer questions is somewhat of a hit or miss process that initially takes a bit of patience. One way to start looking for good forums is to search Google for your niche and forum. So, for example, if you have a real estate site, try typing in “real estate forums” or “real estate message boards.” You should get a good listing to sift through and find one you like. Alternatively, you can save time and use a search engine dedicated to finding message or forum sites, such as Omgili, Board Tracker, Yahoo! Groups, Google Groups, or DMOZ.

How Much Time to Spend

Most people are busy, and although it would be great to spend all day answering questions directly related to your niche on the Internet, there are clients waiting. The best way to offset the time challenge is to find a question to answer and set a timer. Once the timer is up, submit your answer. You want to make sure your response is detailed, accurate, and worthy while at the same time honoring the rest of your day. Spend just half an hour a week, maybe even just 15 minutes, stay consistent, and you should see some good results.

Track the Results…with Patience

Search for a forum or message board, start using it, and then track the results…with patience.  It will take a good amount of time before you start to see any sort of traffic. You have to answer a number of questions and build up your reputation within a given community. When some time has passed you can look at stats within Google Analytics to see what traffic has come from referring sites. Keep an eye on this from time to time so you can get a better idea of when your efforts are paying off. If you are really adventurous, try answering questions from more than one forum or message board. You can then track which ones do better for you over time.

Even though it does take some time and patience, once you have established yourself, what you have just keeps building and getting better. Once a certain community comes to respect your authority in a given niche, you gain an Internet marketing asset that is far greater than any advertisement you could hope to purchase.

Do you already use forums or message boards with success? Send a comment below and let us know they have worked out for you.

Relationships Produce Happiness

“We have found that people who release more Oxytocin are happier and they are happier because they have better relationships of all types”

We are inherently social creatures which makes isolation a strong form of punishment. As humans, we are chemically wired to interact, and those interactive relationships produce a chemical called Oxytocin. At the core, these connections with other people produce happiness. These connections can be of any type including electronically via social media such as Twitter, Facebook, email, and more.

Social Media Helps Make You Happy

“There are so many ways we can connect to people. For example through social media…We investigated the role of social media and found that using social media produced solid double digit increases in Oxytocin.”

Connecting with other people via Facebook and Twitter helps your body produce Oxytocin leading to increased happiness. There is a difference between pushing content via social media and taking the time to connect. Think of the connection made recently when Charles Sipe read on Twitter that Ian Lurie didn’t have any diet soda and Charles brought him some. Charles not only made many new connections but the action produced a flurry of online activity. If Charles had just read the tweet and nothing more or just retweeted it with a small comment, there wouldn’t have been the same level of engagement. Instead Charles got creative and interacted directly. Although no one was there to measure his Oxytocin level, it was probably high with the flurry of online activity. The key with any online engagement is think of ways you can make a real connection rather than just a random comment. The result is going to help you produce Oxytocin while also helping another person.

An Easy Way to Produce Oxytocin

Paul Zak ends his Ted talk with an easy way to produce Oxytocin without injecting a chemical: hugs. In fact, he proscribes eight hugs a day to increase Oxytocin and create more happiness. He points out that you could inject Oxytocin into your nose for the same benefit; however, hugs or connections are more enjoyable and produce ongoing benefits than just the Oxytocin.

Customize Your Facebook Page

A customized landing page provides a consistent, branded message to the first-time visitor. When someone lands on your fanpage, instead of seeing a random posting on your wall, they get content and images that are specifically designed to convert them into liking your page. Once a visitor likes your page, your wall then becomes the default view.

Getting a Landing Page

If all you want is one custom landing element on your Facebook page, there are many free Facebook apps available. Some of these options require you to use code but there are others that have pre-formatted versions with default background images. Here are some to consider:

1. Wildfire
2. Woodbox
3. Pagemoto
4. Goso

Facebook Fan Page Settings

Click for Larger Image

Some of the Facebook apps above do have what is called a “Fan Gate” option (having the element show only to first-time visitors), there is an easy setting in Facebook to make this work. While logged into the page go to “edit info” and then “manage permissions” and choose “default landing tab” and your newly created page (most name this Welcome), then save changes. Click image on right for larger view.

