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Starting out in a freelancing career can be tough. Ranging from freelance authors to graphic designers and programmers, freelancing comes with many of the same hurdles. One large aspect is building your personal brand – how do you get people to recognize you for your skills? Thankfully the internet has provided a very simple medium for sharing and obtaining information in a very short time. Many tools abound, so how do you know where to start to reach your audience?

Using the right tools will surely help your profile and work stand out among the rest. Another benefit of personal branding is the quickly-recognized popularity. You probably won’t see your name up in lights in any big city for your freelance projects, but you’ll be recognized much more online and can even develop a community among others interested in your work.

Social Networks for Freelance Collaboration

More recently there have been tons of social networks being created targeting specific niches in freelancing. One obvious example would be the FreelanceSwitch Forums. Being able to ask questions and discuss common topics with other freelancers, brainstorming and figuring out your brand will come much simpler.

The new social sharing community for designers, Dribbble, has been drawing in some attention. I’ve found some amazing designers on there doing user interfaces and banners/graphics, so a good portfolio there can really land you some attention. In a similar vein, Forrst is a social network for designers and web developers alike. Currently still running in private beta, the site has been growing immensely since launch and has a very sturdy community structure in-tact.

Building and Growing Common Internet Profiles

One of the best ways to build a brand online is through a well-known venue: Twitter. Cliché as it sounds, social media truly is the way of the future. You can follow other freelancers in your field for major networking potential. By also tweeting frequently and building up your account, you will be able to gain a small following who enjoy your work!

Google offers a number of tools for social media branding. Creating a Google Account can build a number of venues with potential. For one thing, your Google Account works with many apps – Gmail, GTalk, Google Buzz… the list goes on and on. [Editor's Note: Also Google Wave, until Wave's recent demise.] Of the most notable here are Gmail for a personal e-mail account through Google. GTalk I have found extremely useful for building my own brand, along with networking and finding others in the market.  And of course, Google Buzz is how Google is starting to build personal profiles. So getting your own name (eg jakerocheleau) as a username will secure your Google Buzz profile. It works similarly to Twitter, but can connect to RSS feeds and update automatically – a very handy branding tool.

I’m sure there are plenty of other concepts out there for building a common brand online. I’ve only covered a few here, but these small steps will most definitely increase your online branding potential very quickly. So don’t be afraid to get out there online! Start networking on Twitter and Dribbble, build up a fan base for your work – popularity at it’s finest.

Tags: brand yourself personal brand personal branding

Social Media Consultant… what is a social media consultant really?

I am starting to think many people think it means “I have a Twitter account and you can pay me lots of money to be your social media consultant”.

I haven’t been out of the virtual office much lately as I am busy working on client projects. Yet, the 1-2 times a week I actually get out to a biz networking event or meeting of some sort I am amazed at the social media fud. Is it me or is there starting to be more and more?

I am seeing more and more businesses hire so called “social media gurus” who are doing more harm for their company than good. An example is I recently spoke with a local “guru” hired to manage social media for a local biz. I can’t tell you what type of biz but will tell you they have a built in community of over 1500 members and are in the Business to Business (B2B) space. They also sponsor multiple events a week.

Hint: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook & Foursquare would be excellent platforms for them to monetize.  However, The local “guru” shared with me that he/she decided “LinkedIn is for resume history only” so not really a priority… and I really don’t know enough about Twitter so not really focusing there yet”.

Please tell me how anyone can be hired as a social media anything and not look past their own skills and comfort zone to determine what social platform is right for the business paying their mortgage?

Or how about the social media expert agency who I recently saw on an online TV channel interview that specializes in social media execution. I went to look them up online only to have to spend 10 minutes to find their twitter profile! Was not on the front page of their website!

My advice to hiring companies is to do your research! Just because somebody has a Twitter account, it doesn’t mean they should be determining your social media strategy.  Social Media is NOT free.  Yes the tools are free.  However, it consumes your greatest and most valuable asset which is TIME!

As most of you know who follow me I am not usually one to rant. You’ll only see a post like such from me when it comes from the heart or when something has bugged me long enough.

Please know I am not picking on newbies to social media.  This post is intended to have some fun.  For the below I am referencing the so called “consultant” who has positioned themself as such and knows deep down they are not.  I am NOT criticizing the newbies or consultants  in training!  We all start somewhere and trust me, I learn every single day!

You Are Probably NOT a Social Media Consultant If:

1. You think LinkedIn is only for resume promotion and work history.
2. You think Facebook is only for sharing photos and networking with friends as business is not meant for Facebook.
3.  Having a Facebook Fan Page page qualifies you to consult with companies on social media best practices and strategies.
4. You believe having 1000 Twitter followers makes you a social media guru.
5. You think it is still cool to be called a “social media guru” or “social media rockstar.”
6. You value numbers over quality relationships. The more Twitter followers you get the more customers you will have.
7. You talk the talk somewhat but don’t even have a Twitter link on your home page.
8. You are still using the default Avatar for any one of your social media profiles.
9. You still think Foursquare is a game you play with a red ball.  Geo based social media is just a fad anyway.
10. You think your clients should outsource all of their social media to you without any engagement from them because content and authenticity doesn’t matter anyway.
11. You have a blog but have never really used it.  Content is for the birds… you have followers.
12. You believe one size fits all in social media. It’s  the most cost effective way to deliver social media.
13. You don’t think social media measurement is really important.
14. You advise clients to setup 2 facebook profiles (one for personal and one for biz) even though it is against Facebook policy.
15. You keep your content secret as you don’t see the value of sharing in social media and blogging.
16. You don’t know how or haven’t taken the time to customize at leasts 1-2 of your social media profile background images.
17. You haven’t yet generated any real leads with social media.
18. You do whatever your client tells you to do with social media as the customer is always right.
19. You have never and don’t plan to help your clients write a social media policy.
20. You go straight for the tweets as there is no reason to write a social media plan.
21. You believe “engagement schmagement… build it and they will come!”
22. You would never stay up past midnight Tweeting.  That is what automated Twitter follower tools are for!
23. You tell clients not to worry about separating personal from business information since Facebook is just for personal and LinkedIn is for business resume history anyway.
24. You have a YouTube channel with links to it from your web page. You don’t have any videos loaded but having a page is good enough for now. Video is also a fad.
25.  You charge the same amount for social media strategy as you do social media execution.  It’s all time so should be the same right?
26. You don’t worry about social media listening. You encourage your clients to “jump right in”. You can always make a second impression.
27. You do at least 10 of the above yet still have a biz card with the title “Social Media Guru & Rockstar!”
28.  On most days you wish you could go back to your “Real Job”.

