The Search & Social night invited entrepreneurs and partnerships of corporations to  inform the audience of various SEO and social media storytelling techniques.

One topic in particular that caught my interest was a presentation by Craig Backman from the McLellan Group who spoke about the importance of incorporating video onto one’s branding and SEO plan.

Backman provided five key takeaways for incorporating video in your marketing strategy:

Video is the preferred medium by most site visitors. According to Cisco Systems, 90% of web traffic will be from video by the time we reach 2013.

Video is relevant to all demographics. It is not just youth that are broadcasting their talents through online video, but people 55 and older are also finding a space to share their stories.

Video is more persuasive. According to Nielson data, product users are 85% more likely to buy from video content than from text.

Video is more memorable. Videos are sensational and require more than just one sense to understand a message. They thus attract better site traffic and higher quality content than text does

Video enhances SEO results. Forrester found that video is 53 times more than text content to rank within the top search engine results. Google looks at the description, title and tags for indexing a video.

Video will not only help gain site traffic, but it offers another route for Google to find content, by crawling keywords within description, the tags assigned to the video and its title.

Moreover, video requires less effort to participate in. Because our technology-driven society has socialized citizens into becoming instantly-gratified beings, videos deliver information at a faster rate than reading a lot of text. Thus you are more likely to attract customers and have a higher retention and recall rate.

Utilizing video on your site also helps to captivate audience interest and provide a more engaging experience than text: it offers unrivalled ways for companies to interact with their customers and provides a unique experience altogether.

If you would like more information on using video to enhance search traffic to your website, we would be happy to help.

Step 1 is to choose an accessible Gmail account. The key when setting up your Google+ Business Page is to use a gmail account that is accessible to multiple members of your marketing team. This ensures that you can separate responsibilities on your team to make certain that everyone has access to all communication to guarantee that your business page is well managed and sustained.

Step 2 is to create your page. To do this, visit https://plus.google.com/pages/create and when you see the option to create a Google+ Page, get started. A wizard will walk you through the set up and allow you to classify your business using one of the following options:
- Local Business or Place
- Product or Brand
- Company, Institution or Organization
- Arts, Entertainment or Sports
- Other

Step 3 is to customize your public profile. To customize your profile, you want to edit your tag line. Think about this as a really short value proposition or unique selling proposition. Then, upload your logo. It’s that simple.

Step 4 is to promote your page. At this point, you have simply created a profile. Google will now prompt you to promote your page. Before broadcasting content to a large audience, take the time to provide more information and complete your profile. Then share some content and value with a small number of people, so you have a foundation in place. Just like you do with your Website, you first want to ensure that you have some great content before you promote it to your target audience.

Step 5 is to continue to optimize it. Just as we’ve discussed in so many of our posts, you want to treat your social networks as funnels where you drive visitors to your networks, and promote great offers, such as eBooks and events to convert them into leads. And as we always say, create fantastic value that will be shared to continually grow your networks.

If you have any questions about how to set up your Google+ Business Page, please comment. We’d be happy to help.

We spoke about the importance of developing a list of the keywords that you would like to compete for, how to perform a keyword search to determine the volume of searches for your particular keywords, as well as how to determine how many times you need to include the keyword in your past and current work experience to rank better than you competition.

If you did not read that post, you can check out that LinkedIn marketing post here.
In this post, we’re going to give you some additional tips on how you can use your title, summary, and specialties sections of your LinkedIn profile for further optimization. So, let’s begin with your title.

Instead of stating your standard title, use your keywords at the beginning of your title. For example, we as Canadians love hockey. If you perform a search for “Hockey Instructor” in LinkedIn, you will notice that “Hockey Instructor at Sperberg Skating Systems” is the first profile to come up. You will also notice that LinkedIn actually highlights the matching keywords in the title, past, and current work experience. All three of these factors are viewed heavily by LinkedIn when determining how to rank specific profiles.

Your “Summary” section is another area that you can include your keywords in for additional optimization. To edit your summary, simply click on “Edit” in your “Summary” and add your keywords to your content. For additional optimization, while you’re in your summary section, update you specialties. A simple way to achieve this is by reviewing your list of keywords that you would like to rank well for and include them in your list of specialties.

