Jeremy Blanton

Technology is constantly evolving and there are always new platforms that arise and newer ways to effectively market your business with online marketing.  Right now, some of the more popular networks used for online marketing are sites like Facebook, & Twitter.  Both of these platforms continue to evolve into more powerful networks and opening more & more opportunities for business.  Our Facebook page is our third largest source of income for our online marketing company 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors

With all these wonderful new platforms, the one thing that many overlook is the ability for your blogsite to become a hub for your business.  Whenever I am doing online consulting with a client,  I make sure to always enforce the importance of a good blogsite that they own as the foundation to their marketing plan.  As I have shared in previous posts, it is imperative to your business to have your own website where your content & brand is strongly displayed and that you can direct all your traffic back to.  Having just a page on a company website, or on a platform other than your own, you always stay at the mercy of someone else.

Just under two years ago I set up an analytics tracker on one of my blogs to keep track of how many visitors I receive.  I find myself at times becoming somewhat a statistics geek. I love seeing the numbers and watching growth and declines.  It helps me to gauge my online marketing efforts.  Since adding the analytics to that blog,  have been amazed by the stats.  There have been over 101,000 page views that have taken place during that time period.  In addition, the blog has seen over 67,000 unique visitors.  That is an average of 4,236 page views per month and almost 2,800 unique visitors per month.

These numbers are HUGE. While there are multiple reasons why these numbers are as high as they are, here are the top reasons I believe it has been successful.  These are my top five ways to get traffic to your blog:

1.  Search Engine Optimization- When I was selling real estate & trying to gain the most exposure to my site, the best way to accomplish this was to write for the search engines.  I did research on keywords that were going to be easily attainable for high rankings and traffic and then set out to write & land on the first page for those longtail keywords.  Usually I could take the top spots within only a few blog posts on a term and keep it the top spots fairly easily. Search engines account for over 76% of the traffic that come into my blogsite.  On the other hand, Twitter & Facebook only account for just over 1.5% of the traffic.

2.  Establishing Yourself as an Authority- With the increasing amount of exposure the Internet provides for businesses & their online marketing, there are more & more competitors that try to gain business via the Internet.  The one thing that will bring them back to your site & sharing it with their friends is if you give them more credible information on the subject they are interested in.  While many fear that if they share too much information, they are giving it away.  Businesses fear that the consumer will not contact them if they share too much. The reality of the situation is that being an authority builds a layer of trust with the client that makes them decide to work with you over your competition.

3.  Sharing Your Experience- Sharing that knowledge gives you an increased level of credibility that will drive that consumer to work with you.  Also, even though you have shared how to accomplish something in detail, consumers will still call on you for your professional experience.  Remember, we are the professionals that work in the industry daily.  That experience is invaluable to most consumers & will bring them in to work with you for that reason alone.

4.  Consistency & Regular Updates- If consumers know that they can find your content on a regular basis, they will come back to read regularly because they are always met with new content.  Writers like Chris Brogan have been able to gain over 50,000 subscribers because he writes daily new unique content.  If you can write at least 3 times a week or more, solid high quality content, you will gain a readership that will return regularly to your page.

5.  Relate to Consumers- One of the biggest mistakes I see people make in writing blog posts is that they do not try to connect with the consumer.  They write using the terms of their industry or the way they would talk when trying to sell something.  Readers of your blog do not like being sold to! Instead of trying to sell, try to connect, it will be much more profitable to your blog.  If people feel it is nothing more than one GIANT ad, they will run for another source never to return to your blog.

If you apply these 5 simple steps into your blog, you will see an increase of traffic and subscribers like you could never imagine.  Trust me when I say, it works!  Once I applied these into my blog I saw my numbers grow exponentially to the place they are now!

If you have any questions about how I achieved this & want some personal online consulting to get your business receiving these types of numbers, feel free to contact me.  I’d love the opportunity to assist.

Yesterday I read an article on Mashable that YouTube recently passed 2 Billion views a day on their network.  YouTube, a company that recently celebrated their 5th birthday has become quite the major component to any businesses online marketing strategy.  Whenever I am doing online consulting with a client regarding their social media marketing strategy, I always try to encourage them to integrate video as a main component of the online marketing strategy.

Next to behemoth search enging Google, YouTube (which is actually owned by Google) is the second most used search engine in the world.  Companies can gain instant notoriety by establishing a solid video online.  Examples: Remember the Social Media Revolution? This video regarding some statistics on the power of social media gave a businesses YouTube channel an instant jolt of traffic.  Or maybe you remember the infamous song of how United Breaks Guitars? The band Sons of Maxwell became overnight successes because of their catchy tune about how United Airlines broke a guitar and refused to pay for it.  They created a quick video poking humor at the event & within no time the video had been viewed over 8 million times.  Their success was so great they even created another video United Breaks Guitars Breaks My Career that basically says thanks for destroying our gear, you made us famous!

