Suse Barnes, Author at Digital Marketing Consulting, Social Media Marketing, Search Engine Marketing

Search Meets Social

December 10, 2009 Suse Barnes One comment

Google recognizes the power of the social connectors (aka social media) by showing real-time search results including content from Facebook and Twitter. Google is unveiling the “Latest Results” which will show tweets from Twitter streams, updates from Facebook, answers from YahooAnswers and more. To me this indicates the power of real-time results. The freshest content and opinions are what searchers are interested in. Google obviously respects the power of the crowd and continues to believe in us. After all, we are the people who power Google. Google both serves us and we serve them by clicking on ads. It’s a symbiotic relationship. I wonder if they will start showing Aardvark results as well.

Facebook, Internet, Search, SEO, Social Media, Twitter Facebook, Search, search engines, SEO, Social Media, Twitter

Make it fun and different and people will choose it over the easier way.

November 8, 2009 Suse Barnes Leave a comment

This video shows some genius thinking at work. This is the kind of creativity we all strive for. And you don’t even have to know German to understand the message.

Fun, Viral Video Viral Video

For Best Results in Social Media, Think L.O.V.E.

October 14, 2009 Suse Barnes 2 comments

On Sunday, I gave a presentation on Social Media for Market Research in Michaela Hayes‘ Market Research class for the Green MBA Program students at Dominican University of California.

In working on the deck, I came up with a new way to remember your what your social media plan should include. And it’s so easy to remember, because it spells the word LOVE. We all love to be loved, to be in love, to give love and to get love and that’s what social media is all about. It’s about LOVE.

L = Listen
O = Offer
V = Visit
E = Engage

Listen
Listening is one of the best ways to show your love for someone. You can’t have a conversation unless you are listening to the other person, (think your ideal audience) and asking them questions about how they are and what makes them happy. If you haven’t started listening in the social media space, a good place to start is with Google Alerts. Simply enter the name of your product, business, favorite person or project, and alerts will send you emails detailing any mentions of your interest on the web.

Twitter’s search allows you to see what peeps are tweeting about in the Twittersphere. Enter a few keyword phrases into search.twitter.com and see who is talking about it in on Twitter. Find the people you want to follow and join the global conversation.

Collecta.com is another way to get real time results and listen to the buzz about your product or industry online.

And a little out of the box, but still part of listening, is asking questions of your network: On Facebook, I dare you to ask your friends their opinion of __________ and on LinkedIn, pose a question to one of the groups you are a member of. You’ll be amazed at the number and quality of responses.

Offer
Having something to offer the love of your life is always a good thing, so think about what you can offer your ideal audience in your social networks as well. Are you sharing links to valuable content with them? Are you posting humorous videos, inspirational quotes, or even just quippy remarks. Whatever you are offering keeps you top of mind for the people that see your posts and that is always a good thing, because when they are thinking of referring a friend to an expert in your field, hello, you’re it.

Visit
What would a relationship be without visits? You have to spend time with someone in order to get to know them, silly. So go and visit some blogs about your favorite product, or topic. Post a comment or two and join the conversation. It may not lead to your next million right now, but it will make you feel good and allow you to practice sharing the love.

Engage
Yes, you’ve reached that point in the relationship when it’s time to pop the question. Is this a relationship with long term potential or mutual benefit? To engage your ideal audience, you need to add value, spark their attention, keep them informed and be top of mind. You want your ideal audience to think of you as an expert, a friend, a confident and someone with whom having a long term relationship will be good, so treat them with respect and show them some love.

Contests and giveaways work well for engaging as does plain old GOOD CONTENT!

So, my friends, here’s my advice to you: For best results in social media, think L.O.V.E.
Susan

P.S. I love you.

Blogging, Facebook, Social Media, Twitter Facebook, LinkedIn, Social Media, Twitter

YouTube Power

September 21, 2009 Suse Barnes Leave a comment

Video can be a very effective way to inform your customers and potential customers about your product.

I recently consulted with a very interesting company called iConfident in San Francisco’s Northbeach neighborhood. They create web-based software, which enables dentists and dental professionals to collaborate and communicate with great ease on things like dental implant parts.

I was working with them as part of a new venture with Click To Play Media and I was extremely impressed to learn of the success of a video produced by Click To Play Media, which has helped iConfident increase referrals by 70%. By adding the video to their “tell-a-colleague” form, they found that 70% more doctors and dentists were likely to send the referral along to their colleagues for a free trial as opposed to when there was no video. That is a huge difference.

