It’s easy, I fantasized: “Spend a buck, win a gazillion dollars.”

Lots of small business owners view Google rankings in much the same way: “Pay someone to optimize my Web site, watch the rankings soar.” Or even better, “Slap up a Facebook page and watch the new orders pour in.”

This kind of stuff  is called “magical thinking.”

I just saw a pretty good reality check, from Carl Weiss in yesterday’s SiteProNews:

“While even the smallest of businesses can generate page 1 results on Google today, it is a far more complicated affair. And in the wired world, complicated translates into time and money. Whereas back in 2000, it was relatively simple to have an SEO expert tune up your homepage, in the modern world of Internet marketing, there are 31 points of light that every search engine spider alights on today, including such things as blogs, social networks, backlinks, and video. If your web presence is lacking in any of these, or you aren’t adding compelling content to them on at least a weekly basis, then your chances of achieving a page 1 result are slim at best…

“Not only are there far more stops on the technology train in 2012 then there were in 2000, but a number of the stops have siderails. Consider social networking. If you are serious about making the grade online, then being on Facebook (the second most visited destination online after Google) isn’t enough. You also need to Tweet. Not to mention the fact that back in November of 2011 Google launched its own social network Google+. So if you are looking to make the grade with Google, it’s probably a good idea to add this to your marketing mix as well.”

Ah, yes. Fantasies are fun….. I wonder how much I’ll win in this week’s lottery. As for the rest of it, I’d better get back to work.

To read the rest of the SiteProNews article, click here.

Image Credit: Pat’s Papers

As small business owners, we want magic wands, too.  “Just wave it and customers will find you and flock to your store, office, or Website and buy, buy, buy.”

Today’s marketing “magic wands” often involve social media and search engine optimization.  “Just put up a Facebook page. Just use certain keywords in your Website text. Or just buy “top-rated” links.” Or more likely, “Just pay us to do it, and you’ll have to beat the customers away.”

Uh, no.

Like most of our other instant-success fantasies, social media success involves many tasks. It takes lots of planning, time, and hard work.

SEO success is also complex and requires hard work on many fronts. Take a look at the chart above, created by Marketing Sherpa. It’s based on the experiences of more than 1,500 search marketers.

Remember this chart the next time someone promises you that their magic wand is all you need.

When ad agencies decide on the ways to publicize their own companies, a full 87% choose not to advertise on Facebook.  Agency ads appear on even a smaller percentage of the other major B2B social media sites–LinkedIn and Twitter.

Here’s the chart showing the percentages:

“Overall,” eMarketer concluded, ” most companies prefer to focus on marketing on social networks, rather than spending money to advertise.”

To read the entire article, click here.

Yet Steve Jobs has always been a larger-than-life inspiration. He also has influenced my professional life in ways I hadn’t realized.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw a Mac, with its amazing graphical user interface–allowing users to click on images instead of having to refer to a complicated cheat sheet of text commands, to do anything. It  truly was a transcendent experience.

Since then, every art director I’ve ever worked with has used a Mac. Every Web or print project I’ve ever produced has been uploaded to a printing company or Webmaster via a Mac. Yet until yesterday, for example, I hadn’t known that it was Steve’s college calligraphy class that influenced his decision to offer a variety of  fonts in Apple computers–a revolutionary concept at the time.

Thank you, Steve, for creating so much that has informed and improved all of our lives–in ways that some of us still may not realize.

We believe that after creating a professional, user-friendly Web site, blogging should be the next layer in the foundation of any small business marketing plan–and specifically, of any social media plan. Valuable blog posts can pay dividends many times over.

For some reason, blogging intimidates people. It shouldn’t. You’ve got ideas, opinions, suggestions, and experience that can benefit others. Blogging is simply a great way to share that knowledge and introduce yourself to people.

Here’s a quick pointer on blogging from infusionsoft, a marketing automation company.

“The key is to create high-quality content that is relevant to your target audience. Keep it consistent and keep it real. Other than that, just have fun with it!  Some suggestions for blog posts include:

• Industry-specific tips and insights

• Special offers or give-aways
• Analysis of recent news items
• Product tutorials
• Humorous anecdotes
• Interviews with employees, customers or partners”

If you’re set up to blog, think of anything in the short list above, and jot a quick post. If you’re not set up, check out WordPress (the format we use) or the also popular blogspot.

Take advantage of one of the best–and free–ways to connect with customers.

Yet a new report from Buddy Media shows that people relate to the word with below-average engagement in social media.

According to the report, written up in MarketingVOX, “[t]he keyword ‘dollars off’ in a retail offer-related Facebook post provides the highest user engagement– 55% higher than average — out of 10 popular choices, according to a September 2011 report from Buddy Media. And ubiquitous ‘coupon’ ? It had an engagement 39% above average.

