Expert Advice on Perfecting Your Internet Marketing

We know you’re a smart, savvy business owner (you’re reading this post, after all), so we know you’ve written a thoughtful business plan that you revisit periodically.

We also know that you have an easy-to-navigate and easy-to-find website, where customers can find and buy what they’re looking for with no hassles. Now all that’s left to do is increase traffic to your site.

For advice on perfecting your internet marketing, we turned to Claiborne Yarbough, the business development manager for Paveya, a North Carolina-based inbound marketing agency. Yarbough spends a third of each day following trends and reading blogs of industry influencers to stay up-to-date on the latestinternet marketing.

She says one of the most critical thing a business owner can do to build traffic to her site is to keep the site current.

“Never has relevant, updated content been more critical,” Yarbough said. “I participated in a webinar the other day where the speaker said that your blog is ‘like an annuity that pays out over time.’ Great distillation of the value of a blog.”

For more advice from Yarbough on building a great website for your business and polishing your marketing plan, read on.

What are some best practices for building an effective website for a small business?

• Build a strong foundation for continued growth by working with a professional marketing agency that will understand your goals for your business — that tells you how to construct the website.
• Be realistic. Don’t overbuild the website in anticipation of the business you are going to become. On the other hand, use good technology, like content management software, so that you will have some flexibility in the short and long term.
• You must include a blog. You must write the blog. If you are passionate enough to start a small business then you have a great story that makes you different from everyone else.
• Make sure you leverage your social channels to drive leads and traffic to your website.

What are the most common mistakes small business owners make when building a site?

I can’t tell you the number of times that a small business owner has told me that their “brother/son/college roommate/the 18-year-old across the street” does websites. I also can’t emphasize enough that you get what you pay for and there is a lot that goes into a successful website. If the small business owner doesn’t at least try to set a reasonable marketing budget and use most of it on internet marketing, their company will be left behind. Consider that as we speak, 46 percent of us are online searching for goods or services each month, and 70 percent of these people will use their smartphone to search for a product or service that will result in their taking an action (find the store, make a purchase, recommend to a friend) in less than one hour.

What component should every internet marketing campaign have?

Honesty. Marketing as a shell game is over. Your customers are looking for goods or service and they want to trust the business owner that can provide that to them. Engage them in a one-on-one, genuine conversation (which you can do through a variety of channels) and you will have a successful internet marketing campaign.

Where can a small business owner go for help building a website and marketing on the web? What tools should they use to build traffic?

A small business owner should probably do a search for an inbound marketing agency … this kind of marketing agency is geared to a consultative sales approach that will benefit the small business owner. I can’t say this enough, blogging  is so important and it is something that everyone can do.

What tips do you have for launching an effective marketing campaign on social media? What should you be doing beyond posting a link back to your website?

Social media is a great opportunity to be in conversation with your leads and customers. There is nothing wrong with posting a link back to your site (in fact you had better do that). But I see social media as the opportunity to continually refine who your target market is and what it is that they are looking for and what speaks to them. Marketing is no longer outbound only. Be in dialog with your “community.” As you become a trusted resource, your posts or pins will be shared with the holy grail of marketing — the recommendation to friends and family.

Name some companies you think do internet marketing well – what can we learn from them?

Paveya is now a strategic partner with HubSpot (www.hubspot.com), which by far has the slickest internet marketing campaign I’ve seen. I am also very impressed with Amazon and Zappos—the level of consistency of service is remarkable. They invest in it and it shows. Finally, I am also watching Target come up to speed.

What are the top three things every small business owner should know about SEO?

1. You have to have it or no one is going to find you. Everyone has a website.
2. Don’t be afraid of long tailed keywords. Think men’s-red-athletic-shoes-for-hiking, not red shoes.
3. SEO is now as much about relevant, updated content. Can I say one more time how important it is to blog?

How often should you reevaluate your marketing strategies? How do you know when to change what you’re doing or try something new?

You should spend an hour or two every month analyzing and thinking about your marketing strategies. If you are not seeing consistent growth (lead conversion) it is time for a new approach.

Learn more about Paveya and read Claiborne’s blogs at www.paveya.com.

http://www.resourcenation.com/blog/expert-advice-on-perfecting-your-internet-marketing/36161/

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The 7 Essential Practices of the New Sales Professional

photo credit: Official GDC via photopin cc

Last week I wrote about what I called theDisciplines of the New Sales Professional. What I was describing more than anything was a mindset shift or maybe even the strategic approach to sales that must exist these days.

What I want to address today are the practices, some not always associated with sales jobs, required to excel in the new sales environment.

If last week’s post was the strategy, this is the tactics. These are the skills that sales professionals will need to acquire and that organizations need to support, train and look for in their sales teams.

1) Create a platform

It’s no longer enough to be a part of the brand; today’s salesperson needs to take charge of his or her own platform. This means creating an online presence that includes content, SEO, email marketing, social media and maybe even awareness advertising. These are the building blocks for creating an online reputation and community and moves beyond simply completing network profiles.

2) Become an authority

One of the most important ways to shift the context of the sales job is to build an expertise and reputation for sharing useful information. This is how you start the process of being invited to share your ideas before your competition knows there is an opportunity. You do this by authoring educational articles, speaking at industry and community events and even facilitating things like Google+ Hangout discussions among customers and prospects.

3) Mine networks

The new suite of online tools make it much easier to listen to entire markets and drill down and discover invaluable intelligence such as what people lack, who they report to, and what their objectives for the year are. Sales people must get very good at listening for clues and mining networks to create interdepartmental relationships and to connect the dots between who needs help and who they can help.

4) Build problems

Prospects have gotten very good at figuring out solutions to the problems they’ve identified due in large part to access to unprecedented amounts of data and information available online. Today’s sales professional has to get good at understanding and building cases for problems that the market doesn’t yet know exist. This is a skill that comes from helping customers think bigger about what’s possible first and foremost.

5) Finish the sale

I’ve always contended that a sale is not a sale until the customer receives a result. This mindset means that you have to get involved in the experience, before, during and after the commitment or sales is made. Staying connected in this manner is also how you get more referrals and better understand the needs of a client going forward.

