SEO Makeover for 2014: A Practical Guide for Businesses

SEO is about attracting non-paid search traffic to your website. The idea is that a person searches the Web using Bing or Google, etc. and your site comes up in the non-paid search results. To that end, it’s important to make sure your website is easily understood by both people and machines.

• People = your target market, your ideal website visitors.
• Machines = search engines like Google and Bing.

It’s a problem if your website confuses people and they can’t easily find what they’re looking for. Or they can’t smoothly accomplish the tasks they want to complete (or you want them to complete).

But did you know it’s also a problem if your website confounds machines? It’s common for websites to have technical roadblocks that create problems for machines trying to understand or even find pages on your website.

Does your site need a makeover? Find out using…

The Portent 2014 SEO Website Makeover Checklist

Compare your website to this checklist. It’s not in any particular order so you can jump in and start your makeover pretty much anywhere on this list. You’ll be able to figure out if a checklist item is meant to make it easy for machines or for people. If not, just hit me up in the comments section at the end.

• Does your home page instantly and clearly communicate what you offer? Are you sure?
• Does each page have a page-relevant unique title tag?
• Does each page have a page-relevant unique meta description?
• Does each page have a clear and concise headline?
• Do your page URLs convey an indication as to the topic or content of the page?
• Do your pages use interesting unique images and make use of a relevant image ALT attribute?
• Does your page content truly inform or engage?

Don’t just answer “yes!” to the above questions, be objective and honest. The above list could keep you busy for quite a while… but here’s more:

• Are any pages on your website duplicates of any other page on your website (either by accident or on purpose)?
• Are any pages on your website duplicates of any other page on other websites you have (either by accident or on purpose)?
• Do any pages on your website contain text that is duplicated on any other website on the Internet (either by accident or on purpose)?
• Are topically related pages of content logically linked together in a way that’s useful to site visitors?
• Are any of the links on your site leading to “404 page not found” error pages?

Your content should be 100% unique on the Internet. Not 50% or even 99% unique, 100%. Broken links frustrate visitors and provide dead ends for machines so be sure to fix those. Got all that done? Let’s keep going…

• Is your site navigation easy to find, understand, and use?
• If someone landed on any page of the site, would they be able to instantly figure out where they were in the site hierarchy?
• Does your site have clear calls to action?
• Is your site rife with jargon and technical terms you use all the time but your target market does not use or understand?
• Do your site visitors get a clear indication of what will happen if they fill out a form, click a link, or take some recommended action?
• Do you provide a sitemap of pages in case someone wanted to see a complete “menu” of your website?

Here’s more stuff you need to attend to:

• Do your site pages load in a browser in less than 3 seconds?
• Do you have an XML sitemap?
• Are you making proper use of a robots.txt file?
• Are you making appropriate use of structured markup? (See schema.org for more info.)
• Have you set up Google+ authorship and/or publisher cross links?
• Is your site displaying well and is it usable on a smart phone?
• Are you putting content in technology that machines can’t understand like Flash or iFrames?

Got all that done already? Now check the following:

• Does your site code have huge blocks of JavaScript that could be moved to an external file?
• Does your site code have blocks of CSS that could be moved to an external file?
• Are you 100% sure that you have your analytics tracking tags deployed properly on each and every page of your site?
• Are you providing site search functionality to your visitors? Does it provide frustratingly irrelevant results?
• Does http://www. display in front of your domain name and also http://?
• Are all of your site’s links hyperlinking directly to the target URL, or do any of them pass through redirects?

Don’t stop now, you’re on a roll!

• Does Google Webmaster Tools report crawl errors you need to fix?
• Does Google Webmaster Tools report HTML improvements you need to make?
• Are images compressed?
• Are images properly scaled?
• Is your navigation still visible and usable if you turn off JavaScript in your browser?

