Measuring Success with Social Media

by John Eberhard

I have started doing a lot of social media marketing work for clients where I add friends, followers and connections to their Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. I was adding friends for them on MySpace too but have recently discovered that hardly anyone is using MySpace anymore, so I am dropping that from the mix.

All this got me thinking about how you should measure your success with social media. I found an excellent article on this called “3 Key Metrics To Measure Social Media Success” by Clay McDaniel on SearchEngineWatch.com. I’ll explain and simplify what he is saying, plus add some additional ways of my own to measure social media success. Here are McDaniel’s 3 key metrics:

1. Total Online Community Size: Add up your total Facebook fans of your fan page and/or friends for your profile, Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections, YouTube channel subscribers, and blog unique users.

In my opinion this is one of the most important metrics in terms of how well you are doing, because it gives the total number of people you can reach with your social media communications. This is also something you should be working on regularly to increase these numbers.

2. Monthly Referred Traffic to Site: Go into Google Analytics and see how many total people came to your site, referred from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

If you are posting status updates on your social media accounts that link back to your site or mention things you are doing, this should be generating traffic, i.e. people clicking on the link and coming to your site.

3. Social Monthly Impressions: This is the number of times someone mentions your company or brand on social media sites. You can set up a Google Alert to measure this.

I recently found that posting press releases on two specific online PR sites caused over 150 people to tweet the title of my press release and link to it from their Twitter accounts. I found this out by searching for my company name on Twitter.

Here are some additional ways of my own to measure what is going on with social media:

4. Status Updates Out Monthly: This is a total of how many times you sent out a business related status update to all your social media accounts. This is of course what you are doing rather than how people are responding to you. But I think this should be tracked because it is one of the main things you are doing that will affect how people respond. See my article from last week on what you should put out.

5. Blog Posts Monthly: This is the number of posts you are putting out on your blog or blogs. As mentioned in earlier articles the ideal frequency of this is once a week or more.

Good luck with your social media marketing.

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Your Social Media Outflow Strategy

by John Eberhard

Last week I talked about how you should engage with your friends, followers and connections on social media, and respond to their communications.

But what type of communications should you put out in your own status updates, i.e. the communications that go out to all your social media connections?

Well first of all I have recommended in the past that you set up an account on www.Ping.fm and connect up all your social media accounts to it. That way when you post something on Ping.fm, it goes out to all your social media accounts and you don’t have to log into a bunch of accounts to send your message. That saves a lot of time.

But back to what you should say. Your strategy of course will have to work with your personality and what you feel comfortable saying in your social media marketing. But here are some tips.

1. I have had a successful strategy with regard to my business, whereby I post messages saying what I am working on at the time, such as “I am setting up a new Google AdWords account for a client,” or “I am designing a new web site for a veterinarian,” or “I am adding more Twitter followers for a client.” I was telling a friend about this recently and his reaction was “Isn’t that really boring?” I suppose you could say that it is. But what it does do is create good “top of mind awareness.” That’s where when someone thinks of an Internet marketing consultant, I’m one of the guys they think of. I have gotten substantial business from social media using this strategy. You may be able to use this strategy to create top of mind awareness for your company.

2. Every time you post new content on your blog, you should put out a status update saying “See my new blog post,” then the name of your article, then a link to it. Since the number of characters you get on Twitter (and Ping.fm) is only 140, it makes sense to use a URL shortener for the address of the article, such as www.goo.gl.

3. If your company puts up a new video on YouTube, post an update about it with a link to the video.

4. If you publish a press release on your web site or blog, post an update about this with a link to it.

5. I have one client where I put together client testimonials for him and post them on his web site. Every time one of these goes up, I post a status update about it to his social media accounts.

6. If your company releases any type of special report or white paper related to a topic within your industry, post a link to it. Usually these are offered in such a way that the person has to give you his name and email to get the report, as a method of lead generation. So post a link to the signup page.

7. You can post a link to some interesting article or video you found relating to your industry.

8. Whenever you have an event coming up, like a seminar, class, speech, webinar, or appearance at a trade show, post something announcing it.

