I pay a lot of attention to affiliate marketers - because their livelihood depends on accurately analyzing and predicting market trends, then tweaking their marketing and SEO strategies to match. The problem with an awful lot of affiliate marketers is that they’re stuck in 2000-2004 strategies – that worked like clockwork then, but “Mom and Pop” e-commerce has transitioned over the last few years … becoming exceedingly difficult. Market share for small to medium sized companies on the Internet is shrinking, while the top 10% of web sites on the Internet continue to grab more audience, leaving scraps for the rest of us.
To complicate matters - the trend to mobile apps has caused an overall decrease in Internet use – with mobile content predicted to double within a year. This results in a smaller piece of a smaller pie for entrepreneurs just entering the Internet with e-commerce strategies – and dreams of working from home instead of fighting rush hour traffic to and from work.
I suspect an alarming number of Mom and Pop shops will – go under or at least by the wayside on the Internet – in as little as one to two years down the road – if they don’t transition with the industry. Let’s be honest here – how many of you understand how to market on Facebook or Twitter, or use any number of hundreds of social media platforms to advance your business – while the future of your business rides on the fence. Your competition isn’t sitting back waiting for you to fail – they’re accelerating the process by incorporating Internet strategies that work TODAY – pushing you further back in organic SERPS (search engine results pages).
My recommendation – follow the guidelines that the major search engines put out there – so you can succeed. Do split testing to determine what works from what doesn’t work, then repeat what works over and over and over. Be open to change.
One of my favorite quotes - “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” — by Aristotle, applies to business across the board. Typically, one or two individuals in an organization will be assigned to develop and follow up on Internet strategies, but I contend that each and every employee in businesses of every size, can add intrinsic value to their business (online). In a world that is trending toward peer-to-peer evaluation, each employee brings with them intellectual assets and their own sphere of influence. Encourage each of them to share what makes them special and your business special – on your corporate blog, industry forums, social media platforms – and the list goes on forever.
How would you like to reduce your advertising cost - on Google AdWords or Facebook, yet improve your click through rate (CTR)? Without going real deep into how and why this works, price per click or impression is a factor of a quality score – and that score is determined by how well your ad performs. Essentially the lower your click through rate, the lower your quality score and the higher your resulting cost per click or impression.
Combining poorly performing - keywords, keyword phrases or interests with those that perform well lowers your overall click through rate and also your quality score. It’s far better to create multiple separate campaigns with fewer keywords or interests, first to sort out what works from what doesn’t work and second, to create better performing keywords and interests campaigns to improve your click through rate, thus improving your quality score and reducing the resulting cost per click or impression. Sometimes this means reducing the keywords, keyword phrases or interests in your campaigns to as few as two or three top performers.
Often, a poorly performing – keyword, keyword phrase or interest is simply a bad match with its associated advertisement. You’ll never know this though if you lump sum all your keywords or interests into one campaign. In Facebook, it’s easy to create multiple similar campaigns and simply change out interests. Stop paying for interests that perform poorly and focus on those that do perform well. Click through will improve, quality score will improve and the corresponding cost of your campaigns will decrease.
Integrating social media - into your overall marketing plan has become vitally important, so much so that I devoted a series of four articles composed of nothing but links to outlets that can and will help your business succeed, if integrated correctly. Is this time consuming? Of course, but building any business for success requires going that extra step, not just to keep pace, but to excel among your competition. As a business owner myself, I quickly realized that you can’t sit back and expect prospects to beat a path to your door, even if you think you have the latest greatest product, service or solution on the market.
As I did some research – on how to best integrate social media, I again quickly realized the scope of what’s currently available can overwhelm even the most seasoned of marketing veterans. Fortunately, there are countless numbers of entrepreneurs and experts that specialize in making that connection, and some of them have graciously agreed to share their expertise with you on WDTalk.
Over the coming weeks, I will introduce – some of the most widely recognized experts in social media integration – each with their own stories of success and recommendations.
