social media Archives - Page 2 of 2

Goals in Analytics: Does Your Site Measure Up?

On February 15, 2011, in delegator, Google Analytics, Intermediate: 201, by Jake

Recently, I wrote about Google Analytics and claimed that it is a must-have for any serious website. Hopefully some of you took heed and installed Analytics on your own site. With Analytics in place, you can now rest assured that a lot of important information is being tracked. The trick now is making that vast amount of information useful for your business. The easiest way to do this is through Goals.

Goals provide a simple, intuitive way to get a lot out of your web data. After all, every webmaster has goals for their website. Why not track them? In Analytics, we can even go a step further by assigning relative values to multiple goals. Say a blog subscription is worth half as much to you as a lead form submission, but it is worth twice as much as an order form download. Use these numbers as your goal inputs, keeping in mind that they should reflect some economic value to your business.

Goals are good

This opens up a new stream of data in Analytics – and one that should be quite useful for your marketing efforts. Now you will be able to see what kind of value you are getting from your organic search marketing, paid search, and social media. If you notice you get $50 of value for every $20 you spend on AdWords, then consider spending more on AdWords. If you only get $10 of value, then you may need to optimize your paid search strategy.

Goals with values are better

For more information on how to set up goals, check out a primer from the Official Analytics blog.
And it will be worth your while to read the Godfather of Analytics, Avinash Kaushik, detail his obsession with economic goal values.

Tagged with: 201 • analytics • ppc • social media

Social Media and Your Business: Twitter 101

On February 8, 2011, in Basic: 101, social media, by Heather

If you’re new to Twitter or you’re setting up your business’ Twitter account for the first time, you may be wondering what you’ve gotten yourself into. Twitter can be a confusing thing at first if you’re not familiar with how to use the “@” symbol, the hashtag (#) or what it means to “retweet.” This post is designed to give you the very basics in Twitter 101 for your business.

Usernames

First things first, if you don’t have a Twitter account and username for your business – get one! Every username is unique, and your business’ name may already be taken. This might require you to get creative (Tip: You can use an underscore in your username which may help. Try Acme_Business if AcmeBusiness is already taken.)

Profile

Complete your profile. You’ll need to create a short bio (160 characters or less), add an avatar (your profile image), add your website, and add your location if you choose. You can customize your profile further, but like I said – we’re just going over the basics here.

The Language

Learn the Twitter language. I won’t leave you hanging – if you want to learn more about the “@” symbol, hashtag, and retweet, see the Twitter Glossary. It may take some getting used to, but the more you use Twitter, the more you’ll get the hang of it.

Tweets

If you’ve read the glossary, you know that a “tweet” is a message posted on Twitter with 140 characters or less. You need to start tweeting for a few reasons:

You need content on your profile. If you want people to pay attention to what you and your business have to say, you need to be saying something.
You need to engage your audience.
You’ll get the hang of things. Learning the Twitter language and how things work takes you actually using it.

Followers and Following

Again, if you’ve read the glossary, you know that there is a difference between followers and following. (Twitter does a good job of explaining the difference between the two.) Most people on Twitter want to increase the number of people following them. When you’re starting out though, you start at zero just like everyone else did. There are several ways to devise your business’ Twitter strategy, which could be another post by itself. Since we’re keeping this brief, I would suggest starting with these two:

Follow other respected people in your industry.
Make people aware that you have a Twitter profile. (Link to your Twitter account from your website, etc.)

Hopefully this post will serve as a good starting point for launching your business’ Twitter account successfully. Once you’re underway, you can begin tracking your success and building upon your efforts. If you have any questions about this post or how Twitter could benefit your business, let me know! Feel free to leave a comment or email me directly at heather.e@delegator.com.

Tagged with: 101 • social media • twitter

The World Series of E-Commerce

On October 1, 2010, in Content Writing, Google AdWords, SEO, social media, by Jake

Well, it’s October, and that means the baseball playoffs are at the forefront of many people’s minds. To pay homage to one of our favorite sports, we decided to create a hypothetical starting lineup of Delegator’s services.

Starting Lineup, Part I

Yes, it may seem like a stretch, but we’ve noticed some patterns in the course of our work that (loosely) resemble the starting nine in a baseball lineup. In this post, I’ll introduce the first half of our services lineup. If we ever make it to the World Series of E-Commerce, these would be our go-to players:

Google Analytics
- Any team needs a reliable leadoff hitter, and Google Analytics is the consummate leadoff service. It gets the ball rolling for everything else on your website. Without this crucial data collection in place, you will be formulating your marketing goals and objectives blindly. Google Analytics gives a sleek, user-friendly framework to tell you who is coming to your site, how they get there, and what they do once they are there.
SEO (site review)
- After Analytics is in place and collecting data, we like to proceed with our #2 hitter, an SEO review of the website. This background review will, like Analytics, give us the information we need to take action on a poorly optimized site. The process includes analysis of the site structure, design, and keyword optimization, among other things. And in line with a typical 2-hole hitter, it isn’t the flashiest service, but it lays an important foundation for the heavy hitters to deliver.