6) Measure results

It’s amazing how much more convincing someone is when they truly believe in something. I’ve found that salespeople who have trouble asking for referrals or making sales in general often don’t fully understand or believe in the value their products and service deliver. When you help your client determine and understand the ultimate results they derive, after the sale, you gain a measure of poster that moves beyond confidence and into something more like certainty.

7) Balance energy

Time management is almost passé in a conversation about these new tactics. Traditional sales tactics amounted to pounding the phones and tracking numbers. Obviously, many of the practices I’ve deemed essential will need to draw from areas that have not always been considered selling activities. Today’s sales professional has to make space for strategies and tactics, for time and energy needed to focus on publishing, speaking and serving clients. This requires and new way of thinking about how time and energy is allocated and it takes a great deal of stamina.

There’s no question that what I’m describing is going to require a new view of the role of a sales professional. This view will require that organizations hire differently, train differently and measure differently in order to change the context of selling internally and externally.

This view will require marketing departments that enable sales teams to act a lot more like marketers.

ducttapemarketing.com

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SEO Consulting in 2013: What the Pros Know that You Don’t

SEO is changing, and for the most part, the life of an SEO consultant is getting better. Gone are the days of open keyword data and mass link buying, but we’ve been lucky to gain a few things too. Most notably, we’ve gained the ability to justify the cost of good SEO and shown that a good SEO consultant is worth the additional expense in easy to understand terms and ideas such as ROI and lifetime value.

As in all walks of life, it seems that the pros are always one step ahead of the amateurs and the hobbyists. What separates the pros from the amateurs in 2013 isn’t going to be a self-proclaimed “expert” title in their bio on LinkedIn. In 2013 it’s all about strong content and quantitative analysis to determine what’s effective and what isn’t.

Here’s what’s really important in 2013, and beyond.

Content is king. Really, we mean it this time.

Google has been telling us for years that content was king. Somewhere deep down inside, I think they really meant it.

SEO experts knew that content was important, but the only benefit to good content over bad content was the potential to get it shared, thus building more links in the process. Other than that, content was content. If it were indeed king, it was the king of a place we’ve never heard of.

Now, Google has shown the world that it means business. The “new” search results are going to favor brands – whether personal or corporate – to low-quality, niche-specific, here today gone tomorrow websites or those that just build massive amounts of low-quality content (I’m looking at you eHow) in order to spam the search listings with as many of their indexed pages as possible.

Maybe content was king all along, and Google just found the right algorithm change to weed out most of the bad content by sending it to the depths of the search results. Or maybe Google held on to the idea for far too long that links were absolutely the most important tool in SEO; even though what they really wanted was good and relevant content, even though they didn’t have a quantitative way to measure what good content and bad content looked like (other than human review). We’ll never know.

What we do know is that bad content is a thing of the past, at least if you plan to build a site that generates a decent amount of organic search engine traffic.

Backlinks are losing ground to stronger rankings metrics.

Backlinks are still the most important metric when it comes to ranking a site, but they’re quickly losing ground to other – more modern – metrics such as social indicators, citations, and instances of co-occurrence. In short, SEO is becoming more and more similar to PR every day.

Pro tip: If you’re a PR guy (or girl) it might be time to add a bit of SEO knowledge to your repertoire before you’re completely obsolete.

Content doesn’t mean blogging (necessarily).

Every SEO consultant or person who happens to rely on content in order to drive traffic, leads or sales dies a little inside when we talk about content with clients only to hear about how they’re “already blogging.”

Content is writing. Content is also video, podcasting, design (infographics, presentations, etc.), and social media posting. There are quite literally dozens of ways to produce content and writing it in  a blog is certainly not the only way. Depending on your business, it might not even be the most effective way.

In essence, content is a way to express thoughts or ideas to other people. Writing is but one of may forms of content, and it is certainly something you should educate your clients to understand.

Integrated strategies are the new one trick pony.

In the last few years, the Internet marketing community has grown very segmented. With the rise of segmentation within our industry, we’ve come to rely on several one trick ponies – or people who specialize in just one thing – to get the job done.

The future is made for the strong generalist within all of us. SEO in general is switching from building backlinks, analyzing keywords and optimizing pages to an all-encompassing medium focused on everything from social media strategy to content production.

SEO consultants of the future don’t necessarily have to be good at everything, but they certainly need to be aware that SEO is more than linking and optimization, which is largely what the past generation of SEO revolved around. The good SEOs of the future understand that SEO is a mix of research, optimization, link & citation building, content production, social media and data mining. SEO can’t stand on its own anymore. To succeed in the future, you have to understand the importance of integrated marketing strategies and how to implement them for your clients.

There’s no better time to be (or hire) a great writer.

Anyone who calls himself an SEO consultant – or SEO expert – knows 2013 is the year of the writer, thus making it the year of content. We’ve been building to this point for quite some time, but the time has finally arrived where the best writers – or those that know how to find and retain the best writers – are going to leap frog over the outsourced link builders and the automated software. In short, this is the year the SEO consultant that plays by the rules is really going to shine.

For the first time in the history of search engines, we’re starting to see sites with established and authoritative writers ranked better than those that aren’t as high on the food chain. For example, Rand Fishkin is always going to have better ranking content on the subject of SEO than me, no matter how good I am at SEO. The reason for this is due to the perceived authority (deservedly so) that Rand has achieved within the SEO community.

The same goes for your business, or your clients. Better writers are beginning to show greater returns on investment than the $25 articles from no-name writers we’ve been purchasing from freelancers for the last decade.

It’s time to really dive in and learn all you can about producing great content, or to find someone who can. Good content runs in the range from $75 – $350+ for a blog post, but those that are producing the best content are those that are going to be rewarded with the links, shares, and recognition within the industry.

Cheap content is dead and gone.

There is no more room for shortcuts.

Automation software and overseas employees used to rule the SEO game.

Those days are gone. SEO is now an art form that needs micro managing and near constant supervision.

