Today's post has an infographic on SEO, a new study on Twitter, a video on the ROI of social media and a presentation on website design.

This infographic on SEO from Bloggingpro.com breaks down  the main aspects of an SEO campaign in a clear, easy to understand visual.

A recent study shows that zero percent of Twitter users would pay for the service should it become a pay site. You can view that statistics and the rest of the study results on Mashable.

Determining the ROI of social media is a hot topic for most businesses who are using social media as part of their marketing strategy. The video below from  Socialnomics gives a great overview on this topic.


This presentation on website design or "designing identities" from Helge Tenno, gives an interesting view point on website design and the process of designing a copmany's identity on the web.

We just finished out bi-weekly webinar on Web Analytics. Hopefully everyone who attended found the information useful and feel confident that they can get their web analytics set up and running successfully!

As usual we'll go over the questions we didn't have time to answer during the webinar here, and remember, we're always available to answer your questions directly as well.

Can Google Analytics monitor completion rates for web pages which require visitor content creation (ex. "Request for Quote" pages)?

Yes. There are two ways to do this. You can track the click as a JavaScript event, you can read about that here, or  you can manually track clicks for outbound links, you can learn more about that here.

Is Google Analytics Free?

Yes, Google Analytics is a completely free tool it just requires you to set up a Google account.

What is Direct Traffic?

Direct Traffic is the traffic which arrives at your site without first a search engine, another website or marketing campaign.

The majority of our traffic is from government agencies that aren't allowed to use cookies, can I still use Google Analytics successfully?

There are other ways to track visitors that don't use cookies. Every analytics software is different, but if you're concerned, we suggest taking a look at this interview with some popular web analytics vendors, which discusses the different ways that analytics software can track visitors including using IP User Strings and Unique User Identifiers.

Will the JavaScript code produced by Google Analytics slow down my website?

No, the tracking code will not slow down the speed of your website.

We hope you all found this webinar useful! Our next webinar will be on August 19th and is a Live Landing Page Assessment and you can register for it here.

If you want to view a full recording of the "Web Analytics 101" webinar you can view it here.

If you want to read a related blog post, we suggest our "Getting Stated with Web Analytics" post, which you can read here.

Writing web copy is hard.

It's not just hard because it takes a lot of work, or because it's a continual, constant process. It's also hard because the amount of information available on the web means that to have any real impact your content needs to be really good and it needs to differentiate itself from the crowd.

Consistently writing fresh, engaging web copy, whether it's for you're website's homepage or your blog, can be a difficult task, and believe us, keeping up your creativity levels from day to day is no walk in the park.

But, before you get to scared away by the dire opening to today's post, it's time for the light in the dark. We have tips! Lots and lots of tips for writing that killer content that will leave your competitors in your metaphorical, internet dust and we want to share!

So, without further ado, here are our tips for creating killer B2B web copy:

1. Create content strategically. Every piece of web copy that you write needs to support your overall business strategy.  Your copy should be an active part of your overall web strategy, not just an afterthought. When writing copy, you need to keep the "big picture" in mind and make sure that your copy is a relevant piece of the puzzle. 
2. Write content that is actionable. Guess what? Copy that is useful encourages your readers to take action. If, after reading your copy, your readers aren't inspired to do something (even if it is just to change their mind) your copy is essentially useless.
3. Choose simple words. Demonstrating the size of your vocabulary isn't a necessary part of communicating the value of your products and services. People want the web copy they read to be easy to understand and absorb. Use simple words, be direct and you will be more successful.
4. Keep it short but sweet. This relates to the point above. Your visitors want your web copy to communicate your point in the smallest amount of words possible. Asking for too large a time commitment is a surefire way to lose readers. That's not to say that all copy benefits from being concise, but if you feel your copy absolutely needs further explanation, have a "read more" link for those visitors that are truly interested.
5. Write with confidence. You have confidence in your products or services, now you need to convey it. Confidence doesn't instill itself and without it, no one will pursue a business relationship with you. Tell your readers in no uncertain terms how you stand behind what you're offering (hint: explaining your company's guarantees is a great way to do this).
   
6. Make sure they know why you're special.  What sets you apart from your competition? Communicating your unique selling proposition is one of the most important ways to explain why your visitors should buy from you and it can instantly make your copy more effective.
7. Write informally. Often, businesses are too concerned with creating copy that is "professional" rather than "appealing." Unfortunately, these companies don't realize that if your copy isn't appealing, then it doesn't matter how professional it is. Your visitors want to read things that are easy and enjoyable to consume and one of the best ways to do this is to write copy that has a personal, informal tone. A common trick for this is to write the way that you speak.
   
8. Use their pain. This might sound a little sadistic but using your customers pain points in your copy is one of the best ways to explain that you understand their issues. If your visitors don't believe that you understand their personal problem then why would they continue to interact with your copy?
   
9. Set up a need. Once you've convinced a reader that you understand their pain then you can create a need that compels them to continue reading. Implying to to your readers that you have the solution to those problems and that they are going to miss out if they don’t keep reading is an important part of engaging your audience. 
10. Edit Ruthlessly. The first draft of any web copy is often complete garbage. Be completely cutthroat in your editing and shorten, delete or even rewrite everything that doesn't immediately jump out at you as compelling. We absolutely, 100% advocate getting someone else to read your copy before you publish it. Believe us, no matter how good a writer you are, you're still going to have a biased opinion on the copy you've written because you know what you're trying to say. 

