Social Media Marketing Part 2: Social Media Avenues

Or: What Goes Where?

In Part One of our Social Media Marketing Series, we covered the fundamentals.  What follows is a checklist of great social sites to leverage along with how to get it going and the content you can put into each spot:

If you haven’t done it already, create a Facebook Page for your business (type “Facebook Pages” into the search box when in your personal Facebook account page to find the section, and then click on the “+ Create Page” button to get started).  Once this is done, the obvious next step is to get people to become “Fans” of your business:

- Ask all of your friends and family

- Run a contest to past customers, complementary businesses, or local organizations to get some fans

- Offer a promotional rate to Facebook fans

- Promote your Page in your…

Synonyms, Search and SEO

Or the “Picture” vs. “Photo” Duel

In the Official Google Blog today, Steve Baker gives some (frankly unusual) insight into how it is Google’s algorithms deal with semantics, specifically synonyms.  As he points out in his post, it’s kind of funny and amazing what computers are good at, and what they’re not:

An irony of computer science is that tasks humans struggle with can be performed easily by computer programs, but tasks humans can perform effortlessly remain difficult for computers. We can write a computer program to beat the very best human chess players, but we can’t write a program to identify objects in a photo or understand a sentence with anywhere near the precision of even a child.

But because Google’s primary directive is to produce search results most relevant to the query you typed into the search box,…

Baby Steps to Social Media Marketing

Part I: How to Talk and What to Say

Lots of folks are all aflutter about leveraging social media. When you run a business, you will frequently get lots of comments from everyone you talk with (friends, family, neighbors, new acquaintances, employees, partners) about how you should really be using social marketing. Social media advice has become akin to parenting advice – lots of blanket statements from people who you barely know and who may not even be doing it!

Most of the business owners we talk to are game for any form of “free” website traffic and customers, but just don’t know where to start. They’ve all heard about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and community website content, but they don’t understand how their business could use them.

We’ve put together a quick guide to help you take those…

AdWords Excluded Locations: Secret Double Agents

The geographical area in which you want your Adwords ads to display is a very important factor to consider, not only for local businesses but also for national businesses.

One common scenario we run into is a business that is located in a particular area, but provides service to people across the country, or multiple countries.  A few examples here include real estate agents, travel guides and hotels – pretty much any business that focuses on relocation or visitors.

For these types of advertisers we find that running campaigns targeted toward their local area is often not productive.  We’ll use the real estate agency as an example here – many people like to check out photos of houses on the market and what they are listed at in their own neighborhood, but they have no intention of…

Yield Software an OnMedia 100 Winner

(And We’re Pleased as Punch!)

Yield Software has been chosen by AlwaysOn as one of the 2010 OnMedia Top 100 winners.

Inclusion in the OnMedia 100, the AlwaysOn folks tell us, signifies leadership amongst our peers, and game-changing approaches and technologies that are likely to disrupt existing markets and entrenched players. Yield Software and our flagship Web marketing product, the Yield Web Marketing Suite, was specially selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team and industry experts spanning the globe based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz.

Of course, it’s an honor to have been selected, and we’re proud as all get-out.  Since we launched the Yield Web Marketing Suite last April 1st, we’ve been thrilled to see businesses and agencies of all sizes come on board and even more thrilled…

All that Google Stuff is Too Technical for Me

or “If I had a dollar for every time I heard this…”

But we say Hogwash!

Yes, there are lots of advanced features and complexities to online advertising, but you don’t have to use them. You can get started in a very simple and quick manner.

Here’s your step-by-step guide for using Google to start getting more business today:

1) Go to Google’s Keyword Tool

a.  Select the “Website Content” option
b.  Enter the URL of your home page
c.  Scroll to the bottom and click the link to export the results to Excel

2) Create a Google AdWords Account (if you don’t have one)

3) Create your first campaign in your AdWords Account

a. Create Ad Groups from your Excel export

i. The common terms column translates into your ad groups – create one ad group for each unique common term

b. Put Keywords into your Ad Groups

i.…

Predictions for 2010

(Because They’re Just Too Fun To Pass Up!)

With each new year, prognosticators the world over engage in the age-old sport of predicting the next big trends.  While some have a better record than others, it’s always fun to see what might happen and how it will impact both business and consumers.

So, just for the fun of it, here’s a small round-up of excerpted predictions for 2010.

Five Tech Trends from The New York Times Bits Blog:

1. A Third Wave of Mobile

In 2009 we saw the explosion of both app stores and applications for the iPhone and newer entrants such as the Droid. In 2010, expect to see a range of new external appliances for mobile smart phones that extend their utility.  Exhibit A: Square, a device that plugs into an iPhone audio port and turns it…