Wrap up & TL;DR

This is not meant to be an “all-inclusive SEO checklist.” There is no such thing because every site has specific needs, problems, target markets, and technology stacks. When it comes to making your site better for both humans and machines, you want your distance from perfect to be as close to zero as possible.

I guarantee that by using this website makeover checklist you will find at least 3 things you need to fix or otherwise attend to with your team.

http://www.portent.com/blog/seo/seo-makeover-for-2014-a-practical-guide-for-businesses.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+conversationmarketing%2FMRJI+%28The+Portent+Blog%3A+Conversation+Marketing%29

20 social media resources you need to keep pace with the industry

Social media is a rapidly changing industry. You can be a skilled social media marketer or an enthusiastic newbie that has social in their blood, but keeping up with the changes is highly important for your work.

What is more, you can't think of social as a separate world with its rules and trends, but you'd rather think of it as of an integral part of internet marketing process.

In this article I'm going to share some resources that I personally use for getting most of necessary information about social media.

Official blogs of social media networks

If you use a particular social media network, I highly recommend reading its official blog.

Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and LinkedIn blogs are recommended to read even if you don't use these largest social networks. It is needed for overall understanding of processes going on in the industry.

Websites on social media

1. Social Media Examiner – in-depth tutorials, helpful tips, detailed updates description

www.socialmediaexaminer.com  - This website is a great collection of extremely useful content about social media. Tutorials, explanations of the latest changes and helpful tips can be found here. In fact, if you are a newbie, Social Media Examiner appears to be a great study book to get into the depth of rocket social media science.

2. Mashable – social trends, celebs and happenings

http://mashable.com/category/social-media/  - Mashable social category is about "the latest happenings in social media, plus tips on using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Foursquare and other social tools on the web", as they say about themselves. Here you can also find information about latest social trends and celebs on social, tools collections and more.

3. Forbes – analytics, social media market news

http://www.forbes.com/social-media/ - Forbes social media category is more about analytics, connection with the marketing niche and economy, thus, many articles are also worth reading to understand the situation on the market.

4. BuzzFeed – social trends

http://www.buzzfeed.com/  - You can say it's more like an entertainment website and shouldn't be included. It is. But BuzzFeed does real journalism and collects things that are really popular on the web and are talked about. As a social media manager you should be aware of trends, jokes, memes and feel comfortable when talking about them. And using them in your work!

5. Razorsocial – social media tips and tools

http://www.razorsocial.com/  - It's a blog by Ian Cleary, a well-known social media enthusiast. Also he is a writer for Social Media Examiner. Ian pays special attention to social media tools.

6. Virante – analytics, effectiveness and impact on SEO

http://www.virante.org/blog/category/social-media-2/ - This blog's author is Mark Traphagen, who writes very deep articles, focusing on effectiveness studies, the impact of social on SEO and other analytics topics.

Some more links! They can overlap each other but still you'll find some additional info while scrolling your RSS feed.

7. HuffingtonPost - tutorials, news and marketing stuff

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/social-media/  - Like Forbes, HuffPost is good when you need to go through social marketing news and its connection with the economy.

8. Entrepreneur.Com - tips, news and using social media for business

http://www.entrepreneur.com/socialmedia/index.html  - This is a great resource to know more about using social media for your business.

9. Econsultancy - tips, tutorials and case studies

http://econsultancy.com/by/topics/social - These awesome guys share great articles about how different companies and projects use social as a part of a digital campaign.

YouTube, Scoop.it, SlideShare – popular niche videos, decks and articles

1. Besides following official YouTube accounts of social media networks (like one from Twitter) have a look at Ignite channel.
2. Once in a while I check popular presentations on Slideshare – just search for niche keywords and sort the results by popularity.
3. Speaking about Scoop.it, I think searching for trends is more useful here compared with following specific boards, but there are some decent niche boards by professionals that you may want to read. This resource is helpful if you got tired of the same shared articles in your timelines, and it's a great place to find some not very popular but still pretty decent articles and tutorials.

