The Best Seo Blogs

Archive for October, 2009

Posted by Sam Niccolls

• Eric Schmidt – What the Internet Will Look Like in 5 Years:
  Google’s CEO takes a look into the future and talks about some of the ways the internet will change, such as Chinese language sites outnumbering English language sites, an increase in the number of digital natives in the tech workforce, and the difficulties search engines have around ranking real-time search.

• eCommerce – What the Telco Industry Tells us About Product Selection:
  From button treatments to product matrices, there are likely a number of telco industry learnings highlighted on the Get Elastic Blog that can be applied to your eCommerce site.

• Retailers Going Too Far Tracking Web Habits:
  I’m probably the only person on earth who puts items into his shopping cart and intentionally abandons sites in order to get product discount e-mails a week or two later, but the USA TODAY discusses two issues that are hot button topics for more normal consumers: Cookie usage and behavioral targeting.

• Grammatically Incorrect Keywords:
  In her Search Engine Journal Post, Susanna Speier talks about how even though grammatically incorrect keywords aren’t going to win you any spelling bees, they might be the ones that’ll make you the most honey, er-um money.

• Andrew Chen – Building Lifestyle vs. VC-Backable Companies:
  In an interesting post pulling from his VC experiences, Andrew Chen discusses the fundamental differences between building a self-sustaining company and one that’s VC-backable.

• SEO by the Sea on the Importance of Listening:
  In a step away from his usual technical and analytical posts Bill Slawski takes a thoughtful and reflective look at how his life experiences have validated the importance of listening. Also, Slawski’s post about How a Search Engine might distinguish between bots and humans is not to be missed.

• Amazon vs. Walmart – The Battle of the Books:
  Target is a distant third in the online book sales race, but Compete provides some interesting, in-depth analysis on the toe-to-toe battle this month between Amazon and Walmart. 

• Halloween E-mails:
  Campaign Monitor’s Halloween E-mail Roundup shows some creative, brand specific examples of Halloween e-mails that’ll give you some last minute idea fodder for this year or things to think about for next year.     

• Update on Google Rich Snippets:
  Google has been working on better using structured data and expanding rich snippets for a while, but this week’s post on the GWC blog calls attention to improved documentation and tips around their rich snippet testing tool.

• WSJ – Why E-mail No Longer Rules:
  You may have caught the Wall Street Journal post earlier this month, but if you didn’t, it’s worth a read. The negative backlash across the e-mail industry continues several weeks later.

• Integrating E-mail with Other Marketing:
  A well executed e-mail is no different from a fine wine… it’s good on it’s own, but it’s better when given the right pairing. In a useful post centered around e-mail marketing, Joel Book addresses how the most successful e-mail initiatives integrate with other marketing efforts.

• Google Analytics Qualification Test:
  GA has had a more heavyweight certification for agencies for some time, but now available to individual marketers is a test that gives web analytics users personal certifications.

• Networks, Publishers, & the Evolution of Search & Display Ads:
  Jonathan Mendez talks about emerging trends in the ad world and makes some predictions as to how the landscape will change for both networks and publishers.

• Creating a Multi-Cultural Website:
  If you’ve ever tried to market a product internationally, Forrester’s post about the importance of market research when creating a multi-cultural website might strike a nerve. 

• Google Website Optimizer API Released:
  GWO rolled out a new API, which, depending on your CMS provider, can allow you to create and launch tests without touching any of your website’s code. Pretty useful stuff. Although a major limitation is that the API currently only integrates with two CMS providers.

• Google Analytics – Be Careful When Rearranging Goals:
  With GA’s release the other week came a myriad of fantastic features, including customized alerts and expanded goals. But as James Svoboda points out, if you want to preserve your goal history, you might want to think twice before rearranging your goals.

• Seth Godin – Some People Are Better Than Others:
  The short post about customer types earns a spot in this weeks roundup for one reason: The use of the word sneezers, which Godin uses to refer to the customers and brand evangelizers who are best at spreading your company’s word.

• 5 Social Media Lessons for Paid Search Landing Pages:
  Scott Brinker takes a fairly basic, but worthwhile look at some things to consider when optimizing your PPC landing pages. 

• Google Now Treating 410 Status Codes as More Permanent Than 404s:
  Historically Google has treated the two status codes the same, but now, as stated by Google’s John Mu, 410 status codes will be treated as more permanent.

