It’s important for all types of businesses to have good visibility on the web, but one of the challenges for business owners is determining how and where to use limited time and resources. I’d like to share with you a framework for managing your online presence. Use these steps to help determine the right social media marketing mix for your business.

Set Goals

The first thing you should do is set goals for your web presence.  That way you can decide if a given activity or social media site contributes to those goals and is worth the time and resources.  Having defined goals also makes it easier to tell if you are getting the results you want.

Goals should answer the question, “What do you want your web presence to accomplish?”  These goals should be tailored to your specific business and market, but here are some examples of goals:

• Lead generation
• Online Sales and Orders
• Provide Pre-Sales Information
• Provide Post-Sales Information
• Customer Engagement
•  Share News and Events
•  Get traffic to physical store
•  Provide Training and customer support
• Create Community
• Increase Brand Awareness

When you have general goals, define what success looks like.  Make it measurable. Use these goals to plan and evaluate your actions.

Know Your Audience

Who are you trying to attract? Look at your business from their point of view. What do they need? What are their habits? What social media platforms are they using?  If your target market is teenagers, for example, spending a lot of effort on LinkedIn, which is a professional network, probably won’t get you the best results for your time and resources. Go where your customers go. Not sure how your customers use social media? Ask them.  Have conversations with your customers about how they would like to interact with you on the web.

Focus Your Efforts

Now that you know what you want to do and who you want to reach, how do you focus your efforts?  There are so many different choices and just when you think you know a platform it changes as well!  In order to be effective you also need to coordinate your message across the various web platforms.  It is a tall order, but we have found the best way to manage this is using a hub and spoke model.  It all starts with your website. Use your website as the center and home base and drive traffic from your selected spokes (social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, email marketing, etc.).

Why Center on Your Website?

There are a number of reasons why you want your website to be the center of your strategy.

• The center should be a platform you own and control.  Your website should have a domain name that you own.  Building a long-term web presence on a social media site where you don’t control the terms of service can be costly.  Remember a few years ago when MySpace was the greatest thing going?  Although still in use, it is not as popular today. What if you built your presence mainly there? With the constant changes in the social media arena, it is important to also link back to your hub where you decide the content and the presentation.
• Search is really important.  Very few people still pull out the paper phone book to look for products and services. People may find out about you from Twitter or Facebook or word-of-mouth, but they still Google you as well.  Google is the number one place consumers look online for information about a local business, and Google’s market share of US search was over 66% as of February 2012.  Your business has to be found on Google and your website (with content that is regularly updated) is the best way to make sure that happens. Your content on social media is important for customer engagement and can increase your website’s ranking, but if your primary content is only on social media sites or in email lists it is not as visible to Google and new customers won’t find you.
• You have more flexibility in your social media strategy.  Rather than try to get all social media platforms started at once, I recommend you choose one or two to start with. As necessary, you can add spokes as you get more comfortable with social media and start to see results. You can experiment with new platforms like Pinterest or Instagram if that is where your customers are. You can abandon spokes which do not deliver results for your goals without having to redo your whole strategy.
• It easier to coordinate your message across the various social media platforms using a hub and spoke system.  You don’t want to repeat the exact same content on each platform, but neither do you want to create silos of information that are not related.  In an upcoming post I’ll talk further about using an editorial calendar to also help with this coordination.

Use this framework to plan and implement your web presence strategy:

• Set Measurable Goals
• Know Your audience
• Use a Hub and Spoke Model with your website at the center to manage your digital message

This post is the second in our Social Media Marketing Challenge Series. You can find the first post here. Next up in the series we’ll talk about key elements of your website, how to get found on the web and getting started with various social media platforms.

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Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, FourSquare, and more. Are you using these tools to help your business? What about your website, is it helping your business? Do you also need mobile, iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry apps? Do you know what others are saying about your business online, and are you responding? Have you done Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Google, Yahoo, Bing, and local and mobile search? Are you using online advertising or location-aware marketing? What about email marketing? Do online coupons and deals make sense for your business?

