It seems every major corporation and conglomerate has grokked on to social media as a broadcasting tool.  As a result, there’s a drive for businesses of all types and sizes to make the leap from ‘broadcasting at’ to ‘communicating with’.

It’s a great idea for businesses and entrepreneurs to get inside the minds of their followers and fans.  You have access to a wealth of feedback and inside information about your services through the eyes of your actual clients.

Having said that, if you operate in a town like Nanaimo with only 80,000 people you’ll be facing some challenges before a social media campaign starts working for you.  Here are my ten tips for making social media work in a smaller market.

1) Tweeting is a luxury that you probably can’t afford.

Twitter is cool, but there isn’t much to be gained beyond the glory of tweeting.  Realistically, you just won’t get a huge amount of followers, those followers won’t convert to business and unless you’re really active, most of what you say will get lost in the crowd.  If you have a small hotel or restaurant you may see some success by posting ‘web only’ specials.  I really only recommend it for businesses with 50 employees or more, or those who are already spending a lot of time marketing their business online.

2) Blogging is still awesome.

Blogging is still a great way to generate content, build links and boost your search rankings.  Most hosting accounts come free with WordPress or some other blogging CMS and support text, images and videos.

3) Lifestreaming is the new blogging.

I could dedicate a whole post to this.  Lifestreaming is a new way of documenting the activities surrounding your life using a chronologically-ordered collection of information.  For instance, I have everything connected to my WordPress Blog including my twitter feed, my deviantART account, my Facebook fan page and my LinkedIn profile.  I get good, link rich content and a free post every week with links to my activity around the web.  Watch out for more like this in 2010, as the trend will be to invent new ways to aggregate everything for me in one place. It takes a bit to wrap your mind around it, but a good place to start is here.

4) Facebook fan pages.

Don’t link to your personal Facebook profile for business use unless they’re inseparable.  Creating a fan page allows you to have the same posting and communicating ability, but limits customers to only seeing business related content, not your cousin Judd’s halava recipe.

5) Social media is the tortoise, not the hare.

Slow and steady wins the race.  A new friend here, a new connection there.  Unless you’re Gary Vaynerchuk, you should just be content to spend no more than an hour a day on social media marketing campaigns.

6) Examine your goals before diving in.

Different social media campaigns can get different results.  Blogging will increase rankings and SEO, but isn’t always a great sales tool.  Twitter may give a temporary boost of traffic, but the effects aren’t long lasting.  Flickr is a great way to share photos, but won’t generate much for new business.  You can increase chances of conversion with custom landing pages and links, but these strategies are usually beyond the purveyance (and budget) of most small business entrepreneurs.

7) Maybe you don’t need it at all.

Ignore all of the networks, TV shows, superstars, pundits and adverts and examine what your actual market is.  Are there any other general contractors on Twitter?  Are there any CGAs with Facebook pages?  What % of people in Nanaimo do you think are on Twitter?  What’s the dialogue like for the average entrepreneur?  If you don’t see anyone doing it in your industry, don’t look at it as an opportunity to reach an untapped market, because it probably isn’t.

8) Try before you buy.

Organization and timing are very important and it will take you several hours to set up the social channels so before you commit to branded social media pages, launch a test campaign and see how you feel about the results.  A simple one or two week campaign in the beginning is a great way to gauge the response of your customers to this type of marketing

9) How will you inform people?

If you build it, it will sit there.  That’s my new motto for 2010, because it’s not enough anymore to just build a site and profile.  Conventional SEO (page titles and content) are just a foundation these days and unless you are alone in the market, are probably not sufficient to build up decent rankings.  Having a twitter page and a Facebook page will not entice people to communicate with you, you have to work it and continually provide value.  Asking people to join is a great way, if you have a newsletter list.  Advertise on your web site, and incentivize people who join and follow you with exclusive promotions.

10) Who dares, wins.

It’s not that the internet is dominated by 17 year old’s with a penchant for lolcats, it’s that the internet is dominated by 17 year old’s with a penchant for lolcats.  Edgy content wins every time, so you’re better off having a video of a car driving through your front widow or a faux haunting than you are having walkthrough tours of your custom built character home.  I’ve often said that a great social media campaign is one that gets people who would never use your product or service to talk about it.