• Bing It On:
  Google is still going strong, but Bing’s share of the search market continues to grow.

• How SEO and Sex Are the Same:
  In a post with gratuitous use of the word ‘sex,’  Joel Leydon’s parody highlighting the similarities between sex and SEO is an entertaining read. Both sex and SEO are basic needs, they’re both organic, and yes, as Leydon points out, you can also pay for each, too.

Top YOUmoz entries:

1. *Third-Party Affiliate Programs: Roll Your Own Instead by MichaelC 
   

2. Case Study: How Building a Site for Users Improved Rankings by csaliba
   

3. Web Analytics and Segmentation for Better Conversion by philou2803

* Indicates blog post was promoted to the SEOmoz Blog

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Email is back!

Earlier in the week I mentioned that one of the emerging themes in the monetization sessions at Blog World Expo was the idea of membership sites as a way to make an income from a blog.

The other theme that emerged in a number of the sessions was that many bloggers were placing increased attention on the medium of email as a way to communicate with readers.

Email is back!

Actually email never really went away – but it’s back on the radar of many bloggers after a swing over the last few years away from it in favour of other mediums such as RSS.

RSS feeds are far from being dead as a way to communicate with readers but while some saw the advances in feeds and feed readers as an email killer many entrepreneurial bloggers are now realising that perhaps they should not have given up on email.

I shared on at least one of the panels that I was on at BWE how email on my photography blog is much more effective than RSS on a number of fronts:

1. The Numbers Speak for Themselves

On DPS I currently have a total of 340,784 subscribers. 223,081 of these subscribe via email – 117,703 of them subscribe via RSS. That’s a 2:1(ish) ratio. While this ratio will vary from site to site considerably (depending upon the niche) I’d guess that on most blogs it’d be similar – the exception possibly being sites with a more techy/social media focus.

2. Email Drives Great Traffic

The days I send out Newsletters are the biggest days of traffic on the site. I shared this graphic a few months ago but here’s the traffic to the blog area of my site on newsletter days (it’s pretty obvious which days the newsletters went out):

RSS certainly does drive traffic – however it is less – probably because most people read the content in their feed reader.

3. Email subscribers are monetizing better than other subscribers with onsite advertising

One of the interesting things that also happens on newsletter days is that the rate that people seem to click on ads also seems to go up slightly. This was a surprise to me when I first saw it because I would have thought that subscribers who visit the blog each week would become blind to the ads but the CTR (click through rate) on my AdSense ads goes up on newsletter days. Here’s a quick screen grab of total AdSense revenue on the DPS blog – again you can see the rises for newsletter days.

4. Email Also Monetizes Better with other Income Streams

Not only does AdSense income increase on newsletter days but I’m finding that other monetization strategies also work well in the newsletter. Three come to mind:

• Affiliate promotions have worked really well in newsletter for me. I’ve tested this a number of times by posting a blog post about a product I’m promoting and sending an email about the product. In every instance that I’ve tested it the newsletter wins hands down. The best performing affiliate promotions actually work best where you do a blog post AND an email promotion – but without the email component I find I’m definitely leaving money on the table every time.
• Product Launches - if you have your own product to launch I find that in a similar way to how affiliate promotions work best in emails – so too does selling your own stuff. Again – posting both on your blog and via email (and in other places like twitter) can help increase sales further but email is crucial in driving sales.
• Direct Ad Sales – lastly the few times that I’ve sold ads in my newsletter to direct advertisers I’ve had very good feedback from the advertisers. We ran a big promotion both on our blog and in our newsletter earlier in the year for a big computer brand and the feedback we got was that the campaign was most effective on newsletter day from clicks from within the email.

5. Email is Personal and Builds Community

There is something about a regular email newsletter that just seems to make people feel more connected to you. I find it hard to put my finger why but there’s something about receiving a good email that just seems more powerful than reading a good blog post via an RSS feed. It just seems a little more personal, more special.

Perhaps it is because RSS is generally read in an RSS feed reader where there are hundreds of competing posts to be read or perhaps it is because an email is delivered into an inbox filled with more personal communications or perhaps it is because when someone signs up for an email they have to give you something personal – their address – whereas with RSS they don’t have to reveal anything about themselves.

I’m not sure WHY it is the case – but every week I get people emailing me to thank me for the emails I send them. I’ve never had anyone thank me for my RSS feed….

