Social Media Advisors

We are Social Media Advisors, a Social Media Speaker, & Custom WordPress Site design.

online marketing

Does Your Offline Advertising Effectively Market You Online?

Online Consulting

Every day I receive several pieces of junk mail in my mailbox.  Everything from coupons for restaurants, to car dealerships, to even financial institutions. When time allows I like to look at these printed materials and see how companies are marketing offline to bring people onto their online sphere.

Today, I received 2 pieces of mail. One for a local car dealership, and one for Charles Schwab. Unfortunately in my opinion, I don’t think either did a good job marketing in there printed material.  See images below:

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In the Kia advertisement, it feels as if it was a last second thought.  The social media icons were placed in the bottom in a very sloppy graphic design as very small icons. Nowhere in the ad does it say how to find them on Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter.

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The Charles Schwab ad had a nice QR code on the back left panel of their recent magazine.  However, when I scanned the code expecting to watch a demo of the Schwab Global Account, all I received was a non-mobilized web page. To see any content on my Android phone I had to scroll left to right, pinch and zoom and it was a complete nightmare.

I wish I could say this is a rare thing to see, but the unfortunate is that this stuff happens every day.  So, in closing, before you send out your next piece of offline marketing to your audience, ask yourself if your online marketing on that piece of paper, billboard, or sign is going to be  effective at driving the audience from an offline encounter to an online relationship.

Cyber Monday Email Marketing Blunder by AT&T

How to Use Twitter, Online Consulting, Social Media Advisors

This morning as I began my work week, my inbox like many others was littered with advertisements from dozens of companies making me aware of their Cyber Monday sales.  One that really caught my eye was from AT&T.  They are running various smart phones this Monday at various times for only one cent.  I thought to myself that this was pretty cool and wanted to share this with my social media buddies.  Also, as we have recently been sharing over in our photo blog, various social media marketing efforts of corporations both large and small.  So, I have been scanning every piece of advertising that I come across lately,looking to see if they are integrating social media marketing into their email marketing, print & TV advertising.

As I scrolled down to the bottom of the ad for AT&T I saw buttons to share on Facebook, LinkedIn & Yahoo Buzz.  Glad they have the ability for me to share on Facebook.  That’s a good place to have your stuff shared as there are now over 500 million users and most people have at least 100 connections there.  LinkedIn? Ok, I guess that would also be a good place to have your stuff shared since there is a good sized network there although I am not sure that the content would be relevant to what people use LinkedIn for.  The third icon for Yahoo Buzz? I mean, I have heard of it, but I don’t have an account and have only ever heard one person mention it before.  What blew my mind and where I think AT&T really missed the ball is that they left off a button for Twitter!

According to TechCrunch, Twitter has over 190 million users. Not adding the ability for someone to share easily on Twitter is a major marketing blunder by someone.  For me, Twitter is by far my largest group of connections with 6,710 followers of my personal Twitter account @jb140.  It is also by far my fastest growing group.  In comparison, our Facebook Page, has only 1,390 fans.  Missing twitter in an online advertisement where you are including social media platforms is a major failure in my opinion.   Whoever designed this advertisement at AT&T either doesn’t understand social media fully, had a major brain fart,  or just didn’t want to take the time to incorporate it into the advertisement for cyber Monday thinking it wasn’t worth the time or money to implement.  The same holds true for the entire editorial staff that missed this oversight.  Maybe AT&T thinks that twitter isn’t that important, but my guess is more likely one of the first three options.

So when you are setting up your next online marketing campaign to send out to thousands of people, make sure if you are including social media, to include all the major connections.  For me, I would have loved to share this special on Twitter.  Unfortunately this option wasn’t available easy, so I didn’t.

You Don’t Order Steak at a Seafood Restaurant, So Why Buy a Website From Postcard Companies?

Custom WordPress Sites, Online Consulting, SEO, Social Media Advisors

One of the things that we at 210 Consulting love doing is helping new businesses get their online marketing started in the right direction.  Unfortunately unless you are always working in the web development, SEO, and online marketing industry, it can be overwhelming to a new company.  Also, since you are just starting your new business, money is usually very tight.  So, when you go to purchase business cards, accounting software, or a domain name and they offer to get your site up in running in less than 10 minutes for under $100, you are ecstatic to do so because you can now say you are on the internet.

Usually within 10 minutes of a conversation with a new prospective client I can tell if they have one of these types of sites.  Why because they have only 5 pages of content, on a standard layout with zero ability of customization,  and the adding of plugins or a blog is impossible! When I ask them why they chose this as their website company, the response every time has been this: “Well, I didn’t have a bunch of money to go buy a fancy site and didn’t want to put that much money into something.  Once this site makes me some money I will upgrade. Besides my new site looks pretty and will be fine for my online marketing strategy.”

This is when I finally ask the client, Would you order a steak if you were eating at a superior seafood restaurant?  No! Because they aren’t known for their great steaks.  They are known for serving some of the best fish on the planet. This same principle holds true when you purchase a website from an online postcard company or an accounting software company.

These types of websites are designed to be simple, easy to set up, quick to activate and are inexpensive.  But the limitations they possess are huge.   My sister-in-law set up a website the other day for her new business and was very excited when she emailed me a link to look at the site.  I pulled it up and called her within 2 minutes to tell her to stop wasting her time and that we needed to do something different.  We then made a call to one of my connections that was able to create a WordPress Blogsite for her in just under a weeks time, she hired me to do some graphic design work and for under $1,000 we had her an awesome and amazing new site up and running.