When your clients ask, can you tell them with 100-percent confidence that nothing is going on that is going to get them penalized by Google? Of course you can’t. And if you can’t be sure that you are providing value to your clients, you shouldn’t be in this business in the first place.

Conclusion

Good SEO consultants are constantly on top of the changes that happen (seemingly daily) within the industry. The main thing that separates a good SEO from a bad one is education. Educate yourself, and stay on top of trends in order to provide your client with the most bang for their buck and you’ll stay relevant no matter what changes the SEO world faces in the future.

ducttapemarketing.com

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Logos and the Psychology of Colour

In the process of building new brands, there are three steps that I love:

1. Naming: The naming of your new brand can be fraught – but should be fun. Coming up with a name that is descriptive enough for your customers but imaginative enough to draw them in can take far longer than you can imagine. Then once you have a name, securing and registering it can take time and more than a little money. There are some agencies dedicated to naming, and if you have a big budget it would be fabulous to work with them … but if you’re running a startup, chances are you’ll be doing the naming over a few beers with your mates. Be sure to think through the various combinations of the name and how it will be used. After all, you don’t want to follow the example of promo pen company Pen Island.
2. Planning: No surprise here – but I get quite a kick out of the planning process. From building out the communications architecture through to building out the business case, planning is an important step for any startup. You’ll be amazed what you can learn in a couple of days – and the research and analysis (not to mention the discipline) will hold you in good stead as you start to seek funding and build your core team.
3. Visual design: Most people think that branding is about logos. A logo is just part of the branding process … but it does need to be given time and attention. And budget always helps. Even if you have budget, it still helps greatly to provide a solid brief to your designer – which is where your planning will help. Make sure you share your research and thinking – explain the various use cases and audiences that your new business will impact. Provide a list of “attributes” that describe your brand. Be clear about the vision you have for the future of your brand. All this information should soak into the appearance of your logo and the visual design of your band.

Now that you have a name, some understanding of the potential of your business and some ideas for your logo, take that list of attributes and find them in the list in this infographic from MuseDesign. Pay special attention to other logos that you see and that you admire. Think about how they are using colour to engage you emotionally. What can you learn from great logos? Which designs make your heart jump?

After all, if you want your brand to be memorable, you’ll need all the branding help you can get.

Read more at http://www.business2community.com/branding/logos-and-the-psychology-of-colour-0395505#bLvzXwwMxE9zFzTX.99 

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4 New Ways to Personalize Google Analytics

With so much of today’s marketing and advertising being geared towards personalization, it’s no wonder Google Analytics took it’s interface a step forward in making their dashboard a little more personalized for users too. Earlier this month, a handful of changes were implemented, all of which make Google Analytics easier for its users and provides a much more unified placement for tools within the platform.

Customized Dashboards

A huge beneficial change to the new Google Analytics platform is that it now gives users the ability to create personalized dashboards. This then offers up a lot more options when it comes to how the dashboard is laid out and how users can see their data. With this change, Google Analytics now offers a handful of options available when choosing the best layout for you.

What is nice about the new personalized dashboard is the added feature that you now have the ability to share them with others. This feature allows users to have their dashboard seen by others, such as stakeholders, marketing directors and IT managers, and export a personalized view to each, based on what data their department needs.

New Dashboards Widgets

Two new widgets have been added to the updated dashboards; Geo Maps and Bars. Within the Geo Maps widget, users are now able to color code by country, state, etc. While the Bars widget provides more advanced graphing of data.

Updated Navigation

Fewer tabs now line the top of Google Analytics. This is yet another change that’s been implemented to provide a more powerful dashboard to users. Reporting, Customization, Admin and Help are the only tabs now listed atop the dashboard. This area has been cleaned up, moving some of the tabs to the left sidebar, which makes for a more unified placement of tools.

Another neat addition to the new Google Analytics interface is that the top orange navigation bar now floats with the page. So rather than being a static component on each page, this bar now scrolls down along with the user.

Advanced Segments Added to Dashboard

The updated Google Analytics interface now provides Advanced Segments as a feature on the dashboard. This tool is nothing new to the platform, but with its move to the dashboard, again, makes for easier gathering of specific data for users. So, for example, those interested in looking at paid traffic performance versus organic traffic performance can click on the Advanced Segments button (upper left corner of the dashboard, near Audience Overview in standard Google Analytics dashboard layout), select two options you’re interested in seeing reports on, and hit “Apply” to review the data.

As you can see, there have been some pretty simple, yet beneficial changes to the Google Analytics interface. This comes as a pleasant revision to the already highly useful platform.

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The Evolution of Social Media Marketing

Before the social media boom, marketers thought social media marketing was just another fad that would soon likely pass, something in the vein of pyramid and networking scams. But when Facebook started attracting attention from the year 2004, more and more social media marketing strategies were developed. Today, this marketing tool has allowed start-ups and established companies to gain attention without having to spend millions of dollars on advertisements.

A Brief History

Before there was social media, netizens in the 1970s and 1980s spent most of their time on social networks like dating sites and online forums. Six Degrees, Livejournal, and Friendster were the earliest form of social medias.

The dot-com bubble of 1995 – 2002 was a critical event that allowed the internet to become a viable marketing tool. It began with search marketing, prompting brands to create websites to establish an online presence. As Google, Yahoo and MSN’s search engines evolved, companies turned to SEO strategies to remain at the top of search results.

When web 2.0 sites – blogs in particular – increased in popularity, marketers began to recognize the potential of content marketing. Inbound marketing, where more value is added for the customer and business is earned, starts replacing age-old “buy, beg or bug” outbound marketing strategies.

In 2003 – 2004, the arrival social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and My Space initiates the shift of internet users from multiplayer online games into social networking sites. Eventually, businesses picked up on the positive effects of a social media site presence on e-commerce and started creating their own profiles on the popular networking sites.

In the years that followed, customer’s favorable attitude towards social media marketing slowly changed business marketing preference from the more aggressively-proactive outbound marketing to the more reactive inbound marketing.

