The other day I joined a Webinar on “Winning Back the Customer: Why Social Media Matters in a Down Economy”. I found it very interesting and wanted to share a few pointers they made. Due to our economic status, it’s not uncommon to find businesses prioritizing their budget expenses.

Contrary to myths, people are not spending less and are not opting for a cheaper brand of a specific product or service. What they are doing is prioritizing. This means people are weighing their purchases across categories, so it’s no longer Starbucks vs. home made coffee but it’s Starbucks vs. going to the movies tonight. For businesses this is not good news because it is no longer competition between brands but competition between unrelated brands.

In recessions, people are trying to figure out what is best for them. They are trying to understand what relates best to their lives at this point. This is where businesses need to up their game and start using social media to show their customers how their product or service fits into their customer’s lives.

Most businesses are beginning to panic and are pulling out of services they feel won’t be helpful in the long run. Some think shifting all expenses to online marketing and opting out of social media will help their business. Others are opting for the opposite and are putting as much money towards social media as possible. What is causing businesses to sway? Social Media is a fairly new concept in online marketing. Not only is it new but it takes a long time to start up and needs a fair amount of dedication to ensure its success. So, is it worth the risk when money is so scarce?

Here are some views as to why you should be investing in social media:

• You an’t afford to sit out: social media is not going to stop or slow down for a recession. People are not going to stop using social media tools and the Internet. Therefore you must be there to protect your brand and to create a face for your company. What better way than to interact with people on their grounds than by being part of social media networks. Lost time is lost opportunity.
• True Loyalty is recession proof: social media helps build brand trust because it allows people to learn about brands and connect with other people. Writing blogs, articles and participating in social media networks gives your company credibility and likeability. $148 billion was spent on advertising last year and only 14% of people polled said they trusted advertising. Half was spent on social media and 78% of people polled said they trust social media. 36% of consumers say they think more positively about a company that has a blog.
• Put consumers to use: Using your valuable customers as a voice to your company will help build trust in your community. Listen to recommendations and interact with your customers through competitions or give-aways. This will build customer loyalty and give relevance to your brand.
• Flabby ads: Integrating paid ads and social media can pack a powerful punch. Social networking improves search engine optimization, which in turn enhances the performance of paid search. Social media adds bulk to your brand and gives people interesting information that they can pass along to other people. Each interaction you have is an impression of your company.

Free is good: Here are some free things that social media provides:

• Friending: talking to people
• Social networking seeding: exposing your business
• SEO lift: immediate affects on your traffic flow to your site
• Listening: to your customers and what they want and expect of you.

Many SEO Experts agree that Google Analytics is one of the most useful free tools available in our industry. It is free, easy to install and easy to use. There is so much information that, if installed and interpreted correctly, it would be near impossible not to improve several aspects of a website under evaluation.

It is not, however, always easy to interpret Google Analytics data. This is especially true for the average small business/website owner. Let’s consider the page views section.

Many people look towards the page views section of Analytics to gauge viewer engagement. It is commonly thought that, the higher the page views, the more actively engaged the viewers are with the site and the more likely the viewers are to contact/purchase/return. While this may be true for some sites, it is not necessarily true for all sites.

So, if a high page rank is not indicative of a higher level of user engagement, what exactly is it telling us? Well, a high page rank could be an indication that your website is not well laid out. This is especially true for ecommerce sites. In all likelihood, viewers are having a difficult time finding exactly what they are looking for and, as a result, are having to delve more deeply into your site than they would prefer.

A better indication of user engagement would be to 1. Take a look at bounce rates and 2. Implement well designed goal funnels then track your abandonment rates. If either of these two numbers is higher than you are comfortable with, it is time to decide how to alter your site so that you are achieving the right engagement / higher conversions.

Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Round Table posts an interesting question on his recent blog post, Google showing product images in Adwords.

Google is offering expanding adwords ads. The three ads that appear usually on a Google search results page are accompanied with a + sign that you can click on that provides a drop down of the advertiser’s products.

When you check out Barry’s blog post, you can see that once the products appear on the results page, the organic listings disappear from view. Barry poses the question, is this good for the searcher as well as the advertiser? A comment on the blog asks the larger concern, where will the organic ads eventually appear.

Its clear that as search goes local, the one box, or Google map results that appear underneath the Adwords ads will take up their fair share of real estate. Add the expandable product feature and you have little room for organic listings, except on the right hand side of the page where research has shown us we pay little attention to or will organic results appear as a more results… link at the bottom of the page.

Google has to walk a fine line here. A full page of paid listings has led to the demise of several former search engines. However, being a public company, Google has to produce increased revenue results for their shareholders.  I suspect the failing economy will only speed up the rate at which Google tests and then executes on their next strategy for Adwords.

Where does this leave SEO?  Search engine optimization (SEO) needs to be a part of your search engine marketing platform, however, you must have a pay per click (PPC) campaign as a part of your internet marketing program. Besides, PPC is a great keyword research tool and PPC will become invaluable when mobile search moves into a higher gear…but that is another story.

Who would have thought that terrorists would be tapping into Twitter? Well apparently the US Army intelligence report has identified the popular micro-blogging service Twitter, Global Positioning System maps and voice-changing software as potential terrorist tools.

A 304^th Military Intelligence Battalion report posted on the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) website examines the various uses of mobile and web technologies and their potential uses by militants.

It’s no surprise that Twitter has become a social activism tool. It was noted that members sent out messages, or “Tweets”, reporting the July Los Angeles earthquake faster than news outlets. From socialists, communists, vegetarians to religious groups, political enthusiasts, atheists and hackers all communicate together under one roof freely expressing whatever they wish. Twitter is known to have members that support extreme views.