Image by Leo Reynolds on Flickr.

Over the last few months we’ve put together a blog series on redesigning your website. The inspiration for this series was our own site redesign which we released in early February. Our site redesign has been great and it served to remind us what it’s like to be in our customers’ shoes during a redesign. As a result, we thought it would make everyone’s lives a little easier if we put together a blog series to walk through the steps of a redesign, covering everything from why you should do one, to building an SEO strategy once your site is up and running.

Today’s post is the final one in the series, and it focuses on keeping the website up to date once you’ve gone through the effort of redesigning and optimizing your new site. The reality is that if you’re site isn’t up to date then it isn’t going to have a positive impact on your lead generation initiatives, and could even end up being detrimental.

Keeping a website up to date can be a large job, but that doesn’t mean it has to be an overwhelming one. By taking into account the following tips, you can ensure that your website is current, relevant and that it is doing all that it can to generate more leads for your business.

So what can you do to ensure that your website stays current?

1. Allocate the appropriate resources. Often companies make the mistake of thinking that once their site is up and running, it will become an automatic lead generation machine. Realistically, the redesign is only the tip of the iceberg. Once your site is published, you need to make sure you have the needed resources from people to time, to make sure that you have the ability to keep your site up to date.
2. Content, content, content. We wrote an entire post during this series on content creation strategies, but we thought it was important to emphasize it here. You don’t just get to create website copy and enough content to get your site up. You need to be continually creating, re-purposing and renewing content to ensure that your website is always fresh and relevant. 
3. Make sure you’re measuring for improvement. The only way to successfully monitor your new website and to understand the effectiveness of your web marketing efforts is to incorporate website analytics into your marketing strategy. At the end of the day, the only way that you can continue to improve your website is to understand the areas where you’re falling short and analytics can tell you that.  We suggest using Google Analytics because it is free, feature-rich and not too complicated for beginners. If you want to learn more about how you can implement web analytics into your strategy you can check out our blog post on “Getting Started with Web Analytics.”

You can view the rest of the posts in the series via the links below:

1. Start Fresh in 2010: A How to Guide on Redesigning Your Website for the New Year
2. Website Redesign How to Step 1: The Website Audit
3. Website Redesign How to Step 2: Website Design
4. Website Redesign How to Step 3: Content Creation Strategies 
5. Website Redesign How to Step 4: Website Usability Planning 
6. Website Redesign How to Step 5: Building an SEO Strategy 

Image by julianrod on Flickr

Getting people to link back to your website's content, should be an essential aspect of your organization's SEO strategy, and one of the best ways to encourage your blog readers to take the time to link to your blog or website, is to create engaging content that people like to read and want to share. While creating appealing content is never and easy task, you can make the task of getting back links a little easier by creating content that is popular with a wide range of readers.

What are some of the favorite types of content for readers to link back to?

1. Statistics, graphs and infographics. Readers love industry statistics, especially if they are surprising, useful for benchmarking and even better, if they're presented in an appealing graphic format.
2. A collection of links and resources. This is a good way for your readers to get all the educational information they need on a topic in one easily accessible place. Rather than having to find the individual links themselves, you've published them all in one location, established yourself as an educational resource. Posts like this a two for one deal, since the reader only has to provide one link, but ends up linking to multiple resources at once.
3. Reviews of design elements. These posts are often easy for your readers to absorb and share. Commenting on visual and design elements of different websites or social media profiles, for instance,  and providing examples of these elements create posts with excellent visual appeal and ease-of-consumption.
4. "Top" numbered lists. These lists don't actually have to be for the number 10. Any kind of list that purports to name the "top" factors for any given topic is often appealing to a wide range of readers. 
5. Videos. Videos are an interesting, engaging way to spice up your blog posts. Videos are a great alternative to written content, and whether the videos are your own creations, or selected by you from YouTube, Vimeo or another video sharing site for their educational or informative nature, people love to share this type of content with their friends, followers and business colleagues as a way to break up the written content the consume throughout the day. 
6. Special offers. People love free stuff. Whether your offer is for complementary content or resources or promotions of your products or services, often people are more than willing to link back to your content  if someone has an opportunity  to get a deal out of it.
7. Interviews with industry thought leaders. Every industry and company, whether B2B or B2C, has thought leaders, professionals who have innovative, maybe even groundbreaking ideas, and who share and promote these ideas for the betterment of their chosen industry. Interviewing the people recognized as thought leaders in your space is a great way to encourage linking, as well as to increase the credibility of the rest of your content, which can encourage linking in the future.

Image by rubybgold on Flickr

This is a guest post written by Randa Codron, a Marketing and Communications Specialist for WaterTrax, one of Marqui's SaaS partner companies.

Lead generation and filling the sales pipeline is always a hot button issue for marketers.  There is a constant battle between generating leads and producing “sales ready leads.”  Drip marketing or what some may call lead nurturing takes website visitors from leads to “sales ready leads.”  Statistics that show that between 3 and 30 repetitions are required for any message to “take hold” in the human consciousness. 
 
So how do you develop an effective drip marketing campaign?  The 4 P’s:

• Planning
• Persistence / Patience
• Pizzazz
• Powerful tracking systems

Planning:  As with all good marketing, planning a drip campaign requires a thorough understanding of your target market and how to best reach it.  Make sure your campaign is focused and niche enough to engage your audience.

