December 13,  2012 by Mary Killelea

I am a huge fan of Amy Porterfield, she and I connected on Facebook
awhile back. We both love Facebook Marketing.
I am thrilled to help her promote her new
product that really breaks Facebook Marketing down into easy to follow steps!

Please watch her video!

In order to thrive in growing your business using online
marketing strategies you need a few KEY things:

1. The right tools
2. Traffic
3. Conversions

It’s simple when you know exactly what to do.

Luckily for you, right now there is one resource
you can to leverage to achieve these 3 things.

That resource is……… Facebook!

With close to 1 Billion members on Facebook
there is no question this is the best place online
to get more leads, traffic, and sales.

Are you making the most out of it right now
or letting your competitors take the leads from you?

Seriously you gotta see this video

You’ll learn exactly what you need
to do to create more fans on Facebook and how to
turn them into Super Fans!
Cheers to a prosperous 2012!

December 5, 2011 by Mary Killelea

No matter what type of company you own, Facebook is a fantastic venue to market your business on. Facebook has over 800 million active users and according to http://www.socialbakers.com the average person spends about 55 minutes a day engaged on Facebook. Facebook allows every person to have a free profile but they make it clear that personal pages are for personal use only and they do NOT want you to promote your businesses through your profile. Facebook has created business pages for this purpose, making them equipped with business reporting tools, custom tabs, apps, and other business specific assets.

Why Market on Facebook? What you have to understand about Facebook is for many people, it’s become their virtual world.. that’s where they hang out with friends, family and engage with businesses. People’s expectations of businesses has changed over the past 5 years, now people want to engage with a business and expect for that business to be accessible and transparent thru social media, like Facebook, and Twitter. For this article we are focusing on Facebook.

People buy from companies they know and trust. Facebook provides businesses this ideal setting to extend your brand by creating a Facebook business page and tools to allow you to engage with customers on a one to one basis.

Facebook is a great place for small businesses because it levels the playing field no matter what size your company is you have the same resources to market side by side the big companies. You can find most of the top fortune 500 companies engaging with their fans (customers) on Facebook and take the time to watch and learn from them. Face it if the top companies in the country are utilizing Facebook to build relationships and establish repoire with their exiting and potential customers shouldn’t you as a small business.

Facebook business marketing is free and if you consider each person on average has 130 friends and when a person likes your page, you can market to them thru daily posts and when they like or comment on your posts, those interactions are shared with their friends now your message, brand, services and products have very high chance of being viewed by other liked minded friends who too can become fans and customers of yours.

As you can see the viral marketing effect of Facebook can be enormous but one essential thing to realize when marketing on Facebook, your efforts need to be sincere, your goals needs to be altruistic and your company needs to be transparent. Your marketing strategy should be focused on what solid, beneficial content can you share that will build repoire with your customers and start a dialogue, how can you connect with them in ways that your competition isn’t, what makes your business different. There is a great rule of thumb to follow it’s the 90/10 rule which means 90 percent of the time you are adding value and finding creative ways to connect with fans in an authentic way, 10 percent of the posts should be sales oriented.

One really important thing to recognize is that you want everyone that visits your Facebook business page to “Like” the page. This is achieved in a various ways but one of the most successful ways is to create a reveal tab that they land on by designating this in your settings. This reveal tab will be your first impression so it’s very important to make it a good one. You want to ask them to “Like” your page and offer them some type of incentive, the incentive or payoff is revealed to them once they have clicked the “Like” button. Most people will typically check out a companies business page and in less than 5 seconds decide whether or not they want to click “Like” and give you permission to market to them thru their news feed. “Liking” a business page is the equivalent of a person giving you an endorsement and allowing you to update them with news, information, tips and offerings similar to signing up for a newsletter.

As mentioned above having a business page is free. But when it comes to setting up a custom landing page with a reveal offer there are companies like ours that will design your custom Facebook business reveal tab for you if you are not tech savvy or there are tools out there that you can purchase and some that are even for free that allow you to set up the business custom tab yourself. It’s important to understand that you should optimize your business page with keywords that help identify your products or services as well as your company name so when people do searches for businesses on Facebook either by company name or keywords your company will come up. This can be achieved by thoroughly going through your set up steps and filling out all the information in the about us section and knowing that adding photos of your products and services is beneficial as well as who your page lists as their favorites can be strategic.

One of the best ways to get fans is by posting out as your page on other business pages. This is a powerful marketing strategy you can practice. This is achieved by identifying 5-6 other business pages that you think your potential customers visit, hang out or interact with. When you are on your business page you select “use Facebook as my business page” and then visit their pages see what the conversations are and interact and posts feedback and comments where appropriate. You will be amazed at how many companies will like your page just because they saw you engaging with them and others will visit your page because they saw you posting something interesting and want to learn more about you.

