If you think about it, when the chips are down and things aren’t going well, most people/companies/organizations return to what has worked well in the past. That is just how we’re wired; most of us will pull back and hunker-down with our tried-and-true methods until things start to look up.

There are some things that you need to consider about this approach if you plan to continue to grow your business through online marketing during this difficult time, because online marketing isn’t the same as the marketing you may have done in the past. You cannot take the strategies and tactics of traditional marketing and apply it to how you participate on the Internet and expect to see solid results.

Old media was designed to sell ads. That’s how you and I got access to TV programming and cheaper newspapers- because advertisers paid the freight. That is how the Internet started out and, in many ways, advertisers still pay part of the note for sites/services/features that we enjoy for free. The difference is that, in the online world, the Internet doesn’t care because marketers no longer get to interrupt and try to command our attention, insisting that we see their message. Similarly, advertisers have lost the ability to carefully control what we know about their brand and what it stands for - we have such proliferation of information available that we can quickly and easily find out about a brand’s stance on issues of importance to us.

This is one of the main concepts that we try to talk to people about with regard to Social Media Marketing: brands need to fundamentally change their posture in order to succeed in this new marketing environment. It’s no longer about pushing a one-way message; instead, it is about providing relevant content and creating a natural draw for that information with your targets. It’s about listening to your customers’ interests and sending them information they’ll value and care about. It’s no longer about your brand and what you do, it is about what you can do for your prospects and customers.

There has to be a wake up call for marketers because the online world is becoming the primary media for reaching our target markets. According to a study released today by Pew Research, the Internet has overtaken newspapers as the primary source for news, but you must remember that the same rules do not apply to online marketing. As a marketer, you need to give up on the idea of pushing what you sell as a one-way message and embrace more direct communication with your targets, and focus on creating relationships and joining in the conversations that are already taking place online- conversations that involved you and your brand. You need to be a part of those conversations, so the time to engage is now.

I’m not an economic or financial expert, but I do know that they are doing an amazing amount of artificial manipulation of our economy, and all of that is going to eventually turn things around for this country. The U.S. is the biggest business in the world, it is not going to tank; we’re just going to have to ride it out for a little while until things start to turn back around. That being said, why would you sit and wait to start securing your place within this new marketing space? With such a small window to secure your position on the forefront as an communicator with your prospects and customers, can you afford to wait until this official recession is over?

In 2006 Time Magazines “Person of the Year” was You. “It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.” This issue was all about social media and how Web 2.0 is changing everything and that was 2 years ago!

Social media has and will continue to change the way we get health care information, interact with and find health care providers. It is a resource for information, patients, sales and employees. Health care organizations must understand how to use and take full advantage of the Internet and social media.

The California Health Care Foundation (Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, THINK-Health) published an article titled “The Wisdom of Patients: Health Care Meets Online Social Media”. They state that “Social media on the Internet are empowering, engaging, and educating health care consumers and providers. While consumers use social media — including social networks, personal blogging, wikis, video-sharing, and other formats — for emotional support, they also heavily rely on them to manage health conditions.”

They go on to state that “The collective wisdom harnessed by social media can yield insights well beyond the knowledge of any single patient or physician”. “The outcome of this development is “Health 2.0” — a new movement that challenges the notion that health care happens only between a single patient and doctor in an exam room.”

In an article about “Hospitals and Social Media” on Hospital Impact, Tony Chen states that “you might be surprised at how savvy some hospitals already are”. The “Cleveland Clinic is on Facebook”, the “Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center is also on Facebook”, “Partners Healthcare is on SecondLife”.

He also explains that hospital CEOs are participating in blogs and provides two examples, “Nick’s Blog (CEO of Windber Medical Center in PA) and Paul Levy’s blog (CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston)”.

This video Social Media and Health Care Practices explains how “social networks have created enormous opportunities for pharmaceutical and health care marketers to reach their patient and physician customers.”

Recruiting

Social Media is changing the way health care organizations recruit and communicate with potential employees. In the article Recruitment Marketing: Is Social Media Cost Effective for Recruitment, Part 5 by Ira Kaufman on 24 Aug 2008 he dispels “5 myths about social media and recruiting.

