James

Ball

Digital Marketing Director

I wanted to share this infographic with you today because I truly feel that this information is extremely important to anyone looking for work in today’s job market. The job hunting landscape has changed drastically over the past few years and it blows my mind to see how many job seekers are ignorant to these changes. While the time-tested-and-true methods (putting in those resumes, filling out those applications, networking, and sitting for interviews) are still effective and are a necessary evil, employers are placing more and more emphasis on what applicants look like online.

In the early days of social media we referred to an individual’s online presence as “social proof”. The more of it you had the better. How many places online could someone be found, and how were these profiles and channels managed and maintained? This is something that many early adopters saw as an important career building component. It strikes me as odd that with such mass adoption and acceptance of social channels these days that anyone could neglect managing their digital footprint pro-actively, but they do.

Today large employers, recruiters, and even smaller companies have gotten really good at mining the digital world to gather information about applicants and potential employees. Often, if you don’t stack up, you won’t ever have the opportunity to apply for a job and you won’t be asked to sit for an interview. This infographic provides some sound insight and guidance for those in the job market who desire to gain a much needed advantage in their pursuit of employment.

Much of my readership here is made up of people from within the social media, PR, and marketing world. Many of you are either already employed in this space full time, working as a freelancer, or aspire to obtain employment in this industry. The information and insight in the infographic below certainly applies to all of us…but perhaps more importantly, it applies to those seeking any type of employment  who do not already understand how some of this works. Please share this post liberally within your sphere of influence to those that fall within that group. They will thank you for it!

Quite a while back I devised a 5 year plan for myself that would ultimately put me in a very good place to be able to stand on my own merits and credibility if researched. A huge component of that plan was my own digital presence. I needed an established personal “brand” and I set out to build it. I can honestly tell you that without things like my blog here, my LinkedIn profile, and my social media profiles I would not be where I am today. I say this simply to establish that I really, really believe in this topic today! Enjoy the infographic, I certainly hope you find some value in it.

The excellent Infographic below from the fine folks over at Pixaal.com goes a long way towards explaining this overused and misunderstood term. It would be totally appropriate, and yet totally inappropriate at the same time to simply state that Digital Marketing is a catch-all phrase that covers any type of marketing efforts that exist solely in digital form.

Marketing in any realm makes the best use of the tools, tactics, and channels to effectively appeal to and compel a target audience. This ALWAYS requires a working knowledge of all the mediums and channels used and a strategy designed to meet a goal or objective. Slapping a banner ad on a busy website or buying a few Google Adwords does not a digital marketer make. In all of marketing, it has been my observation that effective digital marketing requires the most intellect, experience, and intuition in order to produce satisfactory results.

Traditional marketing such as television, radio, and print ads are typically some type of broadcast message that is ”pushed” out to a broad audience.  These do not rely on separate advertising and marketing mediums in order to be effective. The marketing mediums are stand-alone pieces that either work or they do not…end of story. Digital marketing is quite the opposite, what’s more, the digital mediums that we utilize today sometimes have an eternal lifespan. Once it’s on the web, it’s always on the web. When you fudge a billboard it comes down in a month or two; launch a lousy infographic and push it out on busy social networks…it’s never going away. Just something else to consider.

Effective digital marketing requires careful integration of many tools, tactics, and channels that will shore-up and support one another. For example, just creating content on your blog alone won’t get you very far down the road. The content also needs to be optimized (SEO) and shared across social networks in order to attract those that will read and value your insights and advice. Please click around to some of the links included in this post and look over the infographic. It is my hope that you learn a little more about what is required in order to embrace and enjoy success from your digital marketing efforts!

Enjoy the digital marketing infographic. Click on the image for a larger view.

Below I have embedded some of today’s top Social Media and Marketing news from the leaders who are shaping this space. Browse these stories and links to stay informed!

Many will find the statistics highlighted in the following video from Erik Qualman frightening. Erik puts these out every year, and SURPRISE…the numbers just-keep-on-growing! If you are not currently embracing and attempting to leverage all that the Internet and social media can do to help you grow your business…you’re more than a little behind at this point.