9. If you are having a sale or special, you should definitely post about it, possibly several times.

10. Avoid making every single status update a pitch for your business. While you should post about all your seminars, classes, speeches, webinars, or trade show appearances, if all you ever post are pitches for your promotional actions, it could cause people to tune you out or even hide your posts or unfriend you. I think it is helpful to throw in some personal stuff, like a trip you’re taking, or a sports event or concert you attended.

It is definitely a good idea to post status updates to your social media accounts frequently. It all comes under the heading of creating top of mind awareness. Using these tips you can increase your posting frequency.

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RealWebMarketing.net Launches New Site for Marketing for Landscapers

Site to Offer Landscaping Companies Web Design, Pay Per Click, and Google Maps

LOS ANGELES: RealWebMarketing.net (http://www.realwebmarketing.net), a web design and website marketing company based in Southern California, has just launched a new web site called Landscaper-Marketing.com (http://www.landscaper-marketing.com) offering online marketing services specifically for landscaping companies.

 

The new website offers landscaping companies web design, pay per click advertising setup and maintenance, and Google Maps setup and maintenance.

 

John Eberhard, President of RealWebMarketing.net, stated, “This is a vital time of year for landscape designers and contractors across the U.S., because their biggest time of the year and biggest surge of business is in the spring and early summer. So now is the ideal time for them to get their web site re-designed if it needs it, and to promote using pay per click advertising or getting a listing up on Google Maps. Promoting your business is never more important than in a time of economic downturn like we’re seeing today. The key is promoting more, not cutting back.”

 

RealWebMarketing.net recently launched a new major web re-design for Big Trees Inc., (http://www.bigtreesupply.com) a large tree nursery in the Seattle area, and is now managing pay per click advertising and link building for Big Trees.

 

John Eberhard has been involved in marketing for a wide variety of businesses for 22 years. RealWebMarketing.net was founded in 1999 in the Los Angeles area, and has clients all over the U.S, in a wide variety of fields such as direct mail, health care, consulting, construction, personnel recruitment, court reporting, drug rehabilitation, publishing, software, jewelry manufacturing and online sales, residential and commercial real estate, dance instruction, tax consulting, plumbing, dentistry, pool remodeling, tree nurseries, landscaping and many others. The services offered by RealWebMarketing.net include website design, blog design, pay-per-click advertising campaign management, search engine optimization, link building, article syndication, optimized press releases, RSS feeds, and video production.

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Social Media Engagement

by John Eberhard

In past articles I’ve talked about the necessity of getting lots of friends, followers and connections on social media sites, if you want to use them effectively for marketing purposes.

But there is another important point that is vital in effectively using social media sites to market. That is your amount of engagement with others on social media sites. By engagement in this case I mean “interacting back and forth with people on the social media sites.”

The idea is that you are not just outflowing information or messages to your friends, followers or connections on sites like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. You should be viewing what other people are doing or saying and interacting with them about it.

I was talking to a friend about this recently and I could tell he thought it would be a daunting task, i.e. that it would take him too much time. But I think it is important if you want to get much benefit from social media sites, and I don’t think it has to take a lot of time. Here are some examples:

1. On Facebook, click on “Home,” then at the top click on “Most Recent.” This brings up a feed of things that your Facebook friends have posted, including short blurbs about what they are doing, comments on things, links to articles elsewhere on the web, pictures they have uploaded, or links to videos on YouTube. Quickly scroll through this feed to look for things that interest you. If someone has posted a blurb or comment that you agree with, click the “Like” button underneath that post. Or post a short comment on it yourself. Similarly if someone has posted a link to an article or video that you like or agree with, click the “Like” button or post your own comment. It is easy to spend excessive time on this but you should discipline yourself and make it take no more than 5 minutes a day. When you click the “Like” button or post a comment on someone else’s content, they receive an email. It shows them that you give a hoot about them and it’s not all about you.

2. On Facebook, in the upper right area of the page is a list of your Facebook friends for whom today is their birthday. Review this list and for anyone who is a real life friend, click through to their page and where it says “Write something,” write a quick “Happy birthday Joe” message.