First up is Artyom Diogtev – Head of SocialMedia at ComboApp LLC. In addition to his article below on Facebook Fan Page Development, he’s consented to an interview at a later date – enjoy!!
Facebook Fan Page Development: best practice
Listen and Understand your audience
Although Facebook is extremely popular and is seen by many as something new and extraordinary, when it comes to creating a Fan Page it is always good to realize that essentially you need good old marketing techniques to make it right and avoid mistakes so many people make. From a technical point of view creating a fan page is fairly simple task, the hardest part is to create a page that will attract your target audience.
If you already have a fan page for your brand name / your product you must see what people are saying about you. In a sense you need to figure out what it is that you have in common with your target audience, and you have to be prepared to have a slightly broader scope than what your product or brand offers. You have to be an expert, and that means going at least a little further then your core competence/knowledge. In many cases your product / service information will be complimentary to more general topics related to your product or service. A simple example would be, let us say, if your app is about mixing music loops and beats, a more general topic will be music – discussing different instruments playing techniques and so forth.
Build Your Fan Base
Now you have your Fan Page ready and you do know their common interests. You are now looking into your Fans counter and thinking what you should do to give it a boost. Facebook has a users base which is larger than US population but how do you reach them initially… You need to promote your page. Here are the tools which are in your disposal:
- Like button – this is one of the most effective tools, which Facebook provides. You absolutely need to place the button code onto your app-dedicated web page and make sure it has a prominent spot to be noticeable by your website visitors.
- Tell Your Fans – this is a great way to discover your app’s current user presence on Facebook and encourage them to become your app fans, this tool will allow you to scan your email account (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and others) and with a single click invite people you’ve been communicating with to become your fan page fans
- Cross-promotion. One of the “Must Do” things is to promote your Facebook fan page on other Social Networking channels – YouTube, Twitter, Flickr. If you’ve developed a video demo for your app and put it on Youtube, you should place a direct link to your fan page right in the description and encourage people to become fans.
- Check Related Brands and Topics. You don’t create your app fan page in a vacuum, there are many fan pages with similar topics and you can always check out fan pages dedicated to iPhone & iPad apps, app review sites, etc. Once you found them, think of a polite but attractive way to present your app on those pages. You need to come up with a short, catchy post about your app, use your sense of humor to catch people’s attention, it will definitely help. Please understand that you do not force your information onto someone, it is their choice of picking it up.
Engage Your Fan Base
All your efforts to build your fan page audience will be in vain if you don’t know how to engage your app fan page fans. Use at least these tools to establish a conversation with your fans:
- Fan Page Wall – post bits of news about your app and about related topics to give your fans reason to visit your page over and over and use it as news source, keeping your audience in the know about your product.
- Photos – your app screenshots, the ones you have on the AppStore, is the most obvious thing to post right away but you can come up with more ideas for photos; post some specific app screenshot with hints, clues, tutorials. Whenever there is something interesting, amusing about your app comes up, capture it with a screenshot and think of the way to present it to your fans. Track carefully your app performance on the App Store and make sure you capture every single moment of your app’s glory on the store – each time it was featured in What’s Hot, New and Noteworthy, Top Paid, Top Free apps and post a screenshot on your fan page.
- Events – it’s a great tool to launch a giveaway and use some of your 50 promo codes to make your fans’ day and to give them a reason to leave a comment about your app on the App Store. Each giveaway should have its rules: deadline, what you’re asking people to do in return to a promo code, i.e. follow your app on Twitter, become your Facebook fan page fan and so forth, announce winners – give them their 15 minutes of glory or more .
- Videos – a good place to publish your app video demo and let people express their opinion right here on your fan page.
- Discussions – this is like setting up a forum on your site but even better cause all conversations between you and your fans will be displayed on your fans’ walls and potentially it may lead to a snow ball effect – more and more people will get involved in these conversations.