The newsletters I send do more than drive traffic and make money – they seem to make people feel as though they belong. To get an email someone has to sign up – they become a member of sorts and this is reflected in the emails that they send me that talk about ‘our site’.

6. Email is more Accessible

I only really started to experiment with email because someone in my family asked me how they could get updates from my photography blog. When I told them about RSS they stared back at me with a blank face. I added an email option and they immediately subscribed.

If you only offer RSS as a way to access your site’s information you’re excluding my family member and probably a lot of other people too.

For this reason I advise giving people a variety of ways to get updates whether it be RSS, daily emails, weekly emails, Twitter updates…. whatever is relevant for your audience.

Don’t Forget about RSS

I don’t want this post to be seen as writing off RSS. It’s an amazing technology and is still really important to my own sites. It too drives traffic, makes money, reinforces brand etc – all I guess I’m arguing is that bloggers take a 2nd look at email.

My personal approach is to have multiple points of connection with readers which reinforces what I’m doing on my sites and maximise the impression that I’m able to make upon them.

How I Use Email

Tomorrow I want to continue this focus upon email to talk about how I use email newsletters to achieve some of the above things. While you can set up tools to just automatically send out emails at predefined intervals to those that subscribe to your blog you can actually take it to the next level and set up a system that is much much more effective.

Tomorrow I’ll walk you through the emails that I send to my newsletter list and share with you some of the techniques that I’ve found that work to drive traffic and make money.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

6 Reasons Why You Need to Consider Email is a Communication Strategy on Your Blog

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The Vancouver Sun, the city’s largest newspaper, has featured me on the cover of today’s Business BC section. The topic was making money on Twitter. Specifically, how new services like Sponsored Tweets and Ad.ly are allowing any Twitter user to monetize their Twitter stream.

Since I started with Sponsored Tweets a month ago, I’ve made nearly $2,600. I expect Tweet income to hit $6,000 next month with the addition of Ad.ly to the mix. This really is the easiest way to make money with Twitter. It only takes a minute to write a Tweet (less than that if the advertiser writes it for you). I say I spent a grand total of 20 minutes writing the tweets that made me $2,600. That works out to $7,800 an hour! Even if you only make $5 a tweet, you can create a rate of $300 an hour for a one minute tweet.

If you want to start making money with Twitter, you should join Sponsored Tweets and Ad.ly. Then go read my 10 Tips To Make More Money with Sponsored Tweets. It will show you how to maximize your Tweeting income. In my January 1 post on How To Make 2009 Your Best Blogging Year, I said you needed to get on Twitter. Now you know why.

Sign up for Sponsored Tweets | Sign up for Ad.ly

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

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Daniel Scocco is the creator of Daily Blog Tips and the man behind the Online Profits membership site. Daniel was the first student to take Yaro Starak’s Membership Site Mastermind course and using what he learned, lunched Online Profits shortly after.

Within five days of lunch, and thanks to a review by yours truly, Online Profits signed up over 200 members paying $48 per month. This created an almost $10,000 per month income stream. Not bad, huh?

Daniel had a chance to sit down with Yaro Starak to do a 43 minute long podcast about his membership site. I recommend you grab a drink and then give it a listen. Some of the highlights include:

• How Daniel attracted members and how much money he made during his launch
• How Daniel selected the topic for his membership site
• What Daniel did to demonstrate the preeminence of his membership site offer
• Daniel talks about how he drove traffic to his membership site launch
• How Daniel managed to get some top launch partners for his membership site
• What technical systems Daniel set up to deliver his membership site
• How Daniel conducted his five day launch and generated a $10,000/month income stream
• Why Daniel recommends Membership Site Mastermind

Press the play button below to begin streaming the podcast or right click and save as to download and play the podcast from your computer.

Special Offer for John Chow dot Com Readers

Registration for Membership Site Mastermind sign up will close this Friday. The cost of the six week course is $297 per month for 3 months. However, if you sign up with my link, you will receive two reviews worth $1,000 for free. Not only does that make Membership Site Mastermind free, it puts you ahead by $109. You can ask Daniel how much of an impact the review made on his membership site. Another bonus to Membership Master Mind members is the opportunity to buy Blog Mastermind for only $297. A nice saving from the $497 regular price.

Membership Site Mastermind is backed by a lifetime money back guarantee. If for any reason, and at anytime, you feel that you didn’t get your money’s worth, send Yaro an email and he’ll refund your money, no questions asked.