3. On Facebook there are groups or fan pages you can find about areas of interest or about your industry. Click “like” on some of these groups and follow or join in the discussions that appear on their fan pages.

4. Facebook has its own email system. Read any Facebook email you get and reply to it.

5. On Twitter, you can spend a few minutes following the posts of other people that you are following, then “re-tweet” the ones you like (that means to send that particular post again out to all of your followers). Or you can send them a direct message via Twitter.

6. Set up folders in your email program and set up mail rules that will dump all Facebook emails into a folder for Facebook and all Twitter emails into a folder for Twitter. That way they do not clutter up your main inbox and you can handle those emails when you have time.

7. On Twitter, you will receive emails that say “Direct message from Joe Jones.” Unfortunately a lot of these will be automatically generated messages that others send out whenever someone follows them, most saying “Thanks for following me. Look forward to reading your messages.” Some will include a link to something they are pitching. I think whoever invented the auto direct messages on Twitter should have a special seat reserved for them in a very hot place, next to that guy who invented that sticky tape along the top of a CD jewel case. The auto direct message is an unfortunate thing you have to put up with. But be on the lookout for any direct messages from others who are actually communicating to you. Reply to them.

8. One thing you can do on Twitter is do a search for your company name or brand, and see what people are saying about you. Then respond to them or re-tweet their stuff if it is positive. If it’s negative, it gives you a chance to monitor any problems and respond to them.

The web, and especially social media sites, are all about interaction, a conversation, back and forth. In the days before the web and social media, most companies were used to putting out communications that their public or consumers would receive. The public could write them a letter but most people never did that.

Today with social media it is much easier for people to write back to a company, or to comment about it. It’s vital, especially as your company expands, to be aware of what people are saying and to respond and be engaged in conversation.

But even beyond managing your public relations, it is best to engage with others on social media sites. By showing interest in your online friends and what they are saying and in responding to their communications, it ensures they will show more interest in you.

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Landing Pages

by John Eberhard

I was recently using some software to do research on the competitors for one of my clients, companies that are competing against my client on Google AdWords. I was amazed to find that these companies were having the visitors click through and then land on their home page.

I figured out years ago that this was not the best thing to do. But now it is considered pretty much common knowledge in pay per click advertising and in other forms of promotion such as email marketing, that you do not have the visitor land on your home page.

You create your ad on Google AdWords so that when the searcher clicks on your ad, he then lands on a customized landing page that you created just for that purpose. Or if you are doing email marketing, you put a link at the bottom of your email for people to click on, that goes not to the home page of your site but to a special landing page that you created just to go along with that email.

There are a number of reasons why it is better to make a customized landing page that your visitors will land on:

1. The content will match. In other words, the content of your Google AdWords ad will exactly match the content of the page they land on.

1. People don’t have to search for what they are looking for on your site. You want them to land on a landing page that is exactly about what they want. Your home page will usually not be about that, and so if you land them on the home page they will have to look over your navigation and figure out where to go. Many will get exasperated and leave.

   If your company offers more than one product or service (most do), then most likely you will have more than one campaign on Google AdWords, each one advertising one specific product or service. Then each one of those campaigns should click through to a customized landing page that is specifically about that one product or service.

So what should and should not be on a customized landing page for pay per click or email?

1. It should look like your web site and have the same header at the top with your logo and all that.

1. It should have sales copy on it, as well as some pictures showing the product or service.

1. The landing page should NOT have navigation buttons on it. When I first set up pay per click campaigns for clients, this one gets the most questioning and disagreement. The whole purpose for a pay per click or email landing page is that you want the person to do something. Usually you want him to become a lead or a sale. You want him to fill out the form or call you.

   I’ve been doing email marketing for about 11 years and pay per click advertising for about 6 years. I can tell you that in that time I have seen that in about 90% of the time, it works better NOT to have navigation buttons or links anywhere on the landing page. Meaning statistically you get more leads or sales (depending on what your campaign is trying to do) if you leave the navigation off.

