Talk to most business owners and they will tell you that word-of-mouth is their best, if not only, source for attracting new customers. And why not? It's free (almost).
There are some costs to achieving positive word-of-mouth. You must have spent money training a knowledgeable and friendly staff to ensure the best customer service possible. You've no doubt given discounts, refunds, and give-aways to satisfy unhappy customers. You probably spent time and money trying to measure your customer's experience with customer comment cards and surveys. Even after all these efforts your business can't be there when word-of-mouth takes place, or can it?
Your customers are talking about you online. Search around on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Myspace, and other Social networking sites to see exactly what I mean. If you don't see anybody talking about you, then try refining your search locally. If you still don't see chatter about you, then you have an even bigger problem, and also a great opportunity. (Funny how crisis and opportunity appear at the same time.)
First, let's talk about what to do if you see people talking about your company, products, or services. You simply need to join the conversation where the word-of-mouth is happening. You may ask," How do I find out all the places where my customers are talking about me?" Your WSI Internet Consultant has tools and reports to find out for you. We can simplify the process of gaining a presence in the Social Media sphere of influence. Now let's look at the second scenario.
So, you can't find any word-of-mouth about you online. What does that mean? It does not mean that your customers don't go online. Unfortunately, it does mean that your business is not creating strong word-of-mouth, which is as good as no word-of-mouth at all. Fortunately, like having no credit you have a great opportunity to build good standing. With the slate blank you can start the conversation then invite your customers to join you. In turn, you improve customer relations and build a community around your business.
Community organizing and involvement are buzz-words today that cannot be ignored. Look at how much success it brought to the Obama campaign in 2008. It has a powerful impact in your market share. Banks have to be involved in the community by law. Most successful small to medium businesses support local Little League programs or charities. There are communities built around these important organizations on Social Networking sites. Your business could support them online as well as off. People like businesses that act beyond their bottom line. Thus, word-of-mouth grows from community involvement.
Want to know more? WSI Internet Consulting and Education is a great place to start. Visit our website to learn more about marketing your business or non-profit on the Internet.
Showing posts with label social media optimization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social media optimization. Show all posts
Friday, June 5, 2009
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Down the Rabbit-Hole of Social Media Marketing
I'm working on a Trend and Competitor analysis report for a client that is interested in starting Social Media and Search Engine Optimization. I started playing around with tools like Google Insight and SEOQuake, and I went down a rabbit-hole of information.
While juggling all the data on my client and their competitors, much like the tea cups at the Mad-Hatter's, I discovered strong evidence for the previous post's claims that SMO gets websites ranked better. Compare the website in the red column with the orange, blue and green.
The red website has no SEO or SMO and rarely is found. The sites in the other columns are easily found at top positions for their search terms with some elements of SEO and SMO. Notice that standard SEO elements such as robot.txt files and XML sitemaps are absent from all the sites. The red column has more indexed pages but still does not rank as well as the others. While the green ranks the best, probably from its high count of incoming links, the orange and blue are a close second without any known incoming links.
Why? Take a look at their Social Bookmarks. Orange 3, blue 11, and green has 1. What does this say about Social Bookmarking and Social Media Marketing? Volumes. It is as if Google is weighing social media activity more than incoming links. And who could blame them? Social media is a much better experience for searchers than following links from site to site. Social media provides fresh content and engage the searcher to interact.
I've come out of the rabbit-hole more convinced than ever that Social Media Optimization works. Moreover, because those inbound links still have a lot of weight, it should be implemented with a strong SEO strategy for the best results. I'm excited to show my client the report and for them to get started on SMO and SEO right away, so I can share the results with you.
While juggling all the data on my client and their competitors, much like the tea cups at the Mad-Hatter's, I discovered strong evidence for the previous post's claims that SMO gets websites ranked better. Compare the website in the red column with the orange, blue and green.
The red website has no SEO or SMO and rarely is found. The sites in the other columns are easily found at top positions for their search terms with some elements of SEO and SMO. Notice that standard SEO elements such as robot.txt files and XML sitemaps are absent from all the sites. The red column has more indexed pages but still does not rank as well as the others. While the green ranks the best, probably from its high count of incoming links, the orange and blue are a close second without any known incoming links.Why? Take a look at their Social Bookmarks. Orange 3, blue 11, and green has 1. What does this say about Social Bookmarking and Social Media Marketing? Volumes. It is as if Google is weighing social media activity more than incoming links. And who could blame them? Social media is a much better experience for searchers than following links from site to site. Social media provides fresh content and engage the searcher to interact.
I've come out of the rabbit-hole more convinced than ever that Social Media Optimization works. Moreover, because those inbound links still have a lot of weight, it should be implemented with a strong SEO strategy for the best results. I'm excited to show my client the report and for them to get started on SMO and SEO right away, so I can share the results with you.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Social Media Helps Sites Rank Higher
Did you ever wonder whether your business should be doing anything with social media optimization or social media marketing You know, things like blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. If you think that these sites are just for the casual use of folks who want to share what they have for lunch, think again. Google and the other search engines are paying close attention to what is going on with these sites and they tend to give them lots of credibility in the search display results. The reason for this is that the search engines love new content and the social media sites and blogs are displaying new content on a regular basis.
I just had a first had example of this. We recently launched a new web site for a local dentist. The site is http://www.jamesrussodds.com/. I have been checking daily to see if the site has been crawled by the Google crawler so the site will be included in the Google index. Of course we did all the "right things" like submitting to the DMOZ project, installing an xml site map and verifying the site via webmaster tools. Still it had been a few days and the crawler had not been there yet.
But today I typed in http://www.jamesrussodds.com/ in the search bar instead of the browser bar and the site did come in the search results for the first time. So the Google crawler has just been there. But guess which page of the site that Google choose to display - well the one blog post we have done so far. Here is the page that was displayed. http://www.jamesrussodds.com/Read_Our_Blog.php
Social media optimization does seem to be the fastest way to get on the search engines. Use social media to get your site ranked.
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