Pinterest | 5 Ways to Turn Pins into Social Media Traffic and Boost SEO

Pinterest is the growing fade among business owners – but few know exactly WHY they are using Pinterest (except that everyone else is using it!) and how it can help grow your business.

Lets take a step back and examine 5 ways your pins can bring you social media traffic and boost your SEO efforts.

Enjoy the video and tell us what you think….remember, if you have a question or would like for us to make a video to help you navigate the social media jungle – email us at info [at] magicmarketingusa dot com!

Dont forget to PIN us – http://pinterest.com/magicmarketing/

Facebook Faux Pas: 5 Ways to Turn LIKES into DISLIKES

In every Facebook fan page campaign; there are three phases that go together like the 3 Musketeers – the group of sword fighting men, not the candy bar.  Those three phases are planning, design, and execution.  Even in the most carefully planned and designed Facebook fan page, the execution is the place where most people fall flat in gaining and maintaining an audience of customers.  In fact, when executed incorrectly, a Facebook fan page can have your nearest and dearest friends avoiding you in the supermarket!

Most people don’t make these mistakes on purpose (although there are a FEW that I have kindly noted the mistake and then UN-LIKED when they persisted).  These are usually the people who see me out at dinner and tell me that their Facebook fans have dropped over the last month.  I shake my head sadly…knowing the answer is probably one of these five mistakes that will turn LIKE into DISLIKE on Facebook:

Tag Lightly – Never Hit Too Hard.  In every Facebook class, we discuss the ways to tag other people and Facebook pages to draw traffic to your own Facebook page.  Sometimes, without understanding the effect, people over-tag certain Facebook pages or people in an effort to get attention (or just because they don’t understand the result!).  Every time you tag someone or a Facebook fan page, it posts your content on their page.  Even with the best of intentions if done too often or in too many places, it is tag-spam (the equivalent of email spam!).

Example:  During a recent social media party, we allowed all of our Facebook fans to post a link to their Facebook fan page to get the community connected.  We asked in return that the posters go to each other’s Facebook fan pages, LIKE their page (to build fans), and leave a hello from the visitor.  One person took this to heart!  She went to all 87 pages that participated and tagged our Facebook fan page as the referrer.  Her posts showed up 87 times on our Facebook fan page!  We had to delete them as they went  down for pages and pages of 87 link-backs from the tags!

Our next post will discuss Facebook Faux Pas #2:  Tresspass Posting!

Facebook Vanity URL: Claim Your Name

Ready to get rid of your prision number for your Facebook fan page?

Here are the criteria:

• You have to own the facebook fan page (or be admin of the facebook fan page!)
• You have to have atleast 25 fans or likes.
• You can only set your vanity URL once!  SO make sure it is SEO and people friendly!

Now…check out this Facebook Vanity URL:  Claim Your Name video!

Video Voice: Facebook Badges for Websites and Blogs

Many people ask about how to get a facebook badge on their blog or website.

Facebook Badges for Websites and Blogs will walk you through the process of getting the code you need for your website or blog.

If you have any questions about how to maximize your social media efforts, please email us at questions (at) magicmarketingusa (dot) com.

Customer Service Stabbed Marketing in the Office with a Knife

Do you have a clue what is killing your marketing efforts?  Whether you are a small business or large corporation, it is likely at least one of these customer service issues is planning the death of your marketing dollars!

Recently, I had occasion to travel across several states on business and pleasure.  Traveling provides a unique opportunity to view the world of customer service from the good, the bad, and the ugly.  While noting that the holiday season brings out the worse in both customers and customer service, it was particularly apparent that most companies do not take enough time to think through the rationale of integrating customer service into the marketing department instead, as is traditional in most case, into the sales department.
 