“Why use print to market a job (e.g., CNN nurse position) when there are often many unfilled positions already listed in the newspaper? Social media is a low-cost promotional method that can pinpoint your exposure, get you links to your website, high search engine placements, high traffic and return visitors to your site. You are appealing to the community of users that have interest in your job opportunity.

A Kansas City recruiting web blog explains how recruiters are using social media.“KC Recruiters, Learn How To Use Facebook To Make $$$”, “New Twitter Tool Gives Recruiters the Edge” and “Rehabcare Launches First Podcast”.

A health care recruiting blog (employmentguide.com) posted an article about “Integrating Social Media Into Health Care Recruiting”. They state that implementing a forum “gives candidates and recruiters alike the ability to ask and answer questions about anything that is deemed important to them. For the job seeker, this gives them the ability to further brand themselves beyond the resume. For the recruiter it opens the door up to see what kind of personality a job seeker has by the way they answer certain questions.”

There are numerous blogs, forums and information sites. Jobsinpods.wordpress.com explains that “Candidates are already finding information about your place of work through all kinds of social media from Facebook to Youtube. Profiles on LinkedIn now allow you to take part and provide some measure of input directly from you.”

If you want to learn more about how Social Media is changing the way we learn about Health Care and the way we select and interact with health care providers visit the following web sites.

Blogs

Share Health Up-Dates

Patients Helping Patients

Physicians Discuss Cases and Issues

Information and Interaction

Discussions and Video

Johnson and Johnson blog with a YouTube video

Cigna is now on Second Life

SEO is a hot buzz-word and the searches for SEO companies has been steadily on the rise since 2004 according to Google Trends. With adverstising budgets being trimmed and marketing dollars dwindling in the face of our now “official” recession, I want to explain to you the reasons why you should be actively investing in Search Engine Optimization for your organization.  

I’m going to lay out some of the reasons why SEO is one of the best marketing investments you can make in this time of economic uncertainty, where every dollar has to count.

Search traffic will not be affected by the Market
Sales might drop and conversion rates may falter, but raw search traffic isn’t going anywhere. A recession doesn’t mean that people stop searching the web. Internet penetration and searches per user are still on the rise, and Search Engines are not going anywhere.

Unparalleled ROI
A MarketingSherpa survey of 3,053 client-side marketers determined that SEO was viewed as the most valuable marketing solution in terms of ROI; even higher than email marketing to in-house email lists. ROI is everything - especially in uncertain economic times.

The Web Outperforms Other Marketing Channels
When organizations look at the paths that lead to sales and income (a critical analysis whenever budgets are under scrutiny), the web almost always comes out with one of two assessments: Either it’s a leading sales channel (especially from an ROI perspective) or it’s deemed to be an area with the greatest opportunity for growth. In both scenarios, web marketing and SEO take center stage.

SEO is Losing its Stigma
Google is releasing SEO guides, Microsoft and Yahoo! both have in-house SEO departments and the “SEO is BS” crowd have lost a little of their swagger and a lot of their arguments. No surprise - solid evidence trumps wishful thinking, especially when times are tough.

Targeted Traffic
Traditional “push” marketing/advertising options often have you publishing an advertisement in a place where you’re hoping it will get a lot of eyeballs. That’s great, but the real question is: who owns those eyeballs? Are they the right people? Do they want or need what you’re offering? Good SEO keyword research can tell you a lot about your targets like what they are interested in and how they are searching for it. When you choose your keywords and optimize for them, you’re addressing an existing need or desire - and you know that the majority of visitors from search engines are looking for exactly what you’re offering. In short, SEO helps to drive highly qualified traffic to your website and gets your message in front of the right people.

Marketing Departments are in a Brainstorming Cycle
A high percentage of companies are asking the big questions - “how do we get new customers?” and “what avenues still offer opportunity?” Whenever that happens, SEO is bound to show up near the top of the “to be investigated” pile.

