In 2010 it is a given that your website is your strongest marketing tool, it has also been a given that ranking high in the search engines, particularly Google, has been the primary driver of traffic to your site.  The second part of that statement is no longer true.

What!! That’s right. According to Web measurement firm Compete Inc., Facebook has passed search-engine giant Google to become the top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN, and is among the leaders for other types of sites.  I would expect twitter to show up in the next snapshot they take. Still think social media doesn’t matter?

First, the numbers; using a snapshot from December, web measurement firm Compete, Inc , found that 13% of traffic to the major portals like Yahoo, MSN and AOL came from Facebook, Google only served up 7%, falling behind even eBay at 7.61%.

What is happening here is that rather than simply navigating the net on their own, consumers are relying more and more on the recommendation of their online friends. Facebook users share links and photos as well as product recommendations with their friends at an ever increasing rate. Rather than going out in search of news and products, they are now coming to us by way of status updates and fan pages.

Everything you knew about where and how to market has changed in the last few years and that change continues. First it was do the right shows and be in the right magazines. Then it was have a pretty Flash website that was really just and online brochure. Next it was use blogs, galleries and HTML websites to rank high in the search engines. Now even that is beginning to fade.

If you think about it, we have come full circle: once again the most important place to market is in the town square. It’s just that the town square now exists in the digital world. Ideas are exchanged over the virtual back yard fence.

Here are a few tips to using your Facebook profile more effectively. First off you should try to separate your business profile from your personal profile. So many of us started out on Facebook on a personal level and to some extent this has helped to blur the line between the two. The question is how much of the comments your sister and friends make do you want broadcast to you business contacts. Set up either a group page or a fan page for your business and work at posting differently on each. For most of you, a fan page is the way to go. You can contact your followers via updates (not as great as PM’s but it works) and your page will appear in the list of pages they joined. Post links to your blog or website to your status anytime you post or update. You can set this up to happen automatically using FriendFeed. You can also link your Twitter account to post on your FB page. Just a word of caution, if you hook all these up you end up with annoying multiple posts.

You should have a link on the homepage of your website, above the fold to your business Facebook page and list it in your signature on your emails.

I was sent the beta last week of a new app for Facebook created especially for brides in the planning stage. Wedding List is a well laid out, very organized planning tool that brides use to ask their friends for recommendations. Hmmm, now doesn’t that tie in nicely with I just said about recommendations? As of 3-01-2010 the application had 2,712 monthly active users and this thing is only a month or so old. One of the people behind this new app is my old contact at Modern Bride, Michelle Prelli, so you know they understand the wedding market. Read the reviews and be on the lookout for the logo in your news feed. If you see it, by all means respond.

All in all, you can’t continue to avoid social media. Not only do you have to be there but you have to know how to use it. Trust me, even Google has taken notice…you have seen Google
Buzz haven’t you?

What is new media marketing? Should you care? Oh no, what is this going to cost me?

The answers to the second two are: Absolutely and a whole lot less then you might think. The first one is a little deeper.

If you haven’t heard about New Media Marketing then you haven’t been paying attention. NMM is about conversations, it is about sharing, it is about engaging your target market instead of just shouting your pitch into the air and hoping it lands on your potential customers. It is about building relationships first and making the sale later.

It’s blogging and Facebook and MySpace. It’s forums and email. It’s Flickr and YouTube and before you know it will be mobile phones too. Advertising has changed in so many ways in the last decade and it is the age demographic the wedding professionals seek that has been at the forefront of this wave.

It is the internet version 2.0. Yes, brides start by looking through magazines but they look there for ideas not their service providers. When it comes time to start connecting with vendors they hop on line. If the only on line presence you have is a webpage that is nothing more than an online brochure you are barely going to get noticed. Classic websites are little more thatn online yellow page ads. Today’s brides want more interaction.

If you read this month’s Bride’s Say column than you have an idea of why this is important. Bride’s today enter the market place with a huge chip on their shoulder. Rather than expecting the best they assume that every single member of the bridal industry is out to screw them. To say the very least trust is an issue. You can thank the few bad vendor and authors like the Fields and Rebecca Mead for that.

