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Biggest Blogging Mistakes, Fixed: Part 2

March 12th, 2012 :: Monika Jansen

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Blog Mistakes

In my last blog post, I discussed four major blogging mistakes companies make. Today’s mistakes will focus on optimization and measurement, because without these components, your blog won’t produce the results you seek.

Mistake #5: Failing to optimize for search

You probably spent lots of time and money optimizing your website content for search. Just as you need to optimize your website to help you get found in search engines, you should also do the same for your blog. Blogs have a tremendous influence on your search results, and you are missing out on opportunities to increase your keyword rankings and organic search traffic if you don’t take blog SEO seriously.

The Fix: The size of a website greatly affects the number of terms the site can rank for. A blog can take your company’s website from a 50-page site to a 500-page site. This means blogging is an important part of your SEO and traffic-building strategy. When you have more indexed pages, you have more opportunities for keywords, so be sure to optimize your blog content with keywords just as you did for your website content.

Mistake #6: Failing to optimize for lead generation

Not only does your blog present opportunities for SEO, but it also gives you the chance to ramp up your lead generation efforts. If you have few, or zero, calls-to-action (CTAs) on your blog, you are missing out on chances to convert blog readers into leads and customers. Many businesses generate large portions of their leads from their blogs – why not your business? Don’t limit the value of your blog’s ROI by failing to view it as a lead generator.

The Fix: Start by placing CTAs on the top and/or sidebar of your blog. Then, commit to lead generation by including a CTA in every blog article you publish. It might be wise to revisit old blog posts to add CTAs to them as well. A CTA could be as simple as asking readers to find further information on another page of your website, or you may ask them to participate in a poll, or even to take advantage of a special offer.

Mistake #7: Not using analytics to evaluate your blogging efforts

You probably use analytics to understand and tweak your website’s performance, so why would you ignore your blog analytics? Analytics can help you see whether your efforts are paying off and help you justify your blogging efforts to your boss and management team. They can also help you decide which articles are working best, and worst, for your audience. This valuable information can help you improve your blog and increase its effectiveness for your overall marketing strategy.

The Fix: Incorporate studying your blog’s analytics into your (or your blog editor’s) duties so you know how well your blog is performing. Your metrics will depend on your blog’s goals, but you may want to consider studying monthly visitors, keyword performance, subscribers, page views, lead generations, social media shares, inbound links and comments.

Are you guilty of making any of these blogging mistakes? It’s OK – we all make mistakes. What did you do to correct and learn from the situation?

Image courtesy of creative design agency Arrae

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Tags: analytics, blogging, bloging mistakes, lead generation, Marketing, seo
Posted in Marketing | No Comments »

5 Ways to Use the New LinkedIn Company Pages to Grow Your Business

December 20th, 2011 :: Monika Jansen

Are you doing all you can to leverage LinkedIn’s engagement opportunities?

Recently, LinkedIn made some changes to provide even more ways to communicate with clients, employees, and industry peers through its Company Pages. Now companies can make status updates on their pages, enabling followers to receive news directly from them. Since keeping up with changes to all the social media networks can be a job in itself, I’ve studied tips for getting caught up with everything LinkedIn.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. Optimize your Company Page for better engagement

There are over 2 million businesses with a company page on LinkedIn, so how do you make yours stand out?

First, you’ll want to make sure your company page is appealing and primed for engagement. LinkedIn allows you to use rich media content, such as YouTube videos, images, and hyperlinked banners, to make your page more engaging and visually interesting, so be sure to take advantage of these features.

Next, use your company overview page to tell potential customers what you can do for them – don’t forget to use keywords to attract your target market. The overview page is a great place to pull in your blog content by inserting your feed URL, too.

Another place to focus some attention is your products and services pages on your profile. Including images, lists of key features, links to promotions and even videos can help customers find the information they want about your offerings.

After sprucing up your page, be sure to enable the page for status updates and designate who can post updates. Now, you’re ready to begin updating.

2. Build your LinkedIn community

Just as on Facebook and Twitter, you’ll need to build your community of followers before you can really see any payoff from your efforts. Even if your business is very small, you can create a vibrant community of super-targeted followers to expand your reach on LinkedIn.

If you haven’t already, ask employees to follow your page and share status updates with their LinkedIn connections.

You can also follow the pages of vendors, customers, prospects and companies within your industry or geographic location–hopefully they will follow you back.

You can even send calls to action to follow your page to your personal connections, your database of customers, as well as post similar calls to action within relevant LinkedIn groups.

Like any other online community, you’ll have to work to grow your LinkedIn company page following, but the targeted connections made here can be well worth your efforts.

3. Provide helpful, industry-related updates

LinkedIn provides the perfect platform for building your credibility as a knowledge leader or industry expert. The professional aspect of LinkedIn’s community means its members are focused on improving their knowledge base and careers. Spark their interest by posting tips and insights that will help them succeed.

