Like, Follow, Plus, Share – Phase 3

You better sit down for this one, there's a lot to go over with this phase.

When I started the Like, Follow, Share campaign there were just main 2 players in the social media game, Facebook and Twitter. This has changed with the roll-out of Google Plus and Pinterest, but in this phase I'm going to talk about Google Plus (g+ from now on).

You may have seen the commercial on TV for g+ or if you use gmail or other Google services you've seen the “+yourname” in the top left of the page. To the average Joe on the internet, g+ may look like a clone of Facebook, but secretly it's more than that! With 90 million users, g+ is the 3rd largest social media site after Facebook and Twitter.

You might see g+ as just another thing that uses up your valuable time, but with it's integration with Google search, g+ is becoming very important for businesses. Google has developed codes that are added to your current website that tells Google that your site belongs to you on g+ and recently I've found out that Google indexes these linked sites more often.

I'm not going to promote g+ as a replacement to Facebook or Twitter, but I believe that having a g+ profile and page for your business is essential for helping your site show up more in Google search results. You aren't going to need to spend much time on g+ posting to achieve this, merely creating a page and making sure you include as much information about your business as possible, some pictures and a link to your website, is usually enough to get you started. After you create your page there is a code that g+ provides for you to add into your website and then you're all set!

Another aspect of the Google & g+ integration is the 1+ button. You may have seen this on site and wondered what that mysterious 1+ is. The 1+ is Google's equivalent to the Facebook Share or Like button, it shares with your g+ circles that you like this page. Unlike the Facebook button, the 1+ is also used by Google for ranking sites in search results, giving more weight to sites with more 1+'s.

I know Google Plus may sound more technical because of the code, but that's a 1 time thing and it's well worth it to help you show up more in search results. This blog post might be long, but there's actually more to the g+ and Google connection that I will save for a blog in the next couple weeks.

As always, if you have questions about Google Plus, feel free to contact me and I'll help you understand it.

What we learned in 2011

Seems like the year just flew by! The holidays are here and businesses are making marketing decisions for 2012. This past year was full of news and emerging trends when it comes to marketing online. Here are just a few of the things we learned:

• Don't count on the search engines to keep any consistent criteria for ranking web pages. In the last year Google has made a multitude of changes that had websites up and down in the result pages while knocking out some relevant websites altogether. It's more important than ever to watch your rankings for changes and to be proactive in your approach to providing the best quality content possible.
  
  
• Email marketing is still a strong tool for reaching your audience - but only when your audience is expecting to hear from you. I've seen clients rent lists only to be disappointed at the click through rates while their company lists, although smaller, produced sales.
  
  
• Social media. If you're tired of seeing that phrase, take an aspirin - it's here to stay. This year the social media fully blossomed and the search engines are experimenting with ways to measure search media in relation to your website popularity. To that end, Google+ started up and, after a much anticipated arrival, still hasn't quite found it's footing but you can bet that if people have "+1" your website it's going to count for something in the search rankings.
  
  
• This was the year of Groupon - and then everyone else figured out how easy it was to offer those deals directly to customers. The result: many businesses found that it may bring in short term discount driven customers but doesn't help business in the long run. Relationship marketing is still more important than the deal.
  
  
• Local advertising online lives!! While we can reach the world through our fingertips online, having access to your local businesses online for brick and mortar purchases has become equally important. Google local listings come up ahead of the regular organic search results putting the the local merchants right up front! If you haven't worked on your local presence, there is no time like the present.
  
  
• The smart phone revolution! Is your website mobile phone friendly? Take a look and see if it's easy to use on your smart phone. If the answer is no, time to create a mobile version for people who use iPhones, Androids and iPads to surf the internet.
  
  
• The opinion of others counts. There are many places for people to leave comments about your business - Yelp, Angie's List, Google, and social media websites to name a few. Searching for your favorite business will no doubt lead to reviews of some sort. As a business owner, you can stay in control of what people are saying by responding promptly to negative comments and using those as a springboard to show your eagerness to work with your customers to solve problems.
  
  
• The age of transparency. With rich keyword content and easy access through the blogosphere every business should be taking advantage of the opportunity to "get real" and be transparent to your customers through blogging. Some blogs are now considered as relevant and authoritative as newspaper editorial sections. If you still aren't using a blog to talk about your industry, it's not too late to start.
  
  
• Usability. There are still many websites that don't take into account what the mind of your visitor is able to manage. With people making decisions about a website's content and relevancy in 3-5 seconds (yes, that short!) you've got to make sure your message is clear from the beginning and it's easy for visitors to see what you've got, what you want them to do and how to complete the process. Everything from navigation options to images to call to action messages count. If you want to make every visitor count - focus on usability!
  
  

The internet marketing game is ever changing as you can see and a far cry from what was the norm in 2002. This is by no means everything but it will give you a good running start on what you should be focused on for 2012.