   The problem with putting navigation buttons on a landing page for pay per click or email is that the visitor will be more likely to just wander around your site, then leave. It is not enough of a tightly controlled situation. You have to control the situation better than that and that means you want to give the person one option of what to do when he is done reading that page, which is to contact you via filling out that form or calling you.

1. The page should have a form at the bottom for the person to fill out. Do not make the person click through to another page to fill out a form unless you can’t avoid it, like if you need for him to go to a shopping cart that is on a different site. Also include a phone number so he can call right now if he wants to. Some people argue against putting a form on the landing page, but I am always in favor of it. For one thing, this is important for people who are checking out your site on the weekend or late at night, when they can’t call you. I also think a form is better than an email link. I used to put email links on sites, but lately have been noticing that I get complaints on these because they won’t work for people who use Gmail or Yahoo, which is a lot of people today. So a form is best.

1. Some people think that a really long page with lots of copy is best, stuffed with lots of testimonials and all that. I’m not so sure this is the best route anymore, as people online are more and more in a hurry these days. Many times they will just read a little bit and then scroll to the bottom, skipping five feet worth of testimonials, to see “how much is the thing?!” You can test it both ways but I am generally seeing that shorter landing pages work better these days. Make your case, then give them the form.

1. Multimedia: I generally find that some sort of multimedia on a landing page helps conversions, i.e. the percentage of people that contact you. This can include an audio file that starts talking to them as soon as the page loads, or a video, or a Flash slide show. Statistically I find that these things help conversions, which is the name of the game.

Following these points, you will be more likely to have success with your pay per click or email campaigns.

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Multiple Use of a Single Article

by John Eberhard

Since there are so many communication media today, it makes sense to take a single article that you write, and make sure it is utilized as much as possible and gotten out on as many communication channels as possible.

Here is my recommended plan for the use of a single article. To fit all these purposes the article should be at least 400 words.

1. Email Newsletter: Send the article out in your email newsletter. Some people like to put an excerpt from the article in the email, then make people click through to their web site or blog to read the rest. Or put the whole thing in the newsletter. I put the whole thing in the newsletter.

1. Blogs: Post the article on your blog or blogs. If your blog is not a Wordpress blog, don’t forget to go to www.pingomatic.com and send a notification to all the blog search engines. Wordpress does this automatically. I have created multiple blogs for myself and for a number of my clients, including one main blog and a number of free blogging sites. Send the article out to all.

1. Article Marketing: Submit the article to between 50 and 100 article directories. This builds quantity links back to your web site, and in my opinion and experience is one of the best methods of developing high quantity links in a short time. Plus people can find the articles and contact you. Supposedly the new version of Google’s algorithm discounts some article directories, but we closely monitor this and we have not seen it.

1. Squidoo, HubPages and Google Knol: These sites are the most important article directories and are more or less in a class by themselves. These allow you to include text links in the article (HubPages only one link, any more than that and watch out, you’re a “spammer”), plus you can include multiple photos and videos as applicable.

1. Twitter: Send out a tweet to your Twitter followers telling them to see your new article, then include a link to that article on your blog. Use the permalink. A permalink is a link that takes a person directly to that article on the blog. On Wordpress click on the article title and it will take you to the permalink. On Typepad, it gives a link to the permalink at the bottom of every post. Take that permalink and go to a URL shortener such as www.goo.gl, that then shortens that permalink address to a shorter address. That’s important for Twitter which only gives you 140 characters for your tweet, and because most permalinks are pretty long.

1. LinkedIn: Same as for Twitter. Post it to your LinkedIn profile and your connections will see it.

1. Facebook: Post a link to the article to your Facebook profile. At the top it says “share” and click where it says “link.” Then put the permalink there and click “attach.” Facebook will show you what it will look like, how much of an excerpt for the article they will show, and a thumbnail picture. Usually you can scroll through the pictures it finds on the page or post, and you can select the one that fits the article the best. Share it with friends.

Using these methods you will ensure maximum utilization and dissemination of your article.

(The picture above is meant to symbolize multiple ways of getting your article out, but if you choose to give it a patriotic meaning that's OK with me.)

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