Reddit – popular articles and discussions

1. This Social Media subreddit is pretty much useful for reading.
2. Also you can have a look at the Webmarketing one from time to time.

Your social timeline – all-in-one source!

You can read certain people on social – SM professionals often post valuable links and related stuff. Build a circle of pro people that tweet news you like. A solid choice of Twitter users can replace a whole world of social media news resources.
What is more, use Twitter lists. For example, you can find social media influencers in this collection of Twitter lists by KISSMetrics. You don't have to follow all of them at once, that's why Twitter lists are handy.

Hashtags – trending articles on Twitter, Google Plus and Facebook

It's great to read news, but it's greater to know what people are really talking about.
So when I need to look over the activity in the niche and see what people are really discussing and sharing, I like to research what is happening under certain hashtags.
Remember that you can use it not only on Twitter, but also on Facebook and Google Plus. I frequently use #social, but I advise to check the hashtag activity you want to research using hashtags.org or any other analytics tool.

To sum it up

This collection is more like a base of knowledge you need to keep up with the industry. Also this list is a must read collection of resources for social media newbies and covers pretty much all segments of social media marketing.

http://www.link-assistant.com/blog/20-social-media-resources-you-need-to-keep-pace-with-the-industry/

Why every startup should consider a multilingual strategy

For startups looking for a new competitive advantage, a multilingual presence may be the answer.While non-native English speakers have long realized the value of pushing their products to the English-speaking market, native English speakers are just beginning to realize the value of a multilingual strategy. More than just being able to launch a business in a second language, the world is becoming a multilingual marketplace. And whether it be Spanish, French, or even Mandarin, an additional language is becoming a necessity for many entrepreneurs to get ahead as the process of globalization continues to accelerate.So what are the real advantages of a multilingual strategy? When we launched Everypost, a social media management mobile application, we made the app available in six languages from the start. Why? Because it was a more cost effective way to market our new product against larger competitors and create more awareness for our brand quickly. We were able to reach an international audience, giving us more users and more feedback faster than we could ever generate from solely launching in the English market. With each additional language, we had the opportunity to reach more customers. A multilingual approach is a cost effective way of marketing, widening your reach, and promoting your brand in new markets without having to spend heavily on other strategies.With every additional language, the potential customer base widens. There are few other ways to receive a dramatic increase in customers for such little investment. In our case, we discovered there are over 101 million Internet users in Japan, over 17 million of whom are on Facebook — so translating our mobile application into Japanese was a definite way to find targeted users that would appreciate our social media solution. Even though our native languages are English and Spanish, a large segment of our customers are using the app in Japanese.

French startup Likebook, a service that pulls users’ Facebook updates, photos, comments, and compiles the information into a unique paperback or hardback book, quickly internationalized as well. That company offers the service in six languages, specifically building on an enormous opportunity in Brazil — the country with the second largest number of Facebook users in the world.Another company that took on the “reach-as-many-as-you-can” strategy from the start is Kiip’s self-service advertising platform, offering businesses the ability to instantly run their own ad campaigns to offer users real-world rewards. Kipp made the move to launch the self-service product globally in a whopping 11 languages across Latin America, Europe, the Mideast, Asia, and Japan — giving brands more reach, and giving developers of Kipp apps greater opportunity to successfully monetize their creations.Setting up a business in multiple languages isn’t an easy task, but it’s feasible — and there are ways to make it easier. If you are just starting out or want to test offering your products or services in another language, try translating your business website with the help of a multilingual website plugin. It also helps having a multilingual team as part of your long term global strategy. This will ease the costs of translation services and you’ll receive continuous feedback from native speakers.ClickBus, a Brazilian online booking platform for bus travel, has set out to reach 14 countries in its first year. After immediate success in Brazil, the decision to move into Mexico and Germany – after a law binding all German bus companies to the government came to an end — is giving ClickBus a huge chance to capitalize on the situation and expand its global customer base. With headquarters in Brazil, ClickBus plans to employ local representatives in each new market — a great way to smooth out the process of setting up shop in another language.