You May Be a Social Media Consultant if:

1. If a potential client doesn’t know what ROI stands for they don’t make it to the next phase.
2. You pull all nighter tweet sessions at least 2-3 times a month.
3. You get the chills with excitement when someone asks you how you measure ROI or if you can help them write a social media policy.
4. You have nightmares about people asking “can I take you to lunch and pick your brain”?
5. If you had $5 for every person who asked to meet you for coffee and “pick your brain” you would be retired.
6. The word rockstar and guru have  been eliminated from your vocabulary as all they get you are “pick your brain” lunches that you pay for.
7. You no longer write long social media proposals delivered for the “pick your brain coffee types”.
8. If you had $2 for every networking contact that said “I really don’t need social media for my business, our website from 1980 and the $1m we spend on direct mail is doing just fine” you would be retired.
9. You get excited to see daylight and leave your house in anything other than your gym clothes.
10. TrafficGeyser, TweetReach, FBML, Hootsuite, Twitter, Ping.fm, TwitterCounter, TwitAnalyzer, TweetDeck,  Grafitti are all names you know and love.
11. What started as a 2 hour “pick your brain” session when you first launched your business how now turned into either a quick twitter, Facebook post or 10 min phone conversation to qualify before you justify getting out of your gym clothes for another “pick your nose” meeting.
12. The numbers are too high to count that you have heard someone ask you “you mean I have to pay for your services? I thought social media was free!?”
13. There is no such thing as a Kodak moment. Instead it’s “hold on, let me twitpic or twitcast that”.
14. You have taught yourself CSS in the last 6 months.
15. You have purchased $200 – $500 worth of themes for WordPress and only kept them your site for an average of 2 wks each.
16. You give of yourself in social media all day and work all night.
17. You have joy when your client’s vision is executed.
18. You have cried with at least a handful of your favorite clients.
19. You have recently fired a client as they don’t bring you joy.
19. You know how to work SEO to drive positive ROI like a crazy bird.
20. You have more than 3 videos that are front page You Tube and Google for keywords.
21. Your LinkedIn profile delivers you leads galore. Go ahead and let those “social media rockstars” who think it’s only for work history think such. LOL!
22. Your kids know what social media is and could spot the Twitter, Facebook and YouTube logos from a mile away.
23. When something cool happens on a family vacation your 6 yr old says. “mom you better tweet about that one!”
24. Your family feels like they know your best Twitter friends even though you have never met them in real life.
25. You can remember eating ramen noodles when you first started your business.
26. You really don’t like to be called a social media consultant. You only have it on your blogsite for SEO purposes.
27. You dream of the twitter bluebird. In fact sometimes you can’t get that dang blue bird out of your head.
28. Your hourly rate has quadrupled since the early days to help avoid the “pick your brain meetings”. You might coup the costs of falling for such by 2020.
29. Your video blogs have went from glitz and glamour to do it whenever I have time…gym clothes or not.
30. You wish every day had at least 8 more hours.
31. Weekends? What are they again?
32. Your spouse begs for a tweet free evening.
33. You can’t wait until the application is released that tweets what you are thinking.
34. You know many of your twitter friends better than your next door neighbor
35. You have officially mastered tweeting from the iPhone on the elliptical while tweeting at 60 wpm and heart rate between 143-168.
36. You sometimes worry about the “what if” clients could really make you millions as you aren’t ready to trade Tweeting for Tahiti full time!
37. Even with all of the above you LOVE what you do and would never go back to corporate or whatever it was you were doing prior. Social media is your game, your name and your way of life for always (or at least until it morphs into the next best thing). Hmmm…better tweet about that one! LOL

So what do you think? Are you a social media consultant, a wanna be or someone that is just lovin’ what ya’ do and making money at the same time? “Titles schmitles” is what I say!

Please add your own! Let’s have some fun w/this peeps!

4 Tips To Help You Stay Focused on Your Blog

by Daniel Scocco

Most people who blog also have a full time job or occupation (i.e., school), not to mention other personal activities (e.g., friends and family), so balancing everything can become tricky indeed.

In fact if you don’t plan well your blog is probably the one that is going to suffer first. That is, when things get messy or overwhelming, most people just abandon their blogs.

I think this is a mistake, because a blog is a great marketing tool for anyone. It helps you improve your writing, it expands your network of contacts, it builds an audience for your ideas, it allows you to establish expertise in your field and so on.

That is why I decide to write a post with 4 tips that will help you stay focused on your blog, even if your personal life is taking most of your time.

1. Focus on the core activities

Writing blog posts, promoting blog posts, building links, creating social bookmarking profiles, promoting on Twitter, creating Facebook fan pages, experimenting with PPC ads, reading RSS feeds, creating eBooks, etc.

Trying to do everything I mentioned above would be possible, and it could help your blog, but it would also burn you out quickly.

If you don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to your blog, focus on the core activities only. The main one is writing content. If you only have time for one task, use it to write content. If in one day you happen to have some extra time, use it to promote your best posts.

That is it. If you write great content and promote it slightly your blog will grow naturally, and you’ll keep your sanity.

2. Have fun with it

You need to have fun with your blog, else you’ll lose the motivation to keep it alive it very quickly.

The first step to achieve this is to choose a niche you are interested in. If you pick a niche only to make money you’ll find it painful to write the content no matter what.

Second, you need to make a compromise between what you like to write and what your readers like to read. Go too much with the former and your audience will go away. Go too much with the latter and you’ll lose motivation to write.

3. Set milestones

You can’t improve what you can’t measure, and you can’t get motivated if you don’t think something is improving.

That is why milestones are important. They allow you to track the progress of your blog, and once you see things are getting better, you’ll get motivated to keep working on the blog.

Examples of milestones you could set:

• to reach 1,000 daily page views
• to reach 1,000 RSS subscribers
• to write a post that will receive 20 comments
• to reach an Alexa rank of 100,000

4. Monetize it

Like it or not, money is a very strong motivator. If you are not monetizing your blog yet, and are losing motivation to keep working at it, maybe you should put some ads or affiliate links around.

Don’t expect to get rich overnight, but I am sure that even $100 monthly would give you an extra incentive to write on your blog.

Apart from the immediate results you’ll also see potential there. You’ll realize that your blog can produce real money, and that the better the content you put there, the more money you’ll make.

It becomes a virtuous cycle, where you write more and better content to make more money, and the more money you make the more motivated you become to write more and better content.

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Parkinson's Law and The 4-Hour Workweek

Entrepreneur Tim Ferriss' new book, The 4 Hour Workweek, offers some extreme methods for doing more in less time.

While some of his strategies are more applicable than others, one of my favorite points of the book was applying Parkinson's Law to your work life.

Parkinson's Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion. It is the magic of the imminent deadline. If I give you 24 hours to complete a project, the time pressure forces you to focus on execution, and you have no choice but to do only the bare essentials.

If I give you a week to complete the same task, it's six days of making a mountain out of a molehill. If I give you two months, God forbid, it becomes a mental monster. The end product of the shorter deadline is almost inevitably of equal or higher quality due to greater focus.

This presents a very curious phenomenon. There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of one another:

1.) Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time. (80/20)
2.) Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important. (Parkinson's Law).

The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.

Email Marketing Basics: All You Need To Get Started

by Daniel Scocco

Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels on the Internet. You can use it to promote your websites, to interact with your customers, to make money with affiliate offers and so on. Yet, the vast majority of bloggers and website owners still neglect email marketing.

That is why I decided to write a quick guide with all you need to know to get started on email marketing. Enjoy.

What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a form of direct marketing that uses email as its communication channel. Direct marketing is an umbrella term used to describe all marketing forms that go straight to the end user, thus not passing through the traditional advertising channels, which include television, print and radio.