Persistence:  Drip marketing works because it is made up of consistent, well timed messages. If you develop a full-year plan, stick to it. Put systems in place up front that are simple to execute, so you don’t have to stop running your business to focus on that next step in the campaign.  Drip marketing should be an automated process occurring in the background of your business, which is why planning is imperative to success.

Pizzazz:  No one wants to see the same approach from the same company at the same time each month again and again.  Deliver real value in your communications and make sure your message is useful, unique and not merely promotional. Include news and best practices in your messages to keep them interesting. Your brand, however, should be consistent from drip to drip. Your audience should recognize immediately that a communication comes from your company.

Powerful tracking systems:  Tracking campaigns and providing measurable results is critical and relatively simple, with a variety of email campaign and lead nurturing tools, like Marqui. As your campaign grows and becomes more complex, you will be thankful you invested in a solution to manage and track your drip marketing efforts.

Today's web marketing digest post will be a little different from usual. Instead of having several links that we find interesting we wanted to focus on a recent survey that has some relevant statistics and facts that might surprise you. AskMen.com has released, “The Great Male Survey 2010 Edition” an annual survey they release filled with opinion-data on everything from dating to lifestyle, and the survey includes quite a few social media, mobile and internet statistics that might surprise readers. The data we’re posting below is for Canadian Men, but the survey includes data from the US, Australia and Britain as well (and the numbers only vary by about 1-2%).
 
When it comes to Social Media…

• 30% of men say that Facebook is their primary method for staying in touch with friends. They chose this over phone, email and Twitter.
• 70% of men said that they use Facebook regularly
• 59% of men don’t use Twitter because they see it as “useless”
• 55% of men said that they don’t use location-based social media like Foursquare because they don’t understand it or don’t know what it is

When it comes to the Internet in general…

• 42% of men think that it isn’t possible to gain social status online
• 74% of men say they spend more time in front of the computer than the TV
• 37% of people chose, “no, not at all” as their response to the question, “Do you still read the newspaper in its print format?”
• 33% of men stated that they watch their favorite TV shows online rather than on TV during regular broadcasting

When it comes to Social Media privacy…

• In response to the question, “Does privacy exist anymore?” 53% of men replied, “Yes, but not online.”
• Only 34% of men use the privacy settings on Facebook  so that only their friends can view their profiles, 25% of men feel that that self-censoring is sufficient for Facebook privacy and 11% don’t use any privacy settings whatsoever

Some of the statistics in the survey surprised us (the fact that 53% of men think that privacy online doesn't matter anymore being one of them) and some of them were right on track with what we believed was the way the public felt about social media. Surveys like this are a great way to get a better understanding of your organization's demographics, and if you're an organization that caters to the male market, the survey is definitely worth taking a look at!

Almost every consultant or web marketer will tell you that when using social media, transparency and authenticity are keys to a successful presence. However, being transparent and authentic aren’t necessarily the easiest things to do. For instance, being 100% transparent with your social media friends, would involve sharing every detail of your life on a daily basis, and being completely authentic, might, depending on your personality, actually be detrimental to your business. Once you realize those points, then the real question about social media authenticity and transparency becomes, how can you do it right.

Transparency

Being 100% transparent with your social media followers may not be the best business strategy. The fact is that every business has some things that their customers or fans probably just shouldn’t know. Most businesses aren't going to tell you all the intimate and specific details of every aspect of their business. What experts mean when they advise you to be “transparent” in social media is that you should be honest and open as often as you can and about the right things.

What are some of the ways that you can be transparent?

• Own up to your mistakes. When you make a mistake, people are going to know. Hiding the root of the issue or tip toeing around it and muddying the waters is an example of NOT being transparent. The beauty of this is that admitting your mistakes gives you a great opportunity to also be clear about you're doing to fix them.
• Acknowledge and respond publicly to customer concerns and questions. Don’t ignore customer concerns. Using social media allows you audience to have greater access to you and often they use that access to address their questions (good or bad) and concerns about your company. Acknowledging those comments and responding to them creates brand trust. Being transparent does NOT involve hiding your skeletons in the closet. Remember, the people who take to social networks to criticize you when they’re unhappy are often the people who will return to compliment you when they are happy and acknowledging those people and their concerns is a great way to build brand fans. 
• Let everyone know who’s doing the social media posting. It doesn’t matter who it is who's in charge of your social media communications,  your CEO, your marketing consultant, your VP,  your marketing intern or your social media manager, it just matters that the person is in fact, a person, and that putting a face behind a tweet or post keeps things clear for your followers.

Authenticity

When people tell you that you should be authentic in your social media interactions, they don’t necessarily mean that you should say every thought that pops into your head. What they really mean when they say, “be authentic” is that they don’t want you to be fake. Those may sound like the same things, but they’re not, not really. The reality is that there are some things about everyone’s personality that just wouldn’t suit social situations, whether online or offline, and understanding the fine line between being “real” and being “too real” is the most important part of being authentic on social media.

What are some tips on being authentic?

• Show some personality! All business and no play makes social users dull. It doesn’t have to be all work all the time. Feel free to post things that you find interesting, funny or amusing. Make comments that you think people will enjoy. Letting people see the entertaining side of your employees is a great way to be authentic, while at the same time building confidence and trust.
•  Apologize when you make a mistake. While acknowledging the fact that you've made a mistake in the first place is an aspect of being transparent, the way in which you apologize, admit your error (hey, we all make them, right?) and address your followers can definitely help you appear more authentic. 
• Get to know your followers. Starting conversations with your customers, asking them questions about their likes or dislikes, getting them to fill in customer surveys, all of these are excellent ways to customize the interactions that you have with your followers and to help build relationships.

