I wrote  many posts about the power of LinkedIn for Social Media Strategies and business.

Everytime I’m speaking on an Internet Marketing Seminar or teaching Social Media Classes I always listen to the same question:

“I’ve got limited time to invest in social media, but there seem to be a million sites out there. How do I know which one is worth my time? If I only have time for one, which one should it be?”

Generally I try to explain that all tools available should fit into your strategy and your level of commitment – either time or content production- and I then explain how I use my various online presence and my expectation with each one of them.

However every single time I end up talking about LinkedIn and my fixation with this tool.

What is Linkedin?

LinkedIn is a website that allows professional network with over 70 million members globally.

LinkedIn is one of those sites that tends to get brushed aside in the sexy, shiny world of social media. It’s not flashy, we rarely hear buzz about billion dollar valuations and you don’t get a billion email reminders to visit because your contacts on LinkedIn are not encouraged to write on your wall, send zombies after you or take lengthy and inane quizzes.

What are LinkedIn Features?

Linkedin has many handy features but one I like to use most are their groups. A powerful networking strategie along with seeding content strategy.

LinkedIn Groups allow you to:

* Quickly discover the most popular discussions in your professional groups.
* Have an active part in determining the top discussions by liking and commenting.
* Follow the most influential people in your groups by checking the Top Influencers board or clicking their profile image to see all their group activity.
* See both member-generated discussions and news in one setting.
* Easily browse previews of the last three comments in a discussion.
* Find interesting discussions by seeing who liked a discussion and how many people commented.

LinkedIn has now rolled out few changes to their groups making it more social and more engaging.

Watch the video below.

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Moo! Why don't raise the stickiness?

Here are 2 quick tips to make your website more user friendly and more SEO efficient using Free Google Tools.

Google recently introduced Web Elements, which are simple snippets of really simple code you can copy/paste into your site’s HTML.

Quick Tip 1 – How to insert Google Search on my website?

If you don’t have a Search tool on your website you may be missing an opportunity to improve customer retention and conversions on your site.

Because users want fast answers and because they are used to pop words and hit search, it’s a good idea to make their life easier on your website giving them a search facility,

The Google Custom Search Engine team has made it really easy to add custom search to any site. Just follow these steps:

1) Access Google Web Elements

2) Click on Custom Search

3) Configure to automatically search your website.

4) Copy the code

5) Place on your website.

Quick Tip 2 – Add Google Maps and Directions to your website.

Meet the Google Maps driving directions gadget that makes it easy for customers to get directions to your office or store.

Thanks to Google, businesses can now offer customers quick and easy step-by-step directions.

The new Google directions gadget will allow business owners to pre-fill the direction “To” field with one or multiple addresses, while leaving open the “From” field so that customers can input their address or some other starting point.

From there, customers can print driving, walking or transit directions in just one click. Google will also provide suggestions for related addresses if users enter vague starting locations, as sometimes knowing the exact details of where you are ‘right now’ is difficult.

The widgets are great for users and add a nice bit of functionality to sites. However, they’re only good for showing users where you’re located. If you want Google to know, and to rank you accordingly, you’ll still need to tell the search engines where your bricks and mortar store is located. And that means using the text on the page to convey it. You can’t leave it up to the gadget.

This helps you in 2 ways.

1) It improves the stickness on your website. Users don’t need to leave your website to find directions.

2) It helps to improve your Local Search SEO.

As a smart small business owner, you want to make sure you cover your bases, so here’s a couple more tips:

1. Grab the directions widget to make it easy for users to map out and find your  location.
2. Create a detailed, keyword-rich Directions page to make it easy for search engines to map out your location and consequently improve your SEO.

Cheers

Lucio Ribeiro

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Let me start with a statement. I wish I had come up with Twitter concept and I wish I could have the U$100 million in investments available for my businesses.

However everytime I see Twitter as a business I ask myself What’s wrong with you Twitter people?

Twitter is not the new kid on the block anymore. Data from Twiter usage is coming from bad to worse and the brand percepetion of Twitter is not helping at all.

Third Annual Survey of Top Marketing Trends by Anderson Analytics and The Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG)

73% of Twitter accounts have tweeted fewer than 10 times according to a new report from Barracuda Networks, a Web security company.

As of December 2009, only 21% of Twitter account holders were what Barracuda defines as “true users,” meaning someone who has at least 10 followers, follows at least 10 people and has tweeted at least 10 times.

Wired 40

In 2000, Wired published the Wired 40 — 40 companies that they said were engineering the new economy.

“A future of unprecedented growth lies ahead”.

Well, let’s pretend that we took their advice and invested $10,000 of our cash into those 40 companies. Where would we be now?

This is an exercise by Wired magazine…..

That $10,000 worth of stock in 2000 would carry a value of just $6,870.29 today. (There are some variables here — in some cases, we assumed you had sold your stock in, say, Enron, on the last day of trading, which is unlikely. This combines both worst- and best-case scenarios.) Think we stink as stock pickers? We’re not the only ones. The Nasdaq is valued at less than half of what it was in March 2000, when the dotcom crash began.