SEO + PPC = Power

Content Writing
- Now we’re starting to get to the heart of the lineup. Content, written for search engines and site users, unique, and keyword-targeted, is a cornerstone of Delegator’s business and fit for the #3 spot on our card. You’ll want your third hitter to be versatile – able to hit the game-winning home run or just a sacrifice fly when necessary. SEO copy can create large gains in organic rankings and boost your traffic or just convince that one extra person to buy your product with a persuasive tagline or call-to-action.
Google AdWords
- Google AdWords, along with other pay-per-click advertising, finds its way into the Cleanup spot of the order. AdWords can drive the most immediate and targeted traffic and conversions to your website. To contend for a title in baseball, you need the power that comes with a cleanup bat (just ask the Mets). And to become a force in the online marketplace, it is imperative to be competitive in paid search. This just so happens to be a core Delegator service – we were the first company certified by Google in our state.
Social Media
- In the constantly morphing e-marketplace, social media engagement is becoming increasingly important as a supplement to the traditionally dominant search platform. In other words, you can’t score enough runs with SEO and AdWords alone. You need a #5 hitter (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) that can pick up a few runs here and there. A solid and diversified social media strategy can be the difference between an average team, and a championship contender.

Part II of this post will introduce the rest of our lineup and our pitching staff, so stay tuned. If you’re interested in learning more about any of the aforementioned services, you can always contact the blog or simply subscribe to our feed.

Tagged with: adwords • analytics • content writing • delegator • google • seo • social media

Social Media: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

On September 24, 2010, in Basic: 101, social media, by Heather

“The world now spends over 110 billion minutes on social networks and blog sites. This equates to 22 percent of all time online or one in every four and a half minutes.”

- The Nielsen Company, NielsenWire

Social media has become a world-wide phenomenon – one that businesses have learned they cannot afford to ignore. However, as businesses enter this new territory, there’s bound to be some examples we can learn from. This week’s blog post will focus on The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly as it relates to social media:

The Good

The following companies make sure their social media efforts reward loyalty, encourage interaction with their audience, and mimic their brand or business.

iTunes: If you want to reward loyalty and increase your fan base, take a look at iTunes Featured tab. If you “Like” this page, you get 10 free songs on iTunes and you have access to other special offers. Give your fans a reason to “Like” your page.

Cranium: The Cranium Facebook page encourages interaction through quizzes and games, while promoting their brand and product at the same time.

The Bad

We know audience engagement is key (see my last post on the Rules of Engagement), but there are thousands of companies out there showing us all what not to do.

Wealth_Formula: This Twitter profile (http://twitter.com/Wealth_Formula) completely lacks the human element.

While tools like TweetDeck and HootSuite make it possible for us to schedule Tweets in advance, this user goes about it the wrong way. Instead of engaging the audience, Wealth_Forumula “yells” at them and tweets identical posts time after time.

Nestle: Below you will find some of the negative criticism on Nestle’s Facebook page over its use of palm oil in products. Things went from bad to worse when the employees behind Nestle’s Facebook and Twitter pages fired back at their critics. Eventually, a Nestle representative apologized to fans for being rude.

The Ugly

United Airlines learned the hard way that social media can have a significant impact on your business.

United Airlines: This company had a customer-service nightmare on their hands after a passenger made a YouTube video about how the customer service department ignored his complaints that his Taylor guitar was broken during his travels. The story was picked up by the LA Times and now has over 9 million views on YouTube.

In response to this customer’s video, Taylor responded in a YouTube video of their own, offering to help the guy out. The video now has over 489,000 views. Taylor properly used social media to capitalize on this oversight by United Airlines.

How to Stay in the “Good” Category
Make sure your company doesn’t make these same mistakes. An effective social media campaign requires thought, planning, and time. At Delegator we understand that time may not be something you have to put toward a social media campaign. From general consulting hours to comprehensive monthly plans covering any number of social networks, we tailor our services to fit your needs. If you’re interested in learning how Delegator can help you manage your social media efforts, contact us.

Tagged with: 101 • facebook • social media • twitter • youtube

Social Media: Rules of Engagement

On August 27, 2010, in Basic: 101, delegator, social media, by Heather

While many businesses today have begun to embrace social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, many have yet to realize how they can best use these resources. The primary focus of any social media campaign should not be sales-driven. That’s right – I’m suggesting businesses focus first on engaging their audience or customer.

Listen to Your Audience

Engaging with your audience requires that you listen first to what they have to say. Do you really know who your audience is? Social media exposure, by its nature, can be broad and dynamic, with a bit of a “Six degrees from Kevin Bacon” element that can get you noticed in ways you never expected. In any social media campaign you should focus on two groups of people:

1. Your customers or potential customers – These are the people you already know well. They buy products from you and use the services you’re offering.

2. Influential players – A person in this group may never buy your product or personally use your service, but they can be a major player in placing your content and your brand in front of a large number of people that could fit into group #1.

To properly engage these two groups, all of your content needs to be focused toward them.

Engage Them

Now that you know whom you should be engaging with, it’s time to discuss how to engage your audience. It’s important to have a conversation, and save the sales pitch for another day. Your goal should be to develop personal connections and a dialog with your audience. Interaction is key.

Ask open-ended questions that encourage comments and responses.
Respond to all comments promptly.
Monitor and moderate your social media accounts frequently.
Add creative content constantly.

Listening to and engaging your customer sounds simple, and in some ways it is. But getting all of this done takes time, attention and, often, creativity. Here at Delegator, we help our social media clients get it done– from setting up to managing social media marketing plans. Whether you have an existing plan, or you’re new to the social media game, Delegator can help.

Tagged with: delegator • facebook • social media • twitter

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