Social media tools like Twitter and Facebook (once primarily the venue of college students, but now a highly effective networking and marketing tool in its own right) are great for small business owners. Twitter lets people get to know you by allowing you to post short 140-character updates – tweets – about what you’re doing, business news, resources you want to share, customer service responses, and more.

Nearly half of social media hits to websites now come from Facebook. With Facebook pages, you can create a mini-version of your business site and build your community of business “fans.”

But who has time to keep up with all of that?

If you’re using WordPress, you don’t have to.

WordPress started out as blogging software, but it’s become an excellent content management tool as well. I always recommend that my business clients consider blogging; WordPress is my platform of choice because of its relatively easy-to-learn administration area and great flexibility.

Thousands of available addons means that you can do just about anything with WordPress. And website owners can use WordPress to grow their sites by adding new pages on the fly, as well as blog posts. Fresh content makes Google happy!

So -  what did I mean about saving time? You can integrate Twitter, Facebook and WordPress to the point where posting on one automatically posts on the others – saving you time and effort. You can get three posts for the price of one, in other words.

Here are just a few of the many ways you can integrate your WordPress website and social media tools.

Post an update and a link on Twitter whenever you post in your WordPress blog – and vice versa.

Add a new post to your blog and your Twitter followers will see a  link to your latest post. Or, make each tweet create a new post in your blog.

Resource: Twitter for WordPress

Post an update in your blog and display it in your Facebook page.

Add a new post to your blog and your Facebook fans see it instantly – or set it up for manual updates, so you can control what gets published on your wall.

Resource: Simple Facebook Connect

Add Twitter and Facebook social media buttons to your website.

Let your blog readers know that you have a business presence on Twitter and Facebook. Put the icons or button links in a place where they’ll stand out – in the header, footer or top of the sidebar. These will link directly to your page or profile in Twitter and Facebook. They can be the typical little square icon or a bigger, more noticeable graphical button, whichever works best with your site’s design.

Resource: The Best Social Media Icons All in One Place

Show your latest Twitter posts in your WordPress site.

Use a plugin to display your latest tweets in a widget (a WordPress sidebar element) – you can choose the number of tweets to show, and it’s updated instantly whenever you tweet. You can also display them in a page if your site doesn’t use widgets.

Resource: Twitter Tools

Show a live stream of Facebook updates in your WordPress site.

Use a plugin to display your latest Facebook page updates in a widget.

Resource: Simple Facebook Connect

Display your Facebook status in your WordPress site.

The status line shows up at the top of your Facebook page and changes with each wall update. Show your status in a WordPress widget.

Resource: Simple Facebook Connect

Add a  Facebook ‘Like’ button below each WordPress blog post.

Make it easy for people to ‘like’ your Facebook page (become a fan) by giving them a link following every blog post. It’s also a good idea to give your blog readers the ability to promote your site on other social media platforms – plugins like Sociable provide a list of icons under each blog post just for that purpose.

- Debbie

©2010All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

In my last post, we discussed the importance of social media’s two magic words: CONTENT and REPURPOSING.

But how does the magic happen in practical terms?  Where is the best place to create your first-rate content and then repurpose it?

The answer is simple.  Its on your blog.

With all the fancy, cool tools available, people often just ignore the plain blog. Turning your back on your blog (or never creating one to begin with!) is one of the biggest mistakes I see small businesses make.

There is no better delivery system for content than a blog.  A blog is like a canvas; you can enter into conversations with consumers, test out ideas and products, and establish yourself as the definitive thought leader in your industry.

Once you have your blog ticking along (you should be creating at least three blog posts a week), you can then repurpose your content, sharing all that you have painstakingly written with your Social Web. Simply put, your blog is the launching pad to your social media success.

Here are some practical ideas about how you can repurpose your blog’s content:

1. Make sure your blog posts appear on your Facebook Fan page.  You can either link them directly using Ping.fm  or re-write them as comments/discussions and then post them.  Doing this will ensure you have fresh content on your Facebook Fan page at least three times a week.

2. Make sure you share your blog posts with your Twitter followers.  But don’t just tweet a link to your post. Go farther.   Extract a surprising statistic, controversial fact, provocative question or fresh quote from your post and Tweet that tidbit along with a link to your blog.  In that way, one blog post can provide you with several Tweets.