Register for Membership Site Mastermind and Get Two Reivew Worth $1,000 FREE

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

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Yesterday one of our Indian readers emailed me to let me know that Daily Blog Tips had appeared on Tuesday’s edition of the Mumbai Mirror. I was quite surprised, as this is probably the biggest mainstream coverage I have had. The blog had been mentioned on some small newspapers and magazines, but the Mumbai Mirror has a circulation of around 1.5 million people according to Wikipedia.

Here is a screenshot of the digital version:

If you are visiting this blog for the first time after seeing it on the newspaper, welcome! The “Categories” on the left sidebar should give you a good idea of the topics I cover, and if you want to get a quick glimpse of all the stuff already published on the blog check the Archives.

Last time I checked India represented almost 4% of my traffic. I find it flattering, given that Indians are among the most tech-savvy people in the world.

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Picture this. You’re in a fancy night club, one of the best in Vegas. You’re drinking free beer and watching 50 or 100 people party to heavy beats and exotic dance tunes. You should be enjoying the mood . . . maybe even letting a dance sneak out every now and then.

But instead, you’re off in the corner talking business. Not just any business either. You’re talking about the business of blogging.

I know . . . pretty lame right?

But hold that thought, because although on the surface it seems like you’re missing the point of the “nightclub experience,” the truth is that you are working feverishly to solve a problem that plagues the blogging world.

It might not be life or death, but the fact that most bloggers don’t see it is cause for great concern. So what’s the problem?

Bloggers make terrible businesspeople

I was at the Bank in the Bellagio hotel earlier this month, talking with my pal Rich Lazzara, and we started talking about something we noticed during the first two days of the Blogworld Expo.

Rich mentioned to me that bloggers were crappy business people (that’s putting it nicely) and proposed that if people like you and I started treating our blog as a business, we’d actually start seeing better results. At first I was a bit surprised by the assumption, but after digesting it this weekend I realized that he was absolutely right.

Over the course of our conversation, we discussed a variety of examples, but I want to share the three “blog killers” that really stood out to me.

1. Business Bloggers Making Hobby Money: These guys (and gals) work like Gary Vaynerchuk, but they aren’t making anything more than hobby money. They want to say that they are probloggers, but they allow the comfort of their job to lull them into a sense of security.

Rather than live up to their inner desire to become a blogging powerhouse, they use “hobby blogging” as an excuse to stay exactly where they are.

2. The Dreamers: These bloggers dream all day about blogging success, but they never get around to actually doing the work required to make it happen. They simply won’t take things seriously. To them, spending four hours on Twitter is just as productive as writing a blog post.

3. The Selfish: These bloggers just don’t see the point in networking or in spreading goodwill. They certainly don’t take the time to foster relationships that can help them reach the next level, including creating a solid relationship with their audience.

For selfish bloggers, everything is about them . . . what they can do, how good their products are, and how much you should want to be like them. They step on everyone else in order to get onto the shoulders of giants.

It’s time to get serious

In my opinion, each of these three maladies hinge on what Chris Brogan said during his Blogworld keynote on Thursday, which is that as bloggers we all need to elevate our game.

If you are serious about blogging, you need to treat your blog like a business. You are the CEO of You Inc., and you’ve got to weigh every single decision as if there were millions of dollars on the line. Yeah, it would be great to blog in your underwear and sleep in every morning, but the reality is that most of us can’t afford to do that.

Measure the day’s work in results, not in hours spent typing on Facebook or Twitter. Absolutely, fostering relationships is important, but every action needs to be treated as an investment of your time.

This is especially important if you are a solo blogger, as there is only so much work that you can get done in a day. You’ve got to be efficient with your time. This means measured action and measured results — not just going with the flow.

Be honest with yourself

If you really don’t care whether or not you make any money as a blogger, then that’s fine. But don’t lie to yourself just so you can feel better about being broke.

Bust your tail

Copyblogger took about four years to get where it is today. Gary V busted his ass for two years before he got the book deal. And Chris Brogan spent 11 years on his “overnight success.”

You’ve got to work hard to become successful. End of story.

Be strategic

Develop a short-, mid-, and long-term plan for your business and follow it to the best of your ability. You can adapt it as you gain knowledge and expertise, but if you go without a plan you’re toast.

Learn how to network

As someone who spends time in sales and marketing, I’m used to shaking hands and saying hello.