That about sums it up, of course it’s up to you to decide if social media marketing is right for your clients.  Be organized, be daring and you could be the next willitblend.  You never know!

I’ve been having an unrequited love affair with semicolons for some time now. Oh, if you look through my posts you won’t be likely to find any; I haven’t been comfortable that I’m using them correctly when I write.  That is, until now.  Inspired by a 2009 post on Daggle titled conjunction complex sentence misfunction that Danny Sullivan twote this afternoon and a recent comic by The Oatmeal titled: How to use a semicolon: The most feared punctuation on earth, I’ve decided to bring semicolons into my life more.

5 ways I’m bringing the semicolon into my life.

• I will use “and”, “but” and other conjunctions less; I will confidently use commas and semicolons instead.
• I will make more winkies in chat programs; I will discover other emoticons that require semicolons.

Ok, that’s only two.  I’m sure I can come up with three more.  Follow me on Twitter to see what they are!

You may be wondering what this has to do with link building. Stay tuned, I’m making my next post about it.

If you haven’t heard, I’m involved in the Extreme Website Makeover project.  Extreme Website Makeover is a joint project with Hosting Nation, Oceanside Web TV, Fusion Creative, Square Eyes Media, and Harbour City SEO.

We’re currently working with Robbin’s Wreaths of Parksville and providing them with a FREE state of the art e-commerce system for their small wreath manufacturing business.  The site will include a custom design built on the Magento framework, hosting and a domain, graphic design, development, programming, internet marketing and search engine optimization.  As we work to complete their new site, we’re taking applications for new contenders.

If you have an engaging story to tell about your company and the challenges you have faced to get onto the web, we’d love to hear about it.  You never know, you could be selected to receive a custom website valued over $5000, absolutely free!

How do you apply?  Well, drop me a line through my contact form or visit extreme website makeover to get the complete application.

Incidentally, items like this are a great way to promote your business.  Getting involved with community driven projects and coordinating with other agencies work wonders for building your online presence.

In the last post, I mentioned the importance of qualifying  your search engine marketing firm in various disciplines.  You wouldn’t take your car to a brake specialist to get the oil changed, and you shouldn’t go with a marketing firm that doesn’t specialize in link building or SEO.

To round up, today I want to talk about some qualifiers for SEO and Social Media marketing.  You should be asking questions of your SEO company, in effect interviewing them to get an idea of their qualifications before you commit to a contract.

If they specialize in SEO

SEO is made up of two distinct areas, on and off-page optimization.  On page optimization involves things like keyword research, competitive research, copywriting and content development and structure as well as an understanding of the technical requirements to set up and work with a variety of website types and content management systems.

Off-page optimization involves link building through various methods, like directory submission, link exchanges and content development and syndication.

More often, a firm will specialize in one or the other.  I, for instance, specialize in the on-page optimization strategies, though I am familiar with many of the techniques for building links.

When you hire a company to do your optimization, there are questions you can ask to find out exactly how qualified they are before handing over your dollars.

Q: Can you tell me about your background in marketing and SEO?

A: look for at least 5 years of experience in marketing.  For young companies with less experience, you can sometimes get a better price on SEO campaigns if they have the qualifications.

Q: What methods do you use for keyword research?

A: They shouldn’t just be targeting the most popular terms, but those that provide the most value and relevant traffic.  Look for an understanding of how keyword research works and how they’ll target the best opportunities.  Most firms won’t tell you everything, as they want to protect their trade secrets, but they should be able to tell you enough so you feel confident to buy from them.

Q: Do you offer full disclosure of all your methods?

A: Transparency is a huge deal in SEO, as the wrong strategy could get your site penalized.  If they don’t offer 100% disclosure, go with someone else.

Q: What types of link building are you proficient in?

A: Ask for specifics, if it’s directory submission, link exchanges, content development or syndication.  They should be able to provide specific examples for each form of successful link building.  From most to least valuable (in my opinion) are: 1) Content development, 2) syndication, 3) directory submission 4) link exchanging.

Q: Can you give me some examples of websites you’ve optimized?

A: This is easy, they should be able to provide examples of work they’ve done AND be able to provide results for their own website.  Researching their website and the company will give you great insight into their business practices.  Ask for references too.  Make sure you Google their company, check out their links and check with companies they’ve worked with.

Q: What sort of guarantees do you provide?

