ionadas local LLC

Guest Post: Using the Internet to Tell Your Customers About Special Offers

Thanks to the Internet, there’s no longer any need to spend money on mailing postcards to your customers to announce sales and special offers.

If you have set up your web marketing capabilities, you can simply tweet on Twitter and send an email blast through your email marketing service.

Let’s look at an example:

Imagine you own a local fabric store and you have just received a much larger shipment of cotton plaids than you expected. Where will you store the inventory? (And we’re not even talking inventory carrying costs.)

Instead you tweet in 97 characters (leaving you 140 more characters to add your website URL, etc.):

Large shipment of cotton plaids with no place to store. Come in today for 50% off these fabrics.

Then you send out a somewhat longer email message explaining your predicament with the same offer. And how have you gotten the email addresses to which to send out this message?

You’ve gotten the email addresses through an email opt-in system on your website in which you offer, for example, a 10% off coupon if the person gives you his/her email address. And the email marketing software system you use stores the addresses in a database, helps you format your email message so that it more easily gets through spam filters, sends out the message for you, and keeps track of open rates.

Of course, if you’re lucky enough to have a website for which you can easily make changes, you’ll also post the announcement in large type on your home page. Anyone clicking through to your website after seeing the tweet or getting the email message will be reminded of why he or she is visiting the site.

By using your website and email marketing system and by sending tweets on Twitter, you can easily make special offers that help you out and make your customers happy.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is an Internet business consultant whose company website is www.MillerMosaicLLC.com. If you liked this article, you’re going to love her free report on “The Top 3 Internet Marketing Elements” – download the report now from www.WeTeachWebMarketing.com.

All opinions expressed in guest blog postings are those of the specific post’s author, and may or may not reflect those of Brian Combs or ionadas local.

Part-time Social Media Specialist Needed

Note: This position has been filled, although the blog post will remain here for historical purposes.

A Client of ionadas local is looking for a Social Media Specialist. This is a part-time position expected to require approximately ten hours per week, although additional hours are likely needed the first few weeks. This position is ideal for a current student looking for real-world experience in using social media commercially. It also might be of interest to a college graduate looking to break into the social media industry.

The Client is a producer and marketer of premium tequilas that is in the midst of a rollout to the U.S. market. The job is located in Austin, Texas. The Client is not interested in telecommuters at this time.

Initial screenings for the position will be provided by ionadas local staff. Final interviews and the hiring decision will be made by the Client. Training in the proper use of social media for commercial purposes will be provided to the one hired.

To apply for this position, please send your resume via email to info@ionadas.com with the Subject Line “Social Media Specialist, August 2009”. No calls please.

The job description is as follows:

Social Media Specialist

Do you tweet and use Facebook all day, everyday? Is building social community so influential to your life that you just can’t stop? Do you understand why blogging and feeds are important? This job seeks a highly a motivated individual with experience and fanatical passion for blogging, micro-blogging and community participation as well as leadership.

The Social Media Specialist is focused on implementing, managing and expanding the Client’s Social Media Strategy and advocating Client’s Products to external communities. He or she will identify influential opportunities and engage regularly with the Client’s audiences online. This person will work with the Client’s Marketing Assistant to ensure that all Web 2.0 communications match the Client’s established tone, philosophy and strategy. He or she will monitor discussions across a number of blogs, forums and Web 2.0 sites, engaging as the Client’s public representative when appropriate.

Roles and Responsibilities

• Coordinate social media outreach and viral campaigns to promote Client messages that increase awareness and/or drive traffic to the Client’s site.
• Establish and cultivate positive relationships with key/targeted bloggers.
• Develop and manage pages on popular consumer social networking sites as specified in the social media strategy; such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Engage in regular participation within the Client’s customer community, including the review of blogs, forums, wikis and other communities.
• Track and monitor the success of online initiatives (i.e. impressions, reach, influence and other metrics) and provide regular reports to the Client’s marketing team.
• Educate staff on the implementation and use of new technologies.
• Promote and evangelize social media activities internally.
• Serve as the eyes and ears of the Client’s brand as if his or her own reputation depended upon it.