Companies using email marketing basically collect the email addresses of prospects and clients, and then send email messages to those subscribers, containing information about the products, special offers and so on. The company must explicitly ask permission to collect the email address and send future messages, and this is usually done with a double opt-in process (where the subscribe must fill a form with his name and email address, and then click on a confirmation link sent via email).

Why You Should Use Email Marketing

Over the last years email marketing started being used by a wide range of individuals, including bloggers, website owners, affiliate marketers and small business owners. This happened because email marketing proved to be one of the most effective marketing channels online.

Email messages get delivered straight to the subscriber (as opposed to blog posts, banner ads or online articles, which require the person to visit your website). Secondly, if you craft the content of your email newsletter carefully, you’ll be able to build a solid relationship with your subscribers, which will yield really high conversion rates (i.e., your subscribers will pay attention to what you recommend to them, and will actually take action based on it).

Finally, email marketing is very flexible, and it can be used for a wide range of purposes. You could use it to drive more traffic to your website, to promote affiliate offers, to build a relationship with your existing customers, to launch new projects and so on.

Email Marketing is NOT Spam

Many people are reluctant to start using email marketing because they associate it with spam. In other words, they believe that email marketing is the art of spamming other people and trying to make money while doing it.

This is obviously a confusion between the tool and how you use the tool. Email marketing is just a marketing tool. How you use it is a completely different story. Sure, some people use email marketing to spam, but you’ll find that most use it legitimately and ethically.

In fact if you subscribe to the email newsletter of any reputable company, blogger or online marketer I am sure you’ll be surprised by the quality of the content you’ll get from it.

It is perfectly possible, therefore, to use email marketing without annoying your users. You just need to make sure the content of your email newsletter will be top notch and relevant to your subscribers. If you do that they will actually thank you for your newsletter, and that is what modern marketing is all about.

The Effectiveness of Email Marketing In Numbers

Let’s use an example to illustrate why email marketing is such an effective marketing channel.

Suppose there are two bloggers, Mark and John. Mark focuses exclusively on growing his traffic and RSS readership, while John focuses on growing his traffic and his email list. After six months or so Mark is receiving 1,000 unique visitors per day, and has 3,000 RSS subscribers. John, on the other hand, also is receiving 1,000 unique visitors, but he has 3,000 email subscribers instead.

Now suppose both bloggers launch a paid eBook. The content and price of the ebooks is very similar. Mark promotes the launch of his eBook by writing a post on his blog about it. John, on the other hand, writes a post about the eBook but also sends an email to his list, encouraging the subscribers to purchase the eBook.

Who do you think will get better results? I am ready to bet that John would sell at least twice as many eBooks as Mark. Why is that? Because John has a much stronger relationship with his 3,000 email subscribers (provided he sent them quality content over time) when compared to the relationship Mark has with his 3,000 RSS subscribers. On top of that, once John send his email message he is sure most of his 3,000 email subscribers will read, while only a fraction of Mark’s 3,000 RSS subscribers will do the same.

Getting Started in 4 Steps

Are you convinced that email marketing rocks? Good. Below you’ll find four simple steps that you must follow to get started with it.

Step 1: Getting an Email Marketing Software

The first thing you need is an email marketing software. That is, a software that will let you collect email addresses, send a messages to them, create an auto-responder, get statistics and so on. There are basically two types of email marketing software: self-hosted and hosted.

Self-hosted means that you’ll need to install and host the software yourself, on your own server. This option is only recommended to people with technical skills and time available.

Hosted solutions are a better option for most users, as the company will host the software for you, and you’ll just need to login on their website to manage your email lists.

When choosing an email marketing company you need to pay attention to two factors: the deliverability rate, which is what percentage of the emails they send actually reach the end user, and the features available (e.g., pre-made web forms, auto-responder options, scheduling options and so on).

I use a company called Aweber.com, and I recommend them exactly because they are very good at both factors I mentioned above. Their deliverability rate is considered by many as the best in the industry, and their control panel has more features than you could ask for. The basic plan starts at $19.90 per month.

If you research around you’ll find that this is the standard price. It is not cheap if you are just getting started, but it should be worth it. Remember that apart from the deliverability rate factor, there is also the compliance with the anti-spam laws. By using a company like Aweber you are sure that your email lists and messages are compliant with everything.

Step 2: Getting Subscribers

Once your signed-up with an email marketing company you’ll just need to login into your account, create your first email list, and then create a web form that your visitors will use to subscribe. Most companies have very simple graphic interfaces to help your create your forms, and you’ll just need to drag and drop the fields around. Aweber also has a wide range of pre-made forms you can choose from. The result will be a piece of code (either a JavaScript or HTML) that you’ll need to paste on your website.

You should consider displaying your subscription form in two spots: on top of the sidebar and at the bottom of single posts. These two spots are very visible, and usually they have highest conversion rates. The spot below single posts performs particularly well, because people will look for something to do after they are done reading your content.

Aweber also offers a feature called “Light box,” which will display your subscription form like a pop-up. This feature is a bit intrusive, but usually it has a very high conversion rate, so it is worth a try. You can also specify how often visitors should see the light box, so you won’t need to annoy your visitors permanently.

There is one thing you can do that will drastically increase the number of subscribers you’ll get, regardless of where you’ll display your web forms: to offer a freebie as an incentive for people who join your list..

The most common freebie is an eBook or a report that you give away to people subscribing to your email list. But depending on your niche it could be something else, including a software, a collection of icons or images, audio or video files and so on. It just needs to be something valuable to your audience, as to encourage them to subscribe.

Once your freebie is ready you’ll just need to adapt your subscription forms accordingly. For example, you could include an image of the freebie (e.g., the eBook or software cover), and you could use the headline to call people to action (e.g., “Subscribe to my newsletter and get a free eBook!”).

Delivering the freebie is very easy. All you have to do is to upload it to a secret folder inside your website, and them to create an auto-responder sequence on your email software, where the first email is sent to new subscribers right way, containing the download link for the freebie. Note that on Aweber the auto-responder found under “Messages” and then “Follow-Up.”

Step 3: Building Relationships

The value of an email list is a consequence of two factors: the size of the list, and its responsiveness. In other words, focusing on growing the size of your list alone is not enough. You need to make sure that your have a good relationship with your subscribers as well, else they will just ignore your messages. How do you achieve this? By sending top quality content to your list.

It would be a good idea to create an auto-responder sequence that all your new subscribers will go through. The first email on the sequence will be sent right away, and it is just an introductory message with the download link to your freebie.

The second email should be sent 2 or 3 days after the first one, containing something really useful to your audience. It could be a tip that will help them solve a problem, a tool that is available online and that they will find useful, and so on.

The third email should be sent 7 days after the second one, and it should contain another really useful piece of content. These first 3 or 4 emails are really important because they will set the tone of your newsletter, and build an initial trust with your audience. If you fail to deliver value right away, many of your subscribers will unsubscribe (after all they already got the freebie they were looking for).