The Content and Images

Although the ultimate goal of the content is to get visitors to like your page, it doesn’t hurt to have them click through directly to your website. Keep this in mind when writing your content and provide keyword rich links within the text back to your site where it makes sense. Take a look at other Facebook fan pages for inspiration in combining content and images. Simple images, clear content, and requests or calls to action offer the best option when it comes to converting visitors to like your page.

Customizing your Facebook page with a landing tab is worth the investment in time. It provides consistent messaging and overall greater likes to your business page. Give it a try! If you like this post, please share it via Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, or other social media. Thanks!

The Panda Update

“Panda seemed to crack down on thin content, content farms, sites with high ad-to-content ratios, and a number of other quality issues.”

The Panda update has been a part of multiple updates throughout the year starting on February 23rd of this year. At the heart of the Panda update Google reinforced a core message; websites that produce quality, relevant, unique content will be rewarded over those that rely on scraped content, thin content, content farms or those pages focused on mostly on ads. The take-away: make sure your content is unique, relevant, and there is more of it than there is other elements on a page. Some have a hard time with how vague all of these ideas sound particularly with thin content. For more on this see my post on thin content.

The Schema Update

“Google, Yahoo and Microsoft jointly announced support for a consolidated approach to structured data. They also created a number of new “schemas”, in an apparent bid to move toward even richer search results.”

The Schema update hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves considering that this was a joint announcement by the big 3. Anytime the major search engines agree on something, it is worth making a note. The Schema update offers a way to mark up content with micro-data types. The take-away: as the Search Engine Land Schema post mentions, ”If you’re building out a new site structure and want to have support built in, especially as the engines use microdata in other ways, then it makes sense to include it.” Although you might not go through every page right now, it is important to consider weaving into your overall SEO plan going forward.

Query Encryption Update

“Google announced they would be encrypting search queries, for privacy reasons. Unfortunately, this disrupted organic keyword referral data, returning ‘(not provided)’ for some organic traffic. This number increased in the weeks following the launch.”

When someone is logged into their Google account while performing a search instead of showing the keywords the person used to get to a site, Google instead shows “not provided.” Interesting about this update is that the paid Adwords subscribers would still see the data. If the update was really for security reasons then it should apply regardless on if the user paid Google or not. In feedback to SEOMoz, some users were seeing up to 50% of their traffic affected. The take-away: there will always be updates from Google could negatively impact your site or your analysis. It is best to make sure that your efforts are focused beyond Google such as with other search engines like Bing, social media, and other online alternatives.

If you enjoyed this post, please share it via social media, thanks!

Finding Newsworthy Items

Keeping tabs on newsworthy items to feed your followers or respond to can be time consuming. Here are three tools that make it easier to find newsworthy content:

Google Alerts: Google Alerts makes it easy to get updates on particular keyword phrases. If you are new to Google Alerts, start by brainstorming search phrases, checking the results until you are happy, and then adding the alert.

Google Blog Search: Use some of your best search terms and perform a Google blog search. Look through until you find 3-5 blogs that have content relevant to your niche and useful to your followers. Subscribe to these via email or RSS feed. You can tweet the post in full, ask a question, or make a point referencing the post.

Twitter Search: Twittersearch used to be the go-to resource for searching Twitter but has since been purchased and has become a part of Twitter. It is still a very effective search tool for finding content and items to retweet.

Compiling Unique Ideas for Tweets

Providing unique fun facts and figures makes it easier to be re-tweeted by your followers. Fifteen to twenty minutes of looking online should yield a good list of facts. Infographics are rising in popularity for every type of online niche and are fun to share. Try to mix up your posts. For example, have a post with a link to a blog article mixed with a post that provides statistics with no link. Here are examples of each:

• The Psychology Behind Customer Reward Programs | Search Engine People http://bit.ly/sLtFCQ
• Nearly 2/3 of US Internet users regularly use a social network (EMarketer Feb 2011)

Organizing Tweets for Effective Timing

The real key to using Twitter effectively is to set a time for compiling material around your schedule. It is easier to sit down for 30 minutes to an hour to effectively organize your thoughts and material. Using a tool like Buffer allows you to coordinate when the posts will be tweeted. Each online niche can have slightly different times for effective tweeting; however, you can start with some general times that have proven effective according to Hubspot.

