New Social Media Marketing Services A Must For Your Business

Asif Iqbal    Twitter Marketing     Business, business-deserves, Businesses, forever-relegate, ignore-the-power, much-better, Power, their-businesses, through-sites

Marketers are starting to realize that to ignore the power of online marketing through sites like Twitter is to forever relegate their businesses to second-class-citizen status. Your business deserves so much better than that.

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New Social Media Marketing Services A Must For Your Business

New Social Media Marketing Services A Must For Your Business

Sharbel Lutfallah    Twitter Marketing     Business, business-deserves, Businesses, forever-relegate, ignore-the-power, much-better, Power, their-businesses, through-sites

Marketers are starting to realize that to ignore the power of online marketing through sites like Twitter is to forever relegate their businesses to second-class-citizen status. Your business deserves so much better than that.

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New Social Media Marketing Services A Must For Your Business

New Social Media Marketing Services A Must For Your Business (OfficialWire)

Karin I Manning    Twitter Marketing     Business, business-deserves, Businesses, forever-relegate, ignore-the-power, much-better, online-marketing, Power, their-businesses, through-sites, Twitter

Marketers are starting to realize that to ignore the power of online marketing through sites like Twitter is to forever relegate their businesses to second-class-citizen status.

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New Social Media Marketing Services A Must For Your Business (OfficialWire)

Three Problems With Facebook’s New Conversion Tracking Feature

admin    Twitter Marketing     Conversion, Facebook's, Feature, Problems, Three, Tracking

Last week Facebook’s Ads Newsletter officially announced the availability of their new Conversion Tracking feature which they launched in beta earlier this year.

The concept is very simple, and very similar to how conversion tracking is done in Google AdWords. You create a unique tracking tag for your ad in Facebook and embed the javascript it generates to the landing page on your site.

It is also possible to insert the javascript on your thank you page. This is the page that people reach after filling out a form on your landing page. This combination allows you to get some really slick reporting as seen below.  

Not only do you get the normal ad performance metrics such as impressions, click and click thru rate, but you also see the number of leads you converted and conversion rate which is the holy grail of advertising – determining the ROI of your spend! Right?

Well, here is the problem with Facebook Conversion Tracking:

1. You’re collecting information outside of your system

Marketers beware! While the conversion tracking dashboard provides a lot of great intel, that information is outside your systems.  Good luck trying to tie it to all your other marketing efforts unless you use their API to import all that information to your system. The average Joe or Jane marketer is probably not going to do that!

2. More invasive code to your site

So do you really want Facebook to know what visitors are doing on your site by placing their code on your pages?  Will you follow suit if Twitter offers the same service?  How much 3rd party code will you keep stuffing into your pages, giving companies your data for free while paying them for theirs?  You are after all paying them to understand how your visitors are doing on their site while they are getting to learn about their visitors on your site for free!

3.  It’s another dashboard to worry about

How many tools do you use to check your email? One, perhaps two because you separated your personal email from work email.  So how  many tools will you log into to understand your marketing? Google? Facebook? Twitter? LinkedIn? YouTube? With the need to spread your activity amongst social sites you will need to track them all, but could managing so many tools spread you too thin? 

All social sites should aspire to provide the level of insight that Facebook is providing.  It is critical for marketers to understand how their time and dollars spent is yielding results.  At the same time there is a need to simplify and centralize to make our lives easier!

Have you used Facebook conversion tracking or have you thought about it?  Please share your thoughts in the comments!
 

Photo credit: Marco Bellucci

Live Webinar: Social Media Optimization Is The New SEO With Brian Solis

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LAIDLAW GROUP CONTINUES SOCIAL INFLUENCE MARKETING GROWTH (dBusinessNews.com)

Maurice Ramirez    Twitter Marketing     abington, branding-expertise, Combining, laidlaw-group, marketing, sim, Social, social-influence

BOSTON, MA — Combining over 20 years of award-winning branding expertise in traditional media with its already substantial experience in Social Influence Marketing (SIM), Laidlaw Group continues to grow with the launch of rethink: precast , a new blog for Precast Specialties Corp., an Abington, MA-based manufacturer of precast concrete products.