“On the other end of the spectrum, seemingly popular keywords, such as ‘sale’,  ‘save,’ ‘deal,”% off’ and ‘bargain’ have lower-than-average engagement rates –  30% lower in the case of ‘sale.’”

To read highlights of the interesting study on what works in social media, click here.

As you can see once again, the success that marketers had with various social media channels depended on whether they were selling to consumers or to other businesses.

Instead of the, “very or somewhat effective” responses given in the Marketing Sherpa chart, the Hubspot  study measured which channels had resulted in the acquisition of a customer. Once again, blogging scored very high in both the B2B and B2C categories. Facebook was strongest in B2C marketing. And LinkedIn was the best social media channel for those businesses selling to other businesses.

So once again, here’s the takeaway: All your friends may be saying, “You have to be on Facebook.” The truth is: You don’t necessarily have to be on Facebook. You need to be where your customers are.  Check around. Look for names of your customers on all of the channels. Then look to see where your competitors are trying to interact with and attract customers.

That simple and cost-free exercise will tell you how best to spend your time, and possibly, your money, on social media.

For example, if you’re selling to consumers (and provided that your customers are actually using Facebook, and that you can lure visitors with compelling content and/or games, contests, discounts, or coupons), Facebook is probably your best bet.  On the other hand, if you’re selling to businesses, you may want to put your social media resources to use elsewhere–say, on LinkedIn. Take a look at the survey results:Allen T. Sutton, who wrote the blog post describing survey results, noted what he’d expected and a couple or results that surprised him:

“Blogging sits comfortably on top. This does not surprise me since creating content is the most effective SEO tactic , and SEO is a vital part of a good inbound strategy.

“However, two things do surprise me. First, I expected LinkedIn to rank high with B2Bs, but I did not expect it to so clearly beat Facebook. Fewer than 50% of B2B marketers report that their efforts on Facebook were effective. LinkedIn appears to provide the most effective social network for inbound B2B marketers.

“The second thing that surprises me is that YouTube and other video sharing sites are well within the top tier. I have seen great YouTube strategies from a select few marketers, but I did not realize that strong performance was this widespread. I expect even more marketers to start using video sites in the coming years.”

What marketing strategies should work best for you? And especially if you have a limited marketing budget?  We can help you figure it out and start attracting new customers. Contact us.

Upstream, a  global mobile marketing technology company, and research company Luth Research, checked in with smartphone users to see what they responded to in messages sent to their phones. Interestingly, respondents indicated that mobile advertisements “that are tailored to their “tastes and interests” far out-performed other offers based on time, lifestyle or location.

The research polled more than 2,000 American adults and found that feature phone users ranked the appeal of personalized offers at 59%, compared with offers that focused on timing (18%), lifestyle (16%) or location (8%). Smartphone users responded similarly:  60% preferred personalized offers over promotions based on timing (17%), lifestyle (10%) or location (14%).

“‘Comparing the importance of personalization versus location in receiving mobile ads is especially interesting, given the hype around location-based players such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, Facebook Places or even Google+ with its Latitude check-ins,’ said Assaf Baciu, Senior Vice President, Product Management, Upstream. ‘While location remains an important factor in delivering mobile ads, tailoring interactions via mobile to consumers’ tastes and interests’ clearly presents much greater potential for driving higher response and conversion rates.’ “

Much of the advice consisted of encouragement by experts (and I’m paraphrasing),  to “Just  do it,” with tips on how to spread your video around.

In the comments section, “beenyweenies,” a video marketing professional who did not reveal his or her name or company name, objected strongly, and called most of the suggestions “borderline irresponsible.”

Here are some of “beenyweenies’” key points:

“There is already so much bad video on the internet right now that the world doesn’t need another 50,000 self produced, poorly executed videos of some talking head rambling on…Most of the suggestions seem more geared to appealing to one’s DIY sensibilities, desire to spend nothing on marketing, and our inner narcissism (YOU can be the star in your own video!).

“Beenyweenies” continues: “Even most “professionally” produced videos have a high failure rate if the producers don’t have a solid understanding of video marketing principals….

“There was a time when business owners thought they could get away with slapping together a shoddy website using FrontPage, too. These days, you’d be lucky to get a few dozen hits a month with a site like that, and most business owners wouldn’t dream of doing something so damaging to their brand. Video is no different, which is why I say this article is doing a disservice to its readers.

“People judge a company on the quality of their promotional materials. If your marketing is poorly done, most consumers get a bad feeling about you and move on to a competing provider. There are simply too many choices in the marketplace to get so sloppy with your marketing.”

In the end, marketing, like most else in life, comes down to the advice my father gave to my brother and me while we were growing up: “If you’re going to do something, do it right.”

To read the entire article, and all of the posted comments, click here.