- Polls – if you want to measure your fans opinion, Polls is a great way of doing it, it doesn’t go by default for a new fan page but can be easily installed from Facebook App Directory – http://www.facebook.com/apps/directory.php
Switch from personal profile to a fan page – you can switch from using Facebook as your personal profile owner to a fan page and it will be easier and more convenient to administrate your page.
Build Trust
The most fundamental principal on which Facebook has built is a human communication, when you create your fan page you effectively begin a conversation with your app users and if you succeed in creating a good fan page you get not only new users, you get loyal fans for your app and also for you as a company. Building trust between you and your fans is the paramount task to achieve.
Keep your head up!
Facebook isn’t only the largest but one of the fastest growing and evolving ecosystems in the era of Web 2.0, always keep your eye on Facebook’s latest developments and adopt your fan page development strategy accordingly.
Artyom Diogtev - Head of Social Media
These are my favorite business and social bookmarks, listed in order by Alexa Ranking (May 13, 2011) – Part 1 of 4
| URL |
Alexa |
Description |
| http://www.facebook.com |
2 |
Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life. |
| http://www.twitter.com |
9 |
Instant updates from your friends, industry experts, favorite celebrities, and what’s happening around the world. |
| http://www.LinkedIn.com |
17 |
Over 100 million professionals use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas and opportunities |
| http://www.tumblr.com |
50 |
Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors, to your theme’s HTML. |
| http://www.myspace.com |
76 |
Myspace, Inc. is a leading social entertainment destination powered by the passions of fans. Aimed at a Gen Y audience, Myspace drives social interaction by providing a highly personalised experience around entertainment and connecting people to the music, celebrities, TV, movies, and games that they love. These entertainment experiences are available through multiple platforms, including online, mobile devices, and offline events. |
| http://www.reddit.com |
138 |
reddit is a source for what’s new and popular online. vote on links that you like or dislike and help decide what’s popular, or submit your own! |
| http://www.digg.com |
140 |
Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our community. |
| http://www.yelp.com |
199 |
Yelp is the fun and easy way to find and talk about great (and not so great) local businesses |
| http://www.delicious.com |
235 |
Social Bookmarking |
| http://www.xing.com/ |
256 |
THE PROFESSIONAL BUSINESS NETWORK WITH MORE THAN 10 MILLION MEMBERS WORLDWIDE |
| http://www.ning.com/ |
260 |
Ning is the world’s largest platform to create powerful, custom social websites. Top organizers, marketers, influencers and activists use Ning to create social experiences that inspire action. |
| http://www.multiply.com |
387 |
Multiply is a vibrant Social Shopping destination that feels like a visit with friends to the Shopping mall, but faster and more convenient. |
My favorite business and social bookmarks listed by Alexa rank, Part 2.
| http://www.slashdot.org |
1343 |
SlashDot |
| http://www.diigo.com/ |
1420 |
If you browse or read a lot on the web, we believe you will find Diigo indispensable. Diigo is two services in one — it is a research and collaborative research tool on the one hand, and a knowledge-sharing community and social content site on the other. |
| http://www.jigsaw.com/ |
2235 |
Jigsaw is the world’s largest database of up-to-date, downloadable, and complete contact and company information. With a directory of more than 25 million business contacts and over 36,000 contacts added and edited daily by a dedicated user base of over one million, the quality, content, and scope of Jigsaw’s world-class contact directory is unrivaled. Every Jigsaw business contact is complete with a phone number (over 70% of which are direct dial), position, company, mailing address, and business email address. Jigsaw also offers free tools for researching companies as well as a user generated company research wiki pages |
| http://www.entrepreneur.com/ |
2368 |
Be sure to check out Entrepreneur Connect on their Community Tab – lots of great forums |
| http://www.folkd.com |
2724 |
Using social bookmarks with folkd.com will enrich your web-surfing experience |
| http://www.blinklist.com |
3575 |
BlinkList is a powerful productivity tool that makes is much easier for anyone to share and save their links for later. |
| http://www.mister-wong.com |
4130 |
Mister Wong is a leading social bookmarking service with over 1 million users globally. |