Image by Ares1060 on Flickr

We're sure that by now many of you have heard about the Old Spice social media campaign that has become a viral sensation. The whole thing started with some brilliant, entertaining commercials for Old Spice Bodywash which featured former NFL wide receiver, Isaiah Mustafa as "the man your man could smell like," a suave, hyper-masculine Old Spice spokesman who is, according to Old Spice, the man all women wish they could be with, and all men wish they could be.

The commercials were such a success that Old Spice and the masterminds behind the original commercials, Wieden + Kennedy, decided to take the campaign to social media. On July 13 Old Spice tweeted the following and what resulted was a viral campaign that swept through social media.



For an entire day, July 13th, anyone who tweeted a message or question to @OldSpice had the chance to get a direct video response written personally for them and given by Mustafa on YouTube. The idea was an immediate hit and within a few hours Old Spice was one of the most popular trending topics on Twitter and millions of tweets were sent with the hopes of receiving a personalized response. During the course of the day, which eventually culminated in a final, "As with all good things, this too must end," farewell video, over 180 videos were produced.

What were some of the major results of the campaign?

• A Google search for Old Spice under "updates" (which are pulled from Twitter) showed over 10 million of results
• Old Spice's YouTube Channel is the #1 most viewed YouTube Channel this week and each response video has received between 100,000 and 2.7 million views in the first week, while the commercial that started it all, "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" has earned over 14 million views
• Old Spice's official Twitter account @OldSpice increased its followers by over 1000% in less than a week

Obviously the campaign reached an enormous amount of people and was quickly spread through word of mouth helping the campaign go viral almost instantly, but why did it go viral? What was it about this campaign that encouraged people to spread it via word of mouth? Well, we've taken a look at the many different aspects of the campaign (and shamelessly watched a large quantity of the responses) and we've determined the following characteristics that helped the campaign have such success.

What made this campaign go viral?

1. They gave their audience something without asking for anything in return. All you had to do to get a response from Old Spice Guy was to tweet something to him. Pretty easy, huh? You didn't have to give them your information, sign up for a demo, or fill in a single form. All that they required from their audience was their engagement.
2. They chose their influencers wisely.The majority of the tweets that garnered responses were from well known influencers in the social media sphere. Everyone from Demi Moore, to Kevin Rose (the found of Digg), Gizmodo and Ellen Degeneres received responses. While there were responses sent to some average joes, most of them were sent to social media users with large followings, which helped the campaign spread quickly as those influencers that received responses retweeted them to their thousands of followers.
3. They engaged their audience in the campaign itself. This wasn't a passive advertising campaign. Old Spice took their campaign to their audience and challenged their social media friends, followers and fans to engage with the company to create the campaign from their interests.
4. They made the campaign feel personal. All of the responses had a personal feel, and included the original tweet to show the one-on-one nature of the conversation, despite the fact that it was streamed to millions of people.
5. They were funny.Nothing makes something spread faster than pure amusement. The videos themselves were ironic, funny and genuinely entertaining and regardless of the motives behind it, or the people chosen to spread it, this was most likely reason enough for the majority of people to pass it around.
6. They used a widely available platform. All of the videos were uploaded to YouTube a platform with a low barrier of entry so the responses were available to a wide range of people, quickly and easily.

If you want to see more about the developing of the campaign, and the original commercial you can view it here via TWiT Netcast Network on YouTube

You can view all the commercials and responses on Old Spice's YouTube Channel here.

When it comes to web marketing, being successful means understanding the basics—and doing them right. One of the key basics of web marketing are landing pages, the page a prospective customer will arrive at once they click on a banner ad, a search engine result link or any other marketing offer or campaign. We have always found that one of the best ways to improve our marketing is to learn from others who are already having success, so, to help explain the common characteristics of effective landing pages, we’ve found some examples we think will help illustrate our points.

First, things first, what are the common characteristics?

1. Have clear calls-to-action. It is essential that you make it as simple as possible for your potential customers to do exactly what you want them to do, whether it is sign up button for a demo or a link to subscribe to your newsletter (for example).  It is okay to have multiple calls-to-action, as long as you make sure that your page doesn’t get too complicated. Having one hard call-to-action, mixed with one or two soft ones, is usually a good strategy.
2. Keeping important information above the fold. We often advise marketers to keep their landing pages as simple as possible, and that is in general a good practice. Having cluttered landing pages filled with irrelevant information, can make it difficult for your customers to determine the goal of the page and let’s face it, most people are lazy. They don’t want to figure it out for themselves; they want you to tell them. Having said that, some of your visitors may still want further information before their commit to clicking on your button or filling in a form. If you feel that there is information that is relevant and necessary for those people who want further convincing, make sure you keep that information below the fold (the section of a screen that a user has to scroll down to view) so you don’t muddy your offer or confuse potential customers. 
3. Establish trust and credibility. Using customer testimonials and including your privacy policy are great ways to establish trust. If someone doesn’t trust your landing page or you company, then they are unlikely to give you their personal information. The amount of trust you can convey is often proportional to the amount of conversions your pages have. 
4. Keep your branding consistent. You want to ensure that when someone arrives at your landing page it is clear that it is connected with your brand. You never want a visitor to arrive at a landing page and think, how did I get here? What company does this page belong to? Or worse, is this a fake or malicious page? It’s important to keep your landing pages up to date with your current site and company branding.

