Is Facebook Right for My Business?

New social media companies appear to be launching every day
At the end of every online article there’s a social share button that wasn’t there before. How do you and your small business keep up and capitalize on these new ventures?

You don’t need a presence in every social media brand on the web. Different venues suit different industries whereas other business-social marriages don’t mesh enough to warrant effort. So which social media is best for your business?

Facebook Wins with Business-to-Consumer

If you run a business-to-consumer (B2C) operation, Facebook is your social media match. With a reported 1 billion monthly users, it offers the farthest possible reach.  

Potent interaction and engagement capabilities are Facebook’s key brand-building advantages for B2C entities. The network offers a host of marketing options, but how do you attract users who will cross the social bridge and become customers?

Building an Engaged Fan Base

Don’t build your Facebook page on a foundation of grovelling. Hitting “Invite Your Friends” and blasting them all with a plea to like your page will give you some likes, but little engagement.

Start with existing clients and newsletter /mailing recipients. These people signed up for your other content vehicles voluntarily. They care about your product or service, and will actually interact with your Facebook content.

Facebook offers no-cost sign up, so paid ads seem on par with luring you in with free samples, but don’t rule out a small campaign. You can build and run ads targeting user gender, age and a sweeping selection of preferences and interests.

If you understand your brand’s audience well, ads can deliver you an engaged base. Plus, there’s no set campaign cost; you determine your own budget on a pay-per-click basis.

Answering the Content Question

Keep your content original. Photos are a good starting point. If you have a new product in the works, hype up its release with high-resolution images of its development.

Capture shots from around the office or on any company outings to establish a human connection with customers. You don’t want to be an anonymous social media handle. Questions related to your products and services will also spur interaction.  

Try to develop your own niche, scheduled content. Give your users something to anticipate on scheduled days such as videos, graphics or promotions.

Avoid Bad Habits

When using Facebook, your business needs to find and walk the fine line between consistency and nuisance posting.

Bombarding users with non-stop content leads to annoyance and a shrinking “Like” list. On the other hand, going days or weeks between posts results in stagnant user engagement. Post twice a day between the hours of noon and 3PM. This will line up with lunch breaks and “zoning out” in the workplace.  

Keep your eye on the ball and save your opinions and politics for your personal page.  Remember, Facebook users log in to see their preferred content. What do you do when you get an unsolicited game request? You roll your eyes and delete it. Facebook brings out the self-empowerment in people. They control this world, and they will exercise that control.

In Summation

Your business-to-consumer operation can benefit greatly from a Facebook presence. If you develop and implement an effective regimen for your page, it will bring in new prospects and keeping current customers engaged.

Words and the Web: Understanding Keyword Tiers

A car with no key is a useless hunk of metal, much like a website with no keywording is a static clump of code and graphics. There’s no magic bullet to bring traffic to your site and customers to your product. 

Your user-friendly functionality and attractive visuals won’t get the word around for you. You have to spread it yourself with three keyword tiers that Google can grab onto to help your site get found.

Tier One: Who and Where You Are 

Let’s say you’re a sporting goods retailer. You’d stock tier one with variations of your company name and location. For example, you should go with “Jimmy’s Sporting Goods, Rhode Island,” or “Jimmy’s RI.”

The web is a seemingly endless road. Through tier one keywords, customers ask for directions to your site.


Tier Two: Your Products and Services 
Not all users will ask Google to point them toward your stake in the digital terrain. Some people will be searching for products and services in their area using tier two keywords.

Following the sporting goods example, such users might query “baseball equipment, Rhode Island,” or “hockey equipment, Rhode Island.” You offer these products, and you want to be sure your site is optimized with them.

If you operate in a competitive market, properly executed tier two keywords give your small business’s voice extra decibels in a loud and crowded room.

Tier Three: Your Niche 
SEO specificity hits its peak here. If you’re just starting out, don’t bank on tier three landing you on a page one Google search result. It incorporates extremely focused terms not likely to be queried.