NMM is one way to help rebuild that trust as a way of attracting your potential customers. If you attach a blog to your website brides will read it and hopefully comment on it, by doing so they get an idea of what you are like. If it is well written they will get to see how passionate you are about what you do. If you post images of your work to your blog you can get a feel for what your market likes by keeping track of which ones are viewed most. They get to know you and you get to know them.

Another way to build community on line is through sites like MYSpace and Facebook. Build a page and read and post to the group forums there. Become an authority in your field, set yourself up as “the go to guy” when brides have questions about your segment of the industry. This is valuable even if the person you are talking to is neither in your price range or geographical location because brides that fit your demo will be reading these interactions too. There are a lot more lurkers than posters.

Flickr and YouTube are another way to get your name out. Watermark your images and upload them. That gets them out there for the world to see for free. There is a brand new group on Flickr put together by Marc Fuller from Great Wedding Network that is working to become the largest repository of wedding related images on the internet. They are soliciting images from brides as well as pros and tagging them so they are search friendly. I can guarantee that if a bride keeps seeing your name come up as she pick things she likes she if going to take the next step and contact you. Get your images out there and not just the set up shots that you put in the magazines and your portfolio but the quick snaps you take on site. Brides want to see the real thing not just the beauty shots.

Believe me, this is where your brides and grooms are, these are the places they go to do their research. You have to be there in a substantial way. You can’t just play around the edges on these things you have to be genuine and real. They will know the difference. Remember, this is about building trust before the sale and about making connections. Think of it as a 24/7 bridal show with a global reach without the sore feet.

Here is a list of some blogs I read. Some I have included because of their popularity and some because of how well done they are.  The first one is the highest rated wedding blog in the states and is written by brides; the rest are the blogs of wedding professionals. Give them a look.

Wedding Bee

Bridal Wave

A Softer Image

The Artist Eye

Style Me Pretty

Bridezilla

Last year we began pioneering the concept of using WordPress not only for a blog, but even better using it’s content management system for a full website including the blog. Our clients saw instant search marketing results. Plus the new found ability to manage their own websites with lower costs. The win-win of a web/blogsite.

For the last few weeks I have been working to add a shopping cart to a new WordPress web/blogsite I am creating for a friend. We are doing the full site from art to design to programming/implementation. The purpose of the site is to market Trollbeads. The goal was to have a small business affordable website, that can be managed by the business owner and with superior front page organic search results, so the choice of WordPress was pretty quick.

But what for the cart? Third party shopping carts even from Yahoo or GoDaddy can cost $50 to $100+ a month plus transaction and processing fees. We wanted a less costly option with better styling options. We looked at ZenCart, osCommerce and WPe-Commerce. All of them were good and provided an excellent low cost self hosted cart with the ability extension. I was familiar with ZenCart from some other projects but wanted to try something a little different and that would not have the standard Zencart look.

WP e-Commerce is what we used for Trollbeads Trail. Like many WordPress plugins, it is free with full functionality and the upgrades with a grid layout and really cool drag and drop cart are very inexpensive. It is a little complex to setup (all shopping carts are to some degree), but very straight forward once you understand the application’s terms (the developers are from New Zealand).

The finished look is outstanding and the SEO power over the first 30 days has been even better than expected. So much so that we cloned it for a second site for the same customer replacing the existing website for her jewelry store, Santa Fe Trail Jewelry.

This is excellent for anyone wanting to increase their item sales or rental potential while keeping expenses as low as possible. Take a look at the finished site, remember it is all WordPress even the shopping cart, and let us show you how we can put this feature to work for you -

It is well recognized that to convert a prospect to a client requires a dialog.  In the past that had to be done with a personal presentation, conversation, a phone call, a series emails or a combination of all.  The website was just a static information resource.  Now we have advanced the website to be a large page of the dialog, to become a Dialogue-Site.

A Dialogue-Site will,

• Allow for the simple additions of new information, images and files.  Done as easily as creating and sending an email.
• Integrate your blog within your website, directly increasing the ranking or your website and reducing traffic leakage due to people’s resistant to click into new sites.
• Dynamically, automatically display featured content in different locations on main page and other pages within your website.
• Allow site visitors to rate your content and even post comments.  Even support comment threading allowing true discussions to evolve on particular subjects.
• Automatically post notifications of any new information to Facebook profiles and page and Twitter.  Yes your website will automatically Tweet your changes and also post your Tweets to the front page of your Dialog-Site.
• Create XML sitemaps, save them and confirm notification of Google, Bing and Ask search engines to retrieve the new sitemaps.  All automatics every time you make a site change.
• Built-in social media links on every page allowing your site visitors to bookmark and note your site on their social profiles and within their favorite social media/networks.
• Site content syndication.  Allow off site subscriptions and reading of your site and its content updates via feedreader or direct email.  At not cost to your or your subscriber.
• Easily add new features and pages.