So why is video so effective? Because the moving image is the closest thing to real life. If a video is well done, it can tell a story in a much shorter amount of time than it would take someone to read a description and it is easier to digest, because it is inherently entertaining and interesting. If you think about it, with moving pictures and audio, you have a much richer experience and it is far easier to grasp the gist of the story or idea. Since it’s more like You, you respond to it more quickly than plain text.

Click To Play Media captured testimonials of professionals using the product in a way that makes it easy for doctors who haven’t heard about the product understand the benefits and how iConfident can increase efficiency and save them money.

If you’re interested in creating a video for your company or product, please visit Click to Play Media and tell Anna you were referred by Susby.

business, Marketing, Viral Video business, Marketing, video, YouTube

How to add Google Analytics to your website or blog

September 20, 2009 Suse Barnes 3 comments

Remember, without measurement, there is no success. You have to measure and track whatever you are doing to know how much progress you are making.

Without a goal, there is no where to go, no finish line, no end, and without benchmarks you have no idea where you are, or where the starting line is. So, let’s see where we are in terms of traffic to our websites and blogs and then set some goals so that we can start our journey to accomplish them.

Below is a step by step process for putting a Google Analytics tracking code on your site or blog. If you don’t have a website or blog, then this post is probably not for you, but it you are interested in learning more about how to track visits to your site or blog, for free and with less than 15 minutes of set up time, please follow the instructions below.

If you don’t have a blog, set one up at http://www.blogger.com
You may need to create a Google Account to do this.
Once you have set up your blog. Create a few posts or entries about something you are interested in.
View your blog and copy the URL (from the address bar) of your blog
Open a new tab or window and go to http://analytics.google.com and press the blue “Access Analytics” button
Once you are logged in, look for the “Add Website Profile” link

2011-11-11 Update: If you don’t see the Add Website Profile link, look on the right hand side of the screen for “My Analytics Accounts: Select an account” and a drop down menu. Select “Create New Account” at the bottom of the drop down menu.
Click the Sign Up >> button
Paste your URL into the Add a Profile for a new domain field. It is important that you paste YOUR URL, i.e. only a website address or blog address that you have control of. You can NOT track a website or blog that you do not control. You may only track your own sites and blog.
Click the Continue >> button
Enter your Last Name and First Name and select your country, then click the Continue >> button
Agree to the terms and conditions by checking the box and then click the Create New Account >> button
Copy the script code on the following screen where you see “2. Paste this code onto your site.”
In blogger, go back to your blog and get to the dashboard, i.e. click new post or edit posts. In your website, you will be copying the script into each page, just before the closing </head> tag. If you have a website set up with a template, you may only need to do this once in a footer file. (If you are not using Blogger, skip to step 15.)
In Blogger, click on the Design tab, and then
Click on the Edit HTML link
Do a find [on a Windows machine, hold down the Ctrl + F keys at the same time, on a Mac hold down Command +F] for </head> in the HTML code page. Add a line break before you paste so that it works well.
Save the template and/or your work if you are not in blogger.
Go back to Google Analytics, which you still have open in another window or tab, and click “Save and Finish”
You will see a yellow triangle with an exclamation point in it. IMPORTANT: It takes 24 hours for the tracking to start happening. If everything is working correctly, in an hour or two, you should see a clock symbol, meaning that Google is “waiting for data.” Check back in 24 hours to make sure the tracking is working and ask your friends to visit your site or blog so that you can see some activity. When everything is working correctly, you’ll see a green checkmark next to the site when you next log into Google Analytics.

If you have any questions about any of the above steps, please leave a comment. Happy tracking!

Analytics, Blogging, Internet, Marketing, SEO Analytics, Marketing, SEO

Website Redesign: A Before and After

September 18, 2009 Suse Barnes Leave a comment

For the past few months, I have been fortunate to work with D’Layna Huguez-Dixon, Founder and President of Vocal Downloads for the redesign of the Vocal Downloads website. We were a small team with D’Layna doing a lot of the heavy lifting, I consulting on the project specifications, testing, some Flash animation, graphics optimization and requirements documentation, and one programmer to do all the code changes.

It has been quite a journey and we have finally reached destination number one: Phase 1 launch.

D’Layna’s emails all end with a quote which helps me understand her drive and also why I admire her so much. The quote is:

“If your vision is not your obsession, it will never be in your possession.”