This doesn’t mean optimizing with tier three terms is mere diligence. Think of them as an investment.


Once your business and products start to take off, you want your unique items to have a foundation web presence. Back to Jimmy’s Sporting Goods, let’s say the shop is carrying equipment for all of the major sports, but wants to eventually be the local go-to for custom lacrosse gear.

They’d lean heavily on tier one and two keywords, but not so much on tier three examples like “Jimmy’s Extreme LaCrosse 3500 Stick.” But, they would want to lay groundwork to build this product’s searchability over time, turning this specialty item into a tier two term as it gains visibility and popularity.

In Summation 
Remember, your site is not going to attract eyeballs based on merit. Approach keywording and SEO for what they are; crucial components to your site’s success.

Three Phases of a Successful Email Marketing Campaign, Part 3 – Reporting, Review and Revamp

You’ve compiled your email campaign recipient list, crafted your message and sent it out. Unfortunately, your work is never done with email marketing. 

Your email campaign is like a car, needing regular inspection and upkeep stay on the road. Consulting your campaign reporting tools is that trip to the mechanic.

Get the Broad View 
Your email campaign service comes equipped with reporting tools, offering at-a-glance performance insight and in-depth data.

Your reporting dashboard is a vital signs monitor for your email campaign, measuring opened and unopened emails, opt-outs, click throughs, among others.


Be Open to Change 
The dashboard scratches the surface, it’s time to dig deeper.

The open rate tool tells you how many recipients opened and read your mail. An email-by-email evaluation is your best bet.

If your open rate falls short, go back and do a postmortem of underperforming emails. Divide your contact list in half or into thirds. Send out your next email at different times of day to these groups and gauge which one yields the best results.

Other reasons for lackluster openings could be…

• Unrecognizable or Spammy-looking “from” names
• Equally shoddy email addresses 
• Overlong and muddy subject lines 

Go back over your content strategy to ensure you're executing it properly.

Over-the-Top or Under the Radar? 
Email marketing is a stricter baseball hitting count; TWO strikes and you’re out. Your first swing and miss was the unopened mail. Strike two is opt-outs.

Are you sending your email too often? If bombarded enough, people feel as if their inbox is the landfill of the web. You also don’t want to disappear for months at a time and then abruptly ask to crash on their inbox couch.

Send out a survey polling recipients on their desired frequency of mailings. Take another look at your opt-in language. What tone of frequency did you establish on this successful form? What kind of content did you promise? Make sure the pitch matches your product.

Cash in the Chips You've WON 
While trying to remedy any failures of your email campaign, don’t neglect to capitalize on the successes.

Reach out to your regulars, recipients who consistently opened your mailings. Your reporting tools also offer a click through feature. This tells you who accessed your website or blog via the mailing.

Your message resonated with these recipients. Use this appreciation to make a customer out of a contact.

In Summation 
You’ve paid for the email campaign service and the collected data. Consider the reporting tools to be a marketing currency mint. Now make sure you re-invest it wisely.

Three Phases of a Successful Email Marketing Campaign, Part 2 – What to Say and How to Say It

Last time on the Terrapin Shout Box, we covered how to put together your email campaign mailing list. Now that your signup pitch worked, what’s your message?

You Can't Land Anything with a Bare Hook 
When your email comes in, your recipients will ask, “What’s in it for me if I open this?”

Start with a punchy, concise subject line. For example, Clear our shelves, stock your closet or 5 Can’t-Miss Sales Tips. Make an effort to work in numbers. Using “5” instead of “five” makes for a more readable subject line.

Some bad subject line habits to avoid include use of words like Free! and Advertisement. Check your own spam folder and make a list of what’s in those subject lines. These words will likely get your email tagged with the exiled princes offering you $1 million.