If your company helps businesses with their marketing, provide free content that will help your followers achieve their marketing goals. Likewise, if you sell software applications, teach your followers how to leverage these technologies to make their companies more efficient.

4. Engage with others through their updates

Don’t be shy–if you want to get on the radar of companies that are important to your business, engage with their status updates. Publicly thank them for information, make suggestions you think they’d appreciate, and by all means share their valuable content.

LinkedIn is a great place to talk shop about issues surrounding your industry, so jump into the conversation with potential vendors and partners. Maybe they will reciprocate your kindness and promote your business, too.

5. Measure and monitor for success

LinkedIn has a useful Analytics feature, which can help you see how well your efforts are paying off, but the best way to see how well you are engaging your target markets is to study your company profile’s landing page. Check here often to see who has communicated with or commented on any of your company’s updates.

Monitor the updates from the companies you follow by checking under “Companies” on your home page. Or, visit the “LinkedIn Companies” home page to see a concentrated stream of the same updates. Checking these places often will help you stay on top of the conversation in your industry and jump in with comments when appropriate.

Have you taken advantage of LinkedIn’s new company page features? If so, let us know how you like them by leaving a comment below.

Image courtesy of creative design agency Arrae

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Tags: analytics, engagement, LinkedIn, LinkedIn Company Pages, Marketing, social media
Posted in Marketing, Social Media | 1 Comment »

10 Super Useful iPhone Apps You Need, Part 1

October 3rd, 2011 :: Monika Jansen

This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series 10 Super Useful iPhone Apps

Social Media Examiner published a great blog post recently on social media marketing apps that I tucked away for future use. While I don’t really think they are social media marketing apps, they are definitely good ones to know about. So, since there are some super useful apps on the list, here are the first 10 I liked the best. Look out for Part 2 soon.

Analytics App: This is a Google Analytics app that lets you view 55 reports via your iPhone. Caveat: There have not been enough reviews to rate the app; however, it’s only $6.99, so it’s worth a try.

Chomp helps you finds apps you want, so you can search based on what apps actually do. Super useful, as an app’s name usually tells you very little about it. Just search by keywords to start finding apps by category.

DocsToGo: Want to work on the go? DocsToGo lets you view, edit and create Word and Excel files and view PowerPoints and PDFs.

Dragon Dictation: This is a really, REALLY useful app, as it lets you speak your text, email messages, and Facebook and Twitter updates right into your phone.

Dropbox: If you don’t know about them yet, time to check them out. This free service lets you bring all your photos, docs and videos anywhere.

Flipboard: This app is basically a magazine for the stuff you care about. It lets you flip through the news, photos, videos and updates your friends are sharing on Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Flickr and Instagram.

Homebase: If you are time-crunched, you can blast your announcements to all the social media platforms you use, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Flickr and Foursquare.

Instapaper: If you travel a lot by plane and don’t want to pony up for an Internet connection, use Instapaper to save Web pages for later offline reading.

LastPass Tab Browser: How many passwords do you have? A zillion, right? Store your passwords here and access them on any device anywhere.

LiveProfile: This is another really cool app that will make your life a lot easier. It is a free, cross-platform messenger for iPhone, BlackBerry and Android smartphones that lets you send messages, photos, videos, post status updates and customize your profile.

Image by Flickr user Yutaka Tsutano (Creative Commons)

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Tags: analytics, apps, blogs, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Google Readers, Instagram, iOS, ipad, iPhone, LinkedIn, Marketing, smartphones, social media, Twitter
Posted in Marketing, Social Media | 1 Comment »

5 Steps to Starting Your Own Podcasting Show

August 1st, 2011 :: Monika Jansen

A medium once thought to be going the way of the dinosaur has skyrocketed back to relevancy and proliferation. Podcasting is becoming a popular – and potentially profitable – communication tool for marketers, entrepreneurs, and anyone else who has something interesting to say.

Nathan Hangen unraveled the mysteries behind setting up a WordPress-based podcast of your own in an article he wrote for Social Media Examiner. He offers simple steps and useful tools for getting the job done. Here are the 5 main steps you’ll need to take to get going:

Step 1: Choose a Host

Setting up a podcast on a WordPress blog is easy. Begin by self-hosting using the same server you use to host your blog. Once your podcast begins generating a lot of traffic, you’ll need to move to a hosting service like BluBrry, Libsyn, or Amazon S3.

Step 2: Configure WordPress

Don’t worry – it’s not as hard as it sounds! Once you have your first episode recorded, you’ll need to insert the audio or video into a blog post. The PowerPress podcasting plugin for WordPress makes it simple: It has a field for adding episodes and several media players to choose from. You can even customize the look of your media player and choose where in each post you’d like to display the player.