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LAIDLAW GROUP CONTINUES SOCIAL INFLUENCE MARKETING GROWTH (dBusinessNews.com)

Apple to Build a Search Engine? This Just In: Apple Has a Search Engine!

admin    Web Marketing     Apple, Build, Engine, Just, Search, This

Some analyst predicts that Apple will build its own search engine and the soundbite feeds the blogging community for a week!

We’re also going to jump in–hey we have bills to pay too–but our take is a little different. First the prediction:

We believe Apple could utilize data unavailable to Google, data generated by the company’s App Store, to create a mobile centric search engine, which would be a unique offering to Google’s search engine…We believe the odds of Apple developing a search engine in the next five years are 70%…

<rolls up sleeves>

OK, first of all. Just because someone says "search engine" you shouldn’t immediately think of a web search engine such as Google.

Second. It’s quite plausible for Apple to build a search engine for the thousands of iPhone/iPad apps in iTunes. Heck, I don’t think it’s going to take 5 years–maybe as little as 5 months!

Lastly, Apple already has an abundance of search engine technology. If you own a Mac, you’re familiar with the power Spotlight search, right? Use iTunes? There’s a search engine baked into that. Heck, just head to Apple’s support site and you’ll find a pretty cool search engine.

Still, predicting something that Apple already has doesn’t get you talked about by bloggers. Leaving it up to interpretation–that’s where the money is!

View full post on Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim

Twitter TwiesTweaking Homepage

admin    Web Marketing     Homepage, TwiesTweaking, Twitter

Alright, so the title was lame. It’s been a long time since I even considered overusing the “Tw” that has made Twitter talk funny and incredibly annoying at the same time. Twitter must be really big because this bit of news is about their homepage redesign and not about numbers of Twitter accounts etc.

The Twitter blog tells us about this curious new approach by the world leader in character efficiency (how quickly that could slide into deficiency). Gee, you would think that Twitter is trying to make their site experience better so the third party app crowd might consider visiting the mothership. Wouldn’t that help those revenue generation efforts if more users were on the Twitter site to see those pretty ads etc?

Anyway, here’s the scoop

With the new design, we’re intentionally featuring more dynamic content on the front page, revealing a sample of who’s here, what folks are tweeting about, and the big topics that they’re discussing. The homepage now features a set of algorithmically-selected top tweets that automatically appear every few seconds. It also highlights a random sampling of suggested sources; hover over any of them to see a profile summary and their latest tweet. Trending topics now scroll across the page, allowing us to present a large set of trends using little page real estate. Hovering over some of these trends will show a description explaining why the keyword is (or has recently been) popular.

Here’s a picture.

That’s cool. Twitter has to get more people to come to the site v depending on those third party access apps. If they are going to be selling advertising (I said if!) they want as many active Twitter users using the site thus being in front of those ……. Well, you get the picture.

It appears as if Twitter wants to rid itself of the reputation of being a place where desperate people share the mundane activities of their lives with relative strangers. It wants to play with the big kids now.

All of our recent changes embrace the notion that Twitter is not just for status updates anymore. It’s a network where information is exchanged and consumed at a rapid clip every second of the day. With so much being shared, we know that there’s something of value for everyone. People who internalize the value of Twitter understand the power of this simple medium.

I find this interesting but not earth shattering. Twitter is obviously trying to rally the troops to make sure that whatever revenue plans they have up their sleeves has the best chance to succeed in a huge fashion. Who wouldn’t?

So are you interested in this new homepage format? What else would you suggest to Twitter to make using the Twitter site for access more appealing? Let’em know. You never know who may be listening.

View full post on Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim

Inbox Insider: Integration tools help to sort through data

admin    Web Marketing     Data, Help, Inbox, Insider, Integration, Sort, Through, Tools

Integrating data is one of the major challenges e-mail marketers face today. While e-mail campaigns allow marketers to collect many types of data, they are often faced with difficult decisions on how to use this information and apply it to future campaigns.

View full post on Latest articles from DMNews News

Consumers Responding to Online Ads Better

admin    Web Marketing     Better, Consumers, Online, Responding

This month, the Opinion Research Corporation conducted a survey for Adfusion, the article-based ad network division of ARAnet. While it should probably come as little surprise that the survey found that articles that include brand information were the preferred source of online advertising, it’s nice to hear that all forms of online ads saw a reported increase over last year when consumers were asked about how likely they were to act on that ad.