Nowadays, over 90% of marketing executives utilize social media as part of their marketing strategies, and successful businesses utilize social media marketing for branding, lead generation, customer retention, research and e-commerce. Not only does social media manage to significantly reduce marketing expenses and the time needed to market products and services, it also increased the effectiveness of marketing and overall customer satisfaction. 83% of customers who post complaints on a brand’s social site like Twitter and get a reply state that they are satisfied. This helped companies retain more of their customers, resulting to increased existing customer transactions.

Capitalizing on free Internet

There are over 2 billion people online at any given time. Around 23% of the total time spent on the internet is spent on browsing or interacting within social media sites. At least 53% of individuals who are active on social media sites such as Facebook are following a brand. With the help of global internet, more and more customers (if not all) are expecting their brands to have an online presence.

This year’s tablets, iPads, and Android-operated phones will only make internet browsing all the more accessible for consumers, and social media marketing will allow companies to reach out to more target markets. As long as the internet exists, social media will remain an important part of marketing strategies.

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CEO Hits at SEO Posts Tips; Shifts from Traditional Styles to New Methodologies

CEO and founder James Reynolds of SEO Sherpa takes on SEO posts in a different light. The aim is to upgrade content writing to professional Search Engine Optimisation quality and to improve page ranking and online presence.

7 Elements Of An A-Grade SEO Post

The aim is to get people to read through the content you want them to read.

James Reynolds tackled content writing and brought it to a new level by providing content writers advice on how to improve their posts and make it at par with professionally written SEO content.

Utilizing new technologies and updated methods for effective keyword management, Reynolds focused on important elements in effective content writing. He noted that presentation should be given utmost consideration because this provided more value and recall to a website. “The aim is not just to get people on your site,” he said, “but to read through the content you want them to read.”

The seven keys to effective keyword management were presented as follows: providing a good title, creating a video, providing a transcription of the video, adding a picture to a content, converting transcribed text in to a pdf file, adding social media sharing and, lastly, showing related posts.

“These really help people to find the stuff on your site that they may be interested in,” Reynolds explained. “These eventually would be converted to sales and search engines are more likely to place your website at the top.”

The alternatives available for website administrators and website owners to adopt would be to have an efficient SEO (Search Engine Optimization) service provider or to apply the seven tips enumerated above to improve online visibility. SEO Sherpa is one provider that could provide efficiency both in keyword placement and in utilizing the seven techniques in improving website rankings.

Visit SEO Sherpa for more information regarding this news and other important developments in keyword management and professional SEO practices.

About James Reynolds

James Reynolds is the founder of Search Engine Optimisation agency, SEO Sherpa, and Google Adwords Pay-Per-Click management company, Click Jam. He is an expert in helping entrepreneurs drive sales and increase the overall responsiveness and profitability of their online marketing. James has earned great respect in the field and is an experienced internet marketing speaker appearing at events worldwide and often in the media in Dubai, where he resides.

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7 Essential Books on Developing iPhone and Android Apps

7 Essential Books on Developing iPhone and Android Apps: For Beginners as well as Professionals

Believe it or not, we’re amidst a Mobile App Revolution with the smartphone industry growing at a break-neck pace. Over 21 billion apps have been downloaded for Apple and Android devices alone and the market is expected to make revenue of $30 billion annually over the next few years. So, it’s not a silly thing, if you’re up to cash in on the app gold rush, by developing applications for leading mobile phone operating systems.

iPhone and iPad Apps for Absolute Beginners

If you have an idea for an interesting iPhone app, but being from a non-tech background, you don’t know how to build software applications. Or else, thinking to spend a couple of years learning complicated programming languages. Then, let me tell you that you don’t need to learn any of those brain teasing things. Anyone can start developing simple applications for the iPhone and iPad, and the book “iPhone and iPad Apps for Absolute Beginners“ by Rory Lewis, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Colorado, will show you how. In a language using plain English that everyone can understand, and with practical examples, this book will help you in getting your first iphone apps up and running. It cuts through the fog of jargon and misinformation that usually envelops iPhone apps development process, and gives you simple yet step-by-step instructions to get started with.

iPhone OS Development: Your visual blueprint for developing apps for Apple’s mobile devices

Whereas, the book “iPhone OS Development: Your visual blueprint for developing apps for Apple’s mobile devices“ provides essential tips, tricks, and techniques for the development of the iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. This book touches every aspects from the key features of the Objective-C language, to hands-on tips for getting the most from the Apple SDK, to inside information about programming the touch screen, accelerometer, GPS, graphics, sound, and connectivity. This handy guide includes all the information a newbie needs to create his/her first application, as well as references facts for professional developers who requires distilled information about iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch technologies.

If you know working on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you already have the tools you need to build your own iPhone and android apps. With books — “Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript“, and “Pro Android Web Apps“, you’ll learn how to use these open source web technologies to design and develop apps for the iOS and android devices on the platform of your choice, without using Objective-C or Cocoa.

App Inventor for Android

“App Inventor for Android: Build Your Own Apps – No Experience Required“ is a book that will help you creating apps for the Android platform, even if you have limited programming experiences. It offers a visual language that works on simple programming blocks that users can drag and drop to develop apps. Further, this handy guide proffers you a series of fully worked-out apps, completed with their programming blocks, which you may customize for your own use or can utilize as a initial step for developing the next killer app.

Pro Android Media: Developing Graphics, Music, Video, and Rich Media Apps

Smartphone users are largely indulged in applications that allow them to play, capture, and share media in a variety of new ways on their mobile devices. You can exploit this fact by creating such media oriented apps. For this, you can go through the book“Pro Android Media: Developing Graphics, Music, Video, and Rich Media Apps for Smartphones and Tablets“. It provides concise and clear instruction on how to make use of the media APIs made available through Android to create dynamic apps. In a language easy to comprehend, this book takes you from a simple means to gain access to the camera to complex video capture and sharing examples. It further covers sound, graphics, painting, and more –all that you need to make your app come alive.

3D for iPhone Apps with Blender and SIO2

Learn to create exciting, interactive 3D apps for the very hot devices of the time — iPhone and iPod Touch, with the Tony Mullen’s book “3D for iPhone Apps with Blender and SIO2“. This is the most handy guide to create 3D games and more by utilizing open-source Blender software and the SI02 game engine. Whether you’re a professional iPhone developer or a Blender artist, this book is for you.