See an Example of a dialogue-Site

When the Tennessee Wedding & Events Specialists Association decided to replace their old website they had a long wish list. First it had to appeal to a very web savvy target market and be easy to use across multiple generations.  It needed to be updatable and expandable.  It needed to be fully optimized for both social media and search and compatible with mobile devices. It needed to integrate membership accounting functions such as membership applications and online renewal. What they chose was a website built entirely on a WordPress platform!

TWESA turned to the experts at the Agency@Think to find a solution. What they got was more than they expected.

TWESA.com is a full website including extensive galleries, blogs, video and member listings all built on a WordPress platform.  It is fully integrated into social media such as Twitter and Facebook, even the calendar has its own RSS feed.  This is just what visitors see.On the non public side, members are able to post to the site as well as update their listings.

The Agency@Think included a member’s only blog that functions more like a Facebook wall or a Twitter feed. Since the private blog is fully optimized for mobile devices, members can use it as an instant way to communicate with each other while working an event. The importance of having a private one to many back channel means of communication on a busy event day is priceless.

Also an important factor in choosing WordPress was the ability to incorporate membership accounting functionality. The site now has the ability for new members to apply and pay online, members to renew or upgrade online and automatically bills members when their annual dues are up. The system generates full reports on member billing and accounting activity; eliminating many dollars previously paid to an accountant for billing and record keeping. Because WordPress integrates so easily with so many plugins, the Agency@Think was able to set the payment function up completely with in PayPal eliminating the need for and expense of a traditional shopping cart.

Search Engine Optimization is important for any website. Previously TWESA had been paying over $200 a month for SEO. With the new site, because it is built on the semantically correct WordPress Platfom the site is virtually self-optimizing. With each new post or listing the site’s search power increases. But at the end of the day it is results that count.  The new Dialog-Site website has increased search engine referrals over five fold in just its first 30 days, with no additional advertising or other time expense.

According to Vicki Sanders, President of TWESA, “When we started this project I don’t think we fully grasped the possibilities. The Agency @Think understood our needs and not only showed us what was possible, but even added functionality that would benefit us that we never even knew existed. Many of our members have WordPress blogs that they loved. So we knew how well WordPress worked for that but we were surprised at how well The Agency@Think was able to use WordPress to build an entire website on those strengths.”

Way back in 1998, blogging was born and in many ways is responsible for the kick off of the whole Social Media shift. Estimates vary from 77 million up to 112.8 million blogs out there. In the Technorati “State of the Blogosphere 2008”, citing the McCann Report it is estimated that 346 million or 77% of internet users read blogs regularly and that worldwide 184 million people have started a blog.(March 2008).

What caused this exponential growth? For one thing, the tools became available to make every man, woman and child, no matter how technically challenged, a citizen journalist. From free to cheap, anyone could now pop their own page up on the web and let their thoughts out into the wild. That single thing began to change our world.

Before blogs, the information available to the average citizen was controlled by big media or entities with deep enough pockets to buy and maintain a website. Today, that is no longer the case. Blogger (Blog Spot in the early days) wasn’t the first blog platform, but is certainly the one that sparked the revolution for the average man. For absolutely no money and in as little as an hour, anyone with an internet connection could have a web presence.

My how that little seed has grown. The technology behind social media has been growing as fast as the number of blogs. Led by the technorati among us, newer, better and faster tools are being launched on an almost daily basis. The brightest constellation in the blogospere today is Twitter, the micro-blogging platform. In posts of 140 characters or less, anyone with a bit of wit or wisdom and a touch of dedication can become a rockstar in their field.