You can also update your Website links to include your keywords. To do this, go to “Additional Information” and click on “Edit”. Under “Websites” click on the drop-down list for each of the three Websites and click on “Other”. By clicking on “Other”, you are able to edit the name and keywords for each of your Websites. For example, for the hockey instructor, he could use “Hockey Instructor” for his Website keywords, and “Hock Instructor Blog” for his blog.

There are so many ways to use LinkedIn for business. If you have any questions about how to further optimize your LinkedIn profile or use LinkedIn for business, please comment.

Just as companies optimize their Websites to rank well for certain keywords in Google and other search engines, as an Internet marketing company, we recommend that the same should be done in social search engines such as LinkedIn and YouTube.

In this post, we’re going to provide some quick tips on how you can start ranking for your targeted keywords in LinkedIn. The first thing you want to do is create a short list of keywords that you would like to rank well for. Then perform a search in LinkedIn under the “People” category using your keywords. When you perform your search, you will notice that you will be shown the number of searches for that particular keyword. Compare the volume of searches for the various keywords that you would like to rank well for, and select the keywords that have the best combination of search volume and relevance.

To determine what it will take to rank well against other people who are optimizing for the same keywords, perform another search and ensure that you set “Sort by:” to “Keywords” and set “View:” to “Expanded”. Then, take a look at their “Current” and “Past” profiles. You will notice that the top ranking people state their keywords in their profiles. If you want to rank better than them, you have to include the keywords in your “Current” and “Past” profiles more times than them. It’s really that simple.

For additional optimization, also work on getting more recommendations as they are also factored in to your ranking. If you have any questions on setting up your LinkedIn profile or how to make these changes, please comment.

The search engine giant has come up with a new data structuring method for websites, which enables its crawlers to pull up information more efficiently. Documentation of information as per this new format is likely to boost search rankings. Changes are also being implemented in search result pages. The users are being eased into the changed format. For instance, the result pages now offer more direct information. In the coming months users will no longer need to visit a site to find answers for direct questions. This can make the search process faster and more convenient the users. However, marketers who depend on users visiting their sites and clicking through to deeper web pages will be disappointed.

The data offered by the search engine to marketers is also reducing. Google now looks upon data ownership as a competitive advantage and is trying to protect it from advertising networks. Since October, the data regarding where and how Google users found their site has been unavailable to marketers. It is very likely that the search giant will continue expanding such changes and further restricting available data in 2012.

Get started by reviewing your competitors in the top five social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn. To kick-start things, establish a list of your competitors, your key personnels names, and the keywords that you would like to rank well for in search engines such as YouTube and LinkedIn.

Take a look around in each social network to determine who’s competing for different keyword phrases, how they are positioning themselves, and what their offers are. Read the conversations that are taking place to uncover value creation opportunities.

A great example of this is LinkedIn. Visit LinkedIn and perform a keyword search for the keywords that you would like to rank well for under “Groups” and see which competitors and complementary groups come up. Then, review the discussions. This research will provide some great information on both your competition and customer needs. The Questions and Answers section within LinkedIn is another great tool to use for additional research.

You also want to evaluate each social network in supporting your goals as each social network has its strength. If you are just starting out, you may want to get started with two or three social networks that align well to what you would like to achieve. For example, if you provide presentation training, YouTube would be a great fit.

It’s then a matter of developing a strong social media plan and metrics to track results. For more information on social media, download our free social media eBook or comment if you have any questions.

You want to track both qualitative and quantitative results. Let’s take a look at each, starting with the quantitative side. As we’ve mentioned in various posts, you want to establish goals and analyze your social networks as funnels. On the front end, you want to review the network size, number of followers, number of fans, and quantity of members. Establishing goals and analyzing the growth of your social networks is such a key metric because it provides a clear indication of growth. It provides clarity on the effectiveness of your collective efforts.

The next metric that you want to establish and measure is the quantity of commentary about your brand, products, etc. This gives you a clear understanding of the quality and value of the conversations that you are having with your audience. If comment volume is high, it’s a strong indication that you are connecting with your audience and stimulating a response.

The next number that you want to establish and measure is the number of visitors that you are driving from your social networks to your Website. This is important because it indicates if your social media efforts are driving people to take the next step and convert into a customer. For greater clarity, track the volume of leads, presentations, and sales made from these visitors to determine if the visitors are profitable.