Society has chosen the Internet and social media as the source for information that they will utilize to help them make decisions about the products and services that they purchase. If you have decided not to participate in this societal shift (whether based on fear or ignorance), you are doing yourself a great disservice. It’s not too late for anyone. Simply making the decision to dive in and learn more is an excellent first step!

**Below the video I’ve included an excellent Infographic showing how much time and money small businesses are spending on social media. These are your competitors and your peers.

Consider these key statistical takeaways from the video:

1. 90% of people trust online recommendations from people they know
2. 93% of marketers use social media for business
3. New Yorkers received tweets about an east coast earthquake 30 seconds before they felt it
4. 53% of people on Twitter recommend products in their Tweets
5. More members join LinkedIn per day than the entire enrollment of all the IVY League Schools

You’ll need to watch the video a few times in order to absorb all the statistics. I hope that the video and Infographic provide some insight and encouragement for you today. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you feel that you’d like some help getting all of this in order for your business. Feel free to read what others have to say about my capabilities, services, and successes. Enjoy the video!

This Infographic is based on a survey of almost 500 small businesses and was conducted between Sept. and Oct. of this year. Over 90% of these companies have 100 employees or less.

Today, as Apple rolls out their IOS6 update to millions…and millions, and millions of iPhone and iPad owners worldwide, your business may become invisible to as many millions in the blink of an eye. In what can only be explained as an ultimate one fingered salute to Google, Apple launches a new map application in IOS6, a map application that replaces the longstanding king of map apps in the opinion of many…goodbye Google Maps. After all we’ve done to master getting our business listed and optimized to show up on THAT uber-convoluted map app – the audacity! One could make a case that this is all about them and not about us at all!?

It has been said that the new Apple map feature will launch with even more business listings than Google Maps. This remains to be seen. The important thing to know now, like, right now, is how to go about making sure that your business shows up in the new Apple map application to the millions of users upgrading their devices over the coming days.

Much like Apple’s SIRI, the new map application will pull from several third party services like Yelp, Localeze, and Acxiom. An Apple copyright page is very telling and would substantiate more than rumor status in my opinion.

My dear readers, today is the day that you MUST familiarize yourself with Yelp and the newly bestowed power that it now holds for local businesses. Even if you’ve never considered getting involved with review sites, for whatever reason, you now ignore them at your own peril.

Work through these easy steps before the sun sets today. I promise you’ll be glad you did:

• List your business on Yelp. Be thorough as you build your business listing. We already know from IOS5 and SIRI that your listing on Yelp will have a huge impact on how and where your business shows up in search using SIRI, and after today, the IOS6 Map application.
• Take some time to learn more about how the Yelp review process works and how to appropriately respond to reviews.
• Check in with Localeze and Acxiom to insure that your business is listed and that all information is correct. It is believed that these local listing providers will provide the basic information (business name, address, and phone number) to the Apple map application.

Got all that handled? Here’s your homework for tomorrow:

• Let EVERYONE know that you are on Yelp and ask them all to give you a review. Past customers, current clients, the guy standing at the counter right now…ALL of them, and often. Go ahead and ask SIRI for a restaurant (or whatever) in your local area. Note how the listing with the most Yelp reviews shows up on top? That’s the way this game will be played. Get busy, nobody is going to help you with this. Print your Yelp URL on a card, offer a discount, do whatever it takes to be number one.

That’s all I wanted to point out today, and it’s enough. Today is the big day for Apple IOS6, and if you choose, it could be a big day for you and your business as well.

Special thanks to the folks over at SearchEngineLand, your many posts on the topic were instrumental in my research today. Add em’ to your daily read people!

Does your Facebook page feel like an echo chamber? Have you ever wondered why your business page doesn’t seem to show up in people’s newsfeed…even if they’ve “Liked” your page? This Infographic from the folks at Copypress might just help you to understand why.

Facebook uses an algorithm called EdgeRank to govern what is displayed in the newsfeed. The higher your EdgeRank, the more visible your posts are in the newsfeeds of those who are following your page’s updates. Much has been written about the EdgeRank Algorithm , and I suggest that you take the time to investigate further. I hope that the Infographic gives you a better general idea about Facebook’s EdgeRank…I thought it’d be a great place to start!