Let’s look specifically at the wedding industry. Today blogs platforms have become sophisticated enough to replace websites. This site is built on a blog platform. For years small wedding vendors have struggled with their web presence, often held hostage by their web designer over any changes. Web sites were an expensive proposition that once launched, rarely were updated. By using a blogging platform, the ability to update a website at the click of a button is with in the reach of anyone willing to devote the initial time to learning the platform. Unlike the old days, that learning curve has been shorted to a few hours. On a simple to use platform like WordPress, anyone can be confidently in control of their own web presence in a few short lessons.

Why do you need any of this? Well we know that our brides are on the web, we also know that the single best way to get them to find us is through search. The best way to get good search rankings is by having lots of great, search friendly content. The more often that content is updated or added to, the better. That spells one thing, blog.

If you read yesterdays post than you already know that blogging is about sharing. My advice is to use these new tools and this new media to share your passions. You have 346 million potential readers.

Here is some further reading on blogs and blog statistics if you are interested.

State of the Blogosphere 2008

Wikipedia

Social media, when you get right down to it is nothing more than human conversation. Conversations like you have every day, at work, at play at any social gathering; with one exception.  Social media makes it happen on a global scale in the blink of an eye.

When you talk about social media, you are talking about tools like Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and a dozen other sites just like them. The common denominator is that they each have the ability to turn what you have to say into a conversation. You put your thoughts and ideas out there for your network to respond to. You share what you know and what you have with others and they share what they have with you. It really is that easy.
One of the comments/concerns I get from people when I suggest they start a blog or join Facebook or Twitter is “No one wants to know what I had for breakfast.”  Well that’s true, but if you think that is the only thing you have to talk about you’re not listening to yourself. Don’t you have more intelligent conversations daily? I bet you do.
Think about what you have talked about today with a bride; or what was said on the phone with a colleague. The thing most people don’t realize is that each one of us has a truly unique perspective. We all see things differently than anyone else on the planet. Take for example a group of photographers; if you give them all the exact same subject they will all capture it differently. Whether it is the equipment they choose, the angle or the lighting, no two images will be exactly the same.  It’s the same with florists; give eight florists the same bucket of cut flowers and you will get eight completely different arrangements.

Being a part of social media is sharing your unique perspective. The more you share, the more your network will grow. Then you have all these people that are sharing their unique perspective with you. Whether you are learning and sharing with other wedding professionals or sharing your unique perspective with your target market, everybody wins.

Tomorrow I’ll start exploring some of the tools of social media.

Internet Marketing. Do You Just Not Get How Important It Is?

I’m working with a client right now that has me a bit baffled.  I don’t think they quite understand how important their online marketing is.

We sat down and came up with a very simple yet comprehensive plan. Nothing fancy, just a new blog based website and an email campaign. Three weeks later…

I’m still waiting. The holdup is they want to launch the email campaign first since they already have (a very old) website and they are still compiling their email lead list. Ugh. It seems that their leads are all on paper forms that clients have filled out and they have to wait for their son to put them on the computer.

COME ON PEOPLE!
Hire a virtual assistant and have it done in an afternoon. Move forward. This stuff is important. Spend a little on this, OK?

I know that I have been preaching that social media marketing is insanely inexpensive but it’s not free. Yes, compared to conventional advertising; print, TV, radio, it is insanely cheap. If you do it yourself that is. If on the other hand, you are so unaccustomed to computers and the internet that you have to ask what Excel is then you are going to have to pay someone to do it.

Big business gets it. A new report by Aberdeen Group spotlighted by eMarketer shows that 63% of “best-in-class” companies’ surveyed plan to increase their social media budgets this year despite the recession. Another report that came out this year, The Forrester Report stated that “budgets in this emerging category (social media marketing) are still miniscule — three-quarters of marketers have $100,000 or less earmarked for social media.”

OK, admittedly no small business is going to spend that kind of money, but it doesn’t take that kind of money for a small business to buy in to social media. If you look at what you spent last year on advertising, and eliminated one print ad or reduced the size of them all across the board you could come up with more than enough to hire a professional to get you going in social media.

Hire someone to design a plan for your company and get it set up. Hire them to train you or an employee on how to use the applications. Then either take the time yourself to do it or make it the responsibility of a trusted employee. For next to nothing you are creating your own in house marketing department. It’s not rocket science people but you do have to put forth the effort to either do it yourself of pay to have it done. You can’t just not do it; you’ll get left in the dust.