Here’s a picture of before, and be sure to check out the after too.

Vocal Downloads Previously

: New Vocal Downloads Design

There are many new features including an annual subscription product, enhanced display of samples with expand and collapse options, new member profile and login functionality and the ability to save samples to your crate for purchasing and downloading later. Oh, and right out of the gate the site has a great website grade in terms of SEO as well.

I am so proud of D’Layna for her persistence and courage on this project. It is a labor of love and D’Layna has shown both the labor and the love in great abundance.

Please check out the redesigned website and let us know if you have any suggestions, observations or recommendations.

business, Clients, SEO, Web Design Marketing, redesign, SEO, web development, website redesign

Search Engine Marketing Checklist

September 14, 2009 Suse Barnes 2 comments

If you have a new website or even an old one that you haven’t looked at much in terms of how it performs on search engines, the following checklist will assist you in getting your website optimized for best performance in the free or organic listings on search engines and also what to look for and do if you are considering paid search.

Remember: If you are not on the first page of the search results, it is unlikely your listing will be clicked. People simply very seldom look further than the first page of search results.

Search Engine Marketing (SEO and SEM) Checklist

SEO

Are your Title tags describing the content on each page of your site effectively?
Do your Meta description and keyword tags accurately reflect the content on each page of your site?
Do you have Alt tags on each image?
Are you using real text for content (instead of graphics with text in them)?
Are you including keywords and are the keywords relevant to the content on each page?
Content: How good is it? If it’s not great, don’t expect a lot.
Is your site and content shareable?
Do you have an RSS feed set up?
How many links are coming into your site?
Can you think of people, site owners who would be willing to link to your site and content?
Have you asked those people to link to you?
Is your site link-worthy?
Have you submitted your site to search engines?
Have you started a blog and/or posted articles about your area of expertise or the product or service you are promoting with your site?
Are you checking how you rank against competitors for particular keyword terms?
Is your content fresh?
Have you run your site through http://website.grader.com?

SEM (Paid Search)

If you are unable to get a top page organic search result, have you considered paid search? Since Google has 84% market share, its AdWords Program is a good place to begin.
Are you choosing your keyword terms effectively?
Are you monitoring which ads are working better than others?
Are you monitoring which keywords are your best performers?
Do you have goals set up in your paid search tool? Is your site listed in as many places as possible?
How focused is each page of your site around a particular keyword term?
What are the top 5 keywords that people are finding you with on search engines?
Do you have pages dedicated to those top 5 keywords?

Measure, Monitor, Monitise (MMM)

Are you tracking your linkpopularity? http://www.linkpopularity.com is a good starting point.
Have you started tracking and monitoring visits to your site with analytics tools?
Do you have analytics on your site? Are you monitoring your statistics and making changes to the site according to what you notice from the statistics reports?

Marketing, Search, SEO Marketing, Search, search engines, SEO

Google AdWords and Keyword Matching Tutorial

September 12, 2009 Suse Barnes Leave a comment

If you are just starting out with an advertising account on Google, (aka a Google AdWords account), this quick keyword matching options tutorial will help you get the most from your campaign and maximize your return on investment.

Key points to remember:

Targeting your keywords saves you money and increases ROI
Use exact matches as much as possible
Use phrase matches
Use broad matches sparingly
Use negative matches so that you are only getting clicks from people who are really interested in your product or service

Keyword Matching Options from Google

Marketing, Search Marketing, Search, tutorial

An Introduction to Social Networking Presentation in Oakland

September 10, 2009 Suse Barnes Leave a comment

Save the date: September 25, 2009 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

I am honored to have been invited and excited to be giving a presentation titled “An Introduction to Social Networking: Tools to Grow Your Business, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn…what works for you?” The presentation is to women entrepreneurs as part of a joint effort by Honorable Jane Brunner, Oakland City Council President and the East Bay Community Foundation. It is one of many presentations in Councilperson Jane Brunner’s “Women In Business” Brownbag Lunch Series – Informative workshops targeted at women entrepreneurs.

It should be a great way to personally network with some cool women in business as well. Please share this flyer with your friends and colleagues.

To attend, please RSVP by September 21, 2009 to Luis Aguilar via email at laguilar@eastbaycf.org or phone at (510) 208-0845.

Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized Facebook, LinkedIn, Marketing, presentation, Social Media, Twitter

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