To be successful in Internet Marketing or in any endeavor, it is important to think big and to face down the fear of failure. I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. Hopefully this little story will make sense.
My family plays pitch. We not only play it, we’re very very good at it. The last time we were all together, my brother began teaching the exchange student staying with my other brother how to play. Some members of our extended family play very conservatively and seldom win. They know the rules inside out but when they look at the cards, they only see what is in their hand, not what the possibilities are for their team or for their hand based on what others might have. And as I said, they seldom win.
The way my brother was teaching this young lady was so that she could start at the top. Rather than learning the rules and taking baby steps in learning how to bid, he taught her how to bid aggressively so that she could play a strong hand at a strong table successfully.
I think the same kind of thing applies to business in general and to Internet Marketing specifically. There are many things that go into excellent Internet Marketing but it is not only what you see in your hand. Look at the opportunities available and consider how they fit in with your plan. Where do the synergies lie? How can you capitalize on the strengths of the media you’re using? The goal isn’t to learn how to be an Internet Marketer. The goal is to win at Internet Marketing.
Find the right mentor(s). The exchange student was lucky. Her mentor was teaching her how to win, not how to play. Find mentors that have PROVEN success in their industry. There are dozens of folks out there who claim they are gurus and experts. Ask them for the proof and then double-check it. For example, we’ve been around since 1998 and have been growing nearly every year. We’re ranked high for our key words. We actually get business because we’re found on the search engines. We work hard to practice what we preach.
We aren’t in this to “play the game”. We’re here to help other businesses excel on the Internet.
EduNotes Blog
Plan for Internet Marketing
Internet Marketing, like any kind of marketing, needs to fit into the bigger picture of what you are trying to accomplish. There are three questions you need to ask yourself with any kind of Internet Marketing Campaign:
- How does this campaign fit into our overall marketing goals?
- How will we measure success?
- What step(s) do we want people to take?
ONE: Fitting your campaign into your overall marketing plan assumes you have an overall plan. If you don’t have one, get one. You’ll never get where you want to be if you don’t have a plan to get there. Stop and consider what your business goals are, determine what marketing you need to do to help you get there, and then determine what piece of the marketing pie will be Internet marketing.
TWO: A key component of your success will be determining at the outset what you are going to measure. Long ago I had a customer leave because his web site wasn’t getting him any business. So I asked where he was getting his business from. As it turned out, he wasn’t really tracking any of that stuff so he didn’t really know where his business came from – and therefore didn’t know whether he was getting any business from his site or not. What’s the moral of the story? He didn’t measure anything in his business and he’s no longer in business.
THREE: There are all kinds of measurable steps you can have on your web site. Of course, if you have an ecommerce site, the best step is to make a sale. But if the customer isn’t ready to buy, you can get them to sign up for your newsletter (another measurable step) or click to the next page for more information (this too is measurable). I’m sorry but “The purpose of this page is to educate” is not a step nor is it measurable. If you want to educate them enough that they want to call you or fill out a form, then it is measurable but “educate” is not a step.
Think through these questions with answers backed up with data and you’ll be on your way to success on the Internet.
Finding the Right Web Design Firm
There are lots of places on the Internet you can go to get a web site designed for less than $100. You get what you pay for however. There are also web sites that will help you with Search Engine Optimization for only $25 or some such nonsense. Again you get what you pay for which in this case can actually be counterproductive to your site. Finally there are some excellent graphic designers out there that learn how to convert their work into html and declare themselves to be web designers. For a modest sum, they will build you a web site. Be very careful in this case also.
There are three main elements to web design that you need to make sure you’ve got covered:
1) Good design
Building a good web site means that it needs to be designed to fit YOUR needs. The problem with most do-it-yourself template sites is that you have to customize your needs to the template rather than having the design customized to your needs. Your site should be visually engaging and should be customized to help you get your message across to your customers.
2) Search Engine Friendliness
We won’t lie to you. SEO is very competitive and can get quite expensive. But a key part of web design is an architecture that is friendly to search engines. Some key elements to include in the design: using key words in file names and in image tags; naming sub-directories well; and the obvious – using keywords in the written content – but then also placing that written content in the best place on the page. None of these are included in your super-cheap online SEO services but more importantly, many web designers don’t use or understand these principles.