Big picture is good, but reality bites soon or later. The question is simple. How the $100million ill return?

Lucio Ribeiro

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Things to do Before ad:tech Sydney 2010

As my part of being Social Media Manager for ad:tech, I want to help my readers get the most out of the event. So I’m providing you with some tips to prepare yourself before attending.

There are many things you should do before attending ad:tech if you want to be prepared and make the most of the conference.

I’ve broken them down into three main categories for you: research, connect, and plan.

Research for ad:tech Sydney 2010

The very first thing you need to do is research.

You need to have a look through http://www.ad-tech.com/sydney/adtech_sydney.aspx to make sure you know the dates (16^th and 17^th of March), and have a look through the schedule to see which presentations you want to attend (I strongly suggest to attend Jeff’s-Cadbury case).

If you haven’t already had a look, you’ll see there’s always three different presentations running at the one time, so take note of the ones that interest you the most.

You should also have a look through the sponsors, exhibitors and speakers at the event. Have a look through some of their websites to see what you know about them, if they’d be of any value to you – i.e. a prospective client, or a coonection to a prospective client.

It will also be very beneficial for you to have an idea of who is going to ad:tech Sydney, and what they do.

And to do this you can use the hashtag I mentioned last week #ATSYD to search and you’ll be able to see many names – well Twitter accounts – of people attending or you can just head to the list on ad:tech Sydney Twitter list.

Then you can look through them to see if any of them could be beneficial for you to know or just to talk to at the conference. It’s always nice to know something about the person before you meet them, and they might be very impressed or flattered that you know just one thing about who they are or what they do because you’ve taken your time to read their blog or visit their website.

Similarly, I’d also recommend reading up on as much industry news as you can, the more you know about the latest digital marketing and advertising news, the more impressive you’ll sound when you’re networking at the event.

Connect

Connect or die.

Once you’ve found the people you think will be the best people for you to meet and talk to at the conference, start connecting with them through social media now.

A simple tweet to say hi breaks the ice a bit and you get to introduce yourself before meeting them. This means when you do meet them at the conference, they will probably have looked through your website/blog to find out who you are.

Another great way of making a small connection with someone influential in the industry if you’re not game enough to tweet (or e-mail, Facebook them etc.) is to leave a comment on their blog.

People will always read people’s comments on their own blog as they want to see what feedback and discussion they’re receiving.

If you leave a comment to engage in conversation with them, discussing their blog posting they’ll probably reply to you and you will already have started that connection. Then once at ad:tech, you’ll be able to tell them you’re the person who was having a discussion with them via comments on their blog. They will be very impressed by this – assuming you’ve posted intelligence comments with valid points on their blog – and you’ll receive a great first impression from them.

Plan

Plan

Think about how you want people to remember you. Think about and plan a little introduction speech, so when you meet people instead of introducing yourself in a monotonous boring way, think of something interesting you can say about yourself. This will help people remember who you are, instead of you becoming just a face of one of the many hundreds or thousands of people they meet over the course of the event.

Also plan what types of conversations you want to be having. This means you won’t be talking to someone and after the introductions have nothing to say, making it awkward for both of you. This is why you need to research as I mentioned earlier. It will give you ideas of good conversational topics you can raise with people.

You also need to make sure your business cards, website, and resume are up-to-date. The last thing you want to do is get there and realise you have out-dated, amateur looking business cards that you feel ashamed to be giving out. Remember, people will judge you on your business cards, because apart from anything you may have just said to them in the few minutes you’ve been talking to them, they have nothing else to judge you on yet – and we all know how important first impressions are.

Also think of technical issues that you may forget about later. i.e make sure you have extra batteries or power supplies for your laptop, remember to bring your phone and laptop charger. All the little things that are essential, but you may forget you need to write a list or pack them early.

Doing each of these three steps: researching, connecting and planning will give you the competitive edge.

People will remember you, you’ll create far more meaningful and powerful contacts, and you’ll get the most out of the conference.

Hope to see you there

Lucio

on Twitter

on Facebook

on everything else.

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Although Facebook does send more traffic to News and Media sites than Google News, an analysis by Hitwise’s Heather Hopkins reveals that these two sites send traffic to very different kinds of news websites.

Facebook users seem to prefer broadcast media sites, while Google News sends its traffic over to newspaper websites.

After examining the top 10 News and Media websites visited after Facebook and Google News last week, the data shows that Google News sends most of its users to newspapers such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and Facebook sends most of its traffic to broadcast news websites, like The Weather Channel and CNN.com.

This suggests that social networks are an important source of traffic, but they may be even more important to broadcast news sites than to newspapers.

The broadcast media may also be benefiting from a boost in their audience thanks to Facebook.

Google News still takes the top spot in sending readers to newspaper websites.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal received 10.37% of its US visits from Google News, while it only received 1.41% of its visits from Facebook.