Facebook advertising is another incredible resource that businesses have today, like Google’s pay per click or adwords this is setup very similarly but the advantage that Facebook offers is that you have the ability to market to specific segments of people based on their likes and interests. When each person signs up and builds a profile on Facebook, they fill out a series of questions and over time people add interests and activities to their profiles as a means of enriching their virtual world presence. Facebook so brilliantly tracks all this data giving advertisers a huge advantage allowing them the ability to target VERY specific demographics making an ad campaign a great investment.

As a business owner Facebook can be daunting because there are tactics that are beneficial and tactics to avoid. In writing this article I hope I have shared the importance of getting into the game, and utilizing Facebook to market your business, convinced you it’s an amazing tool that can help grow your business, that there are differences between having a business page and profile page and what the value is in having a person “Like” your page.

Working Web Solutions has been in business for 10 years offering Web Design, SEO and Facebook Business Marketing, our motto is Your Success Is Our Success “Like” our business page on Facebook at www.facebook.com/webdesignandseo and visit us online at www.workingwebsolutions.com to watch a video about Facebook business marketing.

Below is a list of additional resources that I hope you find helpful.

Facebook Business Marketing www.facebook.com/business
Advertising Guidelines: www.facebook.comads_guidelines.php
Guide to Facebook Ads: www.facebook.com/adsmarketing
Advertising Help Center: www.facebook.com/adshelp
Create a Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/pages/create.php
Facebook Page Promotional Guidelines:www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php
Creating a custom Facebook Fan Page http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84bEDBVmdsM&NR=1
Software to create a custom Facebook Fan Page http://www.fanpageengine.com
Software to create a custom Facebook Fan Page http://get10000fans.com/
Wildfire iFrames app (Contests etc.) http://www.wildfire.com

 April 25, 2011 By Mary Killelea

Today I was reading a great article on Mobile SEO from Chris Silver Smith who writes for the the Locals Only column at Search Engine Land. Chris “Silver” Smith is director of optimization strategies for KeyRelevance.

Here are the highlights from his post on .

Optimizing for mobile is fairly simple. In fact, it’s so simple that it’s surprising that more companies are not delivering mobile-friendly versions of their pages.

To optimize for mobile search, try the following:

• Perform content negotiation when a user lands on your site — if their accept-header indicates a preference for a mobile flavor webpage, deliver the mobile version of your page to them.
• Google has a separate bot for crawling/indexing mobile versions of pages. So, you can deliver both a mobile version page up on the very same URL you’re using for the regular, full-blown HTML page, as long as you’re performing the content negotiation check on the backend.
• Google has identified a few different mobile-friendly languages which they support, so you’ll want to use one of them: XHTML Basic 1.1, XHTML MP 1.2, cHTML, or WML 1.3.
• Disclose that you have mobile-friendly pages outright. Googlebot-mobile will eventually discover them, but it could happen quicker if you generate a mobile sitemap and then notify Google through your Webmaster Tools account.
• Let smartphone users choose formats manually, if they wish. Provide a link from the regular page to the mobile version, and vice-versa so users can choose to switch.
• WordPress has some plugins that may handle delivering up mobile-friendly versions of blogs.
• Similar to WordPress and depending on your content management system, or the programming language used to develop your site, there could also be freeware programs, modules or libraries that would make it easiest to get your mobile version set up. Using off-the-shelf code may get you up and running quicker, and save you time.

April 21, 2011 by Mary Killelea

Today I attended the 2011 eMarketing Summit and once again it was a wonderful event filled with useful sessions that highlighted areas in the world of Social Marketing, Search and Mobile Marketing.

The highlight for me for sure was the presentation on The Mobile Marketing Frontier by Aron Ezra, CEO Macroview Labs. It was hard not to be overwhelmed by the numbers and opportunity he presented in the Mobile arena.  Here are some of the interesting stats he provided. 

650,000 Smart phones are activated daily

over 350,000 apps are available in the Apple App Store

there have been over 10 BILLION downloads

mobile searches are up 500% in the last 2 years.

more time is spent by users on their smart phones browsing the web than talking on their phones

Ask yourself if you accidently left your wallet and your mobile phone behind some where like on a bus, which would you be more concerned about retrieving? The majority say their phone!

Another interesting take away from Aron’s presentation was and I am summarizing this is, that just like social media the value or motivation for a company has to be engagement with users not so much sales - sales will come thru user engagement, exposure of your business, and the interation you create. If you are looking to create an app don’t create for the sole purpose of making a buck. Create apps that are free, more peope will sample them and use them as opposed to even selling them for .99 cents.  There are ways to monitize it not at the expense of customers but think out side the box at partnerships or sponsors, while still making it accessible to users for free.