I’ve managed to compile this list of books on Apps Development because I think I’m a real tech nerd. Oh yes, I do try my mind and hands, in my spare time, on developing my own mobile apps. The above mentioned books are my personal pick which I believe will help you, too.

Now, it’s your turn to share with me about your handy guide, if you’ve any. Please comment below!

Read more at here 

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Tips For Taming The Internet Marketing Beast

TIP! Your emails are essential for your Internet marketing plan. It is important to protect your emails.

If you want a successful business, you need to utilize Internet marketing to connect with any potential customers who are online. This article has helpful information to help you become a success through Web marketing. Since you’ve read this article, you now know what it takes to be a successful Internet marketer.

TIP! Even small internet based businesses should have a company logo and a catchy slogan. Slogans and logos are important in helping to build your brand by giving customers a way to remember you.

Make up goals for your website and do everything you can to stick with them. What kind of articles do you want to publish? What directories do you want to publish your articles to? Directories have article requirements that you should be aware of. Always keep these guidelines in the back of your mind whenever you write.

TIP! Try to get inside the brain of your customers when creating your website. If you can provide them with the information or products they are searching for, then sooner or later your marketing efforts will have paid off and result in many sales.

Create a video featuring you using your product. Customers love seeing products in use, so take advantage of this fact and make a promotional video. Display the benefits of your product, as well as unadvertised features. You can host your video on your own website as well as posting it to video-sharing sites.

TIP! Choose a domain name that is easy for people to remember. If you can, it is best to include your business’s name or major brand in the URL.

Leave a form at the end of your ad copy that allows those who have decided not to make a purchase to tell you why. Their specific reasons will be a great help to you in improving your site.

TIP! “Limited” should be written into the content of your ad. People shop online due to their local stores lacking what they want.

When you look at successful internet marketers, one thing you will find in common is that they carry a high level of enthusiasm for the business. Make sure you communicate your confidence in your products. Your enthusiasm will be contagious if your testimony is genuine and convincing. Be sure to update your content often and make sure all your information is up-to-date.

TIP! Try remaining objective when looking at your site. Do you find it customer friendly? Does the content make sense? Can orders be placed on your website quickly and easily? It’s pointless to do all the SEO strategies and leg work necessary to bring in the customers, then lose them with a confusing and sub-par website.

As mentioned above, you can increase your online visibility through the use of focused Internet promotion. When you are not seeing the results you wish for through other means of advertising, Internet marketing may save your day! Use the tips in this article to get started, and market your business online.

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102 Compelling Social Media and Online Marketing Stats and Facts for 2012 (and 2013)

With 92% of companies now incorporating social media into their marketing efforts, it’s no longer sufficient to just “be there” on social networks. Today’s most effective marketers are optimizing content across channels, coordinating search and social marketing activities with traditional PR, and measuring their web presence and performance with sophistication.
The first step to improving digital marketing results is to understand the emerging trends and best practices. This post, along with 79 Remarkable Social Media Marketing Facts and Statistics for 2012 and 87 More Vital Social Media Marketing Facts and Stats for 2012 previously published here, provide a solid foundation for that understanding.
What do buyers really want from social media marketers? What’s the key to generating more inbound marketing leads? What is the source of the largest share of social traffic to websites? (It’s not what you almost certainly think.)
Find the answers to these questions and many, many more here in over 100 engaging and intriguing social, search, content, inbound, email, mobile and other marketing stats and facts from the past few months.

25 Social Media Facts and Statistics

1. While 76% of marketers believe “they know what their consumers want” in terms of social media content and interaction, only 34% have actually asked those buyers. (e-Strategy Trends)
2. At least on the B2C side, there is a disconnect between what marketers think consumers think is important and what consumers actually value. Marketers believe the highest consumer priorities on social media are insights for buying decisions (59%) and customer service (58%). Consumers actually place the highest value on deals and promotions (83%) and rewards programs (70%). (e-Strategy Trends)
3. B2B buyers are most likely to share useful vendor content via email (79%), followed by LinkedIn (53%), Twitter (39%) and Facebook (18%). (Earnest Agency)
4. While three-quarters of marketers consider measurement of social media impact important, 70% say that measuring those results is difficult. (Marketing Charts)
5. 79% of marketers measure website traffic from social media, and 68% track engagement metrics on social networks, but just 26% measure the relationship of social media activity to leads and sales. (Marketing Charts)
6. Just 4% of marketers said their companies were “very effective” at measuring social marketing in 2012. While 47% felt somewhat good at social measurement in 2011, just 38% said the same in 2012. “Nearly half of respondents (47%) feel they or their companies are either not very good at social marketing measurement, or do not measure well at all.” (Marketing Charts)
7. Ever feel frustrated and less productive than you’d like to be at work, even though you’re working hard and putting in a ton of hours? There’s a reason for that! Interruptions (like email and social media) are messing us up. Consider:

• • The typical worker is interrupted once every 28 minutes on average.
• • 28% of the average work day is spent on interruptions and recovery time.
• • 45% of workers believe they are expected to work on too many things at once.
• • And tasks done in parallel take on average 30% longer to complete than those performed in a sequence.

