This article was originally posted on November 4, 2010 on Fifth Gear Analytics.

As a Social Media marketer with SIGMA Marketing Group, I am still amazed when I meet business savvy folks who have not yet adopted social media usage in any way, shape or form.  There are varying degrees of usage and unique formulas for different business types and vertical markets, but I don’t care who you are… Social Media is here to stay, and will continue to evolve rapidly.  I recently wrote an article on social media usage by industry, which focused primarily on B2B Social Media, but it provided some interesting insights about which industries have adopted social.

I also recently read the book Socialnomics, by Erik Qualman, which opened my eyes even further to the need to understand the social channels that are relevant to your own industry and how to best leverage them.  The book provides strong thought leadership on the importance of your social networks.  In just a few short years, the social media landscape has entirely changed.  We now have access to robust tools for social listening and sentiment analysis.  A smart business, whether it is a small business or enterprise-level organization – is aware of what’s going on in their industry in the social space.    The video below is one in a series titled Social Media Revolution, and its statistics are pulled directly from the book Socialnomics.  Fasten your seat belt and enjoy the ride:

“We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it.”  Erik Qualman

I strongly encourage any business-minded person to pick up a copy of this book and read it.  It is full of scenarios, both good and bad, of how social media can impact your business.  Even the smallest niche business can use Social Media to build and nurture relationships, which in the long run can help grow your business.  Social Media is not just using Twitter or posting updates on Facebook.  It’s truly understanding how your brand, product or industry can provide value to its audience.  Some of the basic aspects might include:

• Integrating Social Media with your email marketing campaigns: Allowing your email subscribers to share your content can take a campaign with a limited email subscriber base viral, allowing not only your product or service offering more visibility, but potentially increasing your email subscriber base.
• Listening to the dialog in the social space about your brand, product or industry. Who is out there already doing what you should be doing?  Who is talking about your products, and what are they saying?  What is the sentiment about your brand or industry?  By taking some time to listen before jumping in, you can begin to piece together a strategy of how to leverage Social Media. You never know… you may beat your competitors to it if you start right now!
• Make your campaigns truly multi-channel by adding social elements. Still doing direct mail or email marketing campaigns only?  There’s nothing wrong with that.  But why not add a layer of Social Media touch-points to that same campaign to allow it to go viral beyond your mailing list?  By leveraging social networking sites with the same campaign offering, you can create additional components for your campaign that make it viral in nature.
• Understand what you can learn from Social Media. Once you start adding social to your marketing strategy, you need to understand how it’s performing and where you need to adjust or improve your efforts.  Combining social listening with your web analytics can provide valuable insights about where your customer relationships and brand evangelists are coming from.  To take that a step further, you should work to integrate your online customer data with your offline customer data.  This will allow you to better understand what your customers look like, where they are most like to interact with you, and what drives their buying decisions.

Your customers are evolving every day.  They no longer go searching for products and services-those products and services find them.  Consumers are armed with information at their fingertips, and want to make purchases and buying decisions based on trust and a relationship that provides value to them in the long run.  In this article, I’ve barely scratched the surface on how and why Social Media has transformed from a “bandwagon” to a “supersonic jet,” and how it will continue to change the way to communicate with our customers and prospects.

Have questions about Social Media and Web Analytics can provide valuable marketing insights to your organization? Contact SIGMA Marketing Group today to learn more.

My list of 7 things that you should think about as worst practices that can adversely affect your website’s success:

Myth 1: Repeating your content as many times as possible is a good way to gain ranking.

Truth: Duplicate Content is never a good idea – your site should be full of unique and keyterm rich content that will easily identify your products and/or services, and quickly assist your customer’s to make the purchase decision.  A well thought out SEO strategy is more important than a particular keyword showing 8 times one page. Know your audiences and how THEY would search.  Your content should reflect that.

Myth 2: Having as many links as humanly possible linking to your site is great for ranking – no matter where the links come from.

Truth: Avoid Link Farming: You need a relevant link strategy for your site – link farming is another form of spam that won’t get you anywhere. Volume of links is definitely important, but quality of links is equally if not more important. Read more about link farming.

Myth 3: If I put hidden keywords on my page 100 times repeatedly the search engines will find me.

Truth: Invisible Text is a No-No: It used to be that developers would fill up a page full of keywords by placing white text on white background making it basically invisible to the users – but not to the search engines – this practice will get you banned from sites like Google.

Myth 4: Once I build my site I don’t ever have to do anything with it… it will just be a magic selling machine!

Truth:  No!  Don’t just let your site sit stagnant: You can build the best web site in the world, but if you are not constantly working it – it will go nowhere. Think of new ways to beef up content – consider FAQs based on what your customers are asking, look for ways to improve usability and content – always be working it. Read: Define Your Website with Content – This is not the Field of Dreams People!