Step 4: Promoting Your Stuff

After the third or fourth email you should have already have a good relationship with your subscribers, so you can start promoting your own stuff (e.g., your products, posts on your blog, affiliate offers and so on). Just make sure to make it with moderation, else people will unsubscribe.

For example, you could send one promotional message every two or three content messages (e.g., messages with valuable stuff). This way your subscribers will keep getting value from your email messages, and they will actually look forward to receive them every week.

As for the frequency of the messages, there is no right or wrong, but weekly tends to be the standard around the web.

That is it! If you have any questions or doubts let me know through a comment below and I’ll be glad to answer them.

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4 Proven Steps to Facebook Page Success

By Amy Porterfield
Published July 2, 2010

Are you looking to take your Facebook page to the next level, but aren’t sure how to go about it? This article will provide four proven steps to Facebook success.

An interesting thing happened the other day that grabbed my attention.  Three different clients emailed me with a link to a recent article.  All three wrote some version of “Check out this case study. Can you make this happen for my Facebook page too?”

The title of the article was enough to hook anyone: Facebook Case Study: From 517 to 33,000 fans in two weeks (plus media coverage).

After reading the impressive case study and looking at countless other Facebook page success stories, I instantly noticed a common thread throughout these pages.

The Formula for Facebook Page Success

There’s a true winning formula to creating a successful, thriving and engaging Facebook page.

And here’s the good news: If you apply this formula, you grow your fan base, increase conversations with your fans and capture the interest of people who want to spend money on your products and services. Who wouldn’t want that?

Here’s the formula:

Vision + Branding + Inbound Marketing + Engagement =
A Rock-Solid Facebook Page

The strategy behind a Facebook page does not need to be complicated—but it does need to be carefully thought out in advance. When it comes to growing Facebook pages, that’s where business owners and marketers get stuck—they overcomplicate things.  Let’s dissect the formula to see how it works.

#1: Create a Compelling Vision

The Facebook page of the case study I mentioned above belongs to the California State Parks Foundation.  It’s an outstanding example of a compelling vision.

In an attempt to save 210 state parks from closing, the foundation hired Adams Hussey & Associates to help create the “Friend Get a Friend” campaign.  The campaign was created to promote awareness and discussion around the looming closures and to also encourage people to take action to save their local state parks.

This Facebook page for the California State Parks Foundation achieved amazing media expose.

After reading the case study, one of my clients, who owns a successful medical spa, pointed out (in frustration, I might add), “Yeah, but their mission is noble.  It appeals to environmentalists and loyal supporters. They have a huge advantage.”

This is WRONG thinking at its best.  When you believe in what you’re doing, you can easily cultivate the passion and excitement for your mission.  The popular retail store Target and the popular sundae spot Dairy Queen have extremely successful pages with loyal followers.

The Dairy Queen page has more than a million fans

And here’s what’s important to realize:  Their mission is not necessarily going to change the world—but the people behind the brand are passionate and committed to creating an experience and making their customers happy—and that kind of passion is contagious. (Take note—you can create the same kind of excitement with your brand too!)

Brenna Holmes of Adams Hussey & Associates manages the California State Parks Foundation’s social media campaign. She works with both for-profit and nonprofit organizations.

Holmes sees real opportunity to spread the vision and message in both spheres of businesses.  “As long as people are driven and passionate about their issue,” said Holmes, “and commit to sticking it out with daily work and a real strategy, I believe pretty much any campaign can be successful.”

When you’re starting out with your page, your vision is only as strong as the individual or team behind it.  It’s up to you to spread the word.  The good news is that once you have a solid fan base, your fans will help spread your message and virally attract new followers. It’s up to you to “sell” your vision to get others to pay attention. One great way to accomplish this is to spend time online where it counts and make sure you’re connecting with the people who are most interested in your brand.  I call this “positioning your vision.”

A word about positioning your vision

If you spend any time in the online marketing arena, you’ve heard plenty about knowing your ideal client.  This is crucial when building a Facebook campaign.  Don’t waste your time in spaces where your message could fall flat.

Segmentation and niche marketing is ideal for your page’s success and you want to be laser-focused on whom you target.  Cast a wide net and you’re likely to come up short in the end.

(One great way to attract your ideal client is with Facebook ads.  For more info on what these ads could do for your business, check out Mari Smith’s recent Facebook article here.

#2: Smart Branding

Some of the most successful pages look like mini-websites inside of Facebook.  Branding is key to making your page serve as a mini-hub for all your customers and prospects who are likely spending a lot of their time on the social networking site already.

Meeting your customers where they are in the moment is crucial when searching for a captive audience in the social media space.

Smart branding allows you to create a bridge from Facebook to your websites—but the key is not to push your potential clients outside of Facebook before they are ready.

The more clicks you require your prospect to make, the less likely you’ll get them to where you want them to go.  Therefore, by using the Static FBML Facebook app, you can create many of the same features you have on your website.

Using this app, you can create a portal to sell your products and services, sign people up for your newsletter, and highlight your expertise directly from your Facebook page.

To better understand this, let’s look at a great example of a company that has mastered the concept of the “mini-hub” inside Facebook.  Chick-fil-A, a popular fast-food chain in the U.S., has a thriving page with over 1.5 million fans.

Not only do they offer coupons regularly, they also display their menu and their “coming soon” specials inside their page.  Here are a few screen shots of their well-branded mini-hub:

This screenshot shows the tab that new viewers see when they first visit the page. Chick-fil-A does a great job of enticing new customers by displaying attractive photos of the items on their menu.

In this screenshot, Chick-fil-A puts their menu directly on their page. By doing this, all of their fans currently on Facebook do not need to go any further to check out the menu options. Chick-fil-A makes it easy by putting everything their customers’ need right on the page.

Another great example of a well-branded page is the National Hockey League page.  With almost a half a million fans, this page is thriving. One post can generate over 1,000 comments.  Check out the welcome tab—it’s branding at its best.  Potential fans landing on this tab are sure to click the “like” button to be a part of this community.

In this image, check out how NHL displays the many different opportunities for their fans. This welcome tab does a great job of grabbing attention and creating excitement for the sport.

#3: Strategic Inbound Marketing

Business owners often overlook this piece of the formula.  It’s a no-brainer that we need to use marketing tactics to drive traffic to our websites, but when it comes to Facebook pages, many overlook the importance of using similar strategies to help grow their page. The “build it and they will come” concept is definitely not meant for Facebook pages!

Inbound marketing strategies, including the use of keywords, opt-in opportunities, video, blogging, and cross-promoting on your other social networks are all key factors to “getting found” by the people most interested in your products and services.

One great example of a Facebook page that also utilizes inbound marketing strategies is the Social Media Examiner page.

I was fortunate to work with the founder, Mike Stelzner, to create the page a few months ago.  And since then I’ve been blown away by the momentum of the page (it already has over 8,000 fans).

I recently asked Mike the secret to his page’s success. “We started with a plan from day one,” he said. “Part of that plan was to create a button on our site’s sidebar that simply said, ‘Join us on Facebook.’

“Another thing we did was to make sure our daily email blasts to our readers encouraged them to join our fan page; thus every day more than 26,000 readers are reminded about our fan page.

“Our fan base grew very quickly and has garnered about 100 new fans each day.”

