Most benefits concerning guest blogging are related to a site’s web presence.  However, this general theme is not all that can happen with your guest posts.  If you develop a relationship with a website that has a following – especially a social media following – you can count on some “real” marketing value.

Imagine cultivating a relationship with a similar blog in your industry.  Prior to contacting the site, you see that they are very active on Facebook and Twitter.  This is exactly what you want to see, as the benefits are quite varied:

• Your guest posts will have the “normal” value for SEO, link building, and furthermore
• The audience of the blog could generate traffic itself
• Further marketing value is generated from the site’s social media following

This is gold for any potential guest blogging relationship.  When you see this, you would be well-advised to consider a reciprocal relationship, where both sides agree to share the guest posts on social media outlets.  You might be surprised how valuable this can be for online marketing purposes.

Don’t get into the easy habit of putting guest blogging with certain areas of online marketing.  Social media value and other advantages make guest blogging a great practice – and it’s not just about SEO and link building.

Most SEO experts now use a wide variety of automation tools to help them automate many optimization tasks. These automation tools are designed to make SEO marketing less tedious and more efficient. Many tools such as mass email marketing applications are considered spamming tools by the vast majority of viewers, and unless you are running the software on a VPS, your IP address will appear as the IP where the emails come from. If a lot of email receivers feel that your emails are spammy and report them, the Internet Service Provider may decide to blacklist your IP or even block you from using the service altogether. Therefore, to avoid this, you should hide your true identity behind a VPN. Since the connection is tunneled through the VPN, your activities will never be discovered and you can be free to do whatever you need with your online marketing scheme.

You also need a VPN network when you visit sites and forums for Internet marketers online. As many SEO experts have known, online networking is extremely important in this business. Most SEO experts and online marketers frequent marketing forums daily, some even offer their service directly on the forums. Building a reputation on these forums is crucial to your success. However, there are times when you inadvertently offend the moderators and they may decide to block your IP for a period of time or even permanently. This is why covering up your real IP is very important. You could always change your IP when using a VPN connection, however, if your real IP is a static IP, being blocked from a popular SEO network means a lot of losses to you. With a VPN, you simply have to change your IP to gain access to that forum again.

If you own a VPS server, you should rent a VPN connection from a reliable VPN provider and route your connectivity through that virtual private connection. If you use SeNuke, Scrapebox, Article Marketing Robots or other SEO tools, having a VPN connection is imperative if you want to cover your traces and safely run your SEO tools without getting banned by Google, your ISP or social networks that you are aiming at. If you have been in the SEO and IM game long enough, you should understand the importance of anonymity. When gobbling up lots of internet sites to create backlinks from, whether they are Web 2.0 sites, forums, video directories, article directories, or press release sites, if you do everything from the same IP address you run the risk of your IP being flagged and the site admin will not allow you to sign up any more. Some sites will only allow one account from the same IP.

A SEO specialist might use a proxy to check the position of a website in search engines in different countries. You can test your sites or applications as if you were in US or Europe. Now it is easy to analyze what position your site is in Google for US or UK users. Above are the reasons why you should never perform SEO tasks on the Internet without covering up your traces with a VPN network.

It’s difficult to overtake viable, established websites in certain keywords.  Most notably and naturally, this theme is found with highly-competitive keywords.  For instance, it would be obvious that “best web designer” is a more competitive keyword than “custom web design for law firms.”

It’s true: Your top keyword may have 15,000 searches each month, while your lesser targets may not even reach four digits.  However, there is nothing wrong with competing for both types of keywords.  In fact, it’s a great strategy.

By focusing on less-competitive keywords – while still not neglecting the big ones – you can rule the lesser ones more easily.  This will allow your website to get to the top of search engines for specialty keywords.  After all, it is better to be number one for specialty keywords than make negligible progress for the competitive ones.

But you’re still making ground.  You can still make SEO-friendly content for more important keywords at the same time.  And as your web presence becomes more established, with SEO, link building, and other areas, you’ll be able to compete better with bigger sites with this type of strategy.