As an even bigger offense, if for some unfathomable reason, customer service is a department unto themselves because the divide between performance and evaluation increases at alarming rates.  Without doubt, more marketing dollars are needlessly wasted each year on ineffective customer service than any other marketing endeavor.  Clearly, the most preventable cases the murder of marketing dollars is easily fixed by addressing these five customer service issues:

Man-Handling:  Many times, service representatives react with overzealous pressure on customers.  Upon asking to be left alone (clearly) to browse for shoes, I was continually followed and addressed by a sales person.  When I requested, pointedly, that the sales lady go away, she did only to be replaced by another salesperson from the same charm school.  As a result, my shopping experience was ruined and I left the store.

Cow-Towing:  For some service reps, good customer service is equated to bowing and scraping before the buyers.  The buyer feels horrible that the company or the service individual is fawning over them like an entourage following the diva of the week around the store.  With a strange mixture of discomfort and annoyance, the customer exits the store as quickly as possible.

Passive-Aggressive:  Interestingly enough, in the past few weeks, I have encountered this behavior in several professional settings. When asking for a call number in the library, the Librarian literally snatched the paper from my hand to go get the book from me with a curt, “that is my job!”  As I stood in shock staring at her back, it seemed an odd sense of customer service that resounded of policy filtration.  In another case, I was seriously asked, “What do you want?”  Looking around a large, brand name bookstore, I humorously ordered, “a double cheeseburger with fries and a chocolate shake.”  In both instances, marketing dollars are wasted as customer service is isolated from the rest of the company structure.  NOTE TO CUSTOMER SERVICE WORLD:  The customer does not care if YOU are having a bad day, so that excuse does not fly for me.

Know-Nothing:  In contrast, customer service employees that know nothing about the product or services offered by a company are the worst waste of marketing money.  When customers fill the store seeking details about services or directions to products, a customer service representative should at least have general knowledge.  If the product or service base is so large that no one could have a strong working knowledge, the product specialist should be assigned to aid the customer.  I watched as a bookstore employee advised a beginning PhotoShop7 (yes, I know….groan from the audience….PhotoShop7!) to buy the PhotoShopCS3 Bible because it was about the same thing.  Needless to say, I stepped in to advise her to look online for a copy for a Dummies or 24-Hour book appropriate to her version of Photoshop.  “What’s the difference?” she asked me politely.  “About $75, years of needed Photoshop experience, and the frustration of trying to follow a book that does not represent your software,” I replied with encouragement.

Techno-Interruptus:  Shopping for a new cell phone urged me to add one more criminal act of marketing murder to the sphere of customer service.  Although I do admit that technology is a wonderful thing for business, it might well be the worst thing ever created for customer service.  Encountering service reps texting or talking about a party on their cell gives the worst impression of a company and completely sends me toward the door.  If that customer service rep adds a deep resounding huff of “you are bother me” to the mix, then I might ban the store from coast to coast from my shopping experience.

In most cases, customer service initiatives can enrich the return on investment for every marketing dollar spent by a company.  Marketing expenditures can lead to increased sales and heightened positive brand awareness with the help of informed customer service force as part of the marketing team.

SEO: Seeking Exposures and Opportunities for Websites

Perhaps the most misunderstood value of social media is in its SEO functions.  While there are tons of social media tools and sharing services on the web, the real tie-in between social media and SEO (search engine optimization) escapes many social media converts.  As important as it is to interact with social media in ways that interest your niche market audience, it is vital to consider SEO issues at every step to get the most from your investment of time and money.