Harvest, a B2B company which sells online tracking a billing software, does a great job of communicating the value of their offer, using a clear call-to-action and keeping the page simple. They also include a ton of further information below the fold including some soft calls-to-action, a list of satisfied customers, links to more in-depth product information and their privacy policy.




Basecamp HQ is a B2B company that sells software to help teams collaborate and manage projects online. Their landing page does an excellent job of communicating exactly what Basecamp does, as well as offering some great testimonials (including video), a list of high-profile customers, a big, bright call-to-action button that communicates clearly the goal of the page and some statistics about their company.  Below the fold you can find further company information, notes about where the company has been mentioned in the media and a link to their security information.



Webtrends is a web analytics software provider for that has been working in the internet industry for over a decade. This landing page does a nice job of keeping the page simple, establishing their offer, and what the company does, and has a nice big call-to-action. Their is a link to their privacy policy at the bottom of the page and they only include the information they feel is relevant.



This page is from the Salesforce.com website and it is for a free trial of their contact manager software. The landing page has one clear offer and call-to-action, consistent branding with the rest of the Salesforce.com site, and keeps all of their important information above the fold. Scrolling down the page leads to further links to their company's privacy statement, further contact information and their site map. They also do a neat job of including an unobtrusive yet effective customer testimonial at the bottom of the page.

Social media and its use in the classroom is an enormous issue for many higher education institutions today. How social media can be used effectively for teaching, the challenges and possibilities that it poses, and successful implementation strategies are all hot topics for educators. To help give some insight into the social media and education landscapes, we've found 5 video resources to help educators get their minds around the issue social media poses.

How to Be a Social Media Change Agent from Harvard Business.

This interview from Harvard Business features Josh Bernoff, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research discussing social media and its effective use.


Social Media in the Classroom from San Diego State University

This video involves a series of interviews with students from San Diego State University discussing the use of social media in the classroom, its educational benefits and the challenges faced with its use.


Face It! Social Media with Intention: Online Presence 101 from Dartmouth

This presentation discusses how social media can help jump start graduates career search, and the opportunities available between social media and the emerging job market.



Social Media: The Possibilities and Challenges from CACommunityColleges

This video is from the CETC & CUE Online Teaching Conference and features a discussion about the possibilities and challenges available to educators who are using social media as a teaching tool.

This week’s post has some great marketing statistics, a presentation on location-based social media services, a presentation for inspiration when creating slide decks for your next presentation and an infographic on the state of the internet.

This presentation by Tara Hunt is filled with statistics on social media and web marketing in general and is definitely worth taking a look at.

We're all about presentations today and this one by Grand Union, a digital agency located in the UK, gives an excellent overview on location-based services.

The last presentation on our list today is solely for inspiration. Many of you know that the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival just finished and this presentation is filled with the best slides presented there to help you get some ideas for your next presentation.

Finally, last but not least on our list for today is an infographic on the state of the internet today.

We just finished out most recent webinar in our bi-weekly webinar series. Today's presentation was on how you can grow your business with social media and we've had great feedback thus far.

As usual we can't always get to everyone questions during the course of the presentation and we'll cover the remaining ones here.

Do you recommend having one employee in charge of social media, or should it be a collaborative effort?

As long as you have a definite strategy within your organization for social media usage, having multiple employees collaborate on social media is a great way to enhance your company's online presence and keep content fresh. However, if you haven't already laid out a strategy that determines what type of content you want to be posting, and how you would like your company to be perceived, it may be better to have one experienced social media professional.

If we allow people to comment on our company and they criticize us, won't that harm our business?

We get this question quite frequently with regards to social media. Many companies with traditional marketing strategies fear that opening themselves up to public opinion will have severe, negative consequences. The reality is that yes, the might criticize you, but the truth is that if a customer is disgruntled, then they are going to criticize you whether you have an active presence in social media or not. However, if you have a presence, you have also opened yourself up to the opportunity to respond to that criticism and you may just win over some previously dissatisfied customers.

How can we protect our intellectual property while using social media?

We suggest using a Creative Commons License on content that you are going to be posting regularly to social media sites. You can read more about Creative Commons Licenses here.

We hope you all found the webinar useful and informative! You can access a full recording of our "Growing Your Business with Social Media" webinar here.

Image by Antigone78 on Flickr

The World Cup 2010 is over, and there is no doubt that it was a marketing (especially a social media) success. We mentioned in a previous post, how FIFA used the web, and social media to promote the World Cup and looking back on the entire course of the event, we can all learn a little bit about marketing from the beautiful game.

1. There is no replay. At the end of the day, the marketing decisions you make stand. If a bad call is made, if a strategy fails, you live with your mistakes and keep on playing the game. 
2. Take your team to your fans. Creating personality for your brand is key to having a successful online presence,  like football teams did during the World Cup by having individual Twitter accounts for each team.  Help people get to know your team and your brand to help build a fan base.
3. If everyone isn’t on the same page, you lose. Making sure that your entire team is familiar with your marketing strategy  can help ensure that your team is successful. A fragmented internal marketing strategy can have a somewhat stunning failure rate, much like the way that internal strife brought down the French team during the World Cup.   
4. Understand how to accept a loss and rethink your game plan. No one likes to lose. Having said that, there will inevitably be losses for every team and accepting the losses, learning from your mistakes and improving your game plan are essential to moving on to win in the future. 
5. Celebrate your wins and your key players.  Celebrating your wins for your team and fans is important. Just as in soccer when players dance, run, jump around and land in dog piles celebrating a win, and the team players that made that win possible, congratulating your team is an excellent way to solidify relationships and build trust, within your organization and with your fans. 

