April 2010- Recent events have seen Facebook make yet another round of privacy changes and their traffic dipped in January for the first time in recent history. Is it the beginning of new growing pains or a leveling off? With all the new tools Facebook offers marketers it’s easy to get caught up in the Facebook frenzy and spend all your time focused on their Social Graph and widgets.
Life before Facebook
When I first joined facebook years ago I had no one to connect to except possibly my nephew and niece who were both in college at the time. Unfortunately neither of them were on it yet. MySpace was hot and Twitter wasn’t nothing but a future echo of texting & AOL continued to fade. Despite this the social meida scene was booming.
Blogs, Forums and Chat
Blogs, forums and chat have been around for a while now, forums the longest, and have been a place for regular people to express and share their opinions. In fact forums offer some of the richest grounds for building a community, even in a Facebook dominated world. The challenge is that forums require more work than quickly putting up a fan page with a Like button on your main website. Yet forums and blog post comments can be fertile ground for finding and developing product/service evangelists that can help you promote your product, answer customer questions and defend you against unflattering posters.
Plan Your Non-Facebook Social Media Strategy
- Use free tools like Social Mention to help identify hot issues and avid posters
- Reward evangelists with review products, T Shirts and semi official titles
- Train your customer service folks correctly participate in forums
Today the numbers demand that you pay close attention to Facebook & even Twitter. Taking some time to plan for social media beyond Facebook and Twitter will give you a more balanced strategy and hedge your bet for when the next new paradigm shift arrives.
An important part of your Internet strategy should be to rank well for the top keywords in your industry. According to an article in Website Magazine May 2010, less than 2% of company websites showed a significant number of their keyword terms in the top results. The article defined top results as the top 100!
Top Ten Search Results
Being in the top 10-20 search results is where you really need to be, so ask yourself how many of your search terms rank in the top 10? Given the statistics, it is most likely none. Most companies have absolutely no idea how to get there. They may not even know what they want to be found for.
The basics of being found
You can find this same information on thousands of sites across the net
- Good site structure including Title tags, description tags and proper use of H1 and strong tags
- Good content written in a way that is readable by users who don’t read but scan web pages
- Inbound links from authoritative websites that point to your site with the correct keywords
- A solid social media plan that starts with a good blog and continually expands including how you manage your customer service
How Come Only 2% of sites are actually found?
The above list sounds pretty simple doesn’t it? If it is how come only 2% of company sites show up in the top 100 of search results?
My sites have consistently ranked in the top 10-20 for desired keywords?
Contact me to find out how I managed to get many of the businesses I’ve worked on into the top 10 for dozens and hundreds of their desired keywords.
Resource: Want to see where you rank for your keywords? Check out SEOBOOK
Your first Internet Strategy
Most folks think that an Internet strategy is solved by simply having a web site. You know, build it and they will come. Well even if they do come what will they do when they get there and what will your company get out of it. Even very good websites that are well laid out and look great can fail without first setting goals. Continue reading Building an Interent Strategy
