Monday, April 27, 2009

Join me to Use Social Media on Twitter, Facebook, My Space and More

As a Los Angeles social media marketing consultant, it has been interesting to experiment around with all of the new social media marketing mediums -- the convergence of marketing, advertising and PR on the Web. I do SMM every day for our MarCom New Media clients, including ghostwriting blogs like this one on invoice factoring for Interface Financial, writing articles and syndicated them over the Internet, writing optimized releases and pitch letters, bookmarking content in DIGG and distributing content over RSS feeds. When I pitch the media via email I use pitch letters with embedded videos.

Social Media Marketing for B2B has gotten a bad rap. But I make sure we use podcasts embedded, plus images of their latest products and services. Once our social media press releases are posted on the Internet, via Marketwire, they quickly show up in Yahoo and Google News,l SMM requires every bit as much of a professional to manage, as marketing, PR or corporate communications has always required.

Today, only about 10 to 15 percent of marketers nationwide are doing SMM, according to guru Paul Gillin who wrote a book called The New Influencers. The purpose of SMM is to engage with enthusiasts and existing customers in interactive communities in order to drive more traffic and sales.

If you have not already, start experimenting with blogs, online video, podcasts, corporate communities and public networks. In fact, social networks were only beginning to gain traction in the spring of 2007. Memberships are in the hundreds of millions.

Getting on the first page of the Google listings takes a searc engine optimization (SEO) company like MarCom, who spends months getting our clients ranked on the top of the search engines. Check out our Los Angeles SEO Successes

Friday, April 17, 2009

Onsite Search Optimization Tips

Here are some tips for what NOT to do on your website if you want to attract customers. Never use Flash splash screens. Google and the search engines cannot read it, so Flash is not good for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) results. Embedded Flash is OK to use, but if your home page is a Flash splash screen with no text, the search engines simply won't see it.

As a Los Angeles search engine optimization consultants, we see everything, and mostly we see that website designers do more harm than good when they say they know how to SEO a website. Usually this is just not the case. Good SEO is also all about content... content... content. Make sure there is plenty of content on your website. Nice designs, photos and no content will not help your SEO results, period.

Meta, Title and Description tags are very important. You may have seen some websites where it says "new page" in the browser? That is because the website designer did not put a title tag on the page. A short message with a key word that describes your site in the Description tag is essential so your customers will click through to your site when potential customers see your site's listing.

Never use repeat Title and Description tags. Website pages should each be unique with a theme for key words or phrases for each page. Make your Title and Description tags match the content for one of the keywords per page. You can't optimize one single page for many different key words.

Do not use text as an image. Some sites have text and images combined into a jpg or gif image, so you can't select the text with your cursor. If a search engine can't find any searchable text, you will not get SEO results. Also don't make any headlines into gif images, because they should be text with a key word in it.

Local businesses don't need national SEO. A cigar store in Pasadena does not need to optimize for the national or global market. Customers must live nearby. MarCom had a client like this, so we optimized them for Pasadena Cigar stores. It worked. Now it would have been different if they had an online cigar store.

For those of you who need some more help with your search engine optimization visit our website at http://www.marcomnewmedia.com/

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Google Bans Duplicate Tags and Content

MarCom’s search engine optimization (SEO) expert Mike Keesling has been telling us for some time that there would be a shakeup about duplicate content on the Internet, and as usual, he was right, because Google is not standing for duplicate content anymore. This includes the Internet, but more importantly, it means no more duplicate META, ALT or description tags on websites.

Recently MarCom New Media looked at a B2B company’s website and noticed that they had their name in all their title tags, which dilutes the effectiveness of the title tag. Google will not give full value to your pages, unless each page has a different title tag. ALL website pages need their own unique description tag. Tags should be keyword rich.

What is a title tag? Interestingly, there are no definitions in the online dictionaries for “title tag.” Not in Webster’s or Wikipedia. However, you will find many other descriptions if you type those words in Google. A title tag is a piece of HTML code that describes a specific web page of content. Title tags guide the search engines in determining what is in the content of specific web pages. TIP: Creating a relevant title tag is one of the most important variables in achieving high search engine positioning.

One of the most common mistakes that we see on 80 percent of our new clients' sites is that they put their company name as the first thing on the title tag for each page. Once we fix that, search ranking results begin to inprove. Most often the url for the site already includes the company name, so wasting valuable characters on constantly repeating the name of the company doesn't accomplish anything in terms of search engine optimization. It also usually ends up making at least 50 percent of each title tag identical which is NOT a good thing.

The other new Google slap is that Social Media Marketing (SMM) content must also be unique. This means that Google's cracking down on social media, just like it did last year with link building farms and bots. The rap is that content in social media sites needs to be original. You need to do the work. Or hire experts like us to do the work. Google will not accept it if you use a service that posts 100 Stumble Upon items that are all the same, from the same IP address or are posting hundreds of other tags, for other clients at the same time they do yours.