A multilingual business strategy is not only a gateway to global success, but also a tremendous advantage to increasing awareness for your brand. With Internet and mobile phone usage growing at an accelerated pace in the non-English speaking world, your business needs to plan how to keep up and stay ahead of competition. It is only a matter of time before multiple languages will become a standard for businesses, so by investing the time and energy now — or before even launching — your business can reap the benefits of the global marketplace.Fernando Cuscuela is an experienced entrepreneur who likes nothing better than to start new businesses and make them profitable. He founded a successful Digital Media Agency, Clickbunker, and most recently he started Everypost, where he now focuses most of his attention.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/01/why-every-startup-should-consider-a-multilingual-strategy/#!

Tools And Ideas To Rock Your Online Marketing Program

TIP! Before you select any affiliate marketing program, you should investigate exactly how each company credits sales that are made outside the confines of the website. If orders made through phone or email are not linked back to your unique affiliate ID, notable amounts of your commission may never make it to you.

An internet marketing program can be a great way to earn an extra income through your website! Before you begin, you need to make sure that you understand some basic information in order to increase your success with web marketing. This article will share techniques and information that other affiliate marketers have found effective.

TIP! Let your website’s visitors know you are doing affiliate marketing. Present it in a way that will be well received: it opens up advantageous buying opportunities for them with products they are already interested in.

One way to get started in the online marketing game is to sell a group of themed products from different vendors. You are more likely to pique the interest of a customer if there is a variety of relevant links for them to choose from.

TIP! When getting involved in affiliate marketing, it’s important to work with an affiliate company that has products you truly believe in and would be happy to promote and sell. Try to have multiple affiliates.

Many affiliate marketers do themselves a disservice by straining too hard to turn into “super” affiliates. In their attempts to maximize their effectiveness, they actually end up driving themselves into the ground by taking on more than they can possibly hope to successfully achieve. Remember, maximum results aren’t attainable all at once. It is important to take time and look for the best method that will apply to you.

TIP! Try advertising through multiple programs in the same niche. If you go through several sites that have affiliate programs in the same field then you give your visitors a wider variety of links to choose from.

Certain text programs exist and allow the affiliate marketer to make additional profits in a newer method. This is a new thing, but a lot of affiliates are employing this technique. It keeps customers informed and will help you sell your products.

TIP! A lot of affiliate marketers push too hard to become “super” affiliates. Do not do too much, you will wear yourself out.

There should always be honesty in web marketing. Tell people who you are affiliated with. You should also tell them about your site and what it is all about. If you are dishonest with your visitors, they may avoid your website and go to the main merchant’s site to buy that product.

TIP! Try dipping into secret links. Be subtle when using affiliate links throughout your text.

An affiliate marketing program will help you achieve great results when promoting your business on the Internet. Generally speaking, you can get a lot more traffic with online marketing programs than other types of advertising because you will have access to lots of great marketing tools. You should pay attention to the parent company’s site, especially the quality of the product and the ease of site navigation.

TIP! You should give careful consideration to the products you intend to advertise before setting up the links to do it. Once you’ve chosen some links, experiment with organizing them in different ways on your site.

Online marketing is a great way to make some money, but you have to know what you are doing if you want to make good money. High rankings with the search engines will benefit your Internet site. Doing so will net you prestigious affiliate links and greater revenue.

Conversion Ratio

TIP! Be sure that you keep your target audience in mind when picking affiliates. This can have an effect on your traffic, as well as showing viewers that you understand what they want and need.

If you want to succeed at an online marketing program, go with a quality company that possesses a strong sales to conversion ratio. A conversion ratio of 1% is a great benchmark to have.

TIP! Make sure you provide reliable content. If the readers really like what you produce, they will uphold you by finding referral links and following them should they want to buy the product still.