3. Share your blog posts (or parts of your blog posts) in your Linkedin Groups.  Be sure that you are signed up to 50 LinkedIn groups for maximum exposure.  Share a part of your post with a link to the full blog post in the Discussion area of your group.  If the reader is interested, they can click on the link you have provided and go read the full post.  Not only will you increase traffic to your blog but you will rapidly build your reputation throughout the LinkedIn network.

4. Repurpose your blog into an article (or articles).  Depending on how long your blog post is, you will want to perhaps re-write it slightly or slice it up into several different articles before you submit it to various article directories.At the end of your article, you will include a small box complete with a link to your site, your name and a brief description of what you do.

The most famous directory is ezine articles.com so don’t miss that one.  Articles are a classic but incredibly efficient way of establishing your personal brand. People looking for content on the web will post your article on their websites or ezines. Every time someone reads your article, they will also see your box with your information and link on it.

5. Consider submitting your blog posts to print publications ranging from newspapers to association newsletters to magazines.  Never underestimate the power of using online and offline media simultaneously.

6. Create a podcast. Record your blog post into a digital recorder or directly into your computer.  To do this, you will need a basic microphone and recording software. ( I use a free software called Audacity which can be found at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ ) Once recorded, you can post your podcast throughout all the major podcast directories.  You can also post the recordings on your blog or website or put them onto CDs and send them to prospects.

7. Create an online video using the audio you just recorded for your podcast. Integrate Powerpoint slides are still images with the audio to create a video. Another way to create a video is to record yourself reading some of your favorite posts.  This is really easy with a Flip camcorder.The beauty of the Flip is that it has a built-in USB key; once you have recorded your video, you just plug the USB into your computer and upload the video.   You can distribute your video on an array of video sharing sites by using www.tubemogul.com

- Susan

©2010All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

Are you a small business owner who runs PPC campaigns? Have you spent hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars, and not known if any of your ads have brought in a single sale?

The challenge is maximizing your PPC spend and understanding if your PPC campaigns are truly profitable.  I started this thought process about five years ago when I started asking businesses if their PPC advertising was profitable.  The most common answer that I was received was that their PPC campaigns (typically Google Adwords) were generating targeted leads and sales but they were not sure if the ads were actually showing a profit. 

This is because most sales are done offline and Google and other search engines has no way to know if a sale was made and cannot report if the campaign was profitable or achieving a positive return on your investment.

Let’s say that you have a business that sells Outdoor Furniture and you have three PPC ads running on Google; Google reporting tools will tell you how often a specific ad is seen (impressions), clicked (click thru rate) and converted (customer takes an action such as submits a contact form).  If someone searches for a Gazebo and your PPC ad appears; the searcher first sees the ad, then clicks on the ad, then takes an action to request a price on a Gazebo.

Google reports all that information but they do not know if the Gazebo was sold.  That is incredibly important information to be missing when making advertising decisions.  Without knowing the sale was made and how much was generated it is very hard to know for sure if your Adwords spend is profitable and would be almost impossible to know what the ROI on that spend was.  In addition you do not know which ads are generating a positive return and which ads are not.

It is very beneficial to know the ROI of every advertising campaign that you do in order to make smart marketing decisions.

Hopefully we now agree that calculating the ROI of each PPC campaign is extremely important.  Big business are already tracking this data, my goal is to illustrate how smaller businesses and entrepreneurs can accomplish the same.

Step 1 – The URL
Every URL has the ability to store what is referred to as variables.  In a URL, variables are set after a question mark (?).  Here is an example; www.company.com?variablename=variablevalue.  What you need to do is set up the variables that your Website will read from the URL when a searcher clicks your PPC ad.

My suggestion is to have a different variable value for each different PPC ad that you have. To keep this a illustration more easily understood,  we will just use one variable name and one variable value in this example.  By having just one variable value, we will be tracking your entire campaign, not separated by different ads.  Here is an example of what your URL should look like: www.YourWebsite.com?google=1.

The variable Google can be any descriptive word that you choose. You can name this variable Adwords, Yahoo, Bing or whatever works best for you.  I personally prefer using Google as the variable name when I am measuring an Adwords campaign.

Step 2 – Extracting the Variables
When a searcher clicks on your new ad the URL that will be live at your website will be www.YourCompany.com?google=1.  You need to read that URL and extract the variables from it. I use the Cold Fusion programming language to accomplish this, but you can also use PHP, .NET, ASP or any other dynamic language.