(Visual.ly)
8. Everyone knows women vastly outnumber men on Pinterest, but how about on other social networks? Women make up the larger share of users on Facebook (58% to 42%) and are a slightly larger share on Twitter (52% to 48%) while men are the predominate users of LinkedIn (63% to 37%) and Google+ (71% to 29%). Furthermore, half of all Google+ users are under 25 years old. (iMedia Connection)
9. Social CRM is still confusing. Only 16% of companies say they currently have a social CRM system in place. 21% plan to implement such a system in the coming year, but another 17% “don’t know what a social CRM system is and why businesses need it.” (Convince & Convert)
10. Only a quarter of all U.S. small businesses (20-99 employees) and a third of midsized companies say they use social media “to engage with customers and prospects in a strategic and structured way.” Another 20% of both groups say they use social media, but in an ad hoc manner. (eMarketer)
11. Despite growing interest in the concept of social business, less than 20% of U.S. companies have integrated social media with their customer service, sales, or product development processes. (eMarketer)
12. Worldwide, 86% of companies have a presence on Facebook and Twitter, while just over half use YouTube and Linked and only slightly more than a third have a presence on Pinterest and/or Google+. (eMarketer)
13. More than 80% of small to midsized businesses (SMBs) plan to increase their use of social media in 2013. Not suprising, considering that 87% of SMBs say that social media has helped them either somewhat or a great deal in th past year. Of those using this channel, social media accounts for 32% of SMB marketing activities. (Marketing Charts)
14. Okay, so most marketers have now embraced social media. But why? 84% of marketers say they use social media to “reach customers at multiple touchpoints,” while 62% want to reach customers where they spend time and 56% say that “customers expect them to be on social media.” (Marketing Charts)
15. Still, not every small business should be using social media—or at least not using it as they are currently. 79% of small business owners on Twitter post just once per day or even less frequently, yet one out of three want to spend less time on social media. These business owners would be best advised to either spend their time on other tactics or hire someone who knows and enjoys social media to interact on their businesses’ behalf. No deposit, no return. (Leaders West)
16. Social media may be good for 99 things, but lead generation ain’t one of them. According to research from MarketingSherpa, just 12% of marketers rate social media as “very effective” for lead gen while 27% say it is “not effective.” The only tactic that fares worse is print advertising (9% very effective vs. 30% not effective). (B2B Lead Blog)
17. Which social network sends the largest share of website traffic? The answer is…unknown. Literally. The well-known social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit account for, combined, on average, less than half of all social traffic. The majority (as much as 70%) is “dark social”—links shared through email or instant messaging that generally get lumped in with “direct” traffic in analytics programs like Google Analytics. (The Atlantic)
18. The most popular social media sites for distributing B2B content are LinkedIn (used by 83% of B2B marketers), Twitter (80%) and Facebook (also 80%). After that, it falls off sharply; 61% use YouTube, 39% are on Google+, 26% utilize Pinterest (really?) and 23% share content on SlideShare. (MarketingProfs)
19. Using social media boosts website traffic: companies gain a 185% lift in Web traffic after achieving 1,000 Facebook likes, and businesses with 51 to 100 Twitter followers generate 106% more traffic than those with 25 or fewer followers. (MarketingProfs)
20. 92% of U.S. companies now use social media in their marketing efforts. (Heidi Cohen)
21. Different social media channels serve different purposes. Blogging is generally seen as most valuable for SEO, YouTube for content marketing, and social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn most helpful for branding and engagement. (Heidi Cohen)
22. Globally, eight different social networks have now reached the 100 million user mark. Three of those (Weibo, the fourth-largest social nework, RenRen at #5 and Badoo at #7) are primarily used by non-English speakers. (WordPress Hosting SEO)
23. The average user spends nearly seven hours per month on Facebook, but just 21 minutes on Twitter, 17 on LinkedIn, and only three minutes on Google+. (WordPress Hosting SEO)
24. Social media now accounts for 18% of all time spent online, and the average American spends 6.9 hours per month on social networking. But we are spending less time on the phone, sending/reading email, and watching TV than we did just a few years ago. (WordPress Hosting SEO)
25. One-third of CEOs fail to consider their compananies’ social media reputation when making business decisions. (The Backup List)

12 WPO, Inbound and Content Marketing Stats

26. Leads from inbound marketing cost on average 61% less ($135 vs. $346) than outbound marketing leads. (Earnest Agency)
27. Though it varies across industries, of course, 24% of overall marketing spending last year was on digital/online marketing. Social media and SEO together account for 70% of that spending. (iMedia Connection)
28. Blogging generally gets the largest share of inbound marketing budgets, followed by social media, SEO (if calculated separately from blogging) and PPC advertising. Most outbound marketing spend is on telemarketing, followed by direct mail and trade shows. (iMedia Connection)
29. 57% of companies say they generated sales through their blogs, and an identical share have closed business through LinkedIn. 48% have generated customers through Twitter and 42% through Facebook. (iMedia Connection)
30. Why web presence optimization metrics are vital: half of marketers say tightening integration between social media and traditional marketing is a key goal for 2013, yet nearly a third identify that as one of their top social marketing challenges, and a whopping 57% way measuring social ROI is a challenge. (Convince & Convert)
31. 9 out of 10 marketers say they measure social presence (e.g., number of followers and fans) and social media-driven website traffic, but only about half measure share of voice and sentiment. (Convince & Convert)
32. Need more evidence that measuring social media ROI is hard? While about 90% of all companies do some form of social media marketing, just one out of eight measure the revenue impact directly from social media. (eMarketer)
33. The two biggest challenges faced by B2B content marketers are producing enough content (cited by 29% of marketers) and producing the kind of content that engages (18). Only 2% of marketers say that finding trained content marketing professionals is a big challenge. (MarketingProfs)
34. More content = more leads. On average, companies “with 51-100 web pages generate 48% more traffic than companies with 1-50 pages.” What’s interesting though is the differential is larges for very small companies (those with less than 10 employees), likely because larger companies make greater use of lead gen tactics like tradeshows, webinars and video. (Polaris B)
35. Lots more content = lots more leads. Companies with 101-200 web pages generate 2.5x more leads than those with 50 or fewer pages. More landing pages and more blog posts also mean more leads. On average, companies that have published 200 or more total blog posts generate 5X as much traffic as those with 10 posts or fewer. (Polaris B)
36. Inbound marketing leads cost on average 62% less than outbound-generated leads, and the “big three” inbound channels—blogs, social media and SEO—all cost less on average than any outbound channel. (Polaris B)
37. The financial services (75%), insurance (50%) and software (50%) industries are the most advanced when it comes to having separate content marketing strategies for each channel through which they distribute content. Companies in these industries are also the most likely to have formal content marketing editorial calendars. The automotive (14%) and banking sectors (14%) were the least likely to have separate strategies in place. (MediaPost)