These tips have hopefully provided you with timely and helpful web marketing advice. Remember that it is important to stay current with changes in marketing information. Web marketing can be a nice addition to the income you are already making with your site. You can easily accomplish two goals with one action. “

 

http://www.affiliatemarketing-fordummies.com/tools-and-ideas-to-rock-your-online-marketing-program/

Content Marketers Still Have A Long Way to Go

Three weeks ago I was able to attend and speak at Content Marketing World in Cleveland, OH.  The event was a three-day content love-fest and I thoroughly enjoyed speaking about, listening and having great dialogue with others about their content strategies and approached.   While there is no doubt that content marketers are making great strides in terms of content usage, there is still a long way to go if we as marketers are going to make a difference in our organizations and with our B2B buyers.
Joe Pulizzi, Founder of Content Marketing Institute, kicked the conference off by reviewing some of the stats from the Annual Content Benchmark study conducted by CMI and MarketingProfs and it was the results of the survey that confirmed my suspicion -  while many are working at content marketing – 91% use content marketing, few are truly seeing any benefit or value.
As seen above, 91% of organizations that were surveyed are using content marketing in some form or fashion.  However, as was revealed only 50% of those that are using content marketing have a strategy.   I also believe a case could be made about the 50% who have a strategy as that word carries a lot of weight which I believe many organizations do not truly comprehend.

This lack of strategy is one of the key reasons why of those doing content marketing, only 36% will rate their content as effective or very effective.   No surprises here – no strategy equals a lack of effectiveness.
In thinking about the study, talking to people at the conference, comparing my thoughts to some of those from CMI and also taking stock of the many companies I speak with on an ongoing basis, I believe three fundamental problems that are preventing marketing from getting the most value from their content:
1.  Marketers Confuse Doing More with Value
The CMI-Profs Study asked two questions:
Question one:  Challenges that B2B Content Marketers Face – the number one answer?  64% stated their number one challenge was “Producing Enough Content” followed by 52% stating that “Producing the Kind of Content that Engages” was their number one challenge.
In looking at the ranking of the answers, it is clear that marketers place a significantly higher value on quantity rather than quality.  However, buyers see it differently – in the B2B Buyers Survey conducted by DemandGen Report, buyers ranked relevance of information provided as the most important attribute when selecting a vendor.  Clearly marketers are not seeing it from the aspect of their buyers.
In addition to just producing more content, marketers are operating in a very tactical fashion.
Question two: Asked B2B Marketers about the “Average Number of Tactics That Are Used”  - 64% of organizations are using more than 10+ tactics in their marketing mix.  Combine numerous tactics with without a clear strategy and you get misaligned and confused messages going to your buyers.
2.  Marketers Are Not Thinking About Their Buyers When Developing Content
In their “State of B2B Demand Generation Study”, Forrester states that only 14% of organizations align their content to the buyers journey and according to DemandGen Report 62% of buyers state that vendors focus their content too much on product or services.
If we want to develop content that truly engages, marketers have to stop thinking about themselves and think about their buyers – in a strategic fashion.  Keep in mind that strategic demand generation is not just about qualifying; it also is about educating.  Buyers want to know that vendors are experts, they know the issues, they get the problems of their buyers.  The product’s “differentiator” does not matter as much as vendors think it does.
3.   Marketers Lack the Necessary Skills Needed in Todays Marketing 2.0World
I received the following text from a colleague while at Content Marketing World – “I’m getting a little tired of the ‘you can do this’ message at some of these shows.  There is so much focus on the why and always so little on the how.”  This text says it all – most marketers now know what they should be doing, but they don’t know how to do it. Why?  This is hard stuff and most marketers were not trained on how to execute and drive strategic demand generation and create valuable content.  While the buying process has changed dramatically with buyers having more access to information, marketers have been asked to transform on the fly with no  training on how to do so creating a massive chasm between the sophisticated buyer and marketing organizations.
Several studies have indicated that less than $1,000 is spent annually on marketing training and a majority of marketers state that they are self-taught.  Meanwhile, the buying process becomes more complex, buyers are increasingly more demanding and beginning to take notice of the shortfall.
It truly is time for a change – organizations have to begin investing in getting their marketing teams equipped strategically.  This means a shift from tactics to strategy. Reorganizing to align to the buyers purchase process, taking the time to understand what matter to our buyers instead of cranking out more product information.
The gap will grow increasingly wider between vendors and buyers until some serious attention is given to the issues and while it may draw more to conferences in search of answers, the real problems will be solved when marketers commit to the needed change