Just remember, if a song has a catchy intro, you’re more likely to keep listening. You don’t want your recipients to skip ahead to the next “track,” or the next email in their inbox. 

Keep Your Momentum Going 
Your content has to keep reader attention now that the subject grabbed it, just don’t count on a long attention SPAN. Keep your message tight and to the point.

Supply the reader with appealing, diverse content. Don’t repeat yourself. Shake things up from mailing to mailing. Good starting points for content are:

• Expertise
• Industry Trends
• Company News
• Special Offers

Include eye-catching but not overbearing visuals. Follow the written content philosophy of clean and tight. Don’t turn the mailing into a “Nascar” by overloading it with graphics and color. 

What is Your Email's Endgame? 
Is your email’s purpose to keep the line moving to your site or a download? Maybe your goal is a “call today” scenario. Either way, a clear call to action (CTA) is a must.

Lay out your CTA in simple, clear terms. It could be as basic as a post-text button or hyperlink labelled, “Click here to download,” or “Check out our latest deals.” 



Not to Be Overlooked... 
Check back next time with Terrapin for our wrap-up email campaign post. Here’s a quick checklist of other email campaign best practices:

• Use a consistent format, but don’t be afraid to experiment with subtle changes
• Offer HTML and plain text
• Make your email readable with images disabled
• Address your recipient by name; no one wants to be called “Dear subscriber.”

Three Phases of a Successful Email Marketing Campaign Part 1 - Sign Me Up!

Setting up and executing a business email campaign isn’t as easy as typing a paragraph and hitting “send.” 

If you only go through the motions, you’ll get what you put in. Mapping out your campaign is a must if you want more than an email that goes right to the circular file. This starts with establishing and populating your mailing list.


Your Website is Your Friend
Dedicate space on your website or blog to your email campaign sign-up form. Make sure this spot has visibility. If you tuck it away in your site’s “no man’s land,” don’t be surprised if no one fills it out. You want eyes drawn to the form, not an eyesore.


Determine the level of web presence you want to commit. You can feature the sign-up on the homepage, or on all pages. If you go with the latter, don’t forget continuity; place the form in the same spot on every page.


You control your site, so you control the format of the message. Consider what your company offers that can incentivise email list sign-up. It could be a coupon, white paper or any other valuable.


Don't Just HOPE for the Best
You can’t simply lay out a clipboard at your place of business and cross your fingers for a full list at closing time. You need to engage the customer to sign up. Enlist everyone in your company to encourage customers to consider the sign-up list.


Instruct your customer service representatives to plug your email initiative when interacting with customers. In one sentence, ask the customer if they want to opt in; “While I have you, could I interest you in signing up for our email list?”  A drawn out pitch might prompt the customer to make a decision based on annoyance.


  
Always Stay in Networking Mode
Running a small business, you’re always meeting people. You make a lot of sales calls. Maybe you attend trade shows, workshops and seminars. This is fertile marketing ground.


After exchanging business cards in any of these venues, ask if you can add the card’s address to your email list. If your business comes up in casual conversation off the clock, don’t miss the chance to add another name to your list. Grocery store checkout small talk could lead to a new name on your client board.



Email Campaign Gaffes
You open your front door and find a pile of junk mail. You’re in the middle of dinner and the phone rings with an “exciting time share opportunity.” Or more to the point, you login to your email to the tune of countless spam items.

 Do you read or listen beyond the foil-laced envelope or telemarketer greeting? Nope.
How do you feel? Annoyed.


Don’t stoop to filling your email list without account owner permission. Stay away from Chamber of Commerce or purchased email lists.  Site “scraping” doesn’t work either. Sure, the email address is on the web, right out in the open, but it’s there for business contact, not unsolicited mailings.


In Summation
Email marketing campaigns have a lot of moving parts, all of which need to be well-tuned to succeed. Apply these tips to the construction of your own list and keep an eye out for future Terrapin blogs to improve your email marketing.