The most important thing to remember is that inbound marketing is powered by content.

Just as you would on your website and blog, you must continually publish great content on your Facebook page.  How do you do this?  One way is to pull your blog posts onto your page via the “Networked Blog” app on Facebook.  Another way is to post a link directly to your wall and add some commentary about your recent blog posts to encourage your fans to comment.

Every day when we post a new article on the Social Media Examiner website, we also post it on our Facebook page.  When we do so, we often encourage comments directly to our page by asking a question when we post.

Here’s an example:

In this example, notice how we encourage comments on our wall by asking a question (about fans!) when we post a link to a new article.

#4: Real-Time Engagement

The last piece of the formula is engagement.  In a nutshell, engagement is about taking action. A well-executed engagement strategy takes time and effort.  More than anything, engagement is really about showing up daily and taking a genuine interest in the likes, interests and opinions of your fans.

The rule for engagement is to make it about your fans and not about you. (Remember that people love to talk about themselves—so craft your posts and questions around them, and you’re sure to see some great conversations begin to surface on your page.)

One Facebook page that does an outstanding job of connecting with fans is Teavana.  With over 32,000 fans, the page attracts tea-lovers worldwide.  Their secret to engagement is making their posts about their fans.  Here’s one great example of a post that received 68 comments:

This image shows how simple it can be to get your fans talking. What fun and interesting questions can you ask your fans that will get them to post their thoughts and opinions?

Also, a great engagement tool Teavana uses is their monthly “What’s in your cup?” game where they ask their fans to post photos of what’s in their cup at that moment—this type of game encourages photo sharing which can virally increase visibility of their page.

Another example of a page that has mastered the art of engagement is the NHL page.  As mentioned before, they not only have impeccably branded their page, but they’ve also mastered the art of engagement.

The page uses video in most of their posts.  Why?  Because they know their fans will respond well to short video clips and their content is sports clips, so what better way to get their fans engaged than to show them clips of the game they love most?  (This is also a great example of knowing your fans’ wants and interests!)

The NHL page actually takes it a step further and uses their video to create polls and surveys.  One example is a short clip of a recent game where there was much debate over the call of a goal.  The caption for the video read “Goal or no goal? Watch the NHL Situation Room, make the call.”

This one post, because it added a touch of controversy, generated more than 1,000 comments.  When you see successes like this, think about your audience.  How can you use video to encourage interaction and idea-sharing?

NHL excited fanatic opinions when they asked their fans if a goal in a recent game was a fair call. Take a look at how many comments it generated!

The NHL Page also used a really cool tool called TweetMixx.  This tool allows you to tailor the content categories, tags, users and groups to your specific audience and will deliver the top-rated content as chosen by you and people who share interest in your niche.

This is a great engagement tool because it allows your audience to get instant access to the content they’re most interested in, plus it adds a real-time component.

The interactive TweetMixx application keeps the conversation going strong on the NHL page.

This formula is meant as a guide to help you with your overall social media strategy.

Closing thoughts: There’s a lot of noise on the web about the dos and don’ts of social media marketing and it tends to be overwhelming.  This formula is meant to simplify your process.  If you add a bunch of extra components to the formula, you’re less likely to see the results you want (or worse yet, you’re likely to get overwhelmed and not take action!). In short, ignore the chatter and stick to the plan.

Now it’s your turn!  Do you have a Facebook page success story? Share it below and let us know what components of the formula work best for you. Do you find any of the components of the formula challenging? Share here and you’re sure to find advice from the other members of our community.

Tags: adams hussey, amy porterfield, branding, brenna holmes, california state parks foundation, chick fil a, dairy queen, engagement, facebook, facebook ads, facebook app, facebook case study, facebook fan base, facebook formula, facebook marketing, facebook page, facebook strategy, facebook success, friend get a friend, ideal client, inbound marketing, mini hub, national hockey league, networked blog, NHL, niche marketing, real time engagement, segmentation, smart branding, static fbml, strategic inbound marketing, target, teavana, tweetmixx, vision, welcome tab

One of the most important part of setting up a blog is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO for a WordPress blog is different than SEO for static websites, mainly because of the social nature of blogging technology. It is less about buying links or tricking inadequate search technology. SEO for WordPress blogs is more focused on the technical infrastructure of your site, and your ability to write creative articles that are noteworthy for others to read and link to. This SEO guide should be your reference point for all WordPress blogs because in here we will mention some of the tips that has been proven to work. These techniques does not require heavy investment except for few bits of your time. Don’t make this to do list a chore, you can do these trick one per day and not feel stressed out about it.

Why bother with SEO? If you want to get more exposure for your blog, Search Engine Optimization can make a huge difference. It can bring 10,000 visitors to your site compared to the 100 that you were getting. Therefore if you are thinking about getting organic traffic from search engines at no cost, implement the techniques discussed in this article to your WordPress blog and take it to the next level.

On Page SEO

On page SEO is technical aspects within your site that you can tweak to give your WordPress Blog a leverage over others when ranking for a specific keyword. These aspects can range from permalink structure, to page title, to web semantics and much more. Before you even begin promoting your site, you need to have all of these aspects taken care of in order to achieve the maximum potential benefit from the search engine ranking positions (SERPs).

1. Optimize Post Titles

By default your WordPress post title will look like:

Blog Title » Archive » Keyword Rich Title of Your Post

Surprisingly, it is exact opposite of what you should have in order to increase your SERPs. One thing you must understand is that search engines put higher weight on keywords that are near the start when ranking a post. So theoretically you are hurting your chances of ranking higher in search engines.

Well since WordPress is not a static site, it is difficult to generate the title in the way we want. Thankfully there are great plugins like All in One SEO that lets us do that with a few clicks. First thing you need to do is install/activate this plugin and follow the settings we suggest.

Now as you note that we don’t have our blog’s name in the post title or the page title. We believe the more keywords you add, the more diluted the strength of each keyword will be in the title. Most of the time people will add Blog Title with the post title, but there is no point in repeating something as obvious as that. You will rank for your main blog title for the most part. For example someone can type in the search engine: “wpbeginner 14 header design” and they will find your site on top regardless.

But you actually want to rank for the general keyword like “wordpress header designs” because to a user who does not know about your site, they will not type your name in the search engine. They will type general keywords. Therefore we believe it is not worth to dilute your keyword strength in title by adding your site name into the post or page title.

Using this plugin, you can also write / modify titles for specific post or page. You can override the default post title and write a custom title for your meta tags.

2. Optimize Post Description

Post descriptions are often ignored by many users, but they play a crucial role in your search engine ranking positions. Many users often take shortcuts by creating automated description, but these do not work because most automated descriptions are first few sentences of the post. Those cannot possibly describe the post most accurately using the right keywords therefore you should write custom post description for all post and pages. It might sounds difficult, but if you start out doing this for all your articles, it will not be a big deal. There is no real shortcuts when it comes to this. You will need to download the All in One SEO plugin if you haven’t already for the first one. Once activated, you will see a new option box appear when writing a new post or page.

The option will look like this, and you can write custom description for each article. This will help increase your strength in search engine ranking.