http://annuitas.com/2013/10/01/content-marketers-still-have-a-long-way-to-go/#!

4 Steps to an Effective Facebook Sales Funnel

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I recorded a Pubcast with Amy Porterfield today, and we had a great discussion about how we use Facebook as a sales funnel.

The funny thing is that we had two largely different approaches. Both that work. But it inspired me to detail my approach.

If you follow me closely, you know that I stress building a quality, engaged audience. This is critical to your Facebook sales funnel.

As I’ve found, Fans are the most likely to buy. Proof of that was found in my recentPower Editor training program launch, where I got a 35X ROI overall on Facebook ads.

In fact, they are also the most likely to provide an email address. Getting the Like is easy. It’s a light action. Anything else requires trust.

So, I see the progression in the following order:

Fans > Email Address > Buy

Here’s how it works…

1. Attract Relevant Fans

It’s the first step for a reason. This is the key to your Facebook sales funnel. Without it, the whole thing falls apart.

I see it time and time again. Brands buy Fans. Or they use ads that target “cheap” countries that bring in spam bots. Or they run contests that attract countless Fans with an irrelevant prize.

In all cases, they are focused far too much on quantity and not enough on quality.

You’re tired of hearing it. It’s an overused phrase. Yet it seems most brands still don’t get it.

Yes, you want more Fans. But they have to be relevant Fans who are most likely to buy from you later.

Yes, you want to limit the cost of adding Fans through ads. But not at the expense of quality.

Your focus should be on spending the least amount of money for the highest quality Fans. Period.

It’s a difficult balance, I know. Your main focuses may be in the US, UK, Canada and Australia (as are mine). You may see that the Cost Per Like for US users is 20% higher. Don’t abandon them.

Always work to bring in new, relevant Fans who are likely to buy from you later. Do that with Facebook ads.

I always keep two types of ads running:

• Page Like Sponsored Story
• Page Like Ad Offering Value for a Like

The second currently offers access to my eBook on Facebook ads (from a Facebook tab) in exchange for a Like. That way, I know that those who like my Page are potential customers at a later date.

I then target the following groups with each of those ad types:

• Users who like similar Pages and with similar interests
• Lookalike Audience based on my core email list (focused on Similarity)
• Lookalike Audience based on my core email list (focused on Reach)
• Similar Pages & Interests + Lookalike Audiences (Similarity)
• Similar Pages & Interests + Lookalike Audiences (Reach)

How do you find the list of similar Pages and interests? Use Graph Search and follow these steps.

Don’t understand Lookalike Audiences? Read this post.

Start these campaigns out extremely broad. You already have your target audience. Focus on all placements. Men and women. All (or most) ages.

Then use the new Facebook ad reports to find out what’s working best and optimize from there.

I may have as many as 10 of these campaigns running at once. Getting relevant Fans in the door is the highest of priorities.

2. Provide Value

Great, you got a bunch of relevant Fans in the door. Now it’s time to sell, right?

Of course not!

I succeeded at getting the Page like, but I don’t yet have full trust. That happens by providing consistent value.

Every day, provide content that helps your target customer. Continually drive them back to your website. Get them used to seeing your face.

That value includes some sort of personal connection. Respond to them. Provide a look behind the curtain regarding who you are. Share more than just a brand.