8 SEO Stats and Facts

38. SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation for B2B companies. 59% of B2B marketers say SEO has the biggest impact on their lead gen goals, followed by social media (21%) and pay per click (20%). Not surprisingly, 98% of B2B marketers plan to maintain or increase SEO budgets next year. (Marketing Charts)
39. SEO also has the biggest impact on B2C lead gen. 49% of B2C marketers rank SEO tops for impact on lead generation, followed by pay per click (26%) and social media (25%). (Marketing Charts)
40. Agencies do SEO better. 21% of marketers who work with agencies on SEO report being highly satisfied with their program performance, compared with 11% of those who do SEO in-house. (Marketing Charts)
41. 78% of Internet users say they use the web for product research, and almost half (46%) of all searches on the average day for information on products and services (iMedia Connection)
42. Search is as popular as ever, but the percentage of searches actually done on search engines declined slightly in 2012 (by about 1%). More searches are taking place on websites (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and on Amazon.com, which is the top destination for product search). Still, organic search on search engines drive 50% of all referring traffic, compared to less than 8% for social media. (MediaPost)
43. SEO is rated as the most effective lead generation tactic, with 34% of marketers calling it “very effective” while just 7% say it is not effective. The next-most-effective lead gen tactics are paid search (32% vs. 9%) and webinars (30% to 6%). (B2B Lead Blog)
44. Demand for SEO skills has never been greater. SEO job postings on job board indeed.com increased 1900% last year and people with ‘SEO’ in their LinkedIn profile have increased by 112%. Still, few SEO jobs pay six figures. (Conductor Blog)
45. The largest number of SEO job openings are in New York and San Francisco, with Boston at #5, Austin at #11 and my own Minneapolis at #12. (Conductor Blog)

3 SEM Facts

46. Think AdWords isn’t important? For “commercial” searches on Google, actual organic links can take up less than 20% of the screen real estate and links. (Founder’s Blog)
47. Agencies do SEM better. 20% of respondents working with agencies for PPC report being highly satisfied with their program’s performance, compared to 15% who manage pay-per-click programs in-house. (Marketing Charts).
48. Search (paid and organic) is a leading driver of new customer sales, while email matters most for repeat business. Social media isn’t a significant driver of either type of sale, though of course it is vital for support SEO, brand image (which leads to higher PPC click-through rates) and customer service. (Marketing Pilgrim)

3 Email Marketing Stats

49. There are 62 billion emails sent every day. The average worker receives 112 emails and spends 28 of his or her time on email each day. (Visual.ly)
50. Email is the most common lead gen tactic, used by 81% of marketers. (MarketingSherpa)
51. SEO drives traffic, but email drives conversions. While 43% of marketers say that organic search drives the greatest volume of traffic to their websites, only 29% say that traffic converts at the highest rate. On the other hand, though just 22% cite email as their largest web traffic generator, 25% say those visits convert at the highest rate. (MarketingSherpa)

7 Business Blogging Stats and Facts

52. Just 139 of the Fortune 500 corporations maintain public-facing blogs, only 29 more than in 2009. (e-Strategy Trends)
53. Only 185 of the Inc. 500 (fastest-growing companies) had a blog in 2011, down from 250 firms in 2010, despite the fact that 92% of all companies with blogs say it has been successful for their business. (e-Strategy Trends)
54. Meanwhile, 55% of small businesses have a blog. (Leaders West)
55. On average, companies that publish 15 or more blog articles per month generate five times more Web traffic than companies that don’t blog at all, and those that blog 9-15 times per month generate three times more traffic than companies that don’t maintain blogs. (MarketingProfs)
56. Companies that publish new blog posts just 1-2 times per month generate 70% more leads than companies that don’t blog at all. (MarketingProfs)
57. 57% of companies that blog have acquired a customer through their blogs. (Polaris B)
58. Blogs are the core of social media marketing. Among companies that use social media in their marketing efforts, 59% rank their company blog as critical or important to their business, higher than any other social sharing site or network. (Heidi Cohen)

8 Facebook Facts and Statistics

59. There are one billion posts per day made on Facebook. The average user spends nearly 7 hours per month on the social networking site, and one out of every five pageviews on the Internet is on…Facebook. (Visual.ly)
60. Three out of four American moms use Facebook. (iMedia Connection)
61. Facebook accounts for one out of every five pageviews on the Internet. It’s used by more than half of all people in North America, more than a third of all citizens in Australia and New Zealand, and more than a quarter of the population in Europe. (iMedia Connection)
62. Of Facebook’s one billion-plus users, 57% access the site at least occasionally from mobile devices. The most popular operating systems for mobile Facebook access are iOS (26%) and Android (21%). (Jeff Bullas)
63. Among Facebook marketers, 64% have used Facebook Events to inform fans about online or offline events, making this a far more widespread tool than display ads and targeted posts. (Marketing Charts)
64. 90% of small businesses are on Facebook, and roughly two-thirds post more than once per week. (Leaders West)
65. All of the Ad Age Top 100 Advertisers have now established Facebook pages for their brands. (WordPress Hosting SEO)
66. Facebook grew 18% in 2012 and accounted for more than half of all social content sharing. (AddThis Blog)

6 Twitter Stats

67. There are 400 million tweets per day on Twitter. A million new Twitter accounts are opened each day. The average user spends nearly and hour and a half on the site each month. (Visual.ly)
68. Twitter now has more than 500 million users worldwide, including more than 100 million in the U.S. Twitter’s second-largest user base is in Brazil. (Jeff Bullas)
69. Almost two-thirds (64%) of Twitter access is via Twitter.com (web access), while 16% of use is mobile and 10% is via Twitter clients like HootSuite and TweetDeck. (Jeff Bullas)
70. What’s the most popular marketing tactic on Twitter? 30% of marketers report using hashtags tied to specific campaigns, while 26% use Promoted Tweets. (Marketing Charts)
71. Twitter grew 55% in 2012 and accounted for 15% of all social content sharing. (AddThis Blog)
72. 42% of companies have acquired at least one customer through Twitter. (Polaris B)