Over time, Twitters surveillance use could evolve to reflect tactics of hackers and activists. The report suggested that Twitter could theoretically be used as a social networking operation tool.

Terrorists, to carry out an ambush or detonate explosives, could use twitter, along with Global Positioning Systems. Terrorists have been discussing such tools online, and the US Army is keeping track of what is being discussed.

Although the web has provided the world with endless freedom, resources and means of self-expression, you have to learn to take the good with the bad. Once again this is a perfect example of how human nature manages to manipulate something good and use it against everyone. It’s scary to think that evil is lurking in all corners of our beloved Internet.

Yes I know it’s a play on Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares (which I love), and yes the idea is similar. Growing a business’s bottom line from getting new customers through Internet marketing. No we won’t be having the dramatic scenes of confrontation or dropping the f-bombs, but we will be showing both the online results from Google Analytics, and offline results from keeping notes of how each new customer found the business.

Yes, these will be real companies and yes, we will show real results.

Each business we help may not be hundreds of thousands in debt or on the edge of bankruptcy, but they do realize advertising in in Yellow Pages, magazines, or the local papers is becoming a tougher place to get a return on their investment and the Internet is a massive source of potential new customers.

Like a large proportion of todays business owners they are working hard, focused on running and growing their business. Added to this, they have either dabbled in seo, spending hours glued to their computer getting more confused by the numerous articles, blog posts and forums with all sorts of fast track solutions to get a #1 listing, and changed their web pages countless times hoping one of the changes will show some results.
Don’t have the time to learn how to take advantage of the confusing world of search engine optimization, or the worst stories, where they have parted with thousands of their hard earned money to an SEO company who promised the world and over several months delivered nothing, with the unsuspecting owner having no clue of how to measure anything they have done.

So join us each week and follow our adventures in Internet Marketing Nightmares!

Baby Boomers are among the fastest growing online population. If this particular demographic happens to fall into your target market and you are not yet pursuing them online, you are missing out on a huge opportunity. Of course, if you are ignoring online marketing and engagement opportunities for the baby boomer demographic, you are not alone; too many companies letting the 50+ market slip through their fingers.

I believe that the main reason industries across the board are putting their foray into the online world on hold is that there are just too many perceived unknowns. There are so many questions surrounding the Baby Boomer generation in general, and their online activities in particular, that companies are afraid of screwing up and wasting their marketing dollars or irritating their favourite customer base.

The first step to an effective marketing strategy is realising that the 50 + market is definitely online. Much research and many statistics will back up this statement. This includes a presence on video and social media sites. In fact, there are even social media sites that cater solely to Baby Boomers.

Once you understand that Baby Boomers are pretty much everywhere online, you must then overcome some common misconceptions and stereotypes that are attached to the 50 + market. Click on the link below foe a very interesting video that touches upon the top 10 common misconceptions about the Baby Boomer generation.

Top Ten Baby Boomer Myths

Once you acknowledge your 50+ market’s online presence and online needs, you may then begin strategizing with your preferred Search Engine Marketing Company to invent a solid and profitable plan to capture and engage this customer base.

Lately I have been focused on using Twitter. I’ve questioned whether Twitter is useful or just a waste of time.

Twitter, much like facebook, is a conversation-based site where people can follow what you are up to. People search for others that have similar interests and are involved in similar activities. People “follow” each other and reply to each other’s thoughts and recommendations. This is helpful because, once connected, you can expose a link to many people and get a huge response rate. However, at Twitter you are restricted to 140 characters only, which can be annoying and hard if you have a URL that is more than that length. Using a tool such as tinyurl http://tinyurl.com/ can help you out with a shortened version of your link. Be careful not to use tinyurl throughout your daily life because it does have a win-lose factor to it. The winning side is that it is great for links on the go and when you don’t care how many people click the link, or from where. The losing side is that it is terrible for garnering attention and doesn’t elicit a high degree of trust because more experienced users know that is a quick and dirty option for URL shortening. There are other shortening services out there such as is.gd and bit.ly so be sure to explore those options as well if you are shortening links in other locations. Another plus factor for Twitter is that blogs can also be fed onto your Twitter account http://twitterfeed.com/.

Twitter is great in all of the above aspects and can help you build a reliable community of followers. However, it is very time consuming at first. Throughout your day you have to play an active part in people’s conversations. Don’t be shy to get your opinion across and expose yourself to build up a group of followers. Be sure to go on Twitter at least 4-5 times a day. This being said, be careful not to get too addicted to Twitter where you spend hours of your day conversing with people and posting pointless status updates. It will consume your whole day and won’t be helpful at all! There are better and faster options out there for social media linking, such as LinkedIn, that could also use your time and attention!

On Friday, I was reminded of the importance of including search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click advertising (PPC) in your search engine marketing campaign.

One of our clients wanted to promote a new product on their website as soon as possible. In this case, we set up a Google Adwords account specifically for the new product and added a landing page focused on the new product to their website. This morning, the ad is up and running and driving new business to our client’s website. Immediate gratification.

On the flip side, same client, we noticed that PPC leads generated by a different product were eating up both the advertising budget and the sales staff time while providing less than optimal traffic. We researched the traffic through split testing ads and landing pages. The results were consistent with each strategy.

We concluded that the traffic we received for the given product would inherently include a large percentage of consumer traffic when we were looking for business to business traffic. We still wanted the traffic but it didn’t make sense to pay for it. In this case, we settled for the traffic we were receiving through search engine optimization.

In this case, we used PPC to meet immediate goals and SEO to meet long term goals.