3. Permalinks

When you have a SEO friendly structure, you are increasing your chances of ranking higher in search engines such as Google and others. Which by default are the largest source of new visitors to any website. In our experience with SEO, we have seen that Google gives extra weight to the URL structure therefore it is recommended that you follow this instruction.

By default WordPress URL Structure looks a bit more robotic because it is not user friendly at all let alone not being SEO friendly.

http://wpbeginner.com/?p=25

The goal of making the URL structure more friendly is that your users should know before reading the article what it is about by just looking at the URL. The same goal is to be accomplished for Search Engines as well.

You need to go to Settings > Permalinks and edit the settings as shown in this image below:

We are using the url structure as displayed in the image:

/�tegory%/%postname%/

But another option that also works is just using the post name in the title so you would change the settings to:

/%postname%/

Above are the options that we suggest but if you choose to look for other parameters and options check out our article on SEO Friendly URL Structure. Some of you are probably wondering what happens to all of our previous articles that has the different URLs, they will all be changed. Another question is what happens to all the incoming links that we have from other sites. For that problem there is a plugin called Redirection which you need to install and then go to Manage -> Redirection -> Options, to make sure that both URL Monitoring select boxes are set to “Modified posts”. Now this plugin will take care of the rest by setting a 301 redirect which will send all users and search engine bots to the new post when they access the old URL, so your Pagerank will be recovered as well as your page strength whenever google updates.

4. Semantic Web Markups

This is an old school technique that can make a difference for your site. You should know that Google recommend XHTML Semantics. Good sites are well-organized and easy to surf. When you use the semantic markups such as heading tags you are specifically highlighting to the search engine bots, which tag is more important on the page. It makes their job easily as they can appropriately rank your page for the most relevant keyword. Most templates, and free themes does not use the heading tags wisely. You need to refine them and learn how to use these tags appropriately. Often you will see sidebar headings using

tag which is NOT appropriate use of that tag. Do you really think that the keyword Advertiser or blogroll deserve to have that tag? You should lower all your heading tag in the sidebar to

or maybe

even. Designers often seem to give the blog title

tag on the homepage which is ok, but on single post pages the blog title is not the most relevant subject. You should change your page.php and single.php and make the post title to have the

tag. Remember to never use the

tag more than once on a page. It is wise that you organize your posts with heading tags. You can even use it for styling purposes in the post, so it is one solution to two problems.

For more details please check out the Case Study that our CEO Syed Balkhi has compiled on his blog about refining the Semantic Web Markups.

5. Interlinking within your Site

One of the good ways to make your site more available for the bots is by interlinking within your site. If a search engine bot arrives to a specific page of your site, you should make sure that it finds other pages on your site as well. You can easily do that by having a path of your post displayed with what we call breadcrumb navigation. You can download a plugin called Breadcrumb NavXT to do that.

Another great way of interlinking within the site is by displaying related posts at the end of each post. This not only benefits with SEO, but it reduces your bounce rate because your users may also find something interesting. Lower bounce rate means more revenue for you from advertisers specially adsense. We have written a tutorial that shows two ways of displaying related posts in WordPress. One is with a plugin and other method is with a php snippet. You can pick for yourself.

But by interlinking you are giving bots more parts of your site to explore thus increasing your pages indexed in search engines.

6. Optimizing External Links

Optimizing your external links from your sidebar and others are always a good idea. You need to add rel=”nofollow” tag to all useless links such as registration ones, login links and the ones that you think does not deserve a follow link. Remember when you add an external link, you are sharing your PR juice, and page strength with those sites. So the more external links you have sitewide, the weaker your site’s ranking will be compared from if they did not have those links. Another way which we think works are the XFN relationship feature in WordPress. You won’t see many SEO’s recommending or talking about other rel tags, but we think it makes a difference. It tells the search engine bots how much you value each link, so you can add rel=”me” to your social media profiles instead of adding a complete nofollow to that link. This tells search engines that you are not selling links, instead you are linking to your own profile. It is another way of organizing external links and search engines love organization. You can see the WordPress XFN feature when you click to add a new link in your admin panel.

7. Avoid Duplicate Content

It is very easy to create duplicate content in WordPress. WordPress has a lot of features but sometimes it can work against you. Such features include having tag pages, archive pages, or category pages. If you are displaying full posts in your category pages, then you can create duplicate content, or even if you post a same post in two different categories you are creating duplicate content. Well you can avoid that simply by creating a robots.txt file for your blog.

We suggest you use the following code in your file:

User-agent: Googlebot

Disallow: /wp-content/
Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /archives/
Disallow: /*?
Disallow: /*.js$
Disallow: /*.inc$
Disallow: /*.css$
Disallow: */trackback/
Disallow: /page/
Disallow: /pages/
Disallow: /tag/
Disallow: /category/
Disallow: /link.php

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /wp-includes/

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Disallow:

User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /

When you add a $ sign at the end of any file extension, you are telling the server to not allow bots to index that file extension. You can see in the above code we have added disallow code for all .css and .js files. There is no reason for search engine bots to go through your CSS or JavaScript files therefore it only makes sense to disallow them.

You have your single post page that does well for ranking, there is no reason why you need to duplicate that content on multiple other pages. Therefore we have disallowed the category, tags, archives, pagination, and other useless extensions. You certainly do not want search engine bots to see anything in your wordpress admin directory wp-admin therefore you should always disallow that.

You may also see that we have a disallow tag that looks like this: Disallow: /*? the reason why we have this is to block all search queries to be indexed from your site. So if someone searches for permalinks on this site, it will not be indexed in google.

There is also a plugin called Meta Robots which you can use in order to manage these no index options for pages and categories.

8. Site’s Blueprint Plan

Just like the construction company needs to know a house’s blueprint plan in order to build the site and know where each things go, search engine bots also need a blueprint plan for your site. If you tell search engines exactly where to find each thing, they are going to find it much faster and you will get much better results in terms of indexing. You can create a blueprint for your site by creating a sitemap. Google XML Sitemaps plugin for WordPress lets you do that with few clicks.

9. SEO Friendly Design Structure

Your design plays a crucial role in your site’s SEO. We have already mentioned refining the semantic web markups above in this article, but there is another part of your design that is very important. It is the structure of your design. You need to make sure that in the codes, your site content shows above all the sidebar links. You should be worried about this if your site has a sidebar on the left hand side because sometime unprofessional theme designers do not code theme right. They make the sidebar links appear above the site’s content, so everytime the bot visits the page, they see the links before they see the post content.

You can check out a detailed article here that discusses Two Perfect Design Structures for Websites.

10. Site Load Time

Speed plays a crucial role in your site’s daily indexing rate. The faster your site loads, the more pages will be indexed every day, so your goal is to get the fastest load time as you can. There are many ways to speed up your WordPress and boost performance which we higlighted in that article, but there are two major ones that you must have.

One is plugin called WP-Super Cache which speeds up your site and boost your performance significantly. It also decreases the server load, so your site won’t crash if you receive high amount of traffic.

The next thing you need to make sure is that you have a good web host. There is no reason to pay a cheap unknown company for hosting because these companies are not reliable. They don’t keep their servers updated, which slows their server down. Also risks security as well. We recommend that you try out either Super Green Hosting or Host Gator if you want speedy servers.