It’s important to get out there and meet people, but please don’t be “that guy.” Treat relationships as an investment in your business.

Provide value

Quit worrying about what your customer can do for you and instead worry about what you can do for your customer.

Don’t think about how you can shove a new product down a customer’s throat. Instead, spend your time worrying about whether you can solve a problem or improve their experience. If providing value to your audience isn’t a priority, you’re in for trouble.

There’s no secret to becoming a full-time blogger aside from hard work and adopting the right mentality. Sure, there are nuances that you’ll need to master, but the plan is already laid out there for you. Find your passion, develop a plan, and work your tail off by creating awesome content.

But heck, isn’t that what they’ve been saying here all along?

About the Author: Nathan Hangen writes about web entrepreneurship at NathanHangen.com, and about how to use social media to fuel your brand at Making It Social. Follow him on Twitter @nhangen.

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There’s a new version of Thesis out that has our customers excited, thanks to some really cool new features. And it occurred to me that there are a lot of new Copyblogger subscribers who might use WordPress, and yet not really “get” what this Thesis thing is all about.

So in this post I’ll tell you what’s brand new in Thesis 1.6, and also bring everyone up to speed on why Thesis makes WordPress way better.

What is the Thesis Theme for WordPress?

Thesis is the flagship product of DIY Themes, a partnership between Chris Pearson and me. It’s the theme framework that powers Copyblogger and many other high-traffic sites.

In a nutshell, Thesis is software that delivers rock-solid SEO website code, plus unprecedented design flexibility for WordPress — without requiring the novice user to code anything.

For sophisticated users, Thesis is a search-optimized development framework that allows designers and web developers to build sites better and faster than ever before.

* SEO

Search legend Danny Sullivan, Google’s Matt Cutts, and Microsoft search engineer Jeremiah Andrick all use Thesis for their sites. So does search and affiliate marketing entrepreneur Rae Hoffman, SEO guru Michael Gray, top bloggers Darren Rowse and Robert Scoble, web-hosting entrepreneur Scott Beale, social media darling Chris Brogan, and thousands of others.

To find out why the Thesis approach to site code results in maximum search engine crawlibility, watch this quick video I put together.

* Design Flexibility

With most WordPress themes, you’re stuck with the basic look and feel that the theme designer decided on. With Thesis, you can choose between one, two, or three column layouts (and the size of each column), change font types and sizes, create a magazine-style layout, and lots more. Again, watch this video for an overview, and then dive into the three demo videos listed below the general video to see what Thesis can do.

* Support

Even with everything Thesis makes easier, we know people don’t want to be hung out to dry. Our support forums have evolved into a truly supportive community of over 10,000 of your fellow webmasters and bloggers. You’ll have help from DIY Themes support professionals, Thesis Certified Designers, and tons of your peers who simply enjoy lending a helping hand.

What’s New in Thesis 1.6?

Now, here’s the new goodness. Thesis 1.6 offers a lot of improvements throughout, plus two major innovative capabilities – you can now change colors throughout the theme without getting into the CSS markup, and you can create drop-down interactive navigation menus right from the control panel in the WordPress dashboard.

* Change Colors Throughout the Theme Without Code

This is huge for someone like me, who would never mess with CSS in order to change background colors, column colors, etc. I only know enough code to be dangerous, but now if I want to throw up a new site with a varied color scheme, I can do it without bugging Chris or Tony.

Watch this video to see how to build a site with Thesis 1.6.

* Create Killer Navigation Menus

This is another awesome feature for people who don’t code. Now you can create interactive navigation menus with drop-down subpages for each choice, all point-and-click from the Thesis design panel. It was cool the other day when Mark McGuiness proudly emailed me to check out his new interactive navigation menu (Mark’s a poet and a creativity consultant, not a coder).

Watch this quick video to see how the navigation options work.

What About Thesis 2.0?

The buzz is already building about the highly-anticipated Thesis 2.0 – a complete next generation approach to an already innovative theme. From what I’ve seen so far, it’s hard to believe this is the natural evolution from what we started with a year-and-a-half ago.

But don’t think you have to wait. Our current model and pricing provides all Thesis customers with every future update and unlimited access to support… so you can get started with Thesis today and never miss out on what’s coming next.

(And if you caught the hint by my use of the word “current,” you understand that this will change in the near future. Come join the Thesis community today).