Content posted online must be: Unique and from different IP addresses; posted by unique people. That’s true social media...and if this all sounds like Greek to you, then please give MarCom a call at 323.650.2838 and we'll translate it for you.

PS Google LOVES articles these days. Here's just one example of a search optimized article for one of MarCom's clients - The Interface Financial Group. Credit Repair Tips for Small Businesses. But make SURE none of your articles are duplicates. Each article must be a specific percent different than the next.

As the recession forces many consumers to buy less—search engine marketing is key.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

The MarCom New Media Search Engine Marketing Audit

MarCom is no doubt, one of just a few cutting edge social media marketing firms in Los Angeles, and we are always getting leads for companies that have no clue about what their online marketing needs are or should be. Many people believe their web designers, or programmers, who often times "think" they know how to do search engine optimization (SEO). Our experience almost every time is that companies are NOT well optimized. if anything, webd esigners can do more damage than good when it comes to advising about SEO.

In order to help a company determine what they need to do insofar as SEO and SMM, MarCom has been also been conducting search engine optimization audits for companies. We just did one for client, ExpenseWatch.

Here's what our basic statement of work for an audit looks like. First we research and determine the keywords associated with your company's products or services that are most likely to achieve high search-engine rankings. Next we recommended a keyword strategy with the top SEO words and phrases and make suggestions to map the keywords to specific website pages, as well as how these words relate to competitive websites. You'll get a very comprehensive spreadsheet with this data.

Next MarCom conducts an audit of your current SEO and SEM and then provides recommendations for improving both. The audit reviews website content and offers suggestions for how to repackage pages and add to them. The navigation of the site is reviewed. In some cases we can provide a formula for your website Meta, title and description tags but it's often just easier for us to be hired to implement them.

The audit will also include your competitor activities, site visitor information, Google Adwords spends and organic search results. MarCom also recommends analytics or measurement tools and provides tips to analyze data. If your company already has a Google Adwords program, we'll review it (once you give us access) and provide tips for budgeting, improvements in the campaigns and we'll analyze their results. One of our clients was spending $28k per month. They are now down to around $7k per month thanks to our work. We weaned them off of Google Adword spending and improved their search engine results so they tripled their leads. We saved big marketing dollars.

In summary, many companies are able to leverage their existing content and outside websites already linking to them by using best of breed Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics. These include adding individual, relevant title tags, description tags, and where applicable, alt image tags to the website. But for others, we recommend our three phase approach: 1) Onsite optimization. 2) Offsite Optimization, and 3) Linking strategies and Social Media Marketing.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Find me on Twitter at MarCom4SMM - for Social Media Marketing

The Aberdeen Group recently published a report, “The ROI on Social Media Marketing,” which was sponsored by Visible Technologies. The report affirms that marketers have developed the methods and tools to drive return on investment (ROI) for companies via social media. It's just one more reason why I now have a Twitter account for MarCom - twitter me at MarCom4SMM.

This just affirms what Marcom New Media, a Los Angeles social media marketing firm, has been doing for the last five years, which entails listening to customers and influencing prospects. Actually, we keep telling clients that in order to compete online, flourish and be more profitable, there are three key steps:

Phase I - Online SEO
Phase II - Offline Link Building and Pay per Click (PPC)
Phase III- Social Media Marketing

The research report said 63 percent of the companies in their survey (defined as best-in-class) planned to increase their social media marketing budgets this year.

The truth is, social media networks started around the spring of 2007, and today, memberships in platforms like Facebook, or My Space, are in the hundreds of millions. We started doing tactics like forum posting back in the year 2000.

But there is something else know as social media optimization. This includes offsite optimization strategies with the intent of distributed content across multiple social media networks. Tools for this include adding links to services such as Digg, Del.icio.us or Readdit.

MarCom writes unique content (all articles must be 30 to 40 % unique or different than any other document on the Web) that's embedded with your key words and phrases, so when people search online, there’s a better chance of finding your content via the search engines.

We are also a Los Angeles Search Engine Marketing (SEM) firm, and helps clients audit and determine search marketing strategies for increased lead generation online. We use a many different social networking platforms for branding online.

A couple of the areas that have grown for us includes ghostwriting blogs for clients. We also shoot video shorts, edit them and syndicate them online in places like Google video or YouTube, and record and manage podcasts. We recently completed a number of online videos for our client The Wiley Protocol, which are also on YouTube, and syndicated around the Internet.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Email Marketing Report in From Forrester

According to a March 13, 2009 alert from Forrester, a report entitled, "Optimizing Email Marketing In An Economic Slowdown And Its Impact On Vendor Selection," by David Daniels
with Lauren Jesuitus, Corina Matiesanu, Dave Frankland and Emily Murphy, makes it clear we need to take heed. Following is an excerpt from that document. Marcom New Media, a Los Angeles Internet marketing company, believes that Forrester reports are a good indicator of the marketing marketplace.

