SEO Blog

Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that allows short messages (called Tweets) of up to 140 characters to be instantly shared with others via the Internet or mobile phones.  Like updating your status on FaceBook, it allows everyone within your network (known as Followers) to immediately catch your latest messages and read, reply or comment upon them.  It’s a free service that allows anyone to publish their thoughts, ideas or messages to anyone wishing to ‘follow’.

Twitter’s potential for use as a business marketing tool is only just being tapped.  But Internet marketers and online business owners are already using it as a valuable device in their overall marketing mix.  Clearly, the simplicity of this free service offers business tremendous opportunities.  Companies in the US such as Southwest Airlines have used Twitter to build loyalty and increase their high quality of customer service.

Potential Uses of Twitter for Marketing:

• Offer customers/clients an intimate insight into the workings of your company
• Offer incredible promotional opportunities, an instant FREE PR tool
• Target the specific customers/clients you wish to reach
• Provide instantly updated product/service information
• Gives potential for future Pay-to-Follow Services
• Perfect for influencing Online Reputation Management
• Build brand loyalty by offering exclusive news and offers via Twitter
• Instantly inform ‘Followers’ of the latest offers, sales and other promotions
• Create mass and immediate buzz around a Product/Service launch
• Clickable tiny URL links can be added to Tweets
• Allow Followers to provide immediate feedback on Product/Services

Many high profile users are on Twitter.  Both Barack Obama and John McCain used Twitter in the run up to the US Presidential Election.  It worked for one of them!

Concerns About Using Twitter for Business Marketing:

• The casual nature of the Tweets can be deceptive; people can reveal more than they would normally be willing to do in any other medium
• Twitter presents things a distinct way, it’s aesthetically ugly
• It’s easy to pretend to be someone else on Twitter; anyone could set up a Twitter pretending to be your company (e.g. Fake Steve Jobs’)
• People need to log in to Twitter in order to use it, if users aren’t regular followers
• High volume of Tweets can be very irritating for customers/clients
• Twitter is not always a reliable service and has crashed in the past, wiping all of its data.   There are new third party tools to prevent this though
• Twitter is still relatively new and has not been properly evaluated as a marketing tool.  Insufficient data exists with regards to its effectiveness
• Misuse of Twitter could seriously damage your company’s online reputation
• Pay to Follow Services are not yet available

Twitter may be the latest zeitgeist Internet based marketing tool, but it cannot succeed alone.  If you’re planning on using Twitter for Business, it needs to be another useful tool in the Marketing arsenal of your company.  Combined with the other elements of your marketing mix, Twitter can be a powerful promotional tool.

The Internet presents limitless opportunities for mid-sized businesses that want to compete in the larger market.  Thanks to affordable online marketing options, it’s possible for a medium-sized business to carve a place in their sector and contend with the bigger companies.  The problem is finding or choosing the most suitable way to market your product or service online.

There are a number of options for businesses to choose from when considering cost-effective or affordable Internet marketing solutions, although the combined method or blended mix of marketing might better serve as the best approach.  This blended approach is made up of the five most effective and affordable ways to market your business website online.

SEO

Although SEO, or search engine optimisation, appears to be a rather simple way to increase your share of online traffic, the Natural Search results that it yields are powerfully impressive. SEO is the process of engineering your website so that it most effectively responds to the way that potential customers search for your business online.

Many people believe that SEO is something that can be done by just about anyone, but it takes a professional SEO expert to glean dynamic results without causing some of the very damaging errors that amateurs easily make.

Always choose to work with a professional SEO in order to get the best out of your website’s SEO potential.  The cost of an SEO expert is nothing compared to the potential increase in revenue from having your website optimised.

Articles

The Internet is a word-based medium and very much search driven.  Including articles on your website has a multiplicity of benefits, not least of all providing your customers with up to date expert advice.  Other benefits include:

• Increased credibility
• Improved SEO results from keywords in the articles
• Expanded web presence

You don’t need to be an expert author, there are lots of highly competent and affordable writers that can provide any number of quality articles for your website on any topic.

PPC

PPC, or pay per click, is one of the best methods of bringing traffic to your website and converting it to sales.

Imagine advertising that is read directly by people who are already interested in your product or service.  That’s exactly what PPC offers!  When a potential customer is interested in your ad, they click to find out more.  You only pay for the number of clicks that your ad receives and you can set your budget accordingly.

PPC represents a highly customisable and a truly affordable method of advertising.  Unfortunately, this has been one of the reasons why so many people have attempted DIY PPC, resulting in some quite catastrophic wasted opportunities.

Online PR

Your reputation online matters because it’s easily raised and easily damaged in the same measure.  Online PR can be used to fire fight problems but can also be used to announce important product news, service changes, sales, launches and make the best use of all profile raising opportunities.

Video Marketing

Still relatively in its infancy but drawing increased interest and attention, online video marketing can offer a stunningly effective alternative to television advertising. Many people have found that they can obtain dramatic results from very simple videos.  In the increasingly competitive online market, this is one approach that cannot be ignored.

By using these five methods together, you will create a powerful yet affordable website marketing campaign for your business.

If you feel you need help with any of these areas and would like to work with a professional UK based search marketing agency, please refer to our search engine marketing services page.

At Impact Media, we’re a Google Qualified company and everyone in the team who work on client accounts are Qualified Individuals.

So what? How could that make a difference to your AdWords campaign and, perhaps more importantly, your company profits?

Well, we’re independent of Google and work solely for our clients. Equally, our clients are never tied in to a long term contract so if we don’t add value, they are free to walk away.

Our process is very simple. Once we receive your induction form and have a thorough understanding of your priorities, we review your site and, if applicable, existing campaigns. We then perform comprehensive keyword research to identify both new opportunities and also irrelevant phrases to ensure your online marketing budget isn’t blown on wasted clicks.

We then set about constructing a highly effective campaign with multiple Ad Groups. We make sure that each Ad Group is tightly themed and targeted towards the most appropriate area of your site.

If conversion tracking isn’t in place, we will work with you to implement this so that you’ll be able to see which keywords are delivering sales.

Month by month, we will perform reviews of your site, running reports, performing new research and optimising adverts.

Our entire focus is all about driving your conversions up without simply resorting to throwing more money at waste of time clicks. Refinement is the key!

Hopefully, this has given you an insight into why we believe using a UK Google AdWords Professional could be one of the best investments you could make for your business. If you’d like to know more, request our free Pay per Click report.

When it comes to tracking and analysing statistics for a website, you will find that most web hosts will provide some kind of statistical package as part of your hosting arrangement.

However, these vary in quality and very often only give a superficial level of detail. If you’re a small business and serious with your Internet marketing efforts, be it search engine optimisation or pay per click, then you will want (need) to have a professional analytics package. There are many solutions out there, such as the brilliant Clicktracks Analyzer, but these solutions are often out of the reach for many small business owners.

So what to do? Well, at Impact Media we always recommend our search marketing clients use Google Analytics. Despite being totally free, this is no lightweight solution. Once you set-up your Analytics account, you’ll be provided some code that you simply add to every page of your site. From this point on, your site will be tracked, and not just for Google. You’ll be able to see stats for total visitors, for all search engines as well as direct traffic and pay per click. In particular, if you’re using Google AdWords, you’ll benefit from enhanced reporting capabilities.

From a single account you can manage multiple sites and even share data with other users. Reports can be exported and your data can be ’sliced and diced’ in many different ways.

All in all, Google has provided individuals and businesses of all sizes, a great way to get the most out of their website statistics and we definitely recommend it!