Each company is unique and each purpose and function and desired engagement from their audience is unquie - know your audience, test your apps, listen to feedback and study the anyaltics and if you can afford to test amoungst focus groups do so.

Developing a mobile site  is different from a regular website, KNOW what you’re doing or hire an expert in mobile development, there are compability & design issues that need to be addressed. Users use their desktops differently than they use their mobile phones — don’t just recreate your site in a mobile version. When designing think of of the users reason for looking up your site via thier phone vs. the desktop, understand their reason for engagement, help them understand and appreciate their reason for engagement. If you have a mobile site promote that from your website - share that info with your users to build your relationship with them.  Some of your users depending on your offering or business type might be android users vs. iphone users. This is valuable information keep this in mind when you are designing your mobile site or app. 

Lastly the biggest take away from Aron’s presentation which I don’t think people get yet is  MOBILE MARKETING should be a part of your marketing mix. I still believe as a business you should try and increase your web presence thru SEO and Social Media like facebook and seriously consider mobile marketing as another opportunity to build your brand!

QR stands for Quick ResponseApril 20, 2011 By Mary KilleleaQR Codes are two dimensional barcodes that can be decoded using web enabled mobile device with a camera.

1. Web Enabled Phone with a camera
2. QR Code App Downloaded to Smart Phone
3. Customer takes a picture of the QR Code
4. Phone reads it and either by

a. sending you to a link  to a web page or youtube video
b. it gives you a text message
c. saves as a vcard. 

Drawbacks
There are No standards
Have to download an app
Spotty Wireless connection possibilities.

Pros
If you offer them to your client you are perceived as a  foreword thinking company it’s an added value to your client
likely to become more and more popular

HOW TO CREATE IT:
A service for creating a QR code is called bit.ly-bit.ly  it will not only create a QR code for you, but will also track it. (Note: You have to create an account to track QR codes.)

Here are some questions to ask your clients before you provide a quote: 

1. What are you wanting the code to do when it was scanned?
2. Do you want it to go a your site?
3. Do you want it displayed on your site? If not on your site on what third party will it be placed?
4. Will it send a text, link to a video, link to a landing page? 
5. Do you want it to go to a unique landing page if so  will we be asked to create that and if so what does that encompass?
6. How do you envision your customers utilizing the QR codes?

After you get your client feedback then you can provide an educated estimate for the task. These are fun, new and innovative and soon will be utilized by the masses the sooner you get familiar with them the better it will be for you and your customer!

Check out this video by Don Crowther on ways to utilize QR Codes
 

March 14, 2011 By Mary Killelea

After reading a recent article by Nick Cobb from the Freelance Copywriter it inspired me to write this article. As he says when sites like Facebook and Twitter arrived on the scene not so long ago, they were viewed as a flash in the pants only being utilized by young kids and techno geeks. Social media marketing is now mainstream with fortune 500 companies investing thousands of marketing dollars on social media as part of their marketing mix. It’s undeniable of the potential FB, Twitter and other social media tools can have on your business growth.

Forward-thinking businesses that are utilizing these sites as promotional tools for their products and services see the value. This really is how social media marketing was born. An industry literally created for the purpose of maximizing these tools for your business.

As a result of this realization, the manner in which businesses communicate and interact with their customers has been completely transformed. And if you’re not utilizing FB and other social media tools as part of your business marketing mix you are missing out on a very valuable form of communication and brand building.

By signing up to these sites, you’ll be able to give your business greater exposure online, and post information about your products and services, offer discounts, share industry news, new product info and engage with your customers.

The goal is to post useful and high quality content that provides value for the reader, then more and more people will “follow” you (in Twitter’s case) or become a “friend” (on Facebook), which will help you to build positive, long-term relationships with customers who might not have previously found you. Studies show fans are more to buy your products or services than non fans.. so reach out and try and attract new fans!

Thru Facebook Custom Fan pages you can entice users to Like your page in a number of creative ways, you can offer videos, capture leads and offer ecommerce right on Facebook. Facebook Pages are being indexed in the search engines. The future of marketing is literally developing right in front of our eyes. This is a very EXCITING time, become a part of it …. there are no guarantees and it is somewhat unchartered territory, but for those that take a leap of faith and venture into the social marketing arena the rewards so out way the alternative.

http://www.facebook.com/webdesignandseo

December 20, 2011 Posted by Mary Killelea 

I was reading this article in Search Engine Journal  by Kristi Hines  and thought it was good enough to share even though 1-3 seem like they were relevant to 2010.