Step 3 – Creating a Session
There are different ways you can create a session for that user.  The easiest way is to set a Cookie which will create a session for that specific user.  This Cookie will follow that user throughout the Website as he/she surfs from page to page. Basically what the Cookie is storing is that this specific user came from a Google ad (variable name) and from the first ad your tracking (variable value).

Step 4 – Recording the Data
Almost every Website that is using PPC advertising should have a call to action.  Some type of action you want the user to take, such as filling out a contact form, requesting a price, downloading a white paper, purchasing a product or service, etc.  Every action should include the user filling in some type of information, with their name and email address being the minimum.

That information being filled out in the form needs to be inserted into a database. Along with the personal information submitted you need to also submit the Cookie data into the database in the same row as the personal information.

Do not forget to include the date in which the form was submitted, this is extremely important. At this point the application will know that a specific person took the call to action on a specific date and that person came from a Google Adword with the number one indicating which Adword this user clicked. This can be referred to as a lead from that Adword campaign within a specific time frame.

Step 5 – Recording the Sale
As an example;  Person A come to your Website from Google Adword campaign 1. Person A then requests a price on a “Shed” that they were interested on your Website by filling out and submitting a “request for price” call to action. Person A should then be recorded in your database. In this case, Google will be recorded and campaign 1 along with their name, email address and date submitted.

Now Person A purchases a shed for $2,000 offline.  You need to record in the database that person A spent $2,000.  If person A later purchases another item such as an Outdoor Table for $500, then this has to be added to the original $2,000 spend. Person A is worth $2,500 and came from Google Adword campaign 1 during the month of April 2010.

Step 6 – Recording your PPC Expenditures
In a separate database table you need to record the Google Adwords expenditure for each month that you want to run a report on. I run my PPC campaigns monthly with a specific monthly budget.  Let’s use April 2010 and an expenditure of $10,000 as an example.  You need to record in the database that you invested 5,000 between 4/1/2010 and 4/30/2010 for campaign one.

Step 7 -   Generating your ROI Report
Your database has two tables; one that contains your PPC expenditure within a monthly time frame and another table that holds the sales data.  To report on the ROI for the month of April 2010 you need to run a query that pulls the spend from Google Adword campaign 1 during April  2010 (table 1) and a query that adds how much revenue was generated from Google Adword campaign 1 from leads during the month of April 2010 (table 2).  It is important to note that it doesn’t matter when the sale was made; instead we focus on the date in which the lead was generated.

Step 8 – Make Smart PPC Advertising Decisions
You are now armed with critical data to help you decide where to spend your advertising dollar. Let’s use the following report as an example; April 2010 spend was $10,000 and the website generated $50,000 in revenue from that April 2010 spend.  Your return on that investment was $40,000 or 400%.  I personally like to focus on the dollar amount and not the percentage in this measurement. Obviously the $40,000 was not all profit, you need to estimate how much of revenue is actual profit.

For example 50% of a sale can be profit and 50% goes to expenses. So in this case out of the $50,000 revenue generated only $25,000 was profit, then you subtract the PPC investment of $10,000 to come up with a total profit of $15,000.

With a positive return you know that the ad performed well and that you may want to increase your budget to maximize your return. Let’s say in June you increase your Adwords spend to $20,000 and you generate $60,000 in revenue off that spend.  Now you take the $60,000 in revenues and cut it in half to get $30,000 in profit, and then subtract the $20,000 PPC spend to get a ROI of $10,000.

This data tells you that you were more profitable investing $10,000 than investing $20,000 towards your PPC campaign.  You should not entirely make your PPC advertising decisions off this data, but this data would be an important part of that decision making process.

A better ad or a better offer could have generated more revenue. With a better ad, possibly the $20,000 spend could have generated $80,000 in revenue which would have given you a total profit of $20,000 (80K revenue – 40K in expenses – 20K in PPC expenditure = 20K in profit).

- Jason

©2010All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

Are you tired of hearing all the buzz about social media and still wondering how to put it to use to attract more clients and grow your business?

The concept is simple – social media is the digital version of the conversation that used to happen around the watering hole, water cooler, local pub or at church socials – the conversations that now happen mostly online.