11. Image Optimization

Every blog has images. If you do not add images to your posts, then you should begin to do so now because it is a good technique and it gives your post the life and energy that it lacks when its just words. But many users use images and they do not optimize them. Do you know that Google Images can send you a good number of traffic if you use optimize your images. This is free traffic that you should not miss out on. All you have to do is when adding an image, add an alt tag to it. Many people ignore this tag and some add it and leave it blank. One reason to add it is because it makes your site XHTML friendly. The second reason is Search Engine Optimization. You should add an alt tag to each image and add the relevant keyword in there. Search engine bots cannot read the text that is in your image, so it is a good way to tell them what this image is about.

There is a plugin called SEO Friendly Images which you can use to ease your job. It automatically adds either post title or the image name into the alt tag. This plugin is a shortcut, and if we had to pick between this plugin and doing it manually, we would certainly do it manually. You can pick the right keywords when you do it manually, this plugin can’t possibly get the best keywords automatically.

12. User Optimization

You are probably wondering what does this strange term “User Optimization” really means. Well what we mean by User Optimization is by using the power of your audience to benefit your search engine ranking. One of the best way to get backlinks to your site is organic links from your readers. Given that you already have quality content, your readers will mention you on their own blogs, or even in their tweets which can potentially get you tons of other links. Therefore you want to optimize your users. The fact that one person read your blog once, does not mean that they will read it again. People have too much going on their life, therefore you need to give them options to stay updated with your blog. The more options you give them the better it is for your site. We give our users the option to stay updated with their RSS Feed Reader, staying updated via email, and live stream updates through twitter. P.S. If you haven’t subscribed to our blog via either one of these methods, you should do it now.

When you have a user subscribe to your blog, you are assuring that they read your blog regularly therefore your chances of getting a backlink has increased significantly. Next step in user optimization is having your users engaged in the community. When you have users engaged in the community, it encourages new users to join and participate in the discussion. The more involved each user get in the community, the likelihood of you getting backlinks, or retweets for your post increases.

One way to increase comments and user activity on your site is by staying involved yourself. You need to bond with your commentators by replying to their comments, and encouraging the discussion. Another way to bond with your commentators is by thanking them. Now you should not thank them every time because it gets annoying, but the first time would be a nice thing to do. In our recommended WordPress plugin list, we mention a plugin called comment relish, which sends out an email to first time commentators by thanking them and inviting them to come back. You can certainly customize the message and make it more personal. But this way can actually annoy your users. Therefore you should use a different way which is called Comment Redirecting. Comment redirecting lets you redirect your new commentators to a specific page on your site. We have our new commentators go to the Thank You Page. Do you want to see if it works? If you are a new user, simply comment on this post and let us know how’d you like it. This is by far one of the best way of thanking your user without having them feel that they were spammed.

Now there are more ways that you can get people to interact. If you haven’t already seen in the last paragraph, it is by simply asking your users to comment. You can write in a way that you encourage users to comment. Last, but certainly not the least is by changing the text in your index.php where it says 0 comments, to something more interacting. Perhaps something like “No comments yet, You can be the first one” or you can even ignore the comment count entirely by simply saying “Speak Your Mind”. You can also change the text in your comments.php and encourage your users to comment using the similar technique.

Off Page SEO

A good majority of people define Off Page SEO is all about increasing your backlinks, but they are wrong. Off Page SEO is all about branding and increasing your chances of getting backlinks. It is not about increasing backlinks because people can buy backlinks and increase the count, but that is not the optimial way because you will be gaming the system. There is a positive correlation between your site’s popularity and the chances of getting backlinks. But the fact of the matter is that you do not have a popular site when you start. The techniques mentioned in this section will help you spread the word out about your blog.

1. Social Media Interaction

Social media interaction has always been a huge part of blogging. One of the reasons why SEO for blogging is so different is due to the social nature of blogs. Basically in this step, you go out and talk to people. Be active in social media communities like Twitter, Facebook, and others that you like. This sounds very easy, but in actuality it is not. There is a fine line between interaction and promotion which most people tend to do in social media networks like twitter. You must have interaction with your audience, whether it is through private messages, replies via tweet, or even retweets. You need to have interaction. You can use one of the plugins like Twitter Tools to auto post a tweet whenever there is a new blog post published, but we strongly recommend that you tweet it out manually and add some creative parts to it. Have different ways of sharing the links, you can’t fool the users of thinking that you are tweeting naturally by sharing the link every single time saying Check out this cool link. You need some variation also if you want to be discovered by users on twitter, you probably want to use hashtags for your niche such as #WordPress for ours.

For a new site, Social media interaction is one of the best way to expand. Gone are the days when you email the top guys in the industry and ask them to give your site a mention in their future posts. Because now only spammers choose that technique. Most celebrities in your industry have too many SPAM emails which they ignore. You do not want to be in one of those. Instead you can just tweet them, the likelihood of them checking that is much higher than them checking your email. Everytime a person shares your article, it is being shown to everyone on their network, imagine the power of word of mouth advertising at its best. It can bring you a lot of new users to your website. Make sure that you interact with your audience, acknowledge their questions and even have discussions in these social media sites. By doing all of this your chances of increasing your backlink counts are significantly high because from these social media sites, people will add you to their daily bookmark articles and other collection posts that users write.

2. Networking within your Niche

Networking within your own niche is probably one of the best way to go about getting targetted audience and backlinks. You need to build good relations with your competitors. Believe it or not, but most top guys in the industry that might seems rival in front are very good friends in the background. To find blogs in your niche use Google Blog Search and comment on their blogs. Contact the blogger and see if there is a possibility of you two to work together. You can hold join contests, rival competitions which has seem to work well for others in the past, promote each other’s products and much more. Here is an article about how you can get other bloggers to link to you.

3. Linkbaiting

Linkbaiting is another great way of getting tons of organic backlinks to your site. There are several methods of link baiting that you can use such as creating controversy. Whenever you create controversy, you are likely to be linked by a lot of users. It is not always a good thing to create controversy, but it can certainly get you a lot of attention and backlinks. Another link baiting technique is having contests or giveaways. Everyone love free stuff, so they will most likely write about it. One of the big things you see now is people having contests and those who join retweets it. These contests can get you a lot of backlinks and exposure. To read a full guide on linkbaiting check out Linkbaiting 101.

4. Paid Links???

The most common method of Off Page SEO is getting paid links. Is that the best way to go about it? No! We strongly recommend you that you do not buy paid links at any site because that would be gaming the system and can potentially get your site penalized in Google. There are thousand of webmasters, and bloggers are doing this, but we say that do it at your own risk if you decide to do it.

We hope that this SEO Guide was helpful to you. Remember that On Page SEO is just as much if not more important than building backlinks with Off Page SEO is. If you follow the guidelines above, you should be on your way to getting a good Pagerank and ranking positions in search engines.

[ Via : WpBeginners ]

The Small Business SEM Survival Guide

By Rob Chant, Search Engine Watch, May 14, 2010
Columns  |  Contact Rob  |  Subscribe to Newsletters  |  RSS Feeds  |  Biography-->

One of the best things about the rise of the Web, Google, and search marketing is the degree to which it has levelled the playing field for smaller businesses. No longer do you need a budget in the millions to reach a national or international audience. Or do you?