Step 3: Set Up Your Podcast Feed

Feedburner is the perfect tool for submitting your podcast to iTunes. Simply grab the URL given in PowerPress, head over to Feedburner, and follow the directions for adding a new feed.

Step 4: Install Analytics

Just as bloggers need to use analytics to improve their posts, podcasters need to analyze how well their podcasts are being received. Blubrry offers free podcast analytics that allow you to monitor your podcast downloads from your WordPress dashboard. Just paste the URL into the “redirect URL” box on the Services & Statistics tab in your PowerPress settings. Additionally, you can monitor your subscriptions through Feedburner.

Step 5: Add the Final Touches

Use an attractive 512 x 512 pixel image for your podcast, which you will need to add to the input boxes in the iTunes settings tab on your PowerPress admin panel.

Create an awesome name for your podcast, along with a description and summary that will entice browsers to listen. Click save, and you’re done. This information should also appear in your Feedburner settings.

Open up the iTunes store, and click the Podcasts link at the top. Click “Submit a Podcast,” and enter your Feedburner feed URL. Click “Continue,” verify your information, and hit “Submit.” You’ll get a confirmation email within minutes and an approval or rejection notice within days. As long as there are no copyright issues, you should be good to go!

Image by Flickr user Judith (Creative Commons)

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Tags: analytics, iTunes, Marketing, Nathan Hangen, podcasting, social media, Social Media Examiner, wordpress
Posted in Marketing, Social Media | 1 Comment »

Once, Twice, Three Times Trackable

December 29th, 2009 :: Michael Dougherty

Whether you’re creating a marketing piece/strategy, or getting into social media, you need to be conscious of how you will measure the success, or failure, of your endeavor. Like sending a package through UPS or FedEx, you’ll want to know your items were received and arrived. It could be the amount of emails you collected, the number of page views you hoped to achieve, the amount of sales you intend to make, or any number of reasons, but you need to be conscious, as you start your efforts, that you have a way to track your leads back to its source.

There are tons of ways you could to track your efforts. You could create specific urls to direct people back to a page on your website they could only reach by that marketing piece/effort, a phone number that is only used for that marketing piece/effort, or by the number of physical bodies that show up on the scheduled day. Whatever you choose, decide on what it will be before you get started. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked people how they determined the success of their piece only to hear “We didn’t think about that until after we printed it”.

I am not suggesting, in any way, that you should throw out everything you’ve created till now if you can’t track them. If there are pieces you have that don’t have a way to be tracked, find a creative way to make them so with the resources you have at your disposal. Here are a few creative ideas:

Use mailing labels on your brochures/postcards to update your information.
Call the places you’ve placed advertising with to see if you can alter the type in the next edition.
Place analytics tools, like Google Analytics, on your site to see where people visiting it are going.
Use sites like bit.ly to shorten, and track, the website links you put out in social media.

Once you’ve got the means in place to track the items, you need to determine what success means to your project, strategy, or piece. I’m going to ask you exercise some patience when it comes to tracking your success. Overnight success or an instant explosion of interest is not, and I repeat not, likely. It will take time, but you should determine what timeframe you are comfortable with or accepting of.

A little thought on how to figure out what success will look like. Please understand that it might take a few days for people to get a hold of your effort and that you can’t factor for people who many not be interested in your effort sharing it with others. There are multiple theories of success that you could use to determine your final outcome. One theory of success is the Pareto principle, often called the 80-20 rule, states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. The 1 Percent Rule is another, and Wikipedia defines it as “the 1 percent rule or the 90-9-1 principle reflects a theory that more people will lurk in a virtual community than will participate. This term is often used as a euphemism for participation inequality in the context of the Internet.”

Lastly, please don’t think I’m saying tracking your items is a quick thing to do. Tracking your efforts is a task unto itself. You’ll need to set aside some time to review your statistics and outcome as they come in. This could be day to day, month to month, or an accumulative total in a year. It’s best to take a step back and remember it’s not personal, but in these numbers you can find what works and what doesn’t.

The last thing you want to do is feel like any piece you’ve created was out there with no means for you to know it works. I hope this post has inspired some ideas of how you could begin to track the success of what is working and what doesn’t. This is me giving you a bit of permission to experiment with what works and what doesn’t, but always give each thing you choose to do a way to measure it’s success.

I would love your thoughts on today’s post here in the comments or you can reach me on Twitter by sending a message to @wickedjava, or on Facebook at facebook.com/mcdougherty.

As all ways, if you have been reading, thank you and stay wicked.

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Tags: analytics, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, expo, Generational Marketing, Grow Smart Business, Marketing, michael dougherty, small business, strategy, tracking
Posted in Marketing | 10 Comments »