The goal of SEO is bringing valid traffic to your website or blog through search engine listings.  If that gives you a “well…DUH” moment, realize that there are validating factors in that goal.  For example, traffic needs to be niche enough to convert into viable leads or sales.  So, let’s examine the topic of SEO just for a moment.  There are a few primary tools of SEO including:

• SEO:  Anyone who follows my blog and articles knows that strong organic SEO is the basis of any effort.  By optimizing a website with good copy and valid keyword density in all the important places of a website, solid white hat search engine optimization is like a sturdy foundation to build a house.  Organic SEO, although not a fast process, will save you time and money in the long run.
• Internet marketing:  This category is often thought of as the most confusing form of SEO because it is paid advertising AND includes Google AdWords.  It is a rarity, in all honesty, that Google makes anything easy.  AdWords is not an exception.  With the opportunity to expend large sums of money in a short amount of time without any viable return on investment, AdWords is not for the faint of heart without sound leadership.  As I’ve said elsewhere, one of my favorite guides for navigating the rough waters of Google AdWords is AdWords University.  With a clear methodology and concise terminology, it is easy to follow and create successful AdWords campaigns. 
• Linking:   Linking is the easiest SEO concept to increase website placement.   In short, every website and blog listed in Google has a page ranking that ranges anywhere from 1 to 10.  Most websites and blogs are listed very low in PageRank.  After all, think about it…there are millions of website and blogs listed in Google.  With several factors from the age of the site to content to SEO, the majority of the sites are not ranked well.  By linking with highly ranked sites with common interests (this is vital!), websites and blogs can increase viable traffic through exposure and pull up search engine ranking through each spider crawl.
• Social Media:  Whether tweeting on Twitter or friending on Facebook, social media is the must participate place for businesses seeking credible traffic and branding recognition.  Many would say that social media does not help SEO.  In truth, social media can provide tons of inbound, niche market traffic to a website or blog.  Strong traffic leads to higher page ranking and more exposure.  Remember our goal for SEO of gaining traffic and increasing conversions?  This is the way! 
• Analytics: Analytics is the least understood and possibly the most important tool in the online marketing toolbox. Here’s why. Let’s say you are completely focused on SEO, social media, you have a high-ROI AdWords campaign churning AND you are putting out lots of content on the web pointing to your product or service (for some of you niche bloggers out there, let’s say it’s your pure experienced opinion on your topic). How can you understand your traffic and predict what will create more traffic, how to focus that traffic more on people you want in your ideal captive audience, and generally create a more profitable website and business from what you do online? Google Analytics is a very low-cost, yet scalable solution that allows most businesses to get their feet wet and grow intelligently with the guidance of sound Analytics Concepts.

Admittedly, these are not all of the factors or considerations connected with good SEO practices; however, these are undisputably the touchstones for creating a formidable search engine optimized website or blog.  While most of these techniques are used by professional SEO experts, like Mark Brimm at 123interface.com, a clear understanding of both the methodology and the meaning of measurement will certainly make hiring a qualified expert or embarking on the task yourself much easier a pill to swallow.

AdWords University: Order Out of AdWords Chaos

For many business owners, the very words “internet marketing” invokes enough fears to keep them from initiating any type of online advertising.  What scares most people away from driving traffic to their website using Google AdWords is twofold. 

First, it seems really difficult to understand the process of creating good AdWords campaigns.  With steps and moving parts that require decisions about keywords, many business owners find it confusing to navigate the mine field of Google AdWords without the assistance of a seasoned SEM veteran. 

The second issue is the very real concern about losing money with a poorly planned AdWords campaign.  Needing guidance in understanding the best choices and measurements for a Google AdWords campaign, most people dip a toe into the deep waters of AdWords only to find the price tag is too high for poor conversion.

In reality, these are very valid considerations for internet marketing tools like Google AdWords.  That is why AdWords University is one AdWords guide that is stellar in its sheer ease of understanding and topic depth.  In plain English that makes the reader feel empowered with comprehension instead of burdened with technical talk, AdWords University brings Google AdWords to the masses with explanations defining the concepts of internet marketing, exploring methodologies for finding the best keywords, and  creating a successful AdWords campaign.

Even further, AdWords University takes the additional steps of covering advanced techniques to manage AdWords campaigns to optimize the effectiveness of combined discussions on generating multiple AdWords campaigns for A/B testing purposes.

The value of AdWords University lies in the clear presentation of proven methods in creating an AdWords campaigns that manifest revenue producing traffic.