Learning from Wikipedia

Wikipedia comes off as a Google bully.

The go-to web encyclopedia shows up at or toward the top of the rankings in nearly every search. Do the two entities have some kind of sweetheart deal? Nope. Wikipedia has cracked the SEO code.

Quality AND Quantity
It’s no quick fix, quite the opposite, actually. To dominate the SEO game, patience, and A LOT of content, is virtue.  

To get Wikipedia-caliber rankings, think of Google as that unreasonable teacher you once had; you are regularly required to write novel-length papers. But you had to graduate, so you sucked it up and did it. You want your business and site to thrive, so suck it up and do it.

The more detailed, quality content you work into your site, the more keywords you generate.  As long as you distribute the keywords evenly and don’t resort to keyword “stuffing,” your rankings will improve.

This isn’t the opinion of some lone geek hacker. This strategy comes straight from the mouth of Google.

In his SEO video mailbag responses, Google Search Quality guru Matt Cutts constantly emphasizes “quality content” as the initiation for becoming one of the rankings elite. Again, this goes back to having the patience to crank out an opus per page of your own site.

Repetition without Being Repetitive
A Wikipedia search for “Mariana Trench” produced a 1600 word article. The word “Mariana” is used 26 times, not counting the Notes section. Because of the sheer length and detail of the article, use of this keyword was evenly distributed, avoiding keyword “stuffing.”

This goes back to the quality content concept stressed by Matt Cutts of Google. Speaking of which, the Wikipedia entry for Mariana Trench showed up number one in a Google search for that keyword.

Getting Crossed Up
Wikipedia also excels at cross-links. The contextual internal linking can hook a page on a comic book character to one detailing migration habits of bathypelagic fish. The catch here is the sheer volume of articles on Wikipedia’s site, estimated at 22 million.

With eight figures of page numbers, these cross ups can keep users clicking for hours. It’s like getting into a new band you saw open for the act you bought your ticket to see.

In Summation
If you can follow this blueprint with your site, you could be on your way to being the next Wikipedia. They’ve been at it for over a decade, and you might still be prepping for a launch, so just have some patience with your content, make sure it’s top shelf and construct your SEO around it.

Go for the Gold

Are you sick of seeing your competitors on that top platform proudly displaying their Google rankings gold?

Add Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertisements to your web campaign to take your own top spot.

Pay to Play
PPC is essentially a paid search engine advertisement. It utilizes keywords just like Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Your content shows up in search results as a top or flush right ad instead of an organic result.

With PPC, you set up the ad, establish a budget and only pay when a user clicks the ad. Once the budget is exhausted, the ad comes down unless you re-up.  

The upside to this particular training regimen, if implemented well, is instant gratification. PPC ads are ready to go immediately and will show up at the top assuming a good selection of keywords and sufficient budget. PPC is ideal for specific or seasonal campaigns your business might offer, as well as a long-term marketing tool.

Be Ready for Double Sessions
You’ve drawn in users with your top listing. But establishing lasting web dominance requires “two-a-day” workouts. Along with your PPC effort, Search Engine Optimization is a must.

SEO is like the exhausting, tedious components of Olympic training. The athletes would probably rather skip the endless sprints, laps and conditioning routines.

But these dreaded workouts are mandatory for success, as is SEO. There’s no infomercial-featured, “get ripped in a week” plan to get top-ranking search results honors.

A good SEO plan starts with quality, detailed content. Avoid blatant repetition of keywords, known as “stuffing.” You need to work effective keywords into your site in a natural way.

Never Stop Getting Better
Once you get in peak shape, you have to work to stay that way. Updating your site frequently with fresh content is the only way to stay at the top of your game once you hit that goal.

This all comes back to the aforementioned patience, the old “no pain, no gain” speech you’ll get at practice or the gym.

Bring it In
SEO’s the marathon, PPC’s the sprint. Sticking to this philosophy will give you a competitive edge to go for the gold.