A: This is a tricky question.  No SEO firm worth their salt will guarantee specific results unless you pay through the nose for it.  Every SEO firm worth their salt should guarantee an improvement in results and rankings for targeted terms.

If they specialize in Social Media

Social media requires a lot of ingenuity, great timing and the ability to develop enticing and engaging content.  If you can’t do it yourself, you may be able to farm it out to a third party who will work on your behalf.  That sort of marketing would be too costly for most businesses to outsource based on the time commitment alone.  If you must outsource here, or if you plan on hiring someone for an in-house position, here are some questions you should ask before committing to a contract.

Q: What sort of results have you generated for other companies using social media?

A:  For a small business, brand awareness is less important than actual traffic and new business.  Building social profiles and embracing web platforms are wasted efforts if they don’t generate the desired action. I would want case studies of businesses they’ve worked with in social media campaigns.

Q: Which social media channels do you leverage for your clients?

A: They should be able to answer with the main ones.  YouTube, Flickr, Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Digg etc…

Q: Are you a power user in any of these networks?

A:  The social media networks are ruled by the power users, those who have spent hundreds of hours developing loyal followers.  Many power users are able to have a content item pushed to the forefront by tapping into their social networks, these are the people you want on your side when you have something ready to go viral.

Q: What benefits do I get from using your company to run my social media campaigns vs. running it myself?

A: There may be distinct advantages to using another company ranging from experience in creating successful viral campaigns to overall know how.  I would want an answer that spoke specifically to the benefits of using their company over doing it myself.  Time saved is NOT a good reason.

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There will be other questions you can ask, and I’ll post them in future updates as they come to mind.  To round up, you just can’t ask enough questions of your marketing company before committing to a contract.  If they don’t have the answers to your questions or aren’t willing to provide them, you should probably look somewhere else.

If you’ve just had some work done and want to know what the results are, drop me a line and I’ll check your existing SEO strategy and send you a brief report on my discovery.

The Open Directory Project (also known as DMOZ) is a free directory created and hosted by the Netscape Communication Corporation (remember Netscape?  They’re now part of Time Warner’s AOL).

The ODP has lost favour with webmasters and search professionals over the past few years, mainly due to two reasons.  The first is the theory that the volunteer editorial staff doesn’t evaluate links and submissions objectively, that they have their own ulterior motives when it comes to whether a link makes it in.  The second is that the sheer backlog of submissions means that you could wait weeks, or months before your site makes it in.

I still think it’s worth the effort to submit your site, even if you have to submit multiple times and wait for months.  Here’s why.

The ODP is used by many sites to provide directory results, including Google.

Google still uses the data from the ODP to seed their own directory, which means they trust the ODP, which means they likely trust listings in the ODP.  Along with Google, there are over 150 sites using the ODP’s data to seed their listings – so one link often equals 10, 0r 20 good directory links.

The odds of getting a link are as good as with any free directory.

Most SEO’s will tell you that they hate directory submission.  It’s a long, painstaking process and often the links are worthless.  The ODP isn’t worthless (as we’ve established) and the links you get are of solid quality.

The ODP is essentially non-commercial in nature, which is good for you.

There’s nothing that says that non-commercial sites carry more weight with major search engines than commercial sites, but I’ve seen strong evidence to support the value of a link from a non-commercial site over one from a commercial site.

Now That I’ve covered why, I’ll take a quick moment to cover how.  Getting in to the ODP isn’t easy, but it’s not rocket science.  You just have to follow the rules.

Drill down to the right category

Find the category that most closely reflects what your website or business is about.  Don’t go for the most popular categories, just because they’re there.

Don’t be sleazy when you’re writing your description.

If you write your description with loads of sales copy, “the best” this and “the greatest” that, you won’t get in.  Well, you might – probably not though.  Keep it simple and real.  For instance, if you sell widgets to the Greater Nanaimo area – your description should be short and accurate, like this.

Supplier of widgets and widget related accessories serving greater Nanaimo and surrounding areas.  Includes Ladysmith, Cedar, Nanaimo, Lantzville and Parksville.  Free same day delivery in Nanaimo.

See?  No puff, no shmooze – just the straight dope.

Like I say, you may have to submit more than once and it may take a while – but I’ve seen it continue to produce results for over a decade where many other directories are dead and gone.