How can your business start small with SEO for big results?  Contact us to learn more about this marketing strategy.

“5 Tips To Build Your Personal Social Brand,” a post by Debra Donston-Miller, on Information Week website, offers an overview for both the novice and seasoned users of social media marketing.

“1. Demonstrate your expertise.”  It’s important not to hold back on your urge to share your experiences. Go for it, and you just might be surprised at the positive feedback you’ll receive.

After all, if you’re asking visitors to spend time reading content, the takeaway has to be something of value for them. “This is how you gain loyal friends and followers and how you get content shared.” You just never know when that next prospect will “take notice of your demonstrated expertise.”

“2.  Avoid split personalities.” That’s a hard one to understand, if you’re new to social media practices; essentially, the key here is NOT to throw out so much different information, data and unrelated content that you simply are confusing your followers.

“3. Find an update balance.” Keep an eye on your media usages. Ask yourself if you’re just going through the motions to send up that day’s (or week’s) post. Really get deep-in-the-weeds in tracking your ‘likes’ or related comments and feedback. “…if the num ber of comments, likes, shares and retweets…decreases, you should probably adjust your volume up or down.”

“4. Follow up.” The conversation can’t exist as though you’re on a one-way street. Engage your visitors, and make sure your responses are meaningful and relevant. “Develop conversations around content that you have posted.”

“5. Reciprocate” Just going through the keystrokes of liking, sharing and retweeting won’t win your customer loyalty. What’s important is to make sure you’re using “quality content that will be meaningful to your own fans, friends and followers.”

Contact us to build your knowledge base about all things pertinent to marketing, SEO, social media marketing and direct marketing.

The use of social media allows you to see how your competitors are faring online. You can see the type of marketing being used and any promotions being offered.  This allows you to counter with a different type of promotion or special.

Social media sites are a great way for customers to provide feedback. You can post a message or an image for a product and ask your fans or followers for their feedback. Another option is to track the likes on a specific post. This is a great way for you do conduct market research for a new or existing product.

You can post news about your business, special events, an offer, or a discount to customers to your fans and followers. Offers that you provide can also entice potential customers to like your page or to follow your business. Provide a call to action for users to take advantage of any deals being advertised.

Posts that you create on social media sites, such as Facebook, can be pinned to the top of the page. The pinned post can promote a special or discount for a limited amount of time. A pinned post on your page is set to stay up for 7 days by default.

Create videos that introduce visitors to your business or for a product. You can post a video to YouTube or as a post on your social media page. Include a call to action for a video that directs users to your web page or business to take advantage of a special offer.

If you have any questions about social media marketing, then contact us to develop an online marketing strategy for your business.

This trend is an obvious one for anyone who spends time on Facebook.  If you have ever visited even a mildly popular Facebook page for a business, you have seen it in action:

• Recommendations
• Comments about the product/service
• Specific inquiries about a product/service, or a previous experience
• Outright complaints and criticisms
• Advertisements from others on that company’s page

How you react to these issues plays a big role in your success with customers and clients on Facebook.  What will you do when faced with complaints and advertisements on the page?  Will you handle specific situations on the Facebook page?  How quickly can/will you respond to posts?

While Facebook and other social media sites are great for business, there are issues that take place – such as complaints, advertisements from others, and more examples seen earlier – simply by having such a page.  Due to Facebook’s status as becoming a “primary interaction point for businesses,” Leyl Master Black advises business owners to create a specific Facebook engagement policy.

What could such a policy do for your business?  It could establish proper response times, create guidelines and a process for handling inquiries and issues, and help consider other aspects such as the appropriate tone for your responses.  After all, these items will need to be tailored to your business.

The times are changing.  Perhaps the average customer for your business will look for your Facebook page before a toll-free number.

You’ll need to be ready.  Everyone can see the writing on the wall, after all.  Figure out soon how your business will react to certain types of posts from your customers; it could help form their impression of your business.