The problem is that unlike face-to-face conversation, where you get immediate feedback, in the digital social media world, it can be hard to know whether anyone is listening, much less whether you’re sharing the content your prospects and clients want to read and respond to.

With all the social media tools out there it can be confusing. Want to know how to get started?

Here’s a simple three-step formula.

1. Start by posting articles, like this one, on your blog. These articles should feature your area of expertise. If you’re looking for ideas, check out your competitors’ blogs by searching Technorati.

2. Add the Retweet plug-in to your blog and see which blog posts get the most retweets. Every time someone retweets one of your blog posts, they’re doing your marketing for you, spreading the word for free. Pay attention to the posts that get the most retweets and write more of the same type.

3. Sign up for Postrank and add it to your blog software. Over 80% of social media sharing happens outside of your blog and Postrank gives you the tool you need to see which ideas are triggering conversations elsewhere around the Internet so you can engage in them and follow up.

That’s it.

Three simple steps to a solid, measurable social media strategy you can use to grow your business.

Of course there’s more you can do to cash in on social media marketing and dominate your market.

Get instant access to the top 8 social media marketing experts’ insider secrets >>

- Charlie

P.S. Know anyone in your family, office or neighborhood who likes to share gossip. Social networks are a powerful – in most companies and neighborhoods it’s how news travels. And you can tap social media to enlist tens of thousands of people around the world to tell their friends about your products and services, practically for free.

Discover the amazing power of social media marketing >>

©2010All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

Join today’s Social Media Marketing Telecalls (they’re free)…

To discover the number one way to attract more buyers online >>

Every week I get questions from struggling entrepreneurs and business owners, smart people who want to know one thing. They want to know what’s the best way to generate leads and attract buyers using their websites.

How about you? Do you have a website?

Want to know the number one way to generate more leads, establish your credibility, help people get to know you, trust you and want to buy from you?

The simple answer is with your blog.

My blog brings in the majority of the traffic to my site, attracting thousands of visitors a day, and helping me grow my profits each year, in spite of this turbulent economy, and your blog can do the same for you.

But the big questions are: how should you set up your blog, what you post on it, how can you use it attract prospects like a magnet.

Just adding a blog to your site is a step in the right direction but I want to make sure you understand how to leverage it to skyrocket your business and to monetize all the traffic you’ll be getting.

Which is why I’ve persuaded two of the top experts on blogging to join me today and reveal their top money-making secrets.

In case you haven’t registered already, join the calls >>

If You Have A Web Site –
You need to hear what Ryan Healy and Jack Humphrey, two of the top blogging experts in the country, have to say about adding and using your blog.

Blogging Expert #1 – Jack Humprhey
How To Use Blogging To Attract Your Ideal Clients To Grow Your Business

In 10 years, Jack was responsible for attracting over a billion visitors to his personal websites and those of his clients. Let me repeat that – over one billion visitors. Not to mention Jack has been online since 1991, is the author of the popular book, “Power Linking.”

Don’t miss this call when Jack reveals:

•    What adding a blog to your marketing mix can do for your profits
•    Even if you hate writing, here’s how you should incorporate a blog to reap its advantages
•    How insiders are using blog software to get the benefits of top search rankings and social networking (Boosts traffic and increases profits)
•    How to identify top blogs in each niche of marketing
•    The hottest topics to blog about
•    The top ways to use your blog to attract prospects to your site and build traffic
•    What you should know about free blog services before you try them
•    The most common blogging mistakes that could cost you hundreds of hits in traffic and how to avoid them
•    Jack’s top 3 blogging tactics you should implement immediately to substantially grow your business this year.

Blogging Expert #2 – Ryan Healy
The Secrets To Building A Killer Blog That Brands You and Turns Visitors Into Profits

Ryan is a highly sought after copywriter who knows what it takes to get attention with your posts and how to convert that attention into new clients.