Without value and without a personal connection, any sales effort will go ignored.

3. Collect Email Addresses

You can collect email addresses earlier, but it’s certainly easier getting them from qualified users.

This is an important step that is often missed. By collecting email addresses, you can reach these potential customers with your promotions in two places: Email and Facebook.

That gives them two opportunities to read your blog post. Recommend it to friends. Or buy from you.

You’d be amazed by what the addition of email can do for your overall campaign. Expect far greater results than if you use only Facebook or only email.

So, how do you collect these email addresses?

Once users are Fans, periodically offer them something of value in exchange for that address. Host a webinar. Offer an ebook. Send a reminder to sign up for your newsletter.

Now, you could theoretically do this up front. I’ve offered free ebooks in Step 1 to incoming Fans. In exchange for the ebook, they have to like the Page. Then provide an email address.

But that’s one more step, and it can be off-putting. Don’t try to rush the user down your sales funnel.

Guide them!

4. Sell

Okay, so now it’s the good stuff. You have a captive audience of people who are interested in the your focused niche. You offer consistent value, and they’re eating it up. You’ve gained their trust to the point that they have provided an email address.

Now it’s time to sell!

When you release a new product, you’ll announce it via email. You’ll announce it with a Facebook post. But also turn it into a Facebook ad, displaying it to Fans only.

Now, there’s definitely a balance here. And I will be the first to admit that I’m still figuring out that balance.

You need to monitor frequency. How many times are your Fans seeing an ad every day?

Obviously, the smaller your audience the tougher this will be to manage. So be careful.

What you don’t want to do is now push away those people you’ve spent so much time nurturing. Granted, some will be put off as a result of any self-promotion. You were never going to get them to buy anyway.

But what you don’t want is to lose those who may have bought but you overdid it with ads. I’m sure I’ve lost people before. And my goal is to find that balance to keep the best of the best Fans who are most likely to buy.

http://www.jonloomer.com/2013/09/04/facebook-sales-funnel/

Better Social Media Marketing

Before embarking on any social media marketing campaigns, it is essential to set your goals and define your prospects or target audience. Without a clear understanding of what you want to achieve and who you want to reach, your promotional campaigns will not be focused and the results may be fragmented and weak.

Determining your goals and target audience is a fairly important preliminary process when it comes to social media marketing.
This is not just plotting objectives for the sake of being organized; your goals directly determine the best strategy to take and the community to target.
This article talks about the common goals for social media marketing and includes suggestions on how you can determine your target audience.
Social media marketing goals will often involve different overall strategies and social media channels. It is possible to market with the aim of achieving all the following benefits; they do complement each other and some results naturally arise when other goals are achieved (e.g., better brand awareness eventually brings links).

Let’s take a look at some of the goals you can strive towards:

 Increased Brand Awareness
Content can be created and spread through social media to improve public perception of your brand by evoking specific qualities that make it distinct from others. For new websites or businesses, this pervasive visibility generates brand familiarity. Social media channels can rapidly generate word of mouth and buzz for most brands.

Reputation Management
The goal here is to positively influence the way a potential and existing customer/audience perceives your brand. Work of this nature is less push-orientated and may involve the creation of social media profiles and wikis that rank well on search engines for your brand name.
This also includes monitoring public forums and feedback channels to track and address what is said about your site. Some view this as social media optimization, although I would classify it as pull-marketing.

Improved Search Engine Rankings
When considered within a larger SEO and link building framework, content can be creatively developed and promoted for the purpose of obtaining links from the members of the social news websites.
This means you should primarily target social sites with the highest potential to give you links, instead of smaller-sized communities which only offer interested traffic. While important, your site’s profile need not be entirely relevant to the social media website in question; content can be created specifically to appeal to different audiences.

Increased Relevant Visitor Traffic
If you are only interested in engaging visitors or users for your website, you should invest more time on social communities which have a high topical relevance.
The social site’s topical focus should be inline with what your site covers/offers. For example, instead of promoting your internet marketing articles through wide platform like Digg, try pushing it on more appropriate communities like StumbleUpon, because it will get you people who are more likely to follow your site.

