by Andy Brudtkuhl on January 26, 2009
GetListed.org is a small business resource to help your website become more findable through online listings. One of my first Search Engine Marketing recommendations to any business – especially local businesses – is to get yourself listed on FREE directories like Google Local and Yahoo Local. According to their launch statement, their product “the LocalDashboard™, shows business owners simply and clearly where
their business exists on major search engines like Google Maps and
Yahoo! Local. The tool displays information such as business name,
address, phone number, and website address as they are indexed by these
major engines.”
These are the very first listings that show up when you search for something like [Location] – [Service], i.e. “Des Moines Plumber”.
This is extremely important in your SEM strategy and should be included in any web strategy planning phase. GetListed.org attempts to make this easier on you by creating a dashboard for your local listings and provides you links to get listed on the major directories.
GetListed also has a great resource center containing links and articles on Local Search Engine Marketing.
by Andy Brudtkuhl on January 13, 2009
Today we’re covering Part 4 of our Budgeting 2009 Web Strategy Series – Social Media.
Social Media
Cost: Free – Completely variable depending on scope
Time: An hour a day – at least
As a preface – I am not a social media expert. If you want expert analysis, see the resources below.
Social Media is all about community and conversations. You cannot simply sign up for Twitter and Facebook and consider it social media marketing. The biggest part of a social media budget, at least for us at 48Web, is time. It takes time to build community – and community is one of the most powerful facets of a an effective web strategy. There are three steps to using social media as a marketing tool – listen, join the conversation, and engage discussions. (If you think there are more or less, please share them with us in the comments).
Listening is easy and can be automated. This is the simplest step to get into social media – start listening. Subscribe to Twitter and Google Blog Searches to get started. Set up Google Blog Alerts for your company. All these listening tools are free. And if you want to really start researching – start using Trackur or FiltrBox. Setting up this research environment is easy and takes little time – but has a HUGE ROI. Joining the conversation is often the hardest part because social media is very adverse to traditional marketing messages. In fact – I’d just start joining discussions without any marketing broadcasts. Next up – engage conversations.. Start discussions and gear them towards your brand. Again – I am not a social media expert, but these methods do work. If you have other recommendations, please leave them in the comments.
Social media is a low budget (time and cost), high ROI method of marketing – It’s a must-do internet marketing tactic for an effective web strategy. If you are looking to get started in Social Media, check out Zane’s simple Social Media Starter Kit… Or, check out the Social Media Cheat Sheet. Or, see the resources below. [click to continue…]
by Andy Brudtkuhl on January 12, 2009
It’s time for Part Three of our Budgeting 2009 Web Strategy Series – SEO/SEM.
Search Engine Optimization / Search Engine Marketing
Cost: Free-Unknown (Completely Variable)
Time: 1-2 weeks setup, 1/2 hour a week maintenance
This year I am lumping SEO and SEM together… I consider SEM a global term encompassing SEO, AdWords, and other search engine marketing techniques. Search Engine Marketing is an essential pillar of any web strategy. Although I prefer using community to build traffic – SEM is probably the most effect traffic generation practice. Through organic and paid placements in search engines you are able to target specific keywords in your niche or business. SEM, like other web strategies that we teach, has a measurable ROI and can be improved by analyizing your web statistics and effective keyword research techniques.
At 48Web, we spend about an hour a week on our combined websites and about $50/mo on targeted search advertising. This time/cost budget has been very effective for us. I mentioned that the cost is completely variable above – this is because you can do it yourself for free or hire a consultant. Also, the consultant may train you on SEM strategies (which would cost you less) or do it for you (which would cost you more). Generally an SEM/SEO consultant will cost you about $85-$125/hr.
There are many SEO consultants out there but I would like to warn you – Don’t trust them without researching their company. You should do a fair amount of research on your own before hiring someone to help you with an SEM campaign – so you know you are not getting cheated by claims of “we’ll get your business to the top of google”.
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by Andy Brudtkuhl on December 29, 2008
If you are a visitor to this website you likely noticed an experiment I was running throughout the month of November – aWeber popups asking you to subscribe to the GetANewBrowser email newsletter…
Why did I implement this? Well when we added the email newsletter feature I wanted to test some opt-in internet marketing tactics. Rather than writing a post about the email newsletter I went with a delayed modal popup asking the readers to subscribe. I did this for a couple reasons. I wanted to see the effectiveness of this method without broadcasting it – so that the numbers would not be skewed by visitors from the RSS feed.
Secondly, I wanted to verify the effectiveness of popover requests… And guess what – it works as advertised. aWeber featured a post stating a 1000% increase in subscriptions using this method. ProBlogger wrote a post regarding the ridiculous increase in subscribers to his photography blog using this method.
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by Andy Brudtkuhl on November 12, 2008
I’ve been loving Diigo since I ditched Delicious a few months ago. They are constantly adding awesome features and today I stumbled on the groups feature. Basically it allows you to create a group of like-minded users (it can be public or private) to share links, comments and it has a forum baked right in.
This is HUGE… It allows you to create micro communities and adds much greater value to “social” bookmarking. You can be a part of multiple groups – which are often topical in nature. There are all kinds of different options that allow you to discuss bookmarks in comment threads and in a forum. There are RSS feeds for each group – so you don’t even have to join one to get some benefit. And there’s a great “slideshow” feature that will allow you to quickly lopp through the bookmarked sites.
If you are a Diigo user (you *have* to be if you do Social Bookmarking) – check out the group I made today – Web Strategy. If you are interested in Web Strategy, Social Media, Internet Marketnig, etc… you are advised to join the group to share great articles and get in on the Web Strategy discussions.
If you aren’t a Diigo user… join today. Then, join our group.
If you still need convicing, read my post or read “7 reasons diigo tastes better than delicious”.