Web Budgets are Being Reassessed
Paid advertising is tapering off, and global conversion rates are still very low for pay-per-click. When managers meet to discuss how to address budget concerns they should be talking about improving how they grab that “free” traffic, instead of paid traffic.

Someone Finally Looked at the Web Analytics
It’s sad, but true. When a downturn arrives or panic sets in, someone, maybe the first someone in a long time, checks the web analytics to see where revenue is still coming in. Not surprisingly, search engine referrals with their exceptional targeting and intent-matching are ranking high on the list.

Don’t get me wrong here, because I am most definitely biased on this subject. I run an Internet marketing agency that specializes in SEO and Social Media marketing, but so I would always urge clients, prospects, everyone to make SEO an integral part of their marketing budget. The reasons are simple: people are not reaching for the yellow pages anymore. They are sitting in front of a computer all day, so when they need to find something, they go to their favorite search engine and look. With over 60 billion searches online every month, I guarantee that people are looking for what you offer. Wouldn’t you like them to find your site and not your competitors’? SEO can make that happen for you.

Sources: IGraphix & SEOmoz.org

Measurability and Search Engine Marketing: what you need to know about measuring the effectiveness of your efforts.

How do you justify the value of Search Engine Marketing (SEM)? This is a question that we constantly have to answer to business owner to justify the value of hiring an Internet marketing firm. Since SEM is a long-term strategy for returns that depends on consistency and accumulation, establishing that return on Investment can be difficult. Here are a few suggestions on how to best integrate web analytics data with other tools to prove the value of SEM.

The key is your analytics software
The key to measurability is that it be as detailed and as comprehensive as possible, and that is one of the most compelling arguments for how powerful Internet marketing can be. There are many great analytics packages out there, and one of the best just happens to be given away for free from our friends at Google - Google Analytics. With the right analytics package in place, you should be able to pull a remarkable amount of information about how people are finding and using your site, and this information is going to be critical to determining the success of your marketing program. First, we’ll look at how people are finding your site.

Understand how people find your site
Search Engine Marketing is all about making sure that people find your site instead of one of your competitor’s sites. Your analytics tool should at least be able to track the critical metrics:

• Which keywords or search terms drive traffic from organic (natural) searches?
• Which sites are referring traffic to yours?
• Which search engines are people using to get to your website?

Identify the search terms and keywords
You also need a keyword ranking tool in addition to web analytics. There are a variety of these tools available, although most of the decent tools out there are have at least some cost associated with them.

Since the foundation of any Search Engine Marketing plan is SEO, it’s recommended to optimize each web page for the few most relevant keywords, depending on the amount of content on the page. The keyword ranking tool is crucial because it’s equally as important to understand how visible your website is for these words and phrases. For example, if you’ve optimized your site for the keyword ‘website design company’, does your site show up in a top listings within the major engines when a user searches for the term ‘website design company’?

Integrate analytics with keyword tracking
Once you have a handle on your website’s keywords and search terms, its time to go a step further by comparing this data with your analytics reports. The key question is: are the keywords you’re optimizing for the words that are actually driving traffic to your website? If not, your SEO program needs to be re-focused.

It’s important to reach prospects when they are in the early stages of the buying cycle, the people who are searching for general information. Why? Once your site has achieved visibility within the general search listings, prospects have the opportunity to dig deeper and learn more about your offerings.

You must track SEM-driven conversions
When you designed your site, what was the goal? Is your site’s content designed to provide information, generate leads, or both? Often times PPC (Pay-Per-Click) landing pages are designed specifically with conversions in mind, while other pages within a corporate website are more informational and simply describe the product or solution offered. We always advocate that clearly pronounced calls-for-action be present on all of your site’s pages, because you never want someone who is eager to contact you to waste even a nanosecond searching for your contact number of form. SEO campaigns for consumer-oriented sites are typically focus on tracking orders and sales, but in the world of B2B, marketers must be able to track other types of actions (conversions) such as white paper downloads, sign-ups for virtual tours and newsletters, contact form registrations, and even phone calls.