Five link building predictions for 2011  

1. Less use of keyword-based anchor text, more use of brand names.

With the recent penalization of sites possibly due to over-optimized anchor text, and the Mayday changes that led to brand dominance in search results, link building efforts will probably start to target brand / business names more than keyword anchor text.  This will also be especially helpful for online reputation management, as online review sites are moving up in importance as well.

2. Less focus on quantity, more focus on quality.

Google is working harder to weed out low quality sites which, in the process, will lead to the loss of links from these high volume sources.  Link building strategies should focus more on high quality, relevant linking opportunities so those links will go the distance.  Now the next question is, what will determine quality in the new year?

3. Less emphasis on PageRank, more emphasis on authority.

With the rumored death of PageRank due to the lack of updates in the last half of 2010, link valuation is turning to mozTrust, Domain Authority, and Page Authority.  I have already had clients preferring these metrics over PageRank, and I’m sure that the trend will continue.  Especially now that SEO tools are starting to incorporate mozRank and doing away with PageRank.

4. Less links to the homepage, more links to the content.

Let the link bait roar!  Content development and marketing is growing at a rapid rate, and along with it are the opportunities to build links to internal pages with amazing content instead of homepages or product pages.

5. Less concern about rankings, more concern about conversions.

More clients are starting to integrate analytics analysis into their SEO plans so instead of just getting a set number of links every month or being told that their rankings have moved from #5 to #4, they will want to hear that their conversions have increased for keywords that their clients have been searching for.  Because there is no ROI if you are building links to a keyword that has no commercial value.

Bonus one! Less need for dofollow, more need social mentions.

It’s no longer just a theory that social media is influencing search engines. Google and Bing both are considering social mentions as a part of their ranking algorithm, particularly Twitter and Facebook.  These links that used to be deemed worthless for SEO due to their nofollow value are now being counted for positive sentiment toward a brand or website.  It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that other nofollow authority sites like Wikipedia carry more weight than previously thought.

December 12, 2010 By Mary Killelea

Social Media Marketing Machines is Open NOW!

The Sooner you see this, the better:

1. Local Businesses WANT help with their Social 

Media.

2. Automated Marketing and Done-For-You Templates + 

FAST Results.

3. Social Media Marketing Machines = A PROFITABLE 

BUSINESS for YOU!

And right now, you can get First-Class Education, 

Support, and Automated Systems from a Professional 

Team of “Been there, Done that, GOT the Checks!”

There’s limited time and seats available, so go 

here and see what it’s all about!

http://www.socialmediamarketingmachines.com/cmd.php?af=953189 

See ya soon!

Mary Killelea

November 20, 2010 By Mary Killelea

 SearchFest 2011

Portland’s Premier Search Marketing Conference
When: Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Where: The Governor Hotel (866) 979-7660

No matter what level of SEO skills you have this is a great event to attened.  There are great speakers scheduled, you can network with other SEO folks and potentially meet folks in need of SEO work .

Topics include Advanced Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Universal Search, Analytics, Paid Search Marketing and many more.

View the Agenda 

If you would like you can Register Here

I’ll see ya there…  I look forward to meeting new faces in the Portland search  community.

November 18,  21010 by Mary Killelea

This week I read a great article by Brad Fallin who interviewed Rand Fiskin SEOmoz CEO and Co-Founder. SEOmoz blog is now one of the most populare search engine forums in the world with readers numbering in the tens of thousands every day. BusinessWeek listed Fiskin as one of the 30 Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs Under 30 (Yep Under 30). Fiskin has written about SEO for the New York Times, Newsweek and in his book, The Art of SEO.

Like many in the late 90’s he had a struggling web design and development business but instead of scratching his head and letting his business dissolve he found that SEO could be the tool that could differenitate him from his competition. He was able to sell the value to his clients early on before people even knew what SEO was, which if you remember was a huge struggle for the industry at the beginning. After starting to offer SEO in 2020, then launching the SEOmoz blog in 2004 as a way of sharing his experiences, the site eventually grew into it’s own brand offering consulting until 2007. Now his model has grown into SEO software that very large to very small companies can take advantage of.

When asked what the most noticeable change in the SEO world is that he’s seen, his reponse didn’t surprise me. “SEO has become a much more accepted and standard for of web marketing. It’s  great to see organizations embrace SEO today like they never have before. ” Just in the past year he says he’s been able to speek  about SEO to the CTO of the United Nations, present ot hte group at the YCombinator event and even heard that the White House is doing some SEO! ”

His closing words of wisdom from the interview was “Don’t be discouraged - SEO is a slow, building process much of the time, but it’s the challenge and the obstacles that make it a competitive advantage for those who embrace it and do it well!”

I am happy to share I just saw that Rand Fiskin is gonna be one of the speakers at Search Fest 2011 discussing Advanced link building.