Mastering social media is challenging, but never before have there been so many opportunities for small and medium businesses to cost effectively compete with the big guys in advertising and marketing. Because there are so many options available, where do you start? Do you need to do everything? Do you need to do anything? And how do you keep up with the changes?

Facebook and Google+ have each done redesigns in the past month alone. Pinterest has seemingly come out of nowhere to now become the third most popular social network in the U.S., behind Facebook and Twitter.

We help businesses navigate this process, and have developed a set of services for small and medium businesses, Your Business on the Web℠. In the coming months we will be blogging here about the process of developing and implementing a web presence strategy. We’ll include how-to guidelines and best practices for building your web presence on various platforms, and explain how to figure out where it makes sense for you to spend your time and money. There is no single set of tools and mix of social media that fits everyone. Small and medium businesses need to pick and choose where to allocate resources. You need a web presence strategy to make the social media marketing challenge a manageable process that delivers results.

What is a web presence strategy?

Sometimes it is useful to first look at what it is not.

Your web strategy is not something that you check off the list. Many businesses realized they needed a website, created one several years ago, checked that off the list and don’t think about it much any longer (or they dread thinking about it again). Today, when almost no one uses the Yellow Pages books to find goods and services, you have to be found on the web. You can no longer create your website and forget about it. Building a web presence is a process.

Some business have heard that SEO is really important and paid lots of money for services like link- building and the promise of number one on Google’s search, but have been disappointed to not see any business results. Instant outcomes don’t exist. Building a web presence takes time.

Others businesses have jumped on one or many of the social media trends. They’ve signed up, dabbled a little, and then neglected them because they are too busy or aren’t seeing any results. Building an effective web presence requires planning.

Many businesses are doing better with one or more of the social media platforms, but haven’t figured how to coordinate the platforms with each other and their offline strategy. Building a web presence that gets results requires goals.

Time and money are limited resources, and every business wants to know that they are directing their efforts most effectively. Spending time and money on web, social media, and email marketing shouldn’t be a leap of faith. Building a web presence requires monitoring.

In Summary

Building a web presence that produces results is a process that takes time, planning, goals, and monitoring. Deciding the best approach for your unique business requirements will allow you to master the social media marketing challenge without being overwhelmed or going broke.

This is the first installment of The Social Media Marketing challenge. I hope you’ll follow along as we outline how to develop and implement your web presence strategy for business success!

[Photo Credit Flickr: IvanWalsh.com CC License]

A post from Delos Inc.

Google announced a redesign of Google+ personal and business pages this week.  The interface is cleaner, and pictures and videos are more prominent. Navigation is down the left side and customizable. You have the option to use a cover photo like in Facebook and post pictures are larger.

The pictures look great in Facebook’s new timeline, and also in the new Google+ pages. I am thinking I should learn to take better pictures, or find the person in my company who does that well!

A post from Delos Inc.

Manatawany Land Transfer is a title insurance company serving Southeastern PA. We re-designed their web site as part of a strategy to increase their web presence.  The website serves as the hub of the strategy and includes interactive features, a content management system, integration with social media, and a responsive design.  Responsive design automatically adjusts to the user’s device allowing mobile and  tablet users to view and interact with the website without a lot of scrolling and resizing. We also worked with Manatawny Land Transfer to develop keywords, search engine optimization, and LinkedIn and Google+ pages.

A post from Delos Inc.

If you have a business page on Facebook,  your page will automatically be converted to the new Facebook Timeline format this Friday, March 30. If you haven’t changed over yet, what can you do quickly? Here are 5 things you can do today.

1. Activate Your Preview

Log in to your Facebook business page. Take a look at what Facebook will show by default if you don’t change anything, so you don’t have any surprises.

2. Find A Cover Photo!

You have a great space to showcase your business here. The dimensions of the cover photo image are 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels high. Pictures that are landscape in orientation work best, and note that your profile icon will cover the bottom left portion of the picture.

Here is the page with the cover photo we just published for Delos:

Facebook does have a few guidelines on the cover page:

Cover images must be at least 399 pixels wide and may not contain:

• Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”
• Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section
• References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features
• Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends”

Check out our recent post for some examples of creative cover photos.