So what made her new site that much better & worth the expense? Here are just some of the big differences:

  • Unlimited Pages of Content versus only 5- The original page had a total of 5 pages of content available.  She had maximized that in her first 10 minutes of setup.  She could add more, but there was a fee each time she went to add more pages.  On her new WordPress.org blogsite, she can now add unlimited number of pages with pictures, videos, links and more.  The reason the number of pages is so important is that it is a big factor in how search engines rank your content.  More pages make you look more like an authority on a subject and thus the page goes up in the searches.
  • Power of Plugins- Plugins and widgets are awesome additions to any site.  Unfortunately her template 5 page site did not offer any of this.  She could not add simple things like a Facebook share button, or a ReTweet button.  With a blogsite like WordPress she has the ability to do all these things and much more that not only make it easier for people to share her site with others, but some that also help her with her Search Engine Optimization.
  • Online Ordering- The template 5 page site also prohibited the addition of any types of online shopping carts or purchase online buttons.  Which as her business continues to grow she wants to start offering these features to her clients so that they can purchase her items online and ship them around the world.
  • True Ownership of Her Content Forever- Unlike the other company, the information is now on her own site.  She owns it and nobody else.  She does not need to worry about if they decide to raise the price up.  Or if they go out of business, or if they move servers and crash things for weeks at a time.  The other nice thing is that she has a home base to direct customers to that only her content & products.  The customers will not be finding her competition there.  While online forums are great sources of online business, you do run the risk of your customer that found you there clicking a link to your competitor that is on the same platform and losing the business to someone else.  The same holds true for those those that “have their website on their company site” which is nothing more than just a profile there that drives traffic to your organization and not you.  All it takes is one accidental click on a company site and once again your co-worker is getting the sale instead of you.

These are just four of the many reasons why I said she needed to change her site before even really starting.  Luckily, she listened to me & took my advice.  We worked together with a web developer and built her an awesome looking & highly search engine optimized blogsite. She then did a few training sessions with me to develop her targeted audience and keywords to write about.  Since then she has written a few blog posts, added some great content to her site & seen an explosion of traffic. Without this, she would not have known the first thing about what to write about or what types of things people are searching for.  Remember, she wants to bake cakes, not become a online marketing expert.

So what are the results?

Well, take a look for yourself.  This was an email conversation I had with her today:

Hey Jeremy,

Just got 3 cake orders today for a word of mouth referral! So far since the website has been up I have actually collected about 450.00!  Its quite a bit for cakes and chocolate covered yummies….

My response:

Awesome!  So how many cakes have you sold in the first 2 weeks now? 5? 6?

Her Response:

8 actually
a gift basket
and 50 chocolate covered pretzels!

As you can see, she is well on her way to regaining the money she spent on building her website and the beauty is that she will continue to profit from the site for a long time thereafter too!  So before you sign up for a website through one of these other companies, stop and ask yourself, Would you order steak at a seafood restaurant? Then why am I buying a website through a postcard company?

If your small business needs assistance getting started with your online marketing plan and would like to see this type of results, feel free to contact me to develop your online marketing gameplan.  Also, if the picture above has you interested in some delicious chocolate covered pretzels, make sure you visit Vie Bakery. Lastly, if you are wondering what we suggest for a website, we believe you should go with a custom WordPress Site.

14 Reasons Why Your Business Needs To Use Facebook In Your Online Marketing Strategy

Facebook, Online Consulting, Social Media Advisors

I get asked all the time by clients when we are doing an online marketing consultation about why they need to be on Facebook.  The typical responses are: “I don’t care about someone going on vacation, or that someone’s dog just gave puppies,” or my personal favorite, “all Facebook is good for is throwing sheep, building farmvilles, and joining mafia wars.”  While there are many that get sucked into the giant black hole of Mafia Wars, Farmville and the thousands of other meaningless things to do on Facebook, what most people do not realize is the absolute power that lies within the Facebook platform.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we see roughly 1/3 of our revenue right now come from connections on Facebook.  This is a strong source of income for our online consulting business.  While drinking Google Juice remains king, social network sites like Facebook, Twitter, & Youtube are gaining traction daily.  In case you were wondering if Facebook is something you need to begin integrating into your online marketing plan.  Take a look at these stats, it might be time to start mixing in another drink as well.

GENERAL FACEBOOK STATS

  • More than 400 million active users
  • 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day (200 million people!)
  • More than 3 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
  • More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
  • More than 3.5 million events created each month (half of those invites come to me!)

FACEBOOK BUSINESS PAGES

  • More than 1.5 million local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
  • More than 20 million people become fans of Facebook Pages each day
  • Facebook Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans

USER STATS

  • Average user has 130 friends on the Facebook
  • Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook
  • Average user writes 25 comments on Facebook content each month
  • Average user becomes a fan of 4 Pages each month
  • Average user is invited to 3 events per month
  • Average user is a member of 13 groups

These are some very powerful statistics! While Facebook is an internal network that does not bring you the SEO value that you are used to your website or blog bringing, it is powerful.  Think about it like this: In 2009 the population of the United States was just over 307 million according to Google.  Facebook ads, show that right now there are 112, 291,180 people on Facebook that live in the US and are 18 years or older.  In other words, about one out of every three Americans have a Facebook account, and that 1 out of every 6 is on it daily!

There are many other ways to use Facebook in your online marketing plan for your business.  Hopefully by now you realize this is something you really need to start doing.  If you need help getting started, feel free to ask me for assistance, I love helping clients get their Facebook Business Page set up & optimizing their efforts on Facebook.

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