We hope you all enjoyed the World Cup (no matter who you were cheering for) and that these these lessons help you build a more effective marketing presence.

Image by CLF on Flickr

Microsoft has just released integration between Outlook and Facebook, available through the Outlook Social Connector for Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010. The Social Connector, which was released some time ago, previously only integrated with LinkedIn.

This move helps Outlook get one step closer towards being a completely synchronized social media and email tool. The latest social connector upgrade allows you to interact with Facebook by viewing wall and status updates in an extra viewing pane.  Avid users of Facebook and the other social media that are now integrated with the connector like LinkedIn and Live Messenger, will most likely find this upgrade especially useful for creating a centralized communications hub.

The Outlook Social Connector appears as an additional viewing pane called the “People Pane” and it appears just under the email message that you’re currently viewing. The connector gathers real-time information from the social networks and displays it in this pane. This allows you to view your email contacts' social network profile updates as well as all your prior interactions with that contact including previously sent/received emails and meetings etc.

Many of you Outlook users who are interested in this integration will be happy to know that Outlook has decisively addressed the privacy issues surrounding the integration. Most likely due to the heady debates that have been circling the internet in past months, Outlook is taking particular care to ensure that social media users’ privacy remains intact. An official document released by Microsoft describing the Social Connector explains that the information that is pulled from social networks and displayed in the people pane is only the information that is shown based on the user’s privacy settings in that network.

Overall the integration is pretty interesting and no doubt many Outlook users will take advantage of it as a way to once more limit the amount of communication tools they use to stay in contact with their social network. However, we have noticed one major flaw in the upgrade as it stands right now. At this time you can’t actually update your Facebook account using Outlook and you can’t view Facebook profiles or accounts of anyone unless they send you an email first. This means that you can only view real-time updates if you have received an email from a contact, which isn't optimal from an integration standpoint.

For a look at the Facebook Outlook Social Connector Announcement Video, you can view it on Mashable.

With the buying process changing to one where customers take more control, sales and marketing alignment gets even more crucial for a successful business strategy. However, despite the fact that marketing and sales teams are working towards similar goals, it often seems like they just can’t get along.

How can you encourage sales and marketing alignment in your organization?

1. Identify your ideal customer. Ensuring that both departments have a clear idea of who your organization’s ideal customers are can help you simplify the lead hand-off process and help your demand generation initiatives. If you know who your target customers are, then you can be sure you’re marketing along the correct channels, and that leads from these sources are viable for sales.

2. Define a common language. Often sales and marketing departments have different definitions of different terms and this can be extremely detrimental especially when it comes to things like leads.  A lead could be:

• A name on a purchased list
• An analytics goal conversion
• Somebody who fills in a web form
• Somebody who downloads a resource or attends a webinar
• Somebody who passes BANT questions (budget, authority, need, timeline)
• Somebody who wants to talk to a sales rep

Having a clear definition of what your organization considers a lead to be can facilitate the lead generation and hand-off process (often one of the largest pain points for sales and marketing teams).

3. Identify and agree on rules of engagement at key interface points. Knowing who is going to do what is crucial for any successful business strategy. When everyone has a clear idea of when they are going to take action it minimizes confusion and can help your organizations run smoothly in tandem. Some key interface points could be:

• Responding to demo or “contact us” requests
• Following up with webinar registrants
• Returning leads to marketing for further nurturing 
• Dealing with closed / lost opportunities
• Determining who will nurture live opportunities

4. Operate as a single team. By committing to different team building strategies (weekly sales and marketing meetings, opening communication channels etc.) you can help to diminish the view that many sales and marketing departments have of “them” versus “us.”

5.  Measure what you want to improve. What areas are you looking to improve between your sales and marketing teams? Determining these, can help you measure your alignment and determine where your integration is falling short. Some common metrics you might want to improve are:

• Sales ready leads count
• Opportunity conversions: absolute count, percentage of sales-ready leads converted
• All lead sources: referral, inside sales, sales prospecting 
• Closed business by lead source

Image by ePublicist on Flickr

Social media is a hugely popular marketing channel for B2C and B2B businesses. However, jumping into social media for the first time can be a little intimidating. To help reduce the anxiety related to getting your company involved in the social media sphere, here are some of our tried and true tips for getting started with social media.

1. Make sure you’re where your audience is. This might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s one of the most important tips on our list. If you’re active on social media sites that your target audience doesn’t frequent then you’re not doing yourself any favors and you’re most likely making more work for yourself than necessary. We suggest you do some research, find out where your key customers take part in conversations, and then get yourself to those sites as quickly as possible!
2. Promote your presence.  Once you’ve decided which sites to take part in and have created your accounts, it’s important to promote your presence. Adding links to your social media accounts on your website, in your email campaigns, and adding a “share-this” button to your site are great ways to drive traffic to your accounts. 
3. Don’t focus on selling. Focus on Relationships. Many companies that are just getting started with social media spend too much time trying to  sell their product by pushing coupons, offers, company news and information related only to their business, rather than providing content that will educate their followers and build relationships. While this might get more information about your company out in the social sphere,  it will also most likely annoy your followers, and it certainly won’t make you a go-to resource or improve your followers' opinions about your brand. 
4. Don’t worry about the numbers. Many times companies that are starting out in social media worry too much about their number of followers, mistakenly believing that a large following means a beneficial social media presence. What they should actually be focusing on is the relevance of their following and building authentic relationships with people who are genuinely interested in what their company has to say.
5. Don’t forget the niche websites. There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of niche social media websites where you can promote your brand and make connections. Make sure you do your research to see if there are any relevant niche sites for your industry. Many times these sites have a smaller user-base so it can be easier to become an influencer on them than the big ones like Twitter or Facebook.