| http://www.faves.com |
4239 |
Sites you’ll love, from people like you |
| http://www.kirtsy.com |
5084 |
kirtsy is a social media platform of pure goodness. A plaza for the peachy. A portal to the pretty. A place to find cool things. To read smart scoop. To connect with fab ideas, exceptional people, useful information, excellent products. All of it. And more. |
| http://www.buddymarks.com |
6233 |
BuddyMarks.com has been called “The online personal, group and social bookmarks manager.” |
| http://www.spoke.com/ |
7460 |
Spoke is a Personal Connections Management Service that enables people to leverage their lifetime of personal contacts to discover and re-connect with specific persons that can help them with current needs – even if they no longer remember their names or how they originally met. |
| http://www.mylinkvault.com |
7521 |
Online links made easy |
Here are my favorite business and social bookmarks listed by Alexa Rank, Part 3
| http://www.ecademy.com/ |
7778 |
Ecademy is a membership organisation for entrepreneurs and business owners who belong to a community that connects, supports and transacts with one another. |
| http://www.sphinn.com |
7969 |
Sphinn is a curated content site for search and online marketers. Sphinn accepts news tips and discussion topics from readers and aggregates the best of those with selections made by our editors to produce an ongoing look at the most important online marketing content each day. Sphinn is best used for discovering news stories and how-to articles and/or reading and participating in discussions with industry peers. Here’s a summary of how to get started: |
| startupnation |
10520 |
StartupNation is a free service founded by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. We created this site to be your one-stop shop for entrepreneurial success, and we’re thrilled that StartupNation has grown to be the leading online content and community resource for entrepreneurs. |
| http://www.connotea.org |
10864 |
Free online reference management for clinicians and scientists |
| http://www.focus.com/ |
12714 |
Focus makes the world’s business expertise available to everyone. At the heart of Focus is a network of thousands of leading business and technology experts who are thought leaders, veteran practitioners and upstart innovators in hundreds of different topics and markets. |
| youngentrepreneur |
13996 |
Our social network and blog properties showcase Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Online Business Strategies, Interviews, and several features, solutions and support to assist small business owners with starting, managing and growing successful business ventures. We cater to the entrepreneurial passions of our audience, giving them all the latest news, conversations, small business webinars, access to seasoned experts and of course access to the most active community of like-minded entrepreneurs. |
| http://www.blogster.com/ |
14350 |
Blogster is an online community of people who share interests and activities, and are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. People use Blogster to write about topic they like, upload photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet |
| http://www.biznik.com/ |
15874 |
It sucks growing a business alone. No one cares. But we do. Biznik is an award-winning community of entrepreneurs and small businesses dedicated to helping each other succeed. |
| smallbusinessbrief |
18240 |
Fetching the Best Small Business News |
| fastpitchnetworking |
20786 |
Fast Pitch is a Global Network of Professionals connecting online with the primary goal to add value to their business and the community as a whole. Business networking and marketing is the life blood of local and global economies. By combining sophisticated and simple tools online with a social networking platform, professionals can receive real return on their investment. |
| http://www.clipclip.org |
24889 |
Cut, Copy & Paste the Web |
| http://www.ryze.com/ |
33560 |
Ryze helps you expand your business network. Get a FREE networking-oriented homepage. Make quality business contacts. Re-connect with friends — You probably know people in here already. Help your company make deals through Ryze members. Build your network BEFORE you need it! |
Here are my favorite business and social bookmarks listed by Alexa Rank (Baker’s Dozen) – Part 4 of 4
| http://homebasedbusiness.com/ |
34757 |
The Home Based Business Network is a community of like-minded people from around the world who enjoy the freedom of working from home and for themselves |
| www.gobignetwork.com/ |
41476 |