You may wonder how you can track calls that are coming in from your website, which is crucial for certain industries where the prospect is much more likely to call than email due to the specific nature of inquiry. For example: a custom fabricators of granite counter tops and bathtubs, or a commercial real estate developer. For any industry (or site, for that matter) that intends to drive phone calls to contact your sales force, the ability to track those leads that come in from the site is crucial! Setup a unique phone number, either local or long-distance, so that you can easily run regular reports on the incoming calls. There are a variety of solutions available for this, such as services like Kall8 that will let you register numbers and setup reporting schedules for specific campaigns, and more.

Measure your link building progress and effectiveness
Are you tracking the effectiveness of your link building campaign? Cultivating links from other relevant, quality sites not only helps search engines place value on your pages, but it also helps drive targeted prospects to your website. Link building is a long-term strategy so you need to have very specific tracking for these efforts in order to justify their effectiveness. A variety of different software options are available for this as well.

If you aren’t conducting a link building campaign or, like most businesses we talk to, you have no idea how many sites are linking to yours, then try this:

• The easiest way to determine websites linking to yours is by conducting this Google search: link:www.yourwebsite.com
• To find additional sites that might be linking to yours, try: @yourwebsite.com

Now for a better picture of how people are working Again, compare this linking information to your analytics data. Are your link partners actually driving traffic to your site? Linking should always be an ongoing initiative, so use these insights to continually improve your linking initiative. If you find that one type of site is driving more traffic, or higher quality traffic, than another type — focus future link building research in this direction.

Measuring additional off-page initiatives
What about all the other off-site or off-page initiatives that make up (or should make up) your strategy? Such as:

• Social media -Measure traffic and results from your social networking profiles, social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, and blogs and blog sites such as Technorati.
• Video SEO -Measure traffic and results from video community websites like YouTube.
• Optimized PR -Measure results from sites where your press releases and articles are posted.
• Email campaigns - e-marketing has so many amazing features for measurability, each campaign should be carefully quantified for continual improvement.

All of your marketing efforts should be tracked, in one form or another, by your analytics package in order to properly justify the value of your online marketing efforts. And since online marketing meets all of the qualifications for S.M.A.R.T. marketing; SMART objectives should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based.

Bottom line: web analytics is the key to effectively measuring SEO success. But you have to combine your analytics data with keyword ranking reports, linking reports, and other conversion metrics in order to track improvements over time and to proactively establish the value of SEO.

We made this offer to several of the associations we have spoken to about online marketing and we’ll do the same for you! If you contact us, Valeo will provide a free Internet marketing analysis of your site as well as to integrate Google Analytics into your site for FREE! If you’re not tracking your site then you need this software, and it is 100% free to you.

Contact us now and find out more…

If you’re like me (and 90% of other people out there) and you don’t have your entire day to play with social media sites and read blogs so you need to maximize your time online and still find and digest large amounts of information that is relative to you or your business.

One of the problems that I come across is just the amount of time that it takes to find the great blogs to follow. Weeding out the ones that are irrelevant or a waste of time can be a time-consuming and frustrating process, so you need some help.

A cool tool that I came across is called Toluu which let’s you add a feed that you like, and it will find the best results for other, similar blogs. Unfortunately, you have to get invited at this point- they are trying to control the number of registrations so that they don’t overload their system, but that’s how Gmail started out and it won’t last long if they keep up the good work. You can check the site out and request an invite and they will send you one when they have the capacity.

I think this marks the beginning of yet another new breed of web based applications and SaaS (Software as a Service) that will cater to the exponentially growing number of blogs and other social media content that exists. To see a really cool video of the times we live in and how quickly our world is both shrinking and expanding then see our post from a couple of weeks ago about The Speed of Things

An associate of ours passed along a note that Dave Barger, a local competitor who is very active with promoting Social Media, is giving a speech on that topic to the Public Relations Society of America- Memphis Chapter.