That may be because an article-based ad network was paying for the study—but it may also have to do with the nature of marketing articles. Unlike less successful ad categories like banners and popups, marketing articles usually don’t just sneak up on you and foist themselves upon you. Usually, this is information you’re seeking out because you’re already fairly far along in the purchasing funnel.

Email offers came in a close second. Search ads also performed well, with 40% reporting they were “somewhat” or “very likely” to act upon them.

After reading online articles, consumers are also turning more and more to search. Last year, 50% of consumers “somewhat” or “very frequently” turned to searches after reading articles, and this year 57% reported that behavior, with that rising up to 72% for 25 to 34 year olds.

The survey was conducted last week among a sample of 1,053 adults comprising 509 men and 544 women 18 years old and older.

What do you think? Is article marketing really that effective? Is it widespread enough to warrant your efforts? What kind of marketing are you most likely to act upon?

View full post on Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim

Lessons in Web Site Optimization Using Website Grader

admin    Twitter Marketing     Grader, Lessons, optimization, Site, Using, website

Our first effort at a live HubSpot webinar was better than we expected (thank goodness!).  We were prepared with a few web sites to review with the 1500 registrants of our live optimization event and we were able to call two marketing managers and discuss what they were trying to achieve with their website and get real-time feedback. 

Mike and I enjoyed it so much that we’re going to do this weekly and we’ll do everything live! 

Company: Information Mapping – Website Grader score: 96 

With a score of 96, you’d think there might not be much room for improving. Wrong!  Mike and I both found a few areas we thought this website could do better.  

Our suggestions for improvements:

1. Start a blog.  With a blog providing regular content they will be able to generate more inbound links.

2. Reduce the amount of Call to Action clutter on their Home Page.  So many offers, it is very distracting.

3. Stop using Information Mapping in the title tag and on every page, and start utilizing descriptive, long-tail keywords was an easy fix and one to surely juice up their SEO presence.   

Company: Mesiro & Fink – Website Grader Score: 6

This is a three-month-old site and has been nicely optimized by an SEO firm they hired, so their score of 6 came as a bit of shock to Cynthia when we talked to her during the webinar.  She’s concerned that this site is not generating the number of leads that they expected.  Here’s a few things that Mike & I thought might be helpful:

1. Put a telephone field on the form.  The form is nice and visible but the immediate need for someone with their skill set might necessitate a telephone call instead of an email.

2. Attach the social media efforts they are making to the website and make sure the name of the firm is being used in their Twitter handle.  Currently, they are using a more generic name to tweet.

3. Contribute more actively to their blog and make sure the posts are more educational and less self-promotional in nature.

Company: BT-TelConsult – Website Grader score: 44

This is a big company.  British-Telecom could afford to do just about anything they wanted, right?  Well, it appears that they might want to consider a few tweaks to their site if they want people to contact them.

1. They had a telephone number on their site (if you looked for it) but wouldn’t an email form be better if someone was looking for consulting help?  

2. No Blog!  A company of this size is perfectly poised to leverage their army of consultants in talking about the Telecommunications vertical.  They could have tons of blog posts that would help them with the next key point.

3. Only 162 indexed pages.  Clearly, they need more content, more frequently which would give them more inbound links (currently just 29!).

Company: Photos by Orion – Website Grader Score: 21

This new site has a very passionate business manager, Katherine.  We were able to talk to her about this site at great length and it was great to have an opportunity to understand how a creative person sees the web.  There were a few points we wanted to help Katharine with and most of them had to do with design. 

This is a new site and we wanted her to do more than a few things in order to optimize it.

1. Move away from frames in the web site.  The difficulty of having two bars to navigate can be confusing.

2. Eliminate the knocked-out white on black background, a favorite of designers around the world, yet notoriously difficult to read.  

3. Connect the blog that has some excellent content on it directly into the website.  The content would be a terrific lead generation tool for this site.

4. Add geographical keywords to the title tags.

5. Use more pictures of portraits and wedding photography in the site, especially on the home page.  The beautiful butterfly is nice, but it is not their business.  

Join us on Tuesday, April 6 at 1 PM for our next Live Optimization Webinar.  Please submit your site and we’ll look forward to talking to you live!

Connect with HubSpot:

View full post on HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog