Neither of these tactics do anything to increase your search engine rankings or, more importantly, to inspire confidence in your potential clients – two things that your web presence must absolutely achieve.

Many of these online newbies put something out on the Internet, and then wonder why customers aren’t flocking to them. They then begin to doubt that having an online presence works at all. I know if I give my dog the choice of eating fresh, wholesome food or dry food from a bag, he’ll always choose the fresh stuff. It beats generic every time.

It’s the same with your online presence and potential customers: they need to get a sense of what you stand for, what you know, how you personally will guide or help them with their specific concern. This won’t happen with a pre-packaged solution.

Most business people understand the need for a website and then a newsletter solution, but they “spray and pray.” There’s no strategy or marketing plan behind what they do. They put up a generic website and send one generic email to everybody (spray), hoping that someone will read it and buy from them (pray).

The smart businessperson understands who their target groups are, knows what the problems are for these potential customers, and sends each group of potential customers a different email, targeting their specific concerns. It may take a handlful of hours more to do this, but being strategic in your communications brings your company more credibility, more confidence in your brand, and more customers.

If it didn’t work, then no one would be doing it. Take a look at the email newsletters you receive right now from successful companies. If they’re good, they speak to your specific needs.

Don’t make the mistake of being penny wise and pound foolish with your web and email marketing budget. The quality and quantity of your client base will very quickly reflect the wisdom of being strategic about your brand. Don’t spray and pray.

Those stats are from a study that analyzed 1400 small businesses – small businesses
very much like yours or someone you know.

Great online content is the magnet that draws customers to your
product or service.  BELIEVE IT.  Everything else is just gravy

So, check out our fun, easy and INSPIRING workshop THE MOST FUN PRODUCTIVE WORKSHOP IN THE WORLD.

In 2 short evenings you’ll create 10 Magnetic Online Articles. It’s the
The Most Fun & Easy Way to Get the MOST Awesome Content for Your Site

When: Tuesday July 6 and Thursday July 8 from 7:00 PM to 9:30 PM
in North Beach, Miami Beach —- FREE PARKING after 6:00 PM

BRING YOUR LAPTOP!  YOUR FLIP CAM! YOUR WEBCAM! YOUR MIC!
Whatever you want to experiment making content with.

• You will learn what works and what doesn’t work.
• The basic, easy rules to follow.
• How your competitors can help you.
• Why you should use certain words and words to avoid.
• Easy SEO, keywords – you can do it with 1 hand tied behind your back.
• When to publish so that you get the most impact.
• How to combine words, video, podcasts,images to make it interesting.
• How to get it to work with Facebook and Twitter.
• What’s your motivation?
• 

YOU WILL LEARN THINGS THAT NO ONE ELSE IS TELLING YOU –

How many INBOUND MARKETING CERTIFIED PROFESSIONALS do you know??

ME!

Inbound Marketing is about creating content that is a magnet to YOUR BRAND.

This will be an awesome hands-on workshop! Your hand will be held, and if you
thought you couldn’t be a good writer, YOU WERE WRONG.

Only $75 prepaid for both days! These 6 hours will save you hundreds of hours in mi$take$ forever.

That’s just $7.50 per article and the workshop is priceless.

Email me @ maggie [Email address: maggie #AT# maggiecurran.com - replace #AT# with @ ] to prepay for your spot and get all the details.

www.maggiecurran.com

LIMITED PARTICIPATION – so sign up now [Email address: maggie #AT# maggiecurran.com - replace #AT# with @ ]!

Do you have a question?  Call 305-735-1040. We’re available between 9 AM and 9 PM EDT.

If you are a B2B or sell to other businesses and you blog, you’re getting 68% more leads per month than your competitors who don’t blog.

And how many blog posts or articles does it take to start seeing an increase in leads? 52 articles! For every 50 to 100 indexed pages in Google you’ll also get double digit monthly growth in leads! That means you should be posting at least three new articles per week, including podcasts (with transcriptions), videos (with articles) and regular blog posts of about 300 words each.*

Source

*Did you know that Maggie Curran Inc. offers a great solution for company blogs: 10 original articles per month of up to 300 words each for only $250 per month.   Sign a 5 month contract before the 5th of July at 5:55 PM and get 55 articles for the price of 50!   And every single article is guaranteed to have a minimum keyword density of 1.62%

In the latest analysis of the best lead generation practices of over 1 400 small & medium sized businesses, results show that lead generation (contact with potential customers) only increases when your company is already ranking in Google’s top 100 for between 13 and 19 keywords AND you then add more keywords.

Adding more keywords without already ranking in Google’s top 100 won’t increase your leads.

Source

*Did you know that Maggie Curran Inc. offers a great solution for company blogs: 10 original articles per month of up to 300 words each for only $250 per month.   Sign a 5 month contract before the 5th of July at 5:55 PM and get 55 articles for the price of 50!   And every single article is guaranteed to have a minimum keyword density of 1.62%

Most people assume we’re only advising to monitor negative comments — but what if customers are saying great things about you online?  Shouldn’t you be gathering that information to use in convincing potential new customers?  It’s well-known that potential customers are influenced by what your previous customers say.  Good feedback can help you win new business.

Gather up all those links to compliments and other nice feedback in your Delicious bookmarks and share them on your site or in your email newsletters.  And if you weren’t sure of the business applications for having a Delicious bookmarking account, now you know.

On the other hand, if a customer makes a negative comment, seriously consider taking action to make it right with them.  Customer service isn’t just about always doing the right thing;  It’s also about how you handle things, when they haven’t gone well.

Potential customers may just be impressed by your open attempts to solve a problem.  The fact that you’re pro-actively monitoring complaints online, and responding to them will offer a huge boost to your reputation with many potential customers.

Another advantage to monitoring, that I rarely see mentioned,  is that you can use that information to create original content. Write articles and blog posts about a topic that’s hot right now.  I’m amazed at how often people don’t have a clue about what to write in their business blogs.  If you’re on top of what’s happening, there’s always plenty to write about.

Most people, even businesspersons, ask for advice before buying a product or a service.  Many even do this online.  By monitoring keywords that have to do with your business you will be notified immediately when someone uses those keywords to get advice about buying. You can immediately offer help, advice, a free consultation – whatever it takes to turn that person into a lead and a customer.

Monitor your business, your competition and your industry.  You will protect or enhance your reputation,  stay strategic about what the competition is doing, and gather tons of material that will help you create meaningful content at the same time that you’ll be engaging new leads in their own forums.

If you need a few referrals, here are some social media monitoring tools that will help you stay on top of the buzz:

Google Alerts is free, but you’ll end up getting email alerts for unrelated things. For example, I set up an alert for “Maggie Curran” and I get notices every time something is written online about any “Maggie” or any “Curran,” as well. You can sign up for alerts for anything: competitor names, any products, any combination of terms. You name it.

Paid services let you monitor not only your company name online, but your competitors, your products, your competitors products, brands, blogs, industry terminology – virtually anything that would be strategic information for your business.  They also have filters you can set up to make the results more meaningful.

Trackur is a paid service that costs between $18 and $377 per month.  It may sound like a lot, but if you offer this service to clients, it might be much more cost and time effective.

Alterian’s SM2 offer a Fremium (free) version that gives you up to 1000 results, which works for most small businesses.  I’ve been getting really good reports from them.

Radian6 is an industry leader with big clients and their prices reflect this. They won’t even quote you a price online. (Ed. Note: They offer pricing in the FAQ.)  They push a sign up for a free demo.

If you’ve got others you prefer using, leave a comment and tell us why.

In May 2007 she begins selling make-up brushes and eye shadows on eBay.  She’s uneducated, but trusts her love of make-up will help her provide for her family somehow.  Very quickly she realizes customers are regularly bombarding her with questions on how to apply make-up.   Rather than sending them somewhere else, in July 2007 she opens a YouTube account under the name Panacea81.  In her modest home, with her child running around in the background at times, and with her strong working class accent, she uses her webcam to  record herself applying make-up.  She’s amazed at how quickly word spreads of her modest tutorials.  One day she’s contacted via her Facebook page to create her own line of products.  Now a couple of years later, Lauren Luke’s got her own make-up line available at Sephora, and she’s doing an international tour.

If this doesn’t show the power of an organic online presence to generate income, we don’t know what does.  Source

Our experience has been that small business owners are often afraid to show a personality for their business.  They don’t want to be seen as the brand for their business, but they also don’t listen to their customers’ comments or questions.  Sometimes a natural direction for their business to unfold is crystal clear, but the business owner shies away due to fears of alienating one type of customer.

We don’t recommend radical moves, but it is possible to make calculated moves and experiment based on strategy that comes from analysis.  If one customer segment is stagnant or declining, it may be worth the business owner’s time  to focus some energy on a new customer segment that could be more profitable.  Combining the love for what one does with an entrepreneurial touch may just be what your business needs to soar over the competition, even when that competition may have dozens of employees and hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Look at Lauren Luke.

Even as individuals we grow and mature into a personality that is all our own, a brand.  A business that is not growing, but refuses to explore new ways of operating will lose out on finding a niche that could mean the difference between success and failure. A new business that has no clear vision for how it presents itself in the marketplace will also meet difficult times.

During these unstable times, if your business isn’t growing, don’t become paralyzed with fear.  This is the time to create a brand that is authentically you.  Remember that business plan you made, when you were first filled with the excitement of opening a new business?  Pull it out and re-connect with your original dreams.  We can help you find your way. Call us for a free one hour consultation.

1.  Have a decent statistics program in place that tells you what keywords people are searching for to get to your site.  I hope you did some research before putting your site up and blogging to see which keywords are most used to get to your competitors, too.  You need to know what words your potential customers are using to search for your product or service.  If you don’t, you’re wasting your time and money.

2.  You’ve got up to 95 words only to use in a Google Ad, including 25 words in the title.  You need to incorporate the key words in there, too.  Go through your keywords list, separate them into groups that pertain to a particular offering, etc., and then create your ads based on that offering. You need to know which key word or key word phrase you’re going to use in the ad and the ad has to make your potential customer click through to your site.

3.  Edit your ad down so that you use simple words.  These are easier to read/understand and it also frees up more words for you to use in your ad.  Use Gas instead of Gasoline, for example. You get the drill.

4.  Don’t be coy.  You need to stand out from all the other ads AND you need to get people to click.  Experiment with your ads. Try different tactics.  Be bold, be coy, sell hard, sell soft.  You need to do this and you need to TEST.  Try Google Website Optimizer to create A/B tests to see which type of sales copy works best with your customers.

*Maggie Curran Inc. can help you set up a strategy using the right adwords for your business, and we can help you measure results. Contact us [Email address: info #AT# maggiecurran.com - replace #AT# with @ ] for a free consultation.

Here’s a quick hint:  never be unethical or annoying and stop trying to sell me something with each tweet.  Right there, that bit of advice will shut down over 90% of small business tweeters.

If you’re a small company and you’re not in the middle of a major controversy that has the global media spotlighted on you, ONE TWEET PER DAY is more than enough.  Make it relevant, make it news.  If you’ve got absolutely nothing to say, then say nothing.  Trust me, if you tweet just for the sake of tweeting, we’ll stop reading your tweets and even un-follow you.

If people follow you, great.  They’ve chosen to read your tweets.  However, you don’t have to follow them back – don’t follow just anyone.  Remember that you might offend customers by your choice of follows.  Keep them relevant to your business, avoid controversy, avoid personalities who might be off-putting to your clients, avoid subjects that are polarizing.

When something big happens, it’s all over Twitter within two minutes.  Most everyone has a TV, radio, Internet, mobile devices.  They don’t need you as a primary news source.  Don’t repeat the news.

Share your knowledge.  Not every tweet should be about selling something to your followers.  Share information. Thank clients. Refer to interesting articles on your site or other content.

Stick to these rules, have a strategy in mind when you open a Twitter account, and give the responsibility to someone who’s earned it – not because they’re young or happen to be an assistant, but because they understand the power of social media to create revenue.

*Did you know that Maggie Curran Inc can take care of all your online needs? Check out THE KITCHEN SINK for details.

An analysis of over 170 000 online ads found this to be true.   Although they analyzed banner ads,
the same is true for any online presence, such as your website. 

Potential customers or partners should see at a glance exactly what your logo is, what you’re selling,
and they should understand your message and what you want them to do (a call to action).

I recently had an email conversation with a company that required I give them lots of personal
details before they would let me see what exactly they were selling. 

By the time I filled out their long form all I got was a link to confirm my “membership”  by email!
Hey, I just want to see what you’re selling because I may want to buy it! I was pretty annoyed. 
Well, it turns out this site was only offering virtual space to run webinars! 

Why couldn’t they just say that up front? 

Instead there was a lot of internal jargon about benefits to customers without ever giving
just one simple sentence explaining what their product was.

Don’t hide behind a lot of hot air. Be simple and clear.

Source