Dave has done a great job getting the word out about how effective Social Media is for online marketing in Memphis, but I’m seeing a growing trend that everyone wants to focus on Social Media right now since it is the new ‘hot’ thing out there. Let me first say that I am a true believer in social media marketing, but I can’t say enough that it has to be part of an overall online marketing strategy. I talk to every client that we sit down with about the amazing benefits of social media marketing, but it is not likely to bring high levels of success if undertaken as a singular effort.  Marketing, as a rule, should not operate inside of a vacuum and that goes for Social Media Marketing as well.

Social Media Gone Wrong
Recently, there has been a ton of buzz about Motrin’s social media campaign that completely backfired. In case you missed it, this commercial was a Web video ad for Motrin was developed by the folks at McNeil Consumer Healthcare, which is a unit of Johnson & Johnson. The ad was targeted at mothers and talked about the physical pain involved with carrying an infant in a sling. Watch for yourself and see what you think:

The ad was intended to show empathy for young moms, but ad came off as too flippant for some and a hger campaign of angry mothers started building on Twitter over the weekend with thousands joining its ranks, tweeting angrily about the Motrin campaign.

Equally swift was the company’s response, which came early Monday when Johnson & Johnson plastered the front-page of the Motrin.com site with an apology. They stated, in case anybody missed it - “We have heard you.”

This is a great example of how using Social Media went terribly wrong and why consultants who are pushing Social media marketing as the be-all, end-all of online marketing may quite possibly be giving some less-than-ideal advice to their clients. That’s why it is important to understand how all the pieced come together for a successful online presence, so keep reading, and we’ll continue to tell you how to do it!

Google has introduced a new way for you to mark up your own search results, by giving Google users the ability to move a site that may have ranked 5th in organic results to position number 1. Or maybe a search result that isn’t there and you would like to add it- well, that’s now a possibility!

Google launched their SearchWiki which is a way for users to customize results to best meet their individual needs by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. Check out this video from Google Official Blog

This move certainly has implications for search engine marketers like Valeo as well as for the average Google user. For online marketers, teh ability to have our sites ‘voted’ up or down could have some pretty important ramifications for anyone who relies on organic traffic to drive people their sites.

In order to use this new feature you have to have a Google account and be signed in when you perform a search on Google. You can easily see this in the top-right corner of the page when you go to Google.com and it will show you which account (if any) you are signed in with. This brings up another good point that it is surprising that how Google has made the SearchWiki feature active by default for every Google account. A survery by Search Engine Roundtable suggest that most people (83% at last check) are not ready for the SearchWiki feature.

Google has put the power in the hands of the users on this one, Dave Fleet has some interesting points that the SearchWiki represents the “Diggification” of Google where people can promote, relegate and comment on results; and the unique implications for online marketing and PR:

1. Another place to monitor
2. Increased customer interaction
3. Control by the customer
4. Advantage goes to the existing players
5. More expensive Adwords
6. (Unconfirmed) SEO potential

So why is Google pushing this to all users? Because so many people (roughly 60%) start their searches on Google, so Google has empowered their users. We all know that Google became the 800-pound gorilla of the search engine world by being the leader, so maybe this is the next step. Regardless, we are going to watch this closely because of the implications it could have specific to our customers.

This is exciting news for web designers and e-marketers alike! Google has released a new method for using Google Analytics with Flash!

Yesterday, at the Adobe MAX Conference in San Francisco, a joint collaboration between Adobe and a some third party developers announced a simplified solution for tracking Flash content called Google

Analytics Tracking For Adobe Flash. I have had the opportunity to work with many clients who have used the power of Google Analytics to identify and analyze trends on their web sites. But, one of the most common implementation challenges has been tracking Flash content on their pages. With this launch, tracking your Flash content has never been simpler.

What It’s All About
This feature is a translation of the current Google Analytics tracking code into the ActionScript 3 programming language that dramatically simplifies the ability to track Flash, Flex and AS3 content. This new Flash tracking code can be used to track Flash content such as embedded videos, branded microsites and distributed widgets, such as online games.Now it’s simple for Flash content developers to answer questions like: How many people have watched my video? Are we developing the right creative that attracts new users? How effective is my content at getting people to take action? The ability to answer these questions is now a reality, and the best thing is that they’re providing our entire AS3 code base under the Apache 2 License as Open Source! [From Want to track Adobe Flash? Now you can!]