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of DIY Themes, creator of the innovative Thesis Theme for WordPress. Get more from Brian on Twitter.

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PR industry bible PR Week caught up with the debate about Sidewiki this week.

While it isn’t the best idea Google has come up with (the company needs to balance user experience with its business relationships) and is a serious headache for pharmaceutical companies, it isn’t all that bad and some reactions have been over the top.

Sidewiki is a toolbar plug-in that users will have to download to see wiki content on pages. The question remains as to how many will actually bother installing it.

Social Search

You may well have noticed Google Social Search pop into Google Labs this week, or read Patrick’s post highlighting what it means for SEO.

At the moment it is an opt in option that presents relevant search results from social networks you subscribe to in universal search results. Google says:-

With Social Search, you’ll be able to more easily find relevant public content from your social circle, such as the following:

• Websites, blogs, public profiles, and other content linked from your friends’ Google profiles.
• Web content, such as status updates, tweets, and reviews, from social services that your friends have listed in their Google profiles.
• Relevant articles from your Google Reader subscriptions.

For now it is opt in and for those who don’t have a Google account, or aren’t always signed into theirs, it will remain so if it stays in its current form. Even those with a Google account will have to add profiles from other networks to make full use of it.

So although this feature will likely prove more popular than Sidewiki, the user still has to make a conscious effort to activate it.

The Google effect

As Patrick said in his post now is the time for SEOs to look at Social Search’s data points and increase users, subscribers and friends in relevant networks.

One of the best ways of doing that as a company or brand  is to look at what you can offer as a whole – now more than ever before is the time to seriously think about creating a social media marketing strategy that will engage a new audience with your brand. SEO is a major reason for you to get involved in social media, but shouldn’t be the only one.

While Social Search and Sidewiki are interesting developments users have to decide to download or configure them, with immediate and universal adoption highly unlikely.  In that sense there is still breathing space, but brands now  seriously need to think about whether they want to opt in as Google starts to throw its weight behind social media.

Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for Search engine optimisation

Social search and Sidewiki – not game changing, but the game is changing

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After working in internet marketing for the last 4 years, I have seen several trends come and go—from that silly dancing baby to paid email services like AOL,  but for those of you who think social media is among these trends you might want to think again.

I talk to business owners from hundreds of different industries each month and I’ve observed that a wide variety of companies have begun to take interest in social media. According to a study done by Cone Business, sixty percent of Americans use social media, and of those, 59 percent interact with companies on social media Web sites. One in four interacts more than once per week.

This means that regardless of who your audience is, chances are at least some of them are on Facebook or Linkedin or on another social media site. Don’t believe me? Why not try a simple little test….

1. Go to answers.yahoo.com
2. Type in a keyword phrase that represents what you do or a product you sell.

I work mainly with B2B customers, so here are a couple extremely niche examples that you may be shocked to see on social media:

Concrete Vapor Barrier (56 questions on Yahoo Answers)

Clock Oscillator (22 questions in Yahoo Answers)

As you can see conversations about your industry are happening in social media whether you’re participating in them or not. So why not join in?

According to the 2009 Marketing Sherpa Report on Social Media Marketing & PR  76% of marketing and PR professionals “agree” or “strongly agree” that social media marketing is changing the way their organizations communicate. This data signifies a strong interest in social media but it does not necessarily mean every industry has started participating. The two most significant barriers cited to social media adoption were “lack of knowledgeable staff” and “inability to measure ROI.” Fortunately, there are social media consultants who have emerged over the last few years to fill the knowledge gap, and many tools (such as Hubspot’s social media monitoring tools) are available that help to easily monitor social media accounts and join in on the conversation.

Remember if you are an expert in your field, your expertise is very valuable to your audience. Just by performing the Yahoo Answers test above, you probably unearthed several opportunities to reach out to your audience even if you belong to an extremely niche industry. Whether you are a sales consultant, a real estate agent, software Company, or in the manufacturing industry, you really have nothing to lose and everything to gain from at least getting started in social media.

Why You Should Start Using Social Media Today: The First Mover’s Advantage

The old adage “The Early Bird Gets The Worm” took on new meaning when the internet age came to be. That bird got a name (Twitter) and the Worm became known as “The First Mover’s Advantage.”