Skills and Qualifications

• Strong familiarity and efficiency with Twitter, Facebook, and other such social media outlets.
• Upper classman or graduate. Business, communications, or liberal arts majors/degrees preferred.
• At least twenty-one years of age.
• Knowledge of/experience in the distilled spirits industry is desired.
• Fluency in both English and Spanish is a plus.
• Flexible communication skills. Strong editorial writer.
• Able to present needs and plans internally and has a distinct, personable voice for external engagement.
• Eagerness to exceed objectives and take on more responsibility than may be issued.
• Outstanding organizational skills and the ability to handle multiple projects simultaneously while meeting tight deadlines.
• Proven ability to manage negative situations toward positive outcomes.
• Willingness to experiment and ability to deal with uncertainty.
• Professional attitude and demeanor.

Ten Don’t's for your Small Business Website

Any small business creating a website needs to keep a number of things in mind. While each particular situation will require specific additions, this list is a great place to start.

1. Don’t forget to set goals for your website and define metrics for success.
If you don’t know what success for your website looks like, how will you know when you get there? Prior to building the site, you need to decide what you want the website to accomplish, and define your metrics for success or failure. This paints the picture of the destination, so that you have a reasonable chance of getting there.

2. Don’t build the entire site in Flash.
Designers love Flash because it gives them complete control over the look and feel of the website. Unfortunately, the search engines have a hard time indexing Flash sites. While they’ve gotten much better over the last year or two, I still have yet to see a Flash site ranking for even a moderately competitive keyword.

Flash elements within a page are perfect fine, however. Just don’t make the entire site out of Flash.

3. Don’t pretend that a MySpace page is a website.
If you’re building a website for your band, perhaps a MySpace page makes sense. But don’t pretend that creating a MySpace page (or FaceBook or LinkedIn page) is the same thing as creating a website.

Having a website that runs on its own domain gives a sense of legitimacy that every company should want.

4. Don’t have a redirect in front of the homepage.
I see this one a lot. Someone goes to:

http://www.xyzcorp.com/

…and the site redirects her to:

http://www.xyzcorp.com/homepage2.aspx

…(or some other page).

There are a number of problems with this. First, it’s another chance of confusing the search engines. If Google can’t index a page (or site), you can be darn sure it won’t return it for a search query.

You can use a search engine friendly redirect, but it’s not clear that all linking benefit passes through this.

People will tend to link to the domain of your site, not a page within the site. Make sure you’re receiving the entire link benefit you’ve earned by having the homepage load under the base domain.

In addition, it seems these redirects are often done because the page is in a temporary location. If you later move this page, you then lose the link juice coming into that page directly (or at least part of it if you redirect the old page to the new page).

Ideally, visitors coming into the homepage of your site should just get the domain, not the page designation.

5. Don’t use a splash page.
I’ve been fighting against these since at least 1995. A splash page is a page that comes up when you go to what should be the homepage of the site. It generally is a big graphic or flash animation that someone at the company thought was really cool. The splash page usually redirects to the true homepage after a few seconds, but sometimes you are forced to click on a link to get there.

Splash pages are a distraction and delay the visitor from getting to the content he really wants. And they’re also yet another chance to confuse the search engines.

6. Don’t have the site play music by default.
Many of us find websites with music (or any sound) to be annoying at best. Imagine if your prospective customer is surfing your website while at work, and suddenly the music from your site comes blasting out of her speakers.

Do you think you’re likely to get that order?

If you site must make noise, default to muted and allow the user to choose to turn it on.

7. Don’t put up a site that is just brochureware.
You’re site might be beautiful and have great ad copy, but if it is not transactional, how will you know if it succeeds? For an e-commerce company, this is easy. The sales on your site are the transactions.

For most everyone else, it’s a bit more difficult. The transaction on your site might be contact form. You might go a step further and give a valuable white paper in exchange for contact information. Or, your transaction might be an online demo.

A bricks and mortar store might have a coupon on its website for customers to print out and bring in.

The fact is that you need some sort of transaction on the site that can be measured. Ideally, you should also be able to ascribe some value to it, so that you can track the ROI of your marketing efforts.

8. Don’t neglect to install an analytics system.
If you don’t know what’s going on with your website, you can’t know what is succeeding and what is failing. At the very least, you should set up Google Analytics on your website. While it’s somewhat limited, it’s also free.

Alternatively, you could install one of the entry level analytics systems such as HitsLink. It’s quite a bit more powerful than Google Analytics, and starts around $50/month.

9. Don’t forget to proof read the copy.
Few things look more unprofessional than misspelled words and grammatical errors. Be sure to read through your copy for mistakes. Better yet, have someone who hasn’t read the copy before do so.