"The current economic environment puts increased pressure on email marketers against which they must adjust their practices and strategies. A July 2008 JupiterResearch/Clickz survey of 286 email marketing executives reveals classic challenges of constrained staffing resources and data integration challenges. Driven by staffing challenges and the need to drive further cost efficiencies, 24% of marketers plan on switching their email service providers (ESPs) over the next 12 months. Email Marketers will need to quickly respond to changing consumer communication patterns and social marketing opportunities and must prioritize tactics to create efficiencies within their email marketing practices, such as improved use of targeting, leveraging automation and customer generated content as well as removing non-responsive subscribers from ongoing mailings."

Friday, February 27, 2009

The Future - 2009 Marketing Trends

-In case you are wondering, or curious, the outlook for 2009 advertising remains pretty upbeat for certain types of online media and marketing - including search, video and multicultural initiatives. However, traditional media and some social networks can expect to face serious difficulties going forward, says eMarketer.

Here are that firm's key trends for 2009:

1. Marketers will continue to stretch their budgets by making use of cost-efficient online ad placements. In addition to the Internet’s accountability and targeting, which permit more-focused media buys, lower prices for most display ads and less competition for many search keywords will make online a buyers’ market.

2. Search Marketing Remains Recession-Resistant: While search marketing is not recession-proof, it is recession-resistant, with estimated spending growth in 2009 at 14.9%, to $12.3 billion.

The reasons for search’s strength:
Search is highly measurable and will help retain many budgets and increase some others, as advertisers look for secure and effective marketing methods to combat the fear inherent in an economic meltdown.

Consumers who monetize search ads by deciding whether or not to click, will be both taking money off the table (by shopping less) and putting money back on the table (by searching for deals).

Search advertising will grow less in 2009 than in any previous year. Its inherent strength means greater spending gains than for any other major form of advertising, whether online or through traditional media.

3. Video Ad Spending Will Run Counter to Economic Trends: Video ad spending growth will run counter to overall economic developments, rising by 45 percent in 2009 to reach $850 million.

Check out these two key factors: First, the sharp escalation of professional video content on the web — coming mainly from TV networks — is creating a viable base for brand marketers. Second, even though most advertisers are increasingly cautious with their budgets, they still need to reach online audiences, and woo their shrinking wallets, with messages that reach their hearts and minds. This should add up to more video, according to eMarketer.

4. Social Network Shakeout: With US ad revenue growth slowing, smaller and niche social networks will have a tough time gaining traction and several may close down or be acquired by larger players. In addition, marketers that have built standalone social networks tied to their brands will either shutter them or migrate them to existing social network platforms where they can reach a broader audience.

5. New Revenue Streams for Social Networks: E-commerce will be a growing revenue stream for social network sites. Expect both MySpace and Facebook to enhance their self-serve advertising systems to allow consumers and businesses to buy and sell real-world goods and services. Facebook, already a de facto business networking site because of the number of businesspeople who use it, will develop ad programs aimed at B2B companies. This will directly affect LinkedIn.

6. E-Commerce Sales Growth From Existing Online Buyers: Online retail sales (excluding travel) will grow by only 4% in 2009—the first full year to feel the impact of the economic crisis. Over the long term, online sales growth has been on a downward slope as the number of online buyers approaches saturation. So, the economy accentuates an existing trend. Most retail e-commerce sales growth in the future will come from increased spending by current online buyers.

7. Seismic Shift in TV Ad Sales: US TV ad spending will decline 4.2% to $66.9 billion in 2009. This precipitous drop in spending reflects not only expectations of a continued poor economy but a seismic shift in the way television advertising is bought and sold, eMarketer said.
Like other traditional media, TV advertising was already suffering, and now the climate will be even tougher. Fragmentation on TV and declines in viewership have made it more difficult for advertisers to reach audiences. Broadcasters will be pressed to redefine their businesses in an increasingly digital world. They will focus on expanding programming to the online realm and will continue to test business models.

8. Newspaper Companies to Become Casualties: Newspaper advertising will decline in 2009 more than any other medium. Industry-wide cutbacks will continue, and there will be some consolidation, while firms will be forced to undertake drastic measures to stay afloat. The industry was limping before the recession and the market can expect more newspaper companies to become casualties.

9. User-Generated Content Aggregation: With so much user-generated media populating the web and mobile channels, content aggregation will become more important than ever. In 2009, expect to see the emergence of real-time aggregation tools that combine algorithmic approaches with human input. These aggregation tools will develop from the ground up, much like the content itself.

10. Multicultural Marketing Will Gain Intensity Online: Although white Americans make up about 70% of the US internet population, more and more African-Americans and Hispanics are going online through their PCs and their mobile phones. Marketers will follow, targeting these segments with language and culture-specific messages, which will evolve from their general-market campaigns.