So how does someone optimize their efforts on YouTube & other video sites? Well, there are a few things that if done consistently will help you to get the best results.

1. Tagging & Title of Video. Just like when you write a blog, the title of the video is one of the most important parts.  I had a client who had a video that was really good on something that people would want to see, but the title was done all wrong.  In fact, it had just the basic random title that the video camera named it when they downloaded the video.  When the client uploaded it to YouTube, they never took time to change it and could not understand why their video was not getting much traffic.  So, we renamed the video to a term people would search for & the video started to take off almost instantly.  Now, that video has over 1,100 views!  The tags are also important on a video because they help to categorize your video properly to be searched.  I find myself going to YouTube now for answers on a question rather than search engines.

2. Distribution of Video. The second thing most people is load their video to YouTube but nothing else.  Nowadays we all have Facebook, Twitter, websites, blogs, Posterous accounts & more.  YouTube has now made it really easy to distributet your videos out to other networks.  When I take my reach of all these networks & add them together, it is well over 8,000 people.  Why not share those videos with that audience?  The more exposure you can give to a video, the more likely it is to be viewed by masses.  Not to mention, those who watch the video & like it will then also share it on with others. Each person has a wide net of connections and you can see quickly how your video can then spread like wildfire!

3.  Keeping it to the point. Have you ever clicked on a video to watch & as it starts you see it is 8:39 and you just do not want to sit there that long?  Videos that drag on longer than 3-4 minutes normally have a lot higher viewing level than those that are 8-10 minutes.

In addition to these three tips on how to optimize the use of YouTube & other video services, here is a post I wrote a while back on how to create effective videos.  This post shares with you 5 really basic tips on how to make videos that people will actually sit & watch without having to spend thousands of dollars to have the videos produced.  It covers things like music, how to pan shots properly, and much more.  It is a great beginners guide to starting on video.

In closing, if you are not yet using video in your marketing strategies, it is definitely time to start exploring this.  One final piece of advice:  You do not need to be a professional videographer to create good video.  Most videos that go viral are ones shot with basic digital cameras, flip cams, and most of the times are not even edited.  So do not allow things like that hold you back from getting started.  Raw video can be just as beneficial for your business as one that is shot by the pros.  If you want some assistance in getting started with this, feel free to contact me and I can help you.  The biggest key however, is to just get started!

It seems that just about every restaurant these days has a “receipt survey” in place. You know the kind I’m talking about, right? When I’m trying to pay for my meal, I get a long receipt with a code highlighted near the bottom.

It’s always a little awkward when the server says, “Visit our site and use this code and you will be entered into a drawing to win something useless to you.”

Okay. I know they don’t really say that, but that’s what I hear.

What are the exceptions for me, if any? What would cause me to actually visit the site and use the super-long encrypted code?

That’s easy. There are exactly two occasions when I would bother to follow through:

1. The service was phenomenally good.
2. The service was horrendous.

Everything else falls into the lukewarm spectrum in between.  Is this really candid or valuable in any way?

With that in mind, how can restaurants (and other businesses, for that matter) get a handle on how they’re actually doing? Unlike the title of this post, I wouldn’t advocate actual, in-person eavesdropping.

I have two ideas to help.

The first one involves a bit more work – ask them a couple of the intended survey questions personally before they leave. Offer to reward the customer immediately by giving them a free dessert or knocking a small amount off of their bill.

The second idea is a little more elaborate, but it can be done free of charge. You can easily use some simple online tools to get a feel for what people are saying about you. Believe me, if you do much business at all, someone is having a conversation about you and your company.

Here are a couple to get you started:

Set up Google Alerts (http://google.com/alerts) for your company name or the names of your competitors. If people are writing blog posts that mention how terrible your coffee tastes, you might want to know this. Conversely, if someone is raving about you to their online sphere of influence, offer them something cool, like a t-shirt or a free dessert.

Use Facebook’s “deep search” function. Many people don’t even know this exists. Use the “SEARCH” box on Facebook and put in your company name (or your personal name).  A dropdown menu may appear there automatically.  If so, make sure you click on the “See More Results for ______ Here”, which will be the bottom result on that list.  The results could surprise you.

Utilize http://search.twitter.com – the “advanced search” gives you a lot of options. Again, you could be surprised by what you see, both good and bad.

Of course, there are plenty of others, some of which are professional (read: paid) in nature.

If you are a business owner and you need help understanding how to leverage social media tools to help you improve your company’s image and make more sales, let us know how we can help. We love this stuff!

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/neilt/2517652/