Click on the image to view it in full size.

It wouldn’t be wrong to call this social media infographic minimalist…except that it’s just too darn pretty to be lumped into that category in my opinion. The talented folks over at Ultralinx published this a few days ago and I just can’t stop looking at it! I’m a sucker for clever font work, especially if an entire piece of artwork can stand on typography alone.

As for the information in the infographic, it’s as solid as the finished piece. This is definitely one to print out and hang near your desk, it’ll be a great conversation starter. Stare at it long enough and perhaps it’ll all just sink in!

Click on the image to view it in full size.

Last Wednesday a new report entitled “2012 State of Digital Marketing” was published by the fine folks over at Webmarketing 123. They were wise to also release an accompanying infographic which I’ve posted at the end of this post. I wanted to talk briefly about a couple of the takeaway points from the report/infographic that immediately stood out to me. It should be understood that I am an individual who deals primarily with small businesses that fall under the B2C (Business to Consumer) label…both as a private consultant and as an owner of TrustWorkz® .

First, to answer the question in the title: Yes, if you are not seeing a tangible and measurable impact of your spend and efforts in Social Media and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it’s definitely your fault. We can’t very well blame the whole of the internet or the poor response of our potential customers now, can we? If you’re not pro-actively involved with creating and optimizing content on your website or participating in social media, please refer to the rest of my blog posts, this one isn’t for you.

SEO Measurement

What I’ve found is that most small businesses have little to no insight about what or how to measure the effectiveness of their SEO efforts. The Webmarketing 123 findings support this in a pretty big way. You may actually be a skilled marketer and have SEO fairly well figured out. This fact alone sets you ahead of most of your competitors…especially if you are a hyper-local business.  How are you adjusting and refining your efforts as you go forward though? What metrics are you looking for and what does your idea of success look like?

“The most common measures of SEO performance are the volume of traffic, organic traffic, and the number of keywords appearing on page 1, which give no insight into financial impact.” – Webmarketing 123’s 2012 State of Digital Marketing Report (free report download link)

Financial impact, right; Actions that can be directly attributed to your SEO and social media efforts where your web presence drives MORE feet through the door, MORE phone calls, MORE dollars in your pocket. It’s a no-brainer metric, but you’d be shocked at how many people don’t even ask each and every new customer or client “how did you find us?” I know that what we all want to hear are MORE people saying that they found us and our businesses via the Internet. The one thing I know we can all agree on is that our own marketing efforts on the web are FAR more cost effective that other methods of lead generation.

If you’ve read through this far, I’m going to assume that you are at least using Google Analytics or some other system or tool to measure traffic to your site, keywords used, etc. If not, go now and get Google Analytics set up. Most people stop there. Not that they don’t LOOK at the reports every hour of every day…it’s just that most never really take the time to understand how to use the tools to mine meaningful data. The data is what tells you where you’re winning and where you need work. I suggest looking into Google’s own “Google Analytics IQ Lessons” to help you more fully grasp what this powerful analytics tool can help you to accomplish.

I know I’m at risk of seeming like a real Google fan boy already, but few companies have gone to such great lengths to help people to really understand and benefit from SEO. Check this 32 page Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide to see what I mean…along with all of the other links in today’s post.

Another invaluable tool is Google’s Webmaster Tools…this one touts, “Improve your site’s visibility in Google search results.” How can you NOT give it a whirl? As with most Google products, there is also a great Google Webmaster Tools tutorial and help section.

With just these two Google tools and a better understanding of both, I can assure you that you will develop better intuition and real skills that can help you perform better in search results. What’s more is that I can almost guarantee that your competitors are NOT digging as deeply in order to learn this stuff!

Social Media, Still a Mystery

Social Media has been around for quite a while now. It’s quite natural that the levels of engagement would continue to be on the rise. This latest report shows that up to 70% of the companies surveyed considered themselves moderately or highly engaged with social media. I find however, that most of our clients at TrustWorkz® and my own personal clients are only engaged with social media for social media’s sake.