Image by benstein on Flickr.

This week's post has a presentation on building brand relationships, two great infographics and some ways that social media is helping the Gulf Coast Benefit get some added support.

This presentation by David Rollo discusses why it's important to connect brands with customers through social media and how this can help companies to develop stronger relationships.

Have you ever wondered what the economy of Facebook looks like? This infographic from visualeconomics.com is what you're looking for!

The Gulf Coast oil spill is a terrible tragedy, and to help mitigate the lasting effects, the Gulf Coast Benefit was created. The benefit was a a series of 60 concerts which were presented across the USA and the proceeds went towards the community's Gulf Future Campaign. This post from Mashable highlights some of the ways that the benefit used social media to supplement it's promotion efforts and gives some good ideas for how other benefits can do the same.

We've mentioned the World Cup 2010 a couple times over the last few weeks, and wrote a blog post about FIFA's use of social media to promote the event. This infographic from Inside View, a company which provides sales intelligence to help improve productivity, shows how economic productivity has gone down during the event.

Have a great weekend!

Nobody wants to receive emails that aren’t of interest to them. Non-targeted emails and spam are a common occurrence within the B2B industry and are one of the fastest ways to decrease your email conversion rate. One of the best things you can do to ensure that your emails are going to be relevant for your recipients is to break your email list down into smaller segments for more personalized, targeted campaigns. The more a recipient can associate with the content of an email campaign, the more likely they are to act on it.

How can you get started?

The basis of segmentation involves achieving a better understanding of your subscribers. Segmenting, by definition, requires that you learn what makes your subscribers individuals and how you can group them into subsets. To determine the ways in which you are going to segment your list, you need to do some research into how your product is perceived by different groups. For instance, segmenting by gender is irrelevant, if gender has little to do with how buyers react to your product.

To get started, a good idea is to choose one single attribute to divide up your house list and to then continue to segment into smaller and smaller like-minded groups. A good example of a starter attribute might be, subscription date (older subscribers vs. brand-new ones). Once you’ve done this initial segmentation, then you can further break down these two groups based on more specific attributes like:

• Demographics (age, gender, occupation, income etc.)
• Geography
• Interest-based preferences 
• Acquisition channel (where did you email subscribers come from?)
• Purchasing history (what product lines have they purchased in the past?)
• Past email open or clickthrough rate (CTR)
• Online behavior
• Customer type (repeat, inactive, new etc.)
• Event-based
• Interest-based preferences (interest preferences chosen by the subscriber during the subscription process)

One of the easiest ways to segment your groups is by activity history. Breaking down your list by subscribers who have acted on an email campaign in the past (read, opened or clicked-through), is an easy way to target your subscribers based on their interest.  Once you move into more advanced segmentation you can begin to break these lists of interested subscribers into smaller segments based on which campaigns they interacted with and which they didn’t, to make even more specific target groups.

We know that it sounds a bit complicated, but proper segmentation is actually one of the simplest and easiest ways to create relevant interest from your house list and to increase the CTR for your email campaigns. Our advice is just to start small, and then to slowly graduate to a more in depth complicated segmentation process and remember to always test, to determine which segmentation methods work best for your organization.

Image source: www.emarketer.com

Undoubtedly most bloggers and other web content developers have at some point in their careers come across Creative Commons Licenses. While different people use these for different reasons, most content creators agree that there are definite benefits to this type of license. Unfortunately, while many people have heard of Creative Commons, few have a really clear understanding of what they are or where they come from.

What are Creative Commons Licenses?

In response to a need for an alternative to classic copyright licenses, Creative Commons was created by a group of copyright and intellectual property experts in the United States in 2001. The project created several user-friendly licenses which enable content creators to share their work while retaining their copyright(s) under certain conditions.

Why should you use a Creative Commons (CC) License?

There are several benefits associated with placing this type of license on your content:

• It allows you to share your content within a community while retaining your creative rights
• It allows the spread and promotion of your content across the web without the loss of copyright
• It allows you to place a visible license with regulations on your content rather than just an assumed, “all rights reserved” license

Which license is right for you?

It is important to understand that by placing your work under a Creative Commons License you are by no means giving up your copyright(s). The CC Licenses allow creators to mix and match certain “allowable conditions” according to their specific personal and professional preferences. There are six different types of licenses and each one reserves different subset of copyright(s). The license is generated by the Creative Commons website and then attached to the creator’s work. You can view a full list of the creative commons licenses on the Creative Commons website here.

The licenses fall under four different license categories based on the following conditions:

1. Attribution – You let others make free use (distribute, copy, perform etc.) your work, and its derivative works, as long as you are given credit.
2. Noncommercial – Follows the same rules as attribution, except the works aren’t to be used for any commercial purposes. 
3. No Derivative Works – You work can be copied, distributed or performed verbatim only. In other words, no derivative works can be created based on your original creation. 
4. Share Alike – In this case you’re allowing others to distribute derivatives of your work but only as long as they use an identical license to the one that was put on your original work.