3) Functionality
I’ve seen some really beautiful web sites but have had no clue what the next step is. Often graphic designers that hang up their web design shingle are the culprits. They design visually engaging graphics that don’t point the user to the next step. A term often used with web sites is “intuitive”. An intuitive web site is one where the user can easily figure out (without having to do any “figuring”) what to do. Navigation, for example, isn’t hidden or difficult to figure out – instead the menu items are clearly menu items and you can click on them to move to the next page.
Twitter Done Right
Twitter isn’t all fun and games. There’s some serious business happening among the tweets about Tiger and Charlie and what your accountant had for lunch. Business people want to know, “How can I use Twitter to build a following and promote my business?”
Twitter Done Right! is EduCyber’s January seminar that will teach you how to harness the power of tweeting to build traffic for your business. In this fast-moving seminar, host Brian DeLaet will teach you:
- How to create a plan for promoting your business on Twitter
- Who to follow and why
- How to build a following for you and your business and turn that following into customers
- Real examples of how businesses have used Twitter to explode their sales.
In other words, you’ll learn how to do Twitter right!
Register online at http://www.educyber.com/upcoming-seminars.php
(Space is limited, so call today!)
When: January 28, 2010
Time: 11:30 am – 1:00 pm
Where: 4251 Kipling St., Suite 190, Wheat Ridge, CO 80033
(2nd Floor Conference Room)
Why Bother With Twitter?
I’m often asked why anyone in business would want to spend time tweeting. That question often comes from the very same people who spend lots of time in meetings and events with local business associations, chambers of commerce and other opportunities to meet new people or make connections with existing contacts.
Hmm . . . is what I think. I’m not sure why people don’t see the value of tweeting to friends, colleagues, vendors and customers (and in fact all of Twitterland). Here are the reasons I find time to tweet:
- I can connect with my known circle of friends and tell them about what is happening (remember, don’t tweet about what you’re doing but about what has your attention).
- I can read my circle’s tweets and join in the conversation, letting those folks know that I am engaged in their conversation.
- I can share my news – typically that I have posted a new blog article but also about things related to my company.
- I can meet new people who share my interests, industry, politics, religion and more.
- I can connect with potential employees or staff members.
- I can stay abreast of what is happening in the world and in my industry (I learned that Michael Jackson had died through Twitter and I learned that Facebook surpassed 350 million users via Twitter)
- I can do research on what my competitors are doing
Most importantly, I realize that Twitter is one more way to network but it is unique in the real-time information flow and the method of using it – I often go days without visiting twitter.com but a day very rarely passes without one tweet or interaction on Twitter.икони
Evaluating your Social Media Campaign
Question 10 of 10 Essential Questions for Your Social Media Marketing Campaign is “How do I evaluate the results?”
If you planned properly this is an easy question. At the outset you should have set a measurable goal and set a time period. So now all you have to do is, when you hit the milestone set, look to see if you reached your goal.
In our first question we talked about setting goals and what those goals might look like. The funny thing about goals though is they often change. And that’s ok. The important thing is to continually set, measure and reset your goals. If you had said you wanted to get 200 new subscribers to your newsletter over a two month period and you hit 250 after one month, it would be a good idea to evaluate after one month and change the goal to, for example, 700.
If you only had 20 new subscribers after a month but three of them converted to customers, you might reset the goal to 50 and add a new goal of converting 10 of them to customers. But if you haven’t set a goal, how do you know if you reached it or not?
Other things you can measure as a part of your evaluation of a social media campaign include:
- Number of Facebook fans
- Number of re-tweets onTwitter
- Number of profile views on LinkedIn
- Number of views on YouTube
- Number of click throughs from any social site to your actual web site
- Number of new newsletter subscribers
- Number of new customers
Note that new customers is only one measurement. And it is probably not the most important at first. Of more importance is how you engage and interact with the “friends”, “followers”, “connections” or other social media friends in order to build your network over the long term.