Change is not coming to the marketing community. It is here! 

Many companies have many questions about social media. What is it? How does it work? What does it cost? Is it a cost effective marketing strategy? Is it a good business decision?

As stated in previous blog entries, social media is different from traditional media. It is a two way conversation. It allows customers to express their opinions and ask questions. It is also a tremendous resource for information. It is a discussion about your industry, your company and your services.  

If you are unsure about the power and the value of social media, just ask Barack Obama. 

Obama’s Rivals Should Steal From His Social Playbook

In an article about Barack Obama’s use of social media in Advertising Age, Denise Shiffman explains how Obama used social media to communicate his message and engage the public.   

“Today’s web and the new media that underpin it are known for the ability to create instant sensations. From Digg’s social news to CareerBuilder’s Monk-e-Mail campaign, companies can advance from zero to 20 million viewers practically overnight. The viral nature of this highly social, user-driven environment enables complete strangers to connect over common beliefs, desires or interests and together create winners and losers.” 

“Obama’s campaign is immersed in his audience’s experience. He meets his audience where they already go on the web, and his message of “change” is packaged in a clear and consistent manner, much like the best consumer products.” 

“Candidates must create interactive, personal and engaging Web marketing if they want to affect the conversations on the web. These conversations can affect voting decisions much as they can alter consumer purchasing behavior.”    

The following interview with David Bullock, Obama’s Director of Online Research explains how Obama used social media and how “business can learn from the tools and strategy that Obama’s campaign used.”

“The first presidential campaign to fully embrace the ideas and practices of social media has met with a successful end. Senator Barack Obama has been elected the 44th President of the United States of America.”

Small Business Owners Reap Benefits of Social Media

A survey conducted by online payroll service SurePayroll, reports that “the prominence of social media is  growing.  Professional social networking site LinkedIn grew 187% over the past year.”

David Rohrer, SurePayroll’s online marketing manager, states that “(Social media) is no longer just an outlet for personal use — it’s rapidly becoming a must for business success”.  

“What’s so great about the online world is you don’t need a million-dollar marketing budget. In fact, the most effective online connections are free personal communications from a business owner to their community.” 

Taking it to the White House

In a 2007 YouTube interview, Obama said he intended to use the medium for “fireside chats.” He wants to “give the Internet audience a chance to question him directly.” You will be able to “ask Barack Obama”!

Change has come to the marketing community. More than 73% of American adults are online and more than half of Facebook users are over 35 years old.  Social media is a very powerful, very valuable and very cost effective marketing strategy. 

Are your competitors communicating with your customers? 

Join the discussion! 

I came across this video recently and I just had to share. I use some of these stats in my presentations and its funny how many of the ones that I’ve been quoting for a couple of years made it into this video.

Check it out:

It is interesting to me to see how different people react to some of these types of illustrations. The one that I use most often that found its way into this post is that it took 38 years for radio to reach 50 million people, 13 for tv, but only 4 years for the internet to surpass. Some people are blown away by those statistics, while some show very little surprise.

I don’t think anyone in the U.S. today is unfamiliar with how expansive the Internet has become, and competition online is continually increasing. Business owners have to be innovative, creative, and resourceful to survive during the best of times. But with the current economy, your online business marketing needs to be more effective at reaching your target audience, attracting and converting new customers, and maximizing the ROI of every marketing dollar.

However, despite all the economic gloom reported in the media, savvy business owners have so many advantages afforded by online marketing due to the growing number of Web users who search the Internet for local business information. People are reaching for the Yellow pages less often these days; and with good reason! You’re sitting in front of a computer anyway for most of your day, so why would you hunt for a possibly outdated yellow pages when you can just look it up online. And that’s what users are doing! A recent study showed that 49% o online American use search engines in a typical day! And that number is up from 33% in 2002.

If you want to continue to grow your business in tough economic times, then you have to be smart about it. And there is no better move to market your business than to the largest audience possible that allows you to target them with unbelievable accuracy.