• 9-10 am in the morning
• 12-1 pm over lunch
• 4-5 pm in the evening

After awhile you may want to update these times based on how your audience responds.

Twitter is an effective marketing tool. The tools and tips above will make Twitter manageable. If you enjoyed and found this post useful, please tweet about it!

Button Copy Test

Buttons provide an easy call to action within any webpage. There are many changes that can be made to a button that could potentially influence a visitor’s response, such as placement, size, color, shape, and copy.

In one button copy test, Which Test Won worked with Real Goods Solar to find out which button text influenced the best response. One button had text that referred to a “solar consultation” while the other made reference to “no obligation.” The more effective “button copy got a 74% boost in completed lead generation form submissions from the button’s landing page.”  The “no obligation” button won because, “visitors might fear they’d be obligated to buy after a free consultation.” The comments on the test seem to further reinforce this idea.

It is always good to think creatively about what copy you use for your buttons. Instead of just going with what everyone else is using, look at creative changes that could be made to increase your visitor response.

Form Test

Forms are critical to the success of most conversions. The common advice with forms is that the shorter it is, the more likely people are to fill it out and finish the conversion. This form test actually looked at this assumption and found that the longer form, “got a whopping 88.7% lift in form submits, which in turn led to higher sales.” Most visitors to Which Test Won also assumed the shorter form would win the test. That it didn’t is further proof that testing really can make a huge difference to the bottom line, with increased sales results.

Lead Generation Test

How would you like to increase your lead generation by 91.4%? When testing lead generation for The Green Guide, Which Test Won found the classic marketing technique of repeating the same call to action actually does work. The highlighted changes that really made this work included, “changing from three columns to two, and adding in more prominent calls to action in multiple places through the page.” Although some might consider this old marketing technique a turn off, it can be done tastefully and does produce stunning results.

There are so many more impressive testing results from Which Test Won that are well worth looking over.  As is often the case, the comments posted by readers also prove to have some interesting ideas and things to consider. Just remember, a good rule of thumb is to not make changes based on data that isn’t specific to your niche. Although these tests might give you inspiration, until you do some of your own, you won’t truly know what might work for your website and audience. You can setup your own test by using tools such as Google’s Website Optimizer. You may need to contact support for your website on some of the last steps in implementing the tracking for the test to work.

Have your own thoughts about website testing? Please comment below. Feel free to share this post via Twitter, Facebook or other social media.

Why Test?

Testing provides the best feedback as to what works or doesn’t work on your website. In order to decide what will guide potential clients to click on an item, you need to know what engages them the most. The feedback testing provides allows for targeted changes that can result in a greater number of site conversions. Some website tests have revealed up to a 44% change in results from one version to another. If you didn’t test and figure this out, you would be leaking that much in conversions!

The Basics of Website Testing

The most common form of testing is what is called sequential testing. This is where you make a change in January, check it in February, make another change and then test that change response in March. According to Which Test Won, this form of testing is fraught with inaccurate information because of too many variables. The type of testing recommended by most is called non-sequential testing. This type of testing divides your traffic in real-time, allowing you to obtain results on both versions at the same time until you are statistically confident of the results.

Starting with Data

Before you can start testing you need to have website analytics software, such as Google Analytics, installed on your website. The “control” or baseline, from which to measure results, will come from your initial website data before the test is implemented. After you’ve gathered at least a month or two of traffic stats, you will have a baseline to work from. The question then becomes, what do you test?

Testing the Big Picture

According to Which Test Won, the best items to test are those big picture items. How do you know what a “big picture item” is? Have your website up and then stand about 4-6 feet away from the monitor. Whatever catches your eye the most are the “big picture” elements. Those are the items to look at changing. Although sometimes this will include changing the wording on some items, for the most part it will be about placement, colors, and shapes.

In order to get inspired to look at what is possible, check out some of the test results from Which Test Won. In the next blog post I will look at some favorites and how that information could be applied to your own website. Don’t miss out! Subscribe to the blog or follow me on Twitter.