Make sure to listen in as Ryan reveals:

•    Why building a blog is the single-fastest way to build up a fan base and loyal customer base
•    How to leverage your blog into tons of free Google traffic! (Get thousands of dollars in advertising without paying for it!)
•    How to discover the secret wants, wishes and needs of your customer base by using your blog
•    The secret to using your blog to develop potentially lucrative deals
•    The simple steps to turning random visitors into profits
•    Three ways you can create action-provoking content that keeps people coming back for more
•    How often you should post to your blog
•    The only blog software you need to get started, and which blog platforms to avoid no matter what else you do
•    The 6 essential blog plug-ins that are must haves and why you should use them
•    The secret to making your blog a profit-producing success

Join the call >>

Today’s Call Schedule

**********
Jack Humphrey
**********
WHEN: TODAY (Wednesday April 21st)
TIME: 11:00 AM (EST)
WHAT: Secrets of Building a Killer Blog that Brands You & Turns Visitors into Profits

**********
Ryan Healy
**********
WHEN: TODAY (Wednesday April 21st)
TIME: 4:00 PM (EST)
WHAT: Reveals How to Use Blog Marketing to Attract More Prospects to Your Business

Can’t Make It Today?
I know that some of you due to your busy schedule
 simply will not be able to listen in on these calls.

 That’s ok, because I came up with a solution for you.

 When you register, you will be given a 1-time opportunity 
to buy the recordings of all of these social media expert 
interviews.

I’m giving you …
1. 8 MP3 recordings. Listen while you drive, exercise or work! (Easily worth $97 as a stand-alone product.)
2. 8 fully formatted PDF transcripts. You’ll be able to go through the entire transcript at your leisure and visually see, step-by-step what to do.

That’s 8 hours of the best social media mastery teaching in audio and printed form. But you won’t pay $194 for it … instead; it’s all yours for just $97!

WARNING: The price increases to $197 soon so act now!

I’ll see you at the telesummit!

- Charlie

P.S. Hurry – today’s calls slots are filling up fast. And once they’re all gone, you’ll have missed out on this one-time event to give you the top blogging strategies you need to grow your online business.

P.P.S. Use this link to get in >>

©2010All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

This blog ranked 6th out of the top 12 marketing blogs. And while I’m delighted to be near the top, I’m eager to know what you’d like to see featured here, what type of marketing information, resources, ideas and marketing strategies would get your attention and push us to the top.

Please include your comments and suggestions. For the full list of top marketing blogs and reason blogs publish lists like this…

View the top 12 marketing blogs >>

FYI blog posts that are lists like this one are great attention getters, the search engines love them and have long lasting appeal. Whatever you market or sell – use the same strategy. Create list of the top 12 or top 25 or top 50 blog sites about skiing, composting, employee communication or whatever. Add it to your blog and see your traffic grow.

- Charlie

©2010All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

Google Adwords with her seemingly targeted traffic, easygoing daily budgets, and conservative broad matching makes you think you have found the perfect solution to your marketing needs.

Then as you get to know each other and start to build what you think is a trust-based relationship, she slowly goes completely crazy. Like bad movie psycho girlfriend crazy. Make a wrong move and she’ll set your wallet on fire with bad content network traffic, ridiculously liberal extended broad matching, and possibly throw all your clothes out the window onto the lawn because she caught you messing around with Yahoo Search Marketing or Bing. If you catch her talking about how she wants to optimize or automate your relationship grab your wallet and run for your life!

Okay so the opening is a bit dramatic, but this is a boring topic and starting with a little humor and wit makes it easier to learn. There is no proof that Google actually has a gender but it certainly has a personality and most of its bad behavior is linked to how you trained it. There is no doubt that Adwords gets more complicated as your relationship with it grows and so today let’s talk about how it learns and grows with you.

The normal course of evolution of an Adwords Account starts something like this. Someone throws a bunch of keywords into an ad group, writes a quick generic ad, adds a few dollars to the budget, and pulls the trigger. This is followed quickly by a couple of searches to confirm your genius and mastery of the Adwords System because just like magic your ads appeared as you knew they would. So you walk away thinking to yourself “That was easy” but that was only the first pitch of the game. This is a huge mistake because from the second the account starts Adwords is learning about you and if you disrespect Adwords it will get offended and it can get real rude with your wallet.

If you want to play Adwords professionally you have to understand Google, and Google wants to create the best possible SERP (Search Engine Results Page). This is incredibly important to Google and unlike a regular business the quality of the SERP is more important to Google than your money.  Adwords is 50% of the most important web page on the planet so it is no surprise that if you do not help them help you, they will hurt you. Adwords is only slightly less complicated than space travel, programming all the features of your phone, or nuclear cold fusion and there are thousands of rules, guidelines, policies, and advisory comments. Since even partial coverage of this topic would fill a book I just picked a few common ones to make the point.

