Posted by: Janessa Seewald, Account Manager

In 2010, social media marketing will push to the forefront of many organizations’ marketing efforts, and it will be important to make ongoing improvements as the landscape changes and becomes more competitive.

Here are some tips to consider when making adjustments to your social media marketing strategy:

• Go where the conversation is happening. You may already have a Facebook page, Twitter account, YouTube channel and more, but it is never too late to cut bait. If your prospects aren’t interested in or accessible within a certain platform, there is no reason to spend time posting content and managing it just for the sake of saying your company “is on Twitter.” It is best to focus your effort on the places where you know you can reach your audience and ultimately generate conversions.

Posted by: Janessa Seewald, Account Manager

The latest statistics show that more than 40% of searches within search engines have local intent. For local business owners this means that not only is important to have a website, but to also focus on optimization of your local business listings. Some best practices to consider when developing and optimizing local business listings include:

• Claim your business listing and ensure it is updated. This may sound obvious, but you would be surprised how many listings some businesses already have that they don’t even know exist or are outdated. Claiming the listing you want or that is the most accurate, will allow you to make updates on a regular basis which is very important within the eyes of the local and larger search engines.
• Select the most appropriate categories for your business listing. In most cases you are given several options and can choose more than one category. Make sure you don’t select too many categories as this can dilute the significance of your listing for the most appropriate and relevant categories; however, you also don’t want to select too few categories as this may make it difficult for potential customers to locate your business when searching.
• Include important product and/or service keywords related to your business within the title of your listing. This will not only help increase your rankings within the search engines, but also make your listing stand-out amongst the competition.

Similarly to optimizing a website, optimization of local business listings can take time and involves several more factors than the ones listed above, but starting with these few tips will help start your listing in the right direction.

Posted by: Janessa Seewald, Account Manager

As social media grows in popularity (Facebook, for example, has over 250 million users worldwide), it has become essential for marketers to integrate social media within their existing marketing programs. Before diving in however, it is important to ask the following questions when developing and managing a social media campaign.

• Why am I doing this? Are you implementing a social campaign to help with organic search engine visibility, branding, promoting the launch of a new product or all of the above? Identifying the objectives and goals will help aide in the process of selecting the correct social media platforms, crafting your message/offer and determining which success metrics to track and analyze throughout the campaign.
• Where is my audience? It is important to identify which social media platforms your target audience is using and what offer or message will resonate best with them. If your target audience is younger, MySpace would be a good choice, while Facebook is great to reach a more mature audience. One useful tool is Quantcast, a free tool that provides demographic information for websites including most of the social platforms. Another way to locate your target audience is by getting social yourself. Reading blogs, searching Twitter, etc., will ensure you are a part of the conversation and can provide some great insights.

Posted by: Janessa Seewald, Account Manager

Setting goals for a new search engine marketing (SEM) program and developing the strategy that will achieve them are your first steps toward high ROI. There are several important factors that arise when you go through this process, ranging from qualitative considerations such as the audience’s awareness of your brand to quantitative considerations including your initial budget.

Let’s take a look at a few of these factors more closely:

• Brand Awareness – Knowing how familiar your target audience is with your brand plays a large role in goal setting and strategy development. This will help you define what tactics to consider as part of your program and what metrics you define as important in achieving your goals. For example, contextual advertising is a great way to generate brand awareness by targeting prospects that are searching for content related to your product/service offerings. However, since this is often primarily a branding tactic, you should expect a much lower click-through rate (CTR) than you might from tactics such as email or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

Posted by: Janessa Seewald, Account Manager

Ever since search engines have become such a commonly utilized gateway to the Web, new engines have continually emerged in an attempt to steal searches and market share from bigger companies like Google and Yahoo!; however, besides a small threat made by Ask, no other engine has been able to break through. Cuil, a search engine developed by some former top Google engineers, did pose some threat with its launch in July 2008. It was touted in the blogosphere as a potential “Google Killer,” but according to Search Engine Watch, it had a disappointing start, and traffic numbers are dismal.

So, what will it take for a new search engine to emerge onto the scene and show staying power?