Creative Common Licenses are an excellent way for content creators to share their content while protecting their copyright(s). Thus far, Creative Commons has been a successful, user-friendly alternative to traditional copyright licenses on the web. While it is by no means a perfect solution, it addresses some of the issues that web content creators have faced with traditional copyright licenses in the past and continues to grow in popularity.

For More information on this topic you can visit the Creative Commons Organization website, or the Creative Commons Canada website at:

http://www.creativecommons.org
http://www.creativecommons.ca

Image by AJC1 on Flickr

Many of our bi-weekly presentations from our web marketing webinar series have related in some way to social media. Social media usage is pervasive to many of the different aspects of web marketing and we know that it is an important issue for many of our webinar attendees. We’d like to help clarify some of the many ways that social media can help you develop your business so our next webinar, on Thursday July 15th at 10:30 am Pacific is called, “Growing Your Business with Social Media.”

This informative webinar will last for 45 minutes and will cover:

• The history of word of mouth marketing
• Which social media tools will work for your business
• How to create a social media strategy that will work for your business
• How and what to measure to determine the ROI of social media for your organization

You can register for the webinar here. We hope to see you there!

Publishing your pricing for your products or services can be a bit of a touchy issue for many B2B companies. There is always a fear that putting your pricing “out-there” on your website can scare potential customers away if the price isn’t right, or that it will allow your competition to use that information against you. We’re here to tell you that, we don’t believe that. We actually think that publishing your pricing on your website can have significant benefits for your organization, we have our pricing published and it has helped us discover some of the key ways that it has helped our website conversion rates.

Web usability expert, Jakob Neilsen, has stated that not publishing prices on your B2B website is one of the number one mistakes that company’s make and,  according to Jakob, “Price is the most specific piece of info [sic] that customers use to understand the nature of an offering, and not providing it makes people feel lost and reduces their understanding of a product line.”

We agree with Jakob and to help you understand why we agree, here's our list of 4 ways that publishing your pricing actually helps increase your website conversion rates:

1. It builds trust and brand confidence. If you publish your pricing on your website, it shows that you’re not afraid to stand by your products. If you are willing to publish a price (whether it is on the high or low end of the spectrum for your industry) it shows that you believe your products are worth that price. Displaying your prices with confidence breeds that feeling in potential customers.
2. It allows you to comment on your pricing. Publishing your pricing gives you the opportunity to explain how your prices are built-up. You are able to tell your customers which features they get for which price, differentiating your products within the market and keeping the buying cycle as simple as possible. Nothing is worse than reading about a product and finding out you can’t get what you want for a price you can pay.
3. It makes your promotions' value obvious. Publishing your pricing allows you to put on effective price-based promotions. Offering someone $200.00 off your products (for example) has little or no relevance if they have no idea how much your products cost in the first place. Communicating the value of your promotions can increase the leads they bring in. 
4. It forces your leads to qualify themselves. If a lead comes to your website and can’t find the pricing, they may take the time to contact your sales team for further information, only to find out that they don’t have the budget for your products or services. This wastes valuable sales cycles and time. By publishing your pricing, potential customers have the ability to qualify themselves as hot leads (if they like your pricing) or to go somewhere else if your pricing doesn’t work for their budget. Don’t be afraid of scaring people off! Customers that aren’t able to afford your products, or who are looking for the cheapest solution on the market, tend to be the ones who leave as soon as some less expensive option comes along.  

This week's post has a presentation on social customers, a report on social networking and some Canadian social media news (it was Canada day yesterday after all!)

This presentation from Ryan Turner, highlights the ways that technology has changed businesses interactions with their customers by creating distance. The presentation goes on to discuss why we need to take the time to understand our new "social" customers and to bridge the gap. The presentation is insightful as well as entertaining and includes some statistic gems on social media and internet usage by the general populace today not the least of which is:

In honor of Canada Day, and the beginning of what will hopefully be a beautiful summer, we’ve put together some of our best tips on how you can keep your sales pipeline full in the slow, hot months. Often, during the summer, many B2B businesses find that their lead generation beings to lag. Fewer consumers during the summer months leads to less demand which in turn makes many marketer’s lead generation tactics less effective.  So--how can you keep your organizations sales up this summer?

1. Build relationships. A great way keep your sales up during the summer is to focus on developing relationships with your house list. This allows you to spend marketing time and budget renewing relationships with people you already know, who are already interested in what you have to say. This is a good opportunity to start a lead nurturing program. Don’t just stay in touch with current customers and prospects, but grow those relationships to see if you can upsell to your existing base.
2. Revive old leads. Summer is the perfect time to create a campaign to drive older leads which have lost interest back to your website and to restart conversations that have fizzled over the last year.
3. Get better at selling. When business is slow, your sales teams have the chance to re-learn best practices for selling and to refresh their skills and tactics. When there are less sales opportunities and prospects it’s important that you are using the best selling tactics out there to connect with your leads.
4. Use seasonal promotions. By starting summer promotions, you can reach out to the businesses that are still looking for product and services like the ones you sell. While there may not be as many consumers available to you during the summer, this can certainly help you drive the ones that are out there to your site.
5. Optimize your landing pages and calls-to-action. While this is an important tip year-round, the relative downtown during the summer is a good time to do a complete overhaul. When there are fewer customers it’s more important than ever to ensure that you are getting the most conversions you can.