6 LinkedIn Facts

73. LinkedIn has more than 150 million users, but less than 20% have reached the level of having 500 or more first-degree connections, and only 8% are using the paid premium version. (Jeff Bullas)
74. Also, only 51% of LinkedIn users have “complete” profiles, and just 52% spend two hours or more per week on the site. (Jeff Bullas)
75. The most popular use of LinkedIn is for researching people and companies (77%). Other popular uses include building relationships with industry influencers (50%), finding job opportunities (38%) and increasing brand recognition in the marketplace (37%). Just 28% of companies say they have generated identifiable business opportunities on the site. (Jeff Bullas)
76. The most popular marketing tactics on LinkedIn are the use of LinkedIn groups (cited by 33% of marketers) followed distantly by InMail messaging (14%), LinkedIn Events (13%) and LinkedIn ads (10%). (Marketing Charts)
77. LinkedIn is the most powerful social site for driving B2B sales. Pinterest is most valuable for driving B2C business. (Heidi Cohen)
78. Want to connect with top-level executives? 26% of Fortune 500 CEOs are on LinkedIn. Less than 8% are on Facebook. o% use Pinterest. (Heidi Cohen)

3 Google+ Statistics

79. Google+ has more than 400 million users, with 100 million accessing the site each month. The typical user is a male in his late 20s with a technical position or background. (Jeff Bullas)
80. Google+ users tend to be more technical than Facebook users. The top three brands on Google+ are Android, Mashable, and Chrome; on Facebook, the three most popular brands are Coca-Cola, Disney, and Starbucks. (Jeff Bullas)
81. 12 of the top 15 interest categories on Pinterest are related to commerce, including jewelry and accessories (#1), flowers and gifts (#2), food (#4), books (#7), travel (#8), apparel (#11), home furnishings (#14) and toys (#15). (Jeff Bullas)

3 Pinterest Facts

82. Mothers are 61% more likely to use Pinterest than the average American. Pinterest ranks as the #1 “family and lifestyle site” for moms – ahead of Disney Online. (iMedia Connection)
83. Pinterest’s user base is 79% female, and Apple-centric. The iPad is the most device for mobile access (55%), while an additional 17% of mobile access is through the iPhone. (Jeff Bullas)
84. Pinterest grew an astounding 379,599% in 2012. The biggest driver of growth was pins of food photos. (AddThis Blog)

6 B2B Marketing Facts and Stats

85. 9 out of 10 B2B buyers say when they are ready to make a purchase, they will find a vendor. 81% use search, 59% look for peer recommendations, and 41% read content from “thought leaders.” (Earnest Agency)
86. For purchases over $10,000, 70% of buyers review four or more pieces of content before making a decision. (That actually sounds quite low, doesn’t it?) The most popular type of content: white papers, read by 88% of buyers. (Earnest Agency)
87. Traditional marketing tactics are not dead. 74% of B2B marketers rate direct mail as very effective, while 72% say the same about live events and 71% call email marketing critical. (Earnest Agency)
88. 75% of B2B marketers use SEO for lead generation. 72% utilize social media, and 54% have embraced content marketing, while just 15% of marketers say they are using mobile marketing. (MarketingSherpa)
89. B2B marketers are spending more on content marketing. “On average, B2B content marketers are spending 33% of their marketing budgets on content marketing (in 2012), up from 26% (in 2011, and) 54% plan to increase content marketing spending next year.” (MarketingProfs)
90. The most popular B2B content marketing tactics are the use of social media other than blogs (used by 87% of B2B marketers), articles on their own websites (83%), eNewsletters (78%) and blogs (77%), followed by case studies, videos and externally published articles, all at about 70%. On the other end of the scale is gamification, used by just 11% of B2B marketers. (MarketingProfs)

3 Video Marketing Statistics

91. 75% of senior executives watch videos on business sites every week. 65% go on to visit a vendor’s website after watching a video. (Earnest Agency)
92. 71% of American Internet users watch online videos; 28% do so on a daily basis. (iMedia Connection)
93. YouTube is the world’s second largest social media site, with 800 million unique monthly visitors, and the second largest search engine. (Heidi Cohen)

6 Mobile Marketing Stats and Facts

94. Of the four billion mobile phones in use globally, more than a quarter (27%) are smartphones. Half of all local searches are performed on mobile devices. (iMedia Connection)
95. The top online uses of mobile phones are gaming (61% of users do this), checking the weather (55%), maps and search (50%) and social networking (49%). (iMedia Connection)
96. Despite the growing popularity of local mobile search and social activity, only 3% of U.S. small businesses use geolocation services. (eMarketer)
97. Mobile marketing is “becoming mainstream” for small to midsized businesses (SMBs). 18% said they were “very likely” and 31% “somewhat likely” to incorporate mobile elements in their advertising and marketing efforts to reach potential customers in the coming year. Meanwhile, 7 in 10 plan to either maintain or increase spending in this area (Marketing Charts)
98. Is mobile marketing effective for lead generation? The jury is still out. In a recent survey, 15% of marketers rated mobile marketing as “very effective” for lead gen while an identical share said mobile is not effective. (B2B Lead Blog)
99. 30% of all the time spent on mobile device use is on social networks. (MediaPost)

And Finally, 3 Other Miscellaneous Online Marketing Stats

100. While 45% of all B2B businesses have now implemented some type of marketing automation software, less than 20% of SMBs have done so. However, smaller companies that have embraced marketing process automation are nearly 50% more likely to report revenue growth above plan than those that haven’t. (MediaPost)
101. Half of all employed people in the U.S. have been with their current employer for less than five years. The average tenure for all employees is 4.6 years. Professionals in architecture and engineering (7 years) and management (6.3 years) tend to have the longest tenures, while occupations with the shortest tenures include food service (2.3 years) and sales (3.4 years). (westXdesigns)
102. Social media crisis management in crisis? More than 10% of companies report they will not take any action to respond to a damaging article or social media post. Worse, less than two-thirds of B2C executives and just 43% of B2B leaders even believe their companies could respond to a negative post within 24 hours. (The Backup List)

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