Naïve misconceptions about SEO and search marketing notwithstanding ("I've spent $100 with you, why aren't I number one for 'digital cameras' already?!"), anyone who has taken the time to learn even a small amount about it will realize that it can be a long, tough road. Desirable keywords are often extremely competitive and expensive (in the case of paid search advertising), with the top spots dominated by a few highly entrenched players.

 SMB Survival Strategies

• Focus relentlessly on a few key areas
• Ignore hype and distractions
• Know who your competition are (and who they're not)
• Pick the fights you know you can win (save the rest until you're bigger and stronger)
• Integrate search marketing into the day-to-day running of your business

So is the playing field really that level after all? Can small businesses compete? Absolutely.

It's a question of knowing the game well enough and playing intelligently enough. And this isn't just about picking up the crumbs swept off the giants' table, in the form of a few long tail keywords and some residual traffic.

Your best bet is nearly always to find a search marketing agency with a lot of experience working with small businesses (you can't be an expert at everything, after all). But even if you hire an external agency, it still pays to know as much as you can about the field.

Know Your Competition

I'm sure you've heard this message, frequently blasted out by lazy marketers and the lazy press:

"zOMG, there are like 10million+ new pages published per day, thousands of new sites, zillions of new blogs and they're ALL your competitors!! All your visitors are going to these sites instead of yours! How are you going to STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD!?!!1!"

This is nearly always accompanied by a picture of some little blue men with a slight bigger red man in the middle, standing out from the crowd. Or by someone shouting into a megaphone. Take your pick.

It's all rubbish, of course. The vast majority of this "new" content is spam. Of the remainder of it, little will have anything to do with your business.

For the purposes of search marketing, your competitors are the relevant sites that show up on Google on the first page for whichever search terms you're targeting. In social, they are the small handful of companies in your market niche that make a favorable impression on your preferred social networks.

And that's it. If you concentrate on those few companies and ignore everything else, a huge mountain of a task suddenly seems a lot more manageable.

Analyze each of your competitors frequently -- work out which tactics are working for them, which are their popular blog posts, and where they're getting powerful links. Learn from their tactics, but don't copy outright.

Stay Focused

Search and social marketing experts are always telling us that there are dozens of tactics to implement, hundreds of blogs to read, bucket loads of communities in which to participate, and thousands of three letter acronyms to memorize. Not to mention that it's changing all the time. Just how do you stay on top of it all?

 Learn More

• Rethink Your Web Strengths
• Get Started on the Basics
• Keep it Simple
• Get Started With Keyword Research
• Some Tools to Help Along the Way

The simple answer is, you don't. Pick the few areas you're going to master, and focus on them relentlessly. You don't buy a dozen rare orchids, knowing you only have the time and energy to look after one. You just buy the one, and you nurture it.

By the same token, it's easy to become distracted by all the new stuff that's coming out all the time. Some of it you might be able to work into your existing processes, but most of these distractions are just that -- distractions.

Stay focused on your core strategies and tactics. Don't chuck out that orchid on which you've lavished so much attention just because a slightly fancier one has just come along.

That doesn't mean you should let your nose get so close to the grindstone that you lose touch with what's going on in the world around you. Learning and being exposed to new ideas is always a good thing. It's great to reassess your strategies and try new tactics, but alongside your existing focus, not as a distraction.

And if worst comes to worst and your prized orchid is keeling over whatever you seem to do, of course it's time to move on. To mix my metaphors, it's no good flogging a dead horse.

On the flip side, once you've truly mastered your chosen key areas, you can grow by expanding your focus (e.g., once you're dominating one small group of niche keywords, try adding some new ones to the mix; just don't add too many at once).

Pick Your Fights (and Win Them)

For most small businesses, ranking at number one for any highly competitive, generic search term is simply out of the question. Trying to go viral can be a pot-luck, expensive business (just like trying to win the lottery). Getting picked up by major blogs just isn't going to happen (unless you're extremely lucky -- again, not the kind of business plan to take to the bank manager).

But these aren't problems for you, it just means that you have to be careful to pick fights you know you can win.

For example:

• Getting long tail traffic to your site is easy (and don't let any search marketeer tell you otherwise). Just keep adding quality content to your site on a regular basis -- running a blog is ideal. This takes discipline and a few hours of work per week, but you have complete control over the process and it's a low cost investment compared to the thousands of incoming links required to target a generic term.

• Find out who your happiest customers are, and turn them into your social media evangelists (official or otherwise). Pick a social network or a forum that already has an active community around your niche and send your new recruits out there as well as getting stuck in there yourself. Do this the right way and you can completely dominate a network for your niche, at virtually no cost. (Quick case study: show up on Twitter and ask what the best SaaS accounting package is, and the same answer will almost always come back. Try it!)

• If you run a local business, work on your local and maps listings. It's still the Wild West out there, plenty of land up for grabs (not for long though!).

• Find and target a handful of niche terms that can collectively drive a reasonable amount of traffic (these are to be found somewhere in the wasteland between the long tail and the highly competitive, generic terms).

Every business and niche will have its own unique strategies and tactics that can be put to use here. Ideas in the comments please!

Make it a Part of Your Process

Just like traditional marketing, search marketing of any form isn't a one off. It's an ongoing process. And to work best, it has to be fully integrated into your business.

Bring it into your weekly team meetings or your daily to-do list. Make sure you take some kind of action around it every day, or at least several times a week. You'll be surprised how these small actions add up and how quickly and easily search marketing can become a part of your regular routine.

As a small business, you also need to be on the lookout for quick, high impact wins, and this is where running your campaign in-house can really come into its own. You might not have the time or budget to build thousands of links manually, but you can e-mail all your suppliers asking them for a link (with a great testimonial from your business, of course). You can add a link request to the order confirmation e-mails generated by your e-commerce software. You can get regular guest blogging gigs within your industry.

Again, there are loads of ideas here, many of which will be unique to your business. If you have a regular team meeting, add a mini-brainstorming session as an agenda point, with the goal of generating at least one viable idea applicable to your search marketing efforts every time. If you work by yourself, set aside time for some lateral thinking every week and do the same.

If you're employing an external agency, the same goes. Make sure you have regular contact with them (at least weekly, if possible), and make sure that they know as much about your business as they can. If they're diligent and properly involved, they'll spot no end of new opportunities.

Summing Up

Search is a long-term investment, there's no doubt about it, and it can be tough, especially for small businesses. But by being canny and playing your cards right, the challenges are far from insurmountable.

Contact Rob Chant
Articles by Rob Chant

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Biography

Rob Chant

Rob Chant has been working as a freelancer on the web in one form or another for about 10 years, first as a designer and developer and more recently in SEO. He now runs a web marketing company focused on delivering SEO and related services to small businesses. His experience with both designing and building web sites gives him extra insight into the SEO process.

Rob's always been a bit of a jack of all trades, however, and also runs his own netlabel, a small publishing company and has various other projects up his sleeve, on and off the web.

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