10. Don’t just assume people will come to the site.
Once your site is live, you need to actively drive visitors to it. Have a plan (with designated and preferably detailed budget) for generating interest in your website, both online and offline.

If you follow this advice, you’ve greatly increased the chance of your small business’s website succeeding.

And I’ll let you in on a secret: these rules apply to the websites of large companies as well.

Google Cracking Down on Map Spam

For some time now, Google Maps has been rife with spam for locksmith-related keywords. Lead aggregators, whether companies or individuals, submit Local Business Listings for geographies all over the country. They often use fraudulent methods to push their own listings to the top of the Google Map results, and many times create multiple listings for the same aggregator within the same geography.

If fortunate, the people that call these services have a licensed, capable locksmith show up to help them.

If not so fortunate, the “locksmith” that shows up might be neither licensed nor capable. There are countless stories of the quoted cost suddenly going up once the person arrives. There are also reports of rip-offs and thefts.

Certainly, all industries have their share of scam artists. But for locksmith-related keywords, it’s often been difficult to find one legitimate practitioner within the Google 10-pack.

That has now finally started to change.

The blog “Understanding Google Maps & Local Search” reports that Google is beginning to crack down on Google Map spam, especially within the locksmith industry.

This is good news, although indications are that Google still has more work to do. Many spammy listings remain. In some cases, they still entail the bulk of the listings on a particular query.

There are also reports of seemingly innocent parties being caught in the crossfire, simply for having a particular term in their LBL. This is a clumsy approach on Google’s part, and I expect that it will be adjusted over time.

It should serve as a reminder, however, that with most things SEO:

Pigs get fat. Hogs get slaughtered

If you’re in a competitive industry, you’re going to want/need to push the envelope to get the rankings for your company. But you should realize that the harder you push, the more likely you are to get smacked by Google. You don’t want that.

And don’t forget that there’s a difference between optimization and deception. The latter will tend to bring you unwanted attention.

Lastly, you should never rely on only a single marketing channel. Any marketing channel can disappear with little to no warning, especially one as in continuous state of flux like Google Maps. If Google Maps is your only marketing channel, and Google changes their algorithm in the wrong way for you, you may find your business heading in a bad direction very quickly.

And, last I checked, Washington wasn’t writing bail-out checks for local businesses.

Social Media Case Study: PowerWatch

Please forgive me if some of the details here are a bit fuzzy. This all happened thirteen or fourteen years ago.

In March of 1995, I joined a small computer manufacturer in Austin, Texas called Power Computing Corporation. Power Computing was the first licensee under Apple Computer’s new Mac OS licensing program. We made Mac clones.

My title was “Online Evangelist”. It was something of a catch-all job, with responsibilities for managing the website for the company, as well as for representing the company online. I monitored and engaged in conversations on web forums and Usenet, and was the gatekeeper of several of the public email aliases. It kept me busy, to say the least.

A few months later (don’t remember exactly how many), SDSU student Jeff Keller created PowerWatch, a consumer watchdog website. Either Jeff or someone he knew had had a problem with a purchase from Power Computing, and Jeff was going to make sure the world knew about it.

Anyone who has worked in computer hardware knows that problems with manufacturing happen. Sometimes you build a lemon. Sometimes the computer doesn’t get delivered on time. Or sometimes something is missing from the package. It happens to the best of companies. What’s important is how you react and how you fix the problem.

So, when PowerWatch came online, we could have tried to ignore the problem. We could have obfuscated. We could have done any number of things to try and cover the situation up.

Instead, Power Computing director of marketing Mike Rosenfelt and I decided to engage with PowerWatch.

I began to live on PowerWatch, visiting it three or four times a day. I answered pre- and post-sale questions. When I didn’t know the answer, I went and found out.

When people had a problem with their computer and/or order, I did everything I could to fix it. I received incredible backing and support from Rosenfelt and the executive team to get done what needed to be done. And it certainly help that Power Computing’s tech support and customer service teams had a great attitude about making things right for the customer. Many times, the fastest way to get something fixed was to go through PowerWatch.

Over time, we developed a huge base of fans that were willing to give us the benefit of the doubt when something went wrong. And we gained immeasurable data on what customers wanted from our computers.

This is what people today call social media marketing. Frankly, the idea isn’t that new, although the tools have gotten much better, and the percentage of the population online has certainly grown.

Social media marketing is about having a customer service mindset, and listening to your customers and prospects. It’s about engaging with customers when the the inevitable problems arise.

Then take what you learn and make your company better. That’s all there really is to it.