Thankful
It’s time to pause and give thanks. As the pilgrims thanked God for surviving and for all their blessings at the first Thanksgiving, we also thank God for surviving and for all of our blessings.
We are thankful for living in such a great country where we are blessed to be able to start and run our own business
We are thankful that we have been able to not only survive but continue to grow as we have been since we started in 1998
We are thankful for our customers in the Denver area and around the country – thankful for their patronage and for choosing us as their technology partner.
We are thankful for burgeoning growth on the Internet as more businesses discover how to move on to the Internet and those already there look for ways to innovate further.
We are thankful for dedicated staff that help us continue to grow and to service existing clientele.
We are thankful for family, friends and colleagues that surround us, enrich our lives and care.
We encourage you to set aside time this week to reflect and give thanks for your blessings and we thank you for being a part of our experience.
Your Company Reputation and Social Media Marketing
Question 9 of 10 Essential Questions for Your Social Media Marketing Campaign is How does my company reputation fit into Social Media Marketing. If you haven’t figured it out by now, it is ALL about your reputation.
Social Media Marketing is about engaging others and building long term relationships with others. This enhances your reputation as a company and establishes you as a player in the long term plans of your potential and existing clients.
There are specific things you can and should do to both monitor and build your reputation:
1. Set up a Google Alert (www.google.com/alert) for your company name. You can try it with or without quotes to see what kind of results you get.
2. While both Google and Bing have agreements to include twitter in their results, we still recommend setting up a twitter account to monitor your company name / reputation on Twitter. TweetDeck can be used to do this. Monitter.com can also be used to help you do this.
3. When your company is mentioned online, engage with the mentioner, whether the mention is good or bad. If the comment is negative, see if there is some way you can reach out and change their mind or provide some kind of remedy.
4. If your company isn’t mentioned or isn’t mentioned much, don’t quit. Engage and you will find that it will begin to be used.
5. Set up a Facebook fan page for your company. Plan what you want to happen and make sure you implement your plan.
Why do it? Facebook has 300 million plus users. Twitter has around 60 million users. You won’t find all of them becoming your customers but you will find a sizeable number that you can interact with to broaden your network.
Business Owners Ramp Up Their Internet Marketing Knowledge Through AdvanceMy.biz
“Drive thy business or it will drive thee.” – Benjamin Franklin
Business owners know they need to keep moving their businesses forward to find new clients and new markets. Those who are serious about online marketing face the challenge of either researching the internet to learn about Search Engine Optimization, Facebook and Google Adwords, or paying consultants to do the work for them. Many are frustrated by wanting to promote online, but don’t know where to begin.
Brian DeLaet of Educyber understands their frustration. “Internet marketing changes constantly, and most business owners don’t have the staff to constantly research the best ways to market online. That’s our business. We’re on top of all the latest trends in online marketing and we make that knowledge accessible to business owners through our new site, AdvanceMy.biz.”
AdvanceMy.biz is an online site for business owners to learn how to promote their business online and learn from each other’s problems and also from their triumphs. The AdvanceMy.biz staff and our affiliate internet professionals provide an evolving curriculum of the latest in internet strategies and tools that will quickly ramp up your online marketing efforts.
The courses are geared to three levels – the total beginner, who’s looking to get started, the intermediate web marketer looking to gain more knowledge, and the almost-expert who wants to create and run an online campaign.
To celebrate the opening of the site, new members pay ½ price for the first two months. Sign up at http://www.advancemy.biz. Questions? Email info@advancemy.biz.
Email Scams Proliferate
Lately we’ve been getting bombarded with email scams. Beware and DO NOT click on these unless you communicate with network administrator (call us if you don’t have a network administrator: 303 268-2245).
One message has a title like this: A new settings file for the <youremailaddress> mailbox has just been released and it was a bogus link that you are supposed to click on. DO NOT click the link!
The second message we’ve seen has this subject line: Important – System upgrade and it also has a link that you should not click under any circumstances.
Beware, be aware, and be safe on the Internet.