Myth 5: If I email my customer base every day I’ll get more business

Truth:  Please don’t spam your email subscribers: Now-a-days people are becoming more reluctant to opt-in to an email list because they are afraid of the spam they’ll get. If your users are providing their email to you – respect it and send emails that include relevant content at relevant intervals. Monthly newsletters are a great idea with featured promotions. In some situations, depending on the frequency of updates and changes to content – weekly newsletters may be a good idea – but don’t just send email because you can – send them because they offer value.  (Check out this post on email fatigue for some additional insight.)

Myth 6: My customers have all day to browse my site and eventually will find what they are looking for…

Truth: Don’t make your products hard to find: Users want to find what they are looking for as quickly as possible – it’s why they are on the internet doing their research. Use the “3 click” rule to allow your users to find what they are looking for in 3 clicks or less! If your site uses things like Flash and other interactive features – be sure it does not affect the ease at which users can find the products you sell. In fact, do your best to optimize your product pages so that they get direct ranking on search engines so your user lands directly on the product pages.

Myth 7: I have a niche product and my customers are not online

Truth: That’s a bunch of bologna! You may very well have a niche product that appeals to only one audience or has a very particular use – OR – you may sell a very large ticket item that generally speaking someone is not going to just drop on their credit card. But the odds are that the folks looking for these items ARE in fact researching them online – especially the more expensive items. In the case of niche items, users generally look for price and value online knowing they can search out the best deal for the best product, and get great recommendations. I guarantee – your customers are online – get with a solid internet marketer who will help develop a tactical plan to promote your site and your products to your niche audience.

There are many practices in internet marketing that can hurt your site traffic and success, but these are just my top 7. Small business owners – beware – get yourself aligned with a reputable internet marketing firm who can give you references to call on – ask the right questions to the references to ensure that the group you are hiring to market your small business website has the tools and knowledge to do it effectively and to follow the ever changing best practices!

This post was originally written during my employment at Cazbah as an Account Manager (view original post).

Having spent the time today at Cazbah teaching myself how to add an email opt-in form to a Facebook page from Vertical Response – I found myself getting a little frustrated.  Now that I’ve got it figured out – I’m going to save you tons of time in digging for the info (it’s not altogether straight forward for the basic user).

Assuming you have a business page on Facebook – AND – you are using Vertical Response for email marketing and list segmentation, you can create a tab on your Facebook page that will invite your page fans and visitors to sign up for (or opt-in to) emails from your company, group, etc…  My assumption is that other email marketing tools will work too, but I have only tested VR at this point.

So to start out – head on over to Vertical Response and create your new list.  I recommend creating a list that will store only the opt-ins from Facebook.   After all, we want to know what conversions (if any) are coming from our Facebook pages.

To add a new list – follow the steps under Lists and then “Add New List” in your Vertical Response account.  You then need to create an opt-in form just for that list.  Follow the instructions to create your opt-in form and copy and past that form script into a text editor like notepad – we’ll need that when we get our Facebook page tab ready to go.

Note: When creating that new list and opt-in form, I do recommend using a custom thank you page that can be added to your Google Analytics Goals.

Now here’s where I got hung up – you need to add a customizable tab to your Facebook page, so before you can do that, you have to install the Static FBML application to your Facebook Account.  (I am now a fan of this application since I know how to use it

To find Static FBML, click on the “Edit Page” link in your Facebook page and scroll down to Browse More Applications.  Click on the Static FBML link (shown at right here).

This will take you to the application page on Facebook.  You will need to add it to your Facebook page before you proceed.

The nice thing is, if you manage multiple Facebook pages you can add it to all of them at once.  Scroll through the list and select the page(s) you want to add it to and we’ll continue on.

Once you’ve done that, head back to your Facebook page and click on “Edit Page” – don’t worry we are almost done!  Once you are in your Edit screen you should scroll down and see the Static FBML link you’ll want to click on Edit.

Note:  Have your text editor open where you’ve saved your form code so you can copy it to Facebook.

Change your title and then simply copy in your form script and then add any additional content.  Note that FBML does not like <html> <body> and <head> tags, so you can format tables, paragraphs, etc – but avoid those few tags.

UPDATE (2-19-2010): Due to Facebook updates – you’ll need to add a “&” to the end of your FORM METHOD String to enable this feature to work.  I had to go back to the Vertical Response Lounge to get this resolved (which by the way is a great resource).

<form method=”post” action=”http://oi.vresp.com?fid=26230b1027&” target=…..>

In the completed example below I have included a basic table format with some additional content to let users know what they’ll be receiving once they opt-in:

There you go!  You have just learned (much quicker than I did), how to add email opt-in forms to your Facebook pages.   (See the live example of Cazbah customer Turnbull Manufacturing.)  This Static FBML application can do much more than just adding email opt-in forms.  My next experiment will be with promotional content and coupons – but the possibilities are limitless (within the confines of the application) as to how to utilize this application.