3. Check Your About Copy and Tabs

Your About info is now more prominently displayed right under your cover photo and name.  This is a good time to review what you are saying.  You can see about three lines of text as well as subcategories depending on your business type.  Click on the About link and review and edit your information.

Tabs are also right below your cover photo and have images associated with them. You can have more than three, and can also change their order or customize their images. Click on the down arrow at the end of the tabs. Then you can click on a tab to get the pencil icon to change it. Click on the + icon to add something to a blank tab (events, notes, videos, or your custom pages). You can also rearrange your tabs by dragging them. The only one that cannot be changed is Photos which is always first.

4. Review Your Timeline Entries

Everyone gets a personalized view of your page, seeing which of their friends Like your page and which friends have posted about your page. This always displays in the top right side of the timeline.

You will notice pictures on timeline are much larger. You can choose to highlight a post even further, or hide a post altogether.  On the top right corner of the post, click on the star icon to make the post fill the width of the page, or the pencil icon to hide the entry or reposition the photo.

 5. Add Milestones

When updating your status, click on the Milestone entry to add an event that took place on a specific date or year.  Milestones give you the opportunity to tell the story of your business or brand in a visual, personal way. Visuals add great impact, but if you don’t have time right now, add some milestones anyway.  On milestone entries, you can go back later and edit the story text and pictures .

Now Publish your page and you are ready to go!

A post from Delos Inc.

We just got news that we were selected as a Constant Contact 2011 All Star Solution Provider! Each year, a select group of Constant Contact customers and partners are honored with the All Star Award for their exemplary marketing results. Delos Inc.’s results ranked among the top 10% of Constant Contact’s customer base.

Constant Contact’s criteria for the award include open, bounce, and click-through rates; event registration rates; survey completion rates; use of social features; and use of mailing list sign-up tools.

We think Constant Contact’s tools are great. They keep up with all the social media trends, provide great materials and templates, and are easy to use and affordable. Based on the measurable results we get for our customers, we think this is one of the key elements of a social media marketing plan. We are looking forward to more great tools from Constant Contact as they introduce SaveLocal, an affordable local deal program that gives the business owner control. It will be a great addition to their email marketing, event registration, online survey, and social campaigns tools. I’ll be posting more about SaveLocal soon.

A post from Delos Inc.

How secure is  your website?  Cybercrime has been steadily increasing over the past decade and the number and sophistication of hacking attempts has been increasing along with it.  One tactic increasingly used by many cybercriminals gangs is drive-by download attacks that exploit vulnerabilities in outdated browser plug-ins to automatically download and install their rogue software.

You’ve probably heard it is a good idea to keep your computer updated to include the latest security patches, but are you protecting your web site as well?

This article from PC World recently reported that over 30,000 WordPress sites have been infected in a new wave of attacks orchestrated by a cybercriminal gang whose primary goal is to distribute rogue antivirus software.

According to the article:

Many of the blogs compromised in these recent attacks were running outdated WordPress versions, had vulnerable plug-ins installed or had weak administrative passwords susceptible to brute force attacks, said David Dede, a security researcher with website integrity monitoring firm Sucuri Security. “It seems the attackers are trying everything lately.”

We take security seriously in the development of our applications and websites.  Strong passwords and keeping your website updated are basics that every website owner should follow.  For our customers with WordPress sites, we now offer a maintenance service which includes updates to WordPress, the framework and plug-ins as well as backups of your website and database.  All updates are tested for compatibility in our development environment before being deployed on your live site.  Keeping secure is important, but it doesn’t have to be cumbersome.

[Photo Credit Flickr: Tom Thai CC License]

A post from Delos Inc.

Facebook recently announced all business pages would be converted to the new Timeline format on March 30. What does this mean for you?

The most striking change is the cover photo.  The Nike swoosh in the screenshot above is your standard profile picture. You now have the capability to designate a larger photo as your cover photo which fills the width across the top of your page. The possibilities are endless, but Facebook does have a few rules which you can learn about here.

