Out of the Fog Marketing

Claim your Blog on Technorati
If you have a blog, you should claim it on Technorati. Technorati is an internet search engine focused on the world of weblogs. As of June 2005, Technorati indexes over 11 million weblogs.

Free Website Evaluation Tool

Website Grader is a free tool that performs an analysis of the online marketing effectiveness of your website. It analyzes your website in a detailed way and gives you a score. What's unique is that it measures your website on a relative basis compared to other site. It also gives you some very detailed information on how to make your site more effective.

Labels: Internet marketing, Michigan SEO, web marketing

Designing a New Website? Think Sitemap First.
There seems to be alot of buzz around designing new websites these days. The process is more complicated than ever since firms want great a great storefront, amazing search engine rankings AND a creative design. Balancing these requirements is much easier if you start with a web outline or sitemap. Many small to medium-sized firms just hand over a web project to a creative agency without goals or exacting requirements. This is a recipe for disaster.
Seeing the entire structure of a website on screen or paper makes it much simpler to design the right side the FIRST time. When interviewing creative agencies or marketing firms for your next web marketing project, ask them about their pre-production process and make sure you are getting all your requirements meet to save costly re-works later.

Labels: web marketing, website development

Business Professionals Turn to Social Nets

Business professionals have joined the stampede to social networking sites, with 65% signing up and logging in, according to a recent survey from the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp). A whopping 47.4% claim they use social networks for professional purposes, and 40.8% fess up to using them in their personal lives to connect to friends and family.

According to i4cp, business professionals turn to LinkedIn as their social network of choice, followed by Yahoo! 360 and MySpace.

Other findings:

* 52% of business professionals who use social networks within their organizations do so to connect with internal staff members and remote workers.

* 47% use social networks to connect with potential clients and show off their skills.

* 35% turn to social networks for their job hunts.

* 55% use social networks to share best practices with co-workers, and 49% to get answers to questions they are facing

Sites such as Linked In, let you put up a personal profile including your website URL, so it's a great opportunity to get quality link to your website.

Labels: B2B, business networking, social networking

Checking Your Links
Web1Marketing has a great set of tools for those firms interested in search engine optimization. I've written before about the importance of quality backlinks - your firm's URL listed on other sites. You can check the number of links to your website AND sometimes more importantly your competitors' websites at Web1Marketing's backlink checker.

Labels: backlinks, search engine optimization, SEO tools

Tales from the Gutter
Thanks to a huge pine tree and heavy rain, I had to find a gutter cleaning company this week. I usually check online for these types of folks but was watching my daughter with one eye, cooking with the other and just pulled out dare I say, the yellow pages. I called two firms listed under "gutter cleaners". The first call went to voicemail which just had the guy's name, not the company name listed in the ad. I hung up. The other had a pleasant, professional message, so I left my number and was called back by the friendly owner in 5 minutes. He said he would be over that evening to give an estimate and where could he leave the paperwork if I was not home. Nice touch for a job that was only going to cost $30.
About 30 minutes later I get a call stating "I someone from this number called, want an estimate for your gutter?" It was freaky. I didn't want this guy within 10 feet of my house. Guess which firm I chose...
These days image is paramount. Be professional in all you do and go the extra distance with the little touches. To quote Seth Godin's blog
"Every marketer (or company) has a choice...to make the first interaction the best experience, or the worst."

Labels: customer service

Get High Quality Links to Rank Well On Search Engines

Developing and maintaining high quality links to your web site is essential to ranking high on search engines. Google ranks web pages based on the number and the quality of incoming links if more than one web page is optimized for the same keyword.

Here are a few tips for building quality links:

1) So get listed on respected directories such as dmoz.org or Google Maps.
2) Issue quality press releases to get online publications to cover your story and link to your site.
3) Post blog comments with a user profile that also contains a link to your site.

Labels: Google ranking, Michigan SEO, SEO press release

WOM Is Top Influencer in BtoB Purchase Decisions

When it comes to making purchase decisions, BtoB business executives are most influenced by word of mouth, according to a research report that was released last month. Those word-of-mouth recommendations happen face to face far more often than online, according to the survey, conducted by market research firm The Keller Fay Group and sponsored by experiential marketing agency Jack Morton Worldwide The report shows that executives credit word of mouth with more than twice the influence of advertising. The research also suggests that business executives are extremely influential individuals because they are more likely to discuss and recommend brands than the general public.

Other findings:

* 50% of executives say they are highly likely to buy a product or service based on word of mouth.

* 49% pass the information they hear along to others.

* 75% say word of mouth occurs face-to-face, and 60% of word of mouth conversations include advice to buy, try, or consider a brand.

* 86% make recommendations based on personal experience.

So what does this mean to your small business? Customer service is more paramount than ever and you should have an active referral program in place. Make it easy for your customers to tell their peers how great your products or services are!

Labels: B2B, BtoB marketing