Contact us to find out how to leverage Facebook to meet your customer’s needs.  It may be the best way to market and capitalize on your marketing efforts.

This is the immediate value that metrics bring.  Likely, you’ve seen a metric in action.  For instance, if you pay for an ad on Facebook, you can see what percentage of visible ads translated into a click.  Facebook will also give you another metric, in that of converted fans from these links.

As you can imagine, these can get rather involved.  According to AJ Kumar, the following three online marketing metrics are the most important to monitor:

1. Conversion Rate and Goal Completion

Sound familiar?  The previous example is just one form of this overarching metric.  Kumar lists Google Analytics as your best tool here.  This is a natural choice, given its powerful feature set and the fact that it’s free. 

2. Backlink Profile

Kumar argues that the quality of links that point to your website is everything for SEO.  You should check out a number of services that can help you look at the site’s backlink profile.  Then, you may start improving upon the profile.

3. Visitor Engagement

How much time do your visitors spend on the site?  Metrics such as average time on site, bounce rate, average pages per visit, and number of social media shares can help you characterize your site’s visitor engagement.  These metrics can make a big difference in how your site is viewed, as well as its success.

Are you taking advantage of the most important online marketing metrics?  Contact us for more information on leveraging these crucial statistics for success.

Unfortunately, this is what things have come to for some websites.  While SEO is certainly a strong way to market, it is not the primary role of any blog.  Customers, clients, and/or readers must be able to get something out of a blog post.  There is nothing wrong with posts that try to sell, or bring in search engine results – but there is a point that is a bit “much.”

There is nothing wrong with putting “Pittsburgh” in a title, if you have a business in that city.  If it is a shoe repair business, you might want to put “shoe repair” in a post title.  However, the key is found in your SEO posting strategy on your blog.

Take the following types of posts for this industry:

• Sell: A blog post that reiterates what the company does.  In our example, you might want to approach the topic of heel repair for women’s dress shoes.
• Helpful: What might customer’s value?  This is the chance for a blog to offer something useful to the reader.  Here, an example might be in determining what types of repairs could be done by the reader – and giving the proper steps.
• News: Real-world news, or even a time-sensitive event for the company (i.e. a holiday sale).
• Topical: You could cover a non-profit in the community, or some interesting development.  In our example, a shoe repair business could look at a one-for-one shoe company.
• Customer-Centered: Why not have a giveaway for your customers?  Or, do something that could make a splash on Facebook (i.e. some companies post trivia; the first correct response wins a small prize).

From here, it is simple: Mix it up!  Even when you’re not doing a promotional piece, you might be able to put a keyword in a title – and in the body – naturally.  The point here is to establish an organic feel to your blog.  In other words, you want it to look natural.

Consider the types of posts that belong on your blog.  Identify your SEO targets and place them appropriately into the blog.  If you can carry out your strategy without oversaturation – you’ll gain the readers’ interests as well as the fruits of your SEO strategy.  Then, you can consider other blog-related dynamics, such as timing, frequency, and social media integration.

According to a recent analysis, businesses can expect even more opportunities from social media giant Facebook:

An analysis from Pivot Research Group has been released, showing that Facebook social media marketing will provide a significant way to monetize the overwhelming quantity of activity on the site, as about half of the 900 million members actively use the site using their smartphones, tablets, and other devices.

What does this mean for businesses?  Here are a couple of quick points:

• Not only are social media-based opportunities on the rise, mobile integration is there as well.
• Businesses of all shapes and sizes need to re-evaluate how they are approaching these two markets ofmarketing: mobile and social media.

Clearly, businesses need to become aware of these important trends in how users are interacting with ads.  Mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets, and the growing nature of social media (such as Facebook and Twitter), are becoming two vital areas that cannot be ignored.  Even the most aggressive campaigns in these areas could be increased.

Is your business developing an app for its users?  Even a complementary product could result in increased marketing prowess for your business.

Are you ready to take a bit of the growing pie?  Contact us to learn more about the ever-changing marketing landscape.