On the qualitative side, you want to track the quality of the comments about your brand, products, and key personnel. The reason why this is important is because you want to ensure that the higher volume of comments that you are receiving are, indeed, positive. The sentiment of comments made gives you a clear indication of how positive your impact is on your market. And there are several tools that you can use to track comments and sentiment, including Brandwatch, Alterian, Radian6, MutualMind, and Synthsio.

If you have any questions regarding how to establish the goals of your social networks and the tools to track results, please comment.

The bottom line is that if you are selling a higher priced product, and your brand is not well established, you have to provide something of value for free. Why? Because you need to establish credibility and trust with your prospect. You have to prove to them that you are good at what you do and that you deliver on your claims. And the more you give away for free, the more you can charge.

This brings us to the topic of this post, should you give away something of immediate value and gratification, such as an eBook, or should you give away a free event, such as a webinar? This is actually a heavily debated topic. There are pros and cons to each. Let’s take a look. With a free eBook, you will likely generate more lead volume and, therefore, a lower cost per lead (CPL). As a matter of fact, we tested an eBook offer versus a Webinar offer for one of our clients and the eBook opt-in rate outperformed the Webinar by three times. This means that the CPL for the eBook was one third of the Webinar. If you were to look at this number alone, you would definitely use the eBook as your offer, not the Webinar.

This is why it’s important to also track you cost per sale (CPS) and lifetime revenue per client. And why it’s so important to test. You may find that your CPL is more expensive for your Webinar offer than your eBook, but you may find that your CPS is lower for your Webinar offer than your eBook.

There is no right or wrong strategy. The truth is in the numbers. You simply want to get the most out of your marketing investment as possible. You want to generate as many sales as possible from every campaign that you’re running at the lowest cost per sale possible. It’s that simple.

Your offer allows you to convert the traffic that is driven to your Website and scale up a profitable business. If you don’t currently have some type of free offer on your site, you may want to consider adding one. If you have any questions regarding how to set up an offer, please comment. We’d be happy to help.

The ‘Other’ folder, a sub-tab of the primary inbox, essentially acts like a spam folder. Messages coming from unknown people and events to which users have not RSVP’d are collected in this folder. This means that time and effort invested by a marketer in composing updates that end up in ‘Other’ folder are likely to be wasted. The main reason behind taking the decision of removing the feature was that it was not really offering value to marketers.

The move is likely to be useful for both the site as well as marketers. Getting rid of ineffective features is the best way to ensure that page owners focus on value building tools. This is essential to keep administrators from getting frustrated and shifting their advertising dollars to other platforms.

Currently, posting updates on ones wall is the best method of ensuring that the message reaches target users as it will be visible to them in their news feeds. Targeted sponsored stories and ads are other options for getting your message across to potential customers. Facebook is also testing a new feature that will enable users and page owners to communicate privately.

As an Internet marketing company, we recommend that this is where retargeting comes in. It allows you to get in front of the remaining 85% to 98% of your prospects that come to your Website and don’t convert, so you can get as much from your marketing investment as possible.

Retargeting works by tracking the people who visit specific pages on your site and displaying relevant ads to them as they visit other sites on the Internet.

How Retargeting Works
Many people ask us how retargeting works, and it’s really quite simple. All you do is place JavaScript that is provided by a retargeting system such as Google Adwords or AdRoll. This code creates a list of prospects by placing cookies in their browser.

Ideally, you want to place the JavaScript on specific pages. For example, if you have a free download, it would make sense to place the script on the product and business overview pages, but it wouldn’t make sense to place the code on your career pages.

You can also use different JavaScript for each product line to create separate retargeting lists by product line. These lists enable Google, AdRoll, and other retargeting vendors to display your ads to prospects on these lists.

Why it Works
Since different people are at different steps in the sales decision making process, it allows you to keep your brand, products, and offers in front of your prospect so that when they are ready to take action, you’re a click away.

Retargeting Pricing Models
Each retargeting system offers different pricing models, so take the time to research their pricing and project out what a lead and sale may cost you. The pricing models include cost per acquisition (CPA) or cost per lead (CPL), cost per click (CPC), and cost per thousand (CPM). The key is to determine what your projected CPA and CPS will be.

If you have any questions regarding how to project costs, please feel free to comment.