Rule 1: First Impressions Count

You never get a chance to make a second first impression and Google never forgets its history. If you start your relationship by just throwing keywords around without any thought then you are disrespecting the system and you teach it to treat you that way.  The right way is start your relationship with Adwords is slowly and carefully building your traffic one layer at a time. Go after only the best quality words and buy only the ones that really apply to your business. You can get more liberal and go after broader traffic as the relationship develops but initially try being on your best behavior and help Google create a better SERP with an ad group that is absolutely on-target.

Rule #2: Impressions are NOT FREE!

The term PPC (Pay per click) makes some people think that impressions are free and they could not be more wrong. Just because you pay by the click does not mean that impressions are free and this can be hard for some folks to understand. As they say the truth is in the math and here is how the math works. Your CTR (Click through rate) is clicks divided by the impressions so you can change the CTR by changing the clicks or the impressions. Since CTR is a major factor in your quality score extra impressions drive down the CTR and with it your quality score. Seeing as your bid consists of your money times your quality score impressions do cost you real money. The general rule is that you want all the impressions you need but no more than that.

Rule #3: Words are special

One of the most complex issues with Adwords has to do with the multiple definitions of a word and more times than not it is the context of the word. Somehow English readers can tell the difference between how to read a document and how they read the document. Same word but different context and this happens much more than you think.

My all time favorite word for this is pearl because depending on context the word can be so many things. There pearls of wisdom, pearl jam, pearl harbor, pearl jewelry, pearl paint, pearl flip, aunt pearl, and many more. So this word can be a concept, rock band, tropical island harbor, jewelry, color, cell phone, or a person.  The use of an apostrophes and plurals makes this even more fun!

A great tool for understanding how this impacts your keywords is Google Insights for Search

http://www.google.com/insights/search/

What I like to do with this tool is look at how the use of the word breaks down for the use I have in mind. I did this recently for a client and we came to realize that while we wanted a specific word only 2% of the traffic actually applied to their business. This helped to explain why we were having such a problem with the CTR and quality score. If you start with 98% of the searches not related to your use of the word, you’re going to have a problem!

Rule #4: Adwords is simple, except for the details

Adwords lives where people, language, and technology collide and it is not always pretty. Conceptually Adwords is easy but when you get down to the details there are thousands of trade-offs that you have to make. Fundamentally they boil down to a balance between quality and quantity. Generally speaking as quality goes up quantity goes down and the trick is to find the right balance because there is no right or wrong answer. I frequently have this discussion with clients about the balance between the multiple choices they have in keyword selection, ad copy, and landing pages.

- Bob

©2010All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

I have to admit I’ve been a skeptic of social media. Every time I hear someone talk about spending an hour a day managing a Twitter account, Facebook or any other of the social media sites, I cringe.

For the most part it seems like just one more distraction for small business owners who already wear too many hats and are challenged to stay focused on their marketing. As a business owner my hands are full already and if I have any extra time I’d rather be biking or skiing. How about you?

But then I got a whack on the side of the head when I heard Dell attributed over $6.5 million in sales for 2009 to their social media marketing efforts. That’d make even a skeptic like me think twice about the value of social media marketing.

As a result of Dell’s social media marketing efforts they attracted over 600,000 Twitter followers. That’s pretty awesome while giving them a per Twitter follower value of almost $11.

How’d Dell do it?

They used over a hundred people to implement their social media strategy. I don’t know what they paid these social media worker bees but even 100 times a yearly salary of $30k comes out to $3 million to generate $6.5 million gross in sales.

That still sounds impressive until you take into account that Dell operates on a silicon chip thin profit margin of less than 3%, 2.8% to be exact. Now I’m sure  you’ll let me know if I’ve done the math right but according to my calculations their typical profit on $6.5 million in sales nets them only $182,000 and that doesn’t take into account the $3 million or so they spent on social media marketing.

Even if the 100+ employees were only tweeting part-time the math still doesn’t translate into a runaway success,  $182 thousand in sales for a $61 billion company.

Still want to know how Dell did it? In case you want to read their recommendations for small business owners, here’s their guide >>

My biggest concern is that you stay focused on the key marketing activities that generate leads and sales. So here’s my short list of social media marketing strategies I use myself and know work.

Make Your Blog The Core Of Your Social Media Marketing
Your blog is where you can provide great content and easily move people to the rest of your site. Focus on providing great content here and you’ll keep your prospects at your site longer so they can learn about your products and services.