The New York Times also received more visits from Google News than Facebook, with 5.21% and 2.96% of visits respectively.

Source: editorsweblog

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In the online marketing world, a lot of time and resources are spent buying media, tracking campaigns, working on SEO, installing and customizing Web analytics software to properly track all online marketing activities.

However one of most important steps is most of the time forgotten – Landing pages.

This “little” detail may be the main reason you are losing money on your campaigns.

One of the most underutilised tactics in Internet Marketing is landing pages.

Landing pages have been discussed since Internet marketing started with emails and display ads. Unfortunately, it’s one of those things that people talk about and write about more than they actually do.

For the sake of this article, a landing page is defined as the web page that a prospect “lands” on after clicking on a link – any link – from an email, a CPC campaign, search engine result, inbound link from another website, newsletter; you get the idea.

In essence, every landing page you develop (in fact, every website page) should have a specific goal (inspired by Seth Godin):

-          Get a visitor to click (to go to another page, on your site or someone else’s).

-          Get a visitor to buy.

-          Get a visitor to give permission for you to follow up (by email, phone, etc.). This includes registration of course.

-          Get a visitor to tell a friend.

-          Improve your Market Position in the visitor’s mind.

-          (and the more subtle) Get a visitor to learn something, which could even include posting a comment or giving you some sort of feedback

As Gavin Heaton once wrote – “Every page is sacred, EVERY page. You always need to consider the upstream and the downstream”

A great competitive advantage.

I cannot understand why marketers don’t spend enough time and energy in building the last, and probably most important, step in the Internet marketing process.

Most websites create their landing pages as their campaigns launch, and they leave them alone until they collapse under their own weight.

As more companies find out about the advantages of Internet marketing, and fighting for places on SERP’s or a better position on PPC campaigns increase in competitiveness, testing and improving your landing pages help you to optimise your ROI converting more visitors for less cost.

Loveday and Niehaus, the authors of Web Design for ROI, discuss some unique issues for landing pages, which I’ve summarised below:

* They have to essentially perform the entire sales process.

The landing page (remember what Gavin says) must offer a product, service, or information, capture your visitor’s attention long enough to pique his or her interest and ultimately want to convert, and entice the user to take action (fill out a form, provide payment, etc). Basically, your landing page has to act as your best salesperson. That’s a lot to ask of one little page.

* They have to capture attention very quickly.

People skim, scan, and scoot. Your landing page has only a few precious seconds to keep your visitor from hitting the back button.

* They’re viewed by a lot of new eyeballs.

A lot of new visitors see your landing page compared to your built-in audience. These new people probably aren’t going to know what your site’s about or whether it’s representing a reputable company.

Below you can find a list for guidelines:

1.Establish credibility.
2.Make sure your design looks professional to your audience and is industry-appropriate.
3.Include positive resources and testimonials when necessary or useful
4.Make sure nothing’s broken eg. links to a YouTube video.
5.Simplify and separate.
6.Reduce or eliminate navigation.
7.Minimise your branding.
8.Think of your landing page as a continuation of your ad.
9.Don’t make promises you can’t (or won’t) keep.
10.Re-iterate your ad’s call to action.
11.Use consistent graphics and images.
12.Keep the language consistent.
13.Segment for different audiences/customers.
14.Personalise for your visitor.
15.User fewer but better graphics.
16.Make sure the medium is what’s best for your offer.
17.Speak the customer’s language, not yours.
18.Emphasis benefits, not features.
19.Weed out all but the most essential points.
20.Cover all your bases.
21.Be intelligent about how you display your information.
22.Provide a clear call to action.
23.Consider providing a secondary call to action (don’t overdue it – it can cause a paradox of choice)
24.Provide offline alternatives.
25.Don’t request more than the minimum information necessary.
26.Make your buttons look like buttons.

There are different tools available (Google optimizer is a great free one) that help you to test.

Before releasing Internet Marketing Academy, my team ran more than seven variations of landing pages. There were variations with and without clients testimonials, videos and other combinations. We learnt a lot!

One of the combinations gave us around 200% more conversions, just by changing few key elements.

Only testing will tell what is better for your website. The more you test, the more profitable (useful) your website will become.

Once you have evolved a combination producing profitable results, you then have your new “control” level and you can start testing new ways to beat it.

It will cost you more time, but it will also increase your ROI.

In this case more is more.

(Obs I originaly publish this article on Digital Ministry website)

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Last year myself, Zac Martin and Simon Small started a meetup/catchup/network Event in Melbourne – New Media Beers Melbourne.

we did the first and never got back….until now. Be ready for the next round of beers, wine (Simon…) and Bacon.

New Media Beers Melbourne

Friday 29th January / 7.00pm
The Cabinet (we’ve reserved the balcony facing Swanson Street)
11 Rainbow Alley (left off Little Collins Street heading to Russel Street) – 03 9654 0915

Please help to tell others, we do have a balcony fully reserved…

#NMBMelb twitter  and Facebook event.

Cheers

Lucio

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