What I’m trying to emphasize is that businesses do not understand the real benefit from having an engaging social media presence. It is extremely difficult for a business to leverage a marketing channel if its activity on that channel is not directly tied to some business objective. Furthermore, and as mentioned above while on the topic of SEO, business do not understand what key performance indicators to be watching for and measuring.

I want to tie together two things from the report to make a point here.

1. The percentage of marketers/companies SPENDING money on social media seems to correlate pretty closely to those who are generating leads and MAKING money from social media.
2. There is a higher level of SEO and Social Media satisfaction when companies work with agencies.

I could be tempted by this to believe that the advertising and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) opportunities on social channels truly yield results…unless I knew better. Let me just be brief and say that because professional marketers for larger companies and agencies ARE involved here…I attribute these figures to the fact that refined marketing practices and disciplines are at play here.

“Marketers working with an agency (as opposed to in-house) are twice as likely to be highly satisfied with SEO and Social Media, and significantly more likely to be highly satisfied with PPC.” – Webmarketing 123’s 2012 State of Digital Marketing Report (free report download link)

What does this mean for smaller businesses? It means that you’re going to have to become more pro-active in this arena as well. How are you using social media to drive traffic and grow our businesses? Can you answer this question with confidence? Do you know how to use social media channels like Facebook and Twitter to drive relevant and valuable traffic to your site? More importantly, where exactly are you driving traffic and how does this play into an intentional marketing and sales schematic? Filling the top of your sales funnel and filtering leads through a pipeline and following up…you have clarity here? My guess is that you probably don’t.

Amateur marketers…and that’s what most small business owners are, don’t have a good understanding about things like highly optimized landing pages and calls to action. What I see from most small businesses in their social media bios and the links that they promote on social media channels are weak and without intention.

We tend to see and use social channels as just another place to promote ourselves as better than the other guy. “Look at me…I’m better than them and you should buy my crap.” If this sounds like you, then surely you’ve wondered why you’re so easy to ignore in your social media efforts.

Intentional and pro-active are the key words here. You can’t be either without the best possible understanding of how to leverage these important touch points to benefit your bottom line. Most of us don’t have internal marketing departments or the means to hire ourselves an agency to help us navigate this landscape.

The difference between the guy on the cover of Forbes magazine and the guy on the cover on Bankruptcy magazine is likely only a few paramount decisions. For you, the small business owner, your win will come to be looked upon as the day you made the decision to become a more skilled and pro-active marketer for your business. It’s going to take time, and now is a good time to start. I’ll leave you today with this ancient Chinese proverb:

“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is today”

Enjoy the infographic…and do go download the full 2012 State of Digital Marketing Report. I hope you find some inspiration and encouragement there.

If I can ever help you out, don’t hesitate to contact me. I’m here to help you out of a jam.

This internet radio interview for The Better You Project aired yesterday. This is perhaps the most attention that anyone has ever paid to me in my professional career where the motives were completely altruistic. I can honestly say that it was a huge honor to have been chosen to speak about my story to their audience. I walked away feeling like I had helped to create something that could truly help to inspire and encourage others.

The main focus of The Better You Project is to tell the story behind entrepreneurs who have stepped away from the ordinary in order to follow their passions. The hosts, Eric Holtzclaw and Susan McMullen were an absolute pleasure to work with during the taping. They have carefully structured the time and questions to get the most out of the interviewee. Each interview on The Better You Project leaves the listener with some very candid and practical advice for those just stepping out or who may be considering taking a leap into the world of entrepreneurship.

Like the title says…this thing is an hour long. I hope that you can set aside enough time to listen to it in its entirety. I’ll certainly understand if you have to come back later. I’ve never been less than candid with my clients and my colleagues…and this interview is no exception. No holds barred, no punches pulled…I just tell it like it is. I hope that you find something in the listening that you can take away with you to help you on your own journey!

*No offense to my gracious hosts…but you’ll need to scroll ahead to the 9:55 mark to get to the “me” part!