The Go BIG Network is an on-line marketplace that connects the startup and small business community. The company allows startup companies, funding sources, advisors, and service providers to post requests for help on-line and have those requests routed to other members of the Network who can help them. |
| www.younoodle.com/ |
43179 |
Meet exceptional people. Join the startup of your dreams. Show the world your support for cool entrepreneurs. What are you noodling on today? |
| www.efactor.com/ |
51311 |
EFactor, the world’s largest entrepreneurial community, provides resources that every small business owner needs: funding, knowledge, gain revenue and save cost. At EFactor, entrepreneurs exchange ideas with experts, receive exclusive discounts on business tools, interact with potential partners or clients, and discover funding for their startups. With close to a million users in 168 countries, EFactor offers a unique mix of online and offline E.vents in the US and internationally. Members join EFactor to make relevant connections, taking their businesses to the highest level. EFactor is headquartered in San Francisco, and founded by a team of successful serial entrepreneurs. |
| www.thefunded.com/ |
59317 |
TheFunded.com is an online community of over 14,500 CEOs, Founders and entrepreneurs to discuss fundraising, rate and review investors, and discuss strategies to grow a start-up business. Enjoy! |
| www.PartnerUp.com |
60329 |
The social network for small business |
| www.ziggs.com/ |
100965 |
Ziggs is your one-stop source for creating and managing your online brand. Market yourself on the Web and simplify how you stay in touch with people important to you. People who use Ziggs enjoy comprehensive online personal branding that they control, top visibility in search engines, easy communications and a strong sense of community with people important to them. As well as networking opportunities with millions of other professionals. |
| http://sta.rtup.biz/ |
106144 |
The Small Business Social Network |
| http://mybbwo.com/ |
184121 |
A Social Network for Women in Business, Women Entrepreneurs, and Bloggers |
| www.perfectbusiness.com/ |
194699 |
Our website is a network of entrepreneurs, investors and business experts. Everyone on our site is here to encourage entrepreneurship and mutual success. PerfectBusiness will introduce you to new business contacts and answer your toughest questions. You will not be alone in launching and growing your business. We are YOUR network. We are behind YOU. Whenever you need answers or help, think PerfectBusiness. |
| www.talkbiznow.com/ |
207273 |
Talkbiznow is a web-based business community that provides business services for small businesses and professionals. Our mission is to simplify the essential business services and seamlessly integrate and deliver them through the internet forFree. Our members can network, collaborate with each other, promote and do business online at Talkbiznow. |
| http://cofoundr.com/ |
224540 |
Cofoundr is the fastest growing online network for Entrepreneurs! Join the private community of startups founders — developers, investors, CEOs, advisors, programmers, and designers — to find co-founders, build teams, and get advice. Make your new venture a success by joining Cofoundr now! |
| http://unstructure.org/ |
228522 |
Unstructure is an open discussion platform for business professionals, bloggers and contemporary thought leaders to discuss and debate action ideas that would aid the evolution of business. Unstructure consists of an online discussion forum (where you are currently), an annual physical event and a book of insight and action ideas for businesses of the future. |
| www.upspring.com/ |
298348 |
The easy way to connect, communicate and manage your business and professional community networks. |
| networkingforprofessionals |
349830 |
“We put you in touch with serious and successful professionals online and face-to-face, expanding your business opportunities and accelerating the way you network. And nothing is more important to your business than networking! “ |
| www.raisecapital.com/ |
515503 |
RaiseCapital.com is an online community, where entrepreneurs can display their business ideas and capital needs to investors. Whether your venture is a start-up or existing business, RaiseCapital.com is the perfect vehicle for entrepreneurs seeking capital. |
| www.fledgewing.com/ |
563676 |
FledgeWing provides aspiring student entrepreneurs with the framework they need to develop, build and launch innovative new companies. |
| www.jasezone.com/ |
766209 |
We are an online neighborhood gathering spot for friends around the world. |
| www.addyx.com |
1412159 |
Addyx is a Web 2.0 social news portal about people and sports powered by You |
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