Of course each time you add a blog post, use the automated systems available to instantly post a tweet on Twitter or a note your Facebook page. Of course to do this you’ll need to set up a Facebook page and Twitter account.

What Else Should You Do?

That’s a good question. If you’ve hired a social media firm and can point to a demonstrable increase in sales, let me know. Or if you have employed a social media strategy for your small business and seen a increase in income, share your story.

- Charlie

©2010All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

For your small business marketing you need to understand the tools and pick the right one for the right job at the right time.  You cannot effectively compete without at least considering all the marketing channels and that certainly includes both SEO and PPC.

The issue is not “Either Or.” It is about the balance, frequency, and audience.

If you have a web site you need to consider playing on both sides of the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). As people debate the issue of SEO and PPC I hear some very interesting statements and my absolute favorite is “I never click on the ads.” The reason it is my favorite is it is so blatantly absurd. 

If people did not click on the ads why did Google post $21.128 billion in PPC revenue in 2008? Clearly people click on the ads, and they also click on the organic. We have studied the mix of PPC and SEO several times and the bottom line is every link on a SERP has the potential to get a click. In both Paid and organic, showing up is half the battle.

Just to put my prejudices on the table I am an Adwords Expert but I also earned a living for a decade doing SEO so I have played on both sides of this playground. People are sometimes confused by our business and they call me and just want to optimize their site because they think that SEO is fast, cheap, and easy. The problem is that SEO is none of these things.

We have studied this many times and while PPC and SEO have different cost dynamics neither of them is even close to free. A good SEO strategy requires a steady stream of unique content and that costs plenty to generate.

In all the dozens of cases we have documented, SEO and PPC tend to be about the same cost. What people always forget is the cost to generate, manage, and promote this stream of content. If your business has a source of free professionally skilled labor to write this content then SEO is free, otherwise you just need better cost accounting.

One weakness of SEO is that most web sites will only rank highly for a very small list of keywords.  You may think that your business is the center of the universe; however it is unlikely that Google will share that opinion. You might want to rank highly for 50 keywords but the reality is that in most cases that is not going to happen.

Since most sites get 1-3 core words with good ranking make sure you know what you want. If your list is 50 long make sure you put it into priority order because it is unlikely Google is going to give you everything you want.

When working on optimizing content the advice I give all the time is to write a great article about a unique topic because Google has a whole team of people and thousands of machines trying to find that and serve it up to deserving searchers. Write great copy, do not hide it from them, and Google will be your friend.

PPC has its strengths and weaknesses and everyone knows the big weakness – it costs money! Once you get past the cost, PPC normally out performs organic. The bottom line with PPC is that you can get traffic that you have no prayer of ranking for organically. PPC can also help improve your organic traffic. While there is no direct connection, PPC will tell you things about the volume of traffic that you will never know in a SEO only approach.

A web traffic strategy without a PPC and SEO component is likely to have the same problem as the football team with no defensive team – make sure you’ve got defense.

- Bob

©2010All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

Your blog is the easiest way to add content to your site, attract interest and build  your traffic but… to get results involves more than just adding posts. To get the search engines to take notice, and get top placement you need to make sure to take the following 5 steps each time you add a post to your blog.

Here’s the simple formula for using  your blog to improve your SEO and attract more readers and more business.

Post titles

The most important searchable term is the title of each post. I love creativity, but the article should be searchable as a topic. It may be a little boring, but the point is to drive traffic to that post.

Defining Categories

Defining your categories is a strategy in itself. They are a road map for writing a variety of articles that define your business. Stories can range from products, services, life at the office, jobs in progress, all packed with searchable terminology that potential clients may use to find your company.

Tag the content

Another great feature is including tags that highlight each article’s features. Include product names, cities, and individuals. This also serves as a thread to other blogs that may have listed similar tags, giving you related content while also making your content more visible on other blogs around the web.

Name your photos

Get rid of the automatic numerals your camera uses to name photos. Google and Yahoo image searches are big, and they lead a lot of viewers to your site. Name your photo for what they are—this step takes time, but it is worth it.

Update regularly

Now for Twitter and Facebook fans, which are a focused audience of buyers and interested parties in the media. Send out posts driving them to the newest blog story. Link well, and link often. Social media becomes the new PR.

- Richard

©2010All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..