Some other features of timeline are the ability to specify images for your custom tabs and to pin posts to the top of your page. Take advantage of this to highlight current offers and other important information. You now have more control of what is featured on your page, but you no longer have the ability to specify what tab users will see when they open your page.  If you have set up a “Welcome” page, be aware that users will no longer see that first.

You can now go back and add events in the past to your timeline as well. Important milestones and events in your company’s story are now easy for your visitors to see.

Constant Contact has a photo page of 35 striking cover designs and Ad Age Digital also recently put together a sampling of what some big brands are doing with Facebook timeline. Take a look for some inspiration.

Constant Contact Cover Photos Gallery

A post from Delos Inc.

As we monitor Google Analytics for clients, we have seen a significant increase in the percentage of visits which are coming from mobile and tablet users. At the beginning of last year, these visits were well under 7-8% of all visits to the site. Now we are seeing upwards of 20% mobile and tablet visitors on many sites.

How is your website working on these devices? Google Analytics will not only tell you how many visits are from mobile users, but will also compare their visits with desktop users when you look at the Mobile section on your analytics dashboard.  The screen below shows some of the statistics on this page.

One important clue that your website may not be usable enough in mobile is to look at the Bounce Rate.  The bounce rate tells you how many people came to your site and immediately clicked away from it. Bounce rate is usually an indication that your site content is not relevant to what the user is looking for. However, when the mobile bounce rate is significantly higher than the non-mobile bounce rate this can indicate that your site doesn’t work very well on mobile devices.  The example above is a site not optimized for mobile browsing. The site currently has about 14% mobile traffic.  For non-mobile visitors the bounce rate is about 15%.  For mobile visitors, the bounce rate is 29% which is significantly greater than the overall site average of about 18%. Yet, the percentage of new users visiting the site is the same or even greater for the mobile users.

Mobile browsing requires different considerations in your website design. Here are a few of these:

• The buttons have to be bigger. “Clicking” with a fingertip is much harder when the target area is small.
• The text has to be larger.  Web sites that collapse to show content in an immediately readable fashion are better than sites that require lots of zooming and scrolling.
• Don’t rely on rollover effects for menus and content. Flyout menus are popular, but in general, actions on a touch screen are clicks.
• Don’t use Flash. As well as the problems with search engines and Flash, most mobile browsers do not support it.
• Link to your phone number. Most mobile browsers can place a phone call right from the link.

Should you have a separate mobile web site? An iPhone app? An Android app? Depending on your market and the amount of traffic you get on your web site, the answer may be yes. However, for most small and medium businesses this is not realistic or affordable for many reasons. Fortunately, it is getting easier to create a website that is optimized for multiple device viewing. A good website framework based on HTML5 and responsive design will ensure that your site is functional and well positioned for the future. Our number one recommendation for customers this year is to make sure your website gets optimized for mobile devices.

[Photo Credit Flickr: Johan Larsson CC license]

A post from Delos Inc.

Are you using Google+?  Have you your created business profile yet?  Google announced a few weeks ago they are including results from Google+ in search results. “Search, plus your world” now includes profiles, people and pages, and personal results for users signed in to their account.

Profiles of Google+ users show in autocomplete predictions and in search results.

Google

So getting a Google+ account is now increasingly important for search results.  Your Google+ profile should use the same keyword strategy as your website.  It is important to think like the people who can benefit from your offerings. What will they type in a search engine query box when they are in the market for your products or service? Is that what you are writing about? Content relevant to search queries drives your rankings.

So, should you establish a Google+ presence? When deciding which social media platforms to use for your business, it makes sense to consider the following points:

• Is your audience involved in this platform?
• Do you have the resources (people and/or time) to establish and maintain a presence on this platform?
• How will you integrate this platform into your content strategy and editorial calendar?
• How will you know if it works?

For Google+, the answer to the first question is yes when you consider Google+ results are included in search and Google has over 65% of the US search market (comScore Report).

A post from Delos Inc.