Improve Sales for a Product (goods and services)
To effectively increase your product sales, you should release your offer through an influencer who is respected in the community or work through a sponsorship model (contests etc.). Hard selling a social media audience through an overtly commercial profile is not advisable because it will come across as marketing spam.
One solution is to segment the market and focus on being the number one solution for specific user problems. Naturally, you should mostly target communities which are highly relevant to your niche focus because this increases the likelihood for traffic to convert.
Having distinctive goals allows you to embark on mini-campaigns which target specific communities to fulfill individual goals. For instance, you can run a link building campaign through Digg while simultaneously building brand awareness by leveraging social video communities like YouTube.
Spitting up your campaigns will allow you to more easily examine the general ROI (returns on investment) for each community. Plotting and analyzing your achievements over time will allow you understand which social media channel fulfills your goals the best. This allows you to plan for future marketing initiatives.

Define the target market for your social marketing campaigns

After determining your social media objectives, you need to define your actual target audience. If your website or business has been around for a while, you should already have a rough idea of who you need to reach.
In the context of social media marketing, the goals you’ve chosen will partially determine your target audience as well. For instance, if you’re looking to increase overall sales conversions, you want a social media demographic that is profitable and potentially interested in your product or offer.
If you’re trying to build links, your target audience should be people with the ability to link or influence links. (e.g. bloggers, social media users). While your social media goals may partially determine the crowd to target, your business model is also an important factor to consider. What are you selling and who is likely to be interested?
Sometimes your target audience crosses many demographic segments. If you run a general technology blog your audience profile may be quite varied. You will have programmers, marketers and both male and female tech enthusiasts of all ages.
Some business models have in-built audience profile. Women’s magazines have a more defined audience which can be broken down by gender, age or even geographic location. The communities you target should have users of this mold.

Here are some questions to ask before you begin your social marketing campaign:

1. Who is likely to be most interested in my content?
2. Who do I want to communicate with and why?
3. What kind of audience does this social community have?
4. What are people currently saying about my website or business?
5. Which type of person is likely to purchase my product (goods and services)?
6. What tools or online services do my target audience use?
7. Which websites does my target audience frequent on the net?
8. What do my target audience have in common with each other?

I  like to send some of these questions to a few friends or colleagues and compile their answers. Each individual has a unique perspective and different ways of using the web and their answers will give you a good general idea of your potential online customers and their preferences.
Once you create a general outline of your audience, you can more easily select the social media channels to target. This brings us to the end of the preliminary preparations for your social media marketing campaign.

Understanding the limitations of social media marketing

Social media channels can certainly get you traffic, attention and links but keep in mind that a big part of your potential customers/readers may not know about or use these social websites. This is certainly the case for geo-specific small businesses.
If you’re a plumber in Los Angeles,  they are not going to go on YouTube to find a plumber.
What you can do is to use dynamic content to set up multiple funnels that direct traffic and attention to your website. This may involve creating a blog and producing content which gives you an excuse to be disseminated on high traffic and wide-focus channels like YouTube or Digg.
Your sales page won’t fit in but a humorous article or video about a plumber’s trade is relevant to the general audience. The plumber is just an example. Most businesses will benefit from dynamic content which can be spread through online communities.
The marketing equation and strategy for small businesses goes something like this:

social media visibility = brand awareness + word of mouth = new customer

This is an indirect method to increase sales and your customer base. While extremely powerful as a tool to spread brand awareness, social media marketing should be integrated alongside traditional search marketing goals; you should always try to improve the visibility of your website in the search engine result pages.

Conclusion

Done correctly, social media marketing will get you more customers and increased sales. The results will just not be as immediate as direct response marketing. Patience is a virtue and it is very important to have a lot of it in this situation.

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