If you were one of the early adopters to have a website, or if your company among the first companies to register their domain name, then you are probably reaping the benefits today. These benefits include higher Google Page Rank, a secured domain name, and likely some valuable links you have gained to the site overtime. Just registering a domain has made some people millionaires. Below are a few of the most expensive domain names sold in history:

Business.com- 1999 for $7.5 million
Fund.com – $9,999,950 – Sold in 2008
CreditCards.com – $2.75 million

Why should this matter to you? Let’s use twitter as an example. Have you registered your company twitter name? What about your own name on twitter? Even if you are not using twitter today, having this registered could potentially save you money, and a lot of hassle. It would take you less than 5 minutes to register both….that is if it’s not too late. (Especially if your competitors read the same Cone Business in Social Media Study I did.)

According to the survey, 93 percent of social media users surveyed believe a company should have a presence in social media, while an overwhelming 85 percent believe a company should not only be present but also interact with its consumers via social media. In fact, 56 percent of users feel both a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment.

Internet marketing moves quickly, and the longer you wait the more difficult it is to catch up.

Video: How to Use Social Media to Attract More
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by Stoney deGeyter

People often associate branding with money. Lots and lots of money. Generally, if you try to run a branding campaign you might see from companies like Target, you most certainly will have to fork over a big chunk of change. But small business owners don’t have that kind of money to brand themselves in similar fashion. Fortunately, there are other ways to brand your small business online.

From my examples in my post Why Branding Matters to Small Businesses, you might conclude that a full-scale SEO or PPC campaign is the only way to brand yourself online. SEO can play a role in branding, but you can engage it strategically so you’re spending less time and less money while still building brand recognition.

What are you branding?

First you need to know what it is you are branding. Is it your company name? Your products? Your services? Your personal name or online handle? What is it that you want people to remember?

If you’re a blogger your name is definitely important. So is your blog name. If you’re a business then your business name will be important, as might be your products if they are exclusively yours. The point is, before you start spending money to brand yourself you first need to determine what you have that needs to be branded. Now you have your starting place.

How to use SEO for branding

SEO is a great way to brand your business, products, services or blog. Since you’re not going after high-volume keywords, the cost of using SEO for branding is relatively minimal. The idea is to make sure you come to the top of the results when someone searches for whatever it is you’re trying to brand. The goal here is to make sure your brand is prominent in the results so you begin to build that brand-name recognition.

The easiest way to do this kind of branding is to simply edit your title tags to include your brand name. If it’s your company name, then put your company name first and foremost in your title tag. If you’re branding own name, put that there. Most SEOs will tell you not to put your business name in the front of your title tag. If you’re targeting non-branded keyword searches I fully agree. However if your focus is on building brand name recognition, then you’ll have to sacrifice some keyword real estate for your brand.

The goal here is to make sure people see your company name, or whatever it is you’re branding, whenever your site comes up in the search result. This will also help ensure that when someone does a search for your branded name they’ll find you up top. It will still be important to optimize your site for non-branded keywords, however. The more keywords you rank on the first page for they more opportunities you have to build brand name recognition.

Look for opportunities to optimize for your pages for some of the long-tail keyword phrases. Being ranked on those often generates more highly targeted visitors so branding to that audience is even better.

How to use PPC for branding

Another thing you can do to brand yourself is to buy cheap ads through Google, Yahoo and Bing. You can do this for your name, products or even specific keyword searches. When going this route you’re not competing for top spot, or even for a lot of clicks. Instead, you’re looking to appear on a search result page where you’ll be seen for as little money as possible. Don’t compete. Find keywords that have low click cost or more expensive keywords where you can rank further down the page. Again, the point here is just simply to get eyeballs to fall on your ad–and your brand name–not necessarily to get the searcher to click on your ad (though that’s never a bad thing.)

PPC ads are a great way to get visibility for incorrect or alternative spellings of your brand. Bidding on most variations of your brand name will cost you next to nothing on a per-click bases. You can also run your ads on dozens, or even hundreds, of low search volume keywords. These will get very little traffic, and therefore cost very little, but it gives you yet another opportunity to get your name in front of searchers eyeballs. Lots of little exposures often dwarf the benefit of a few big exposures.

I’m fully convinced that there isn’t a company in the world, regardless of size, that shouldn’t be working on branding itself in some way or another. Branding for your web site or company name is usually the easiest thing to do as most web sites inherently come to the top of the results for those types of searches. But taking it a bit further, expanding your reach can be significantly rewarding, even allowing you to be a little brand in a big commercial pond.

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