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Facebook’s IPO Steals The News

What’s the biggest news of the week? Facebook’s filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission paperwork that will allow it to sell shares on the open market. Facebook is finally going public with an initial public offering. That happened on February 1.

So what does it mean in terms of online marketing?

Not much really. Users will likely not change their social networking habits. Brands likely won’t change how they market themselves using brand pages or how they reach potential customers using Facebook’s paid advertising model. Things will continue to rock on as usual in Facebook land.

So why was this such big news? Politics. People watching the online marketing space, especially the open web enthusiasts, are looking for more transparency. They think that Facebook’s IPO will provide that. But will it?

Only in the financial realm where law requires public companies to disclose certain financial information including profit and loss statements. But it doesn’t require technology companies to divulge trade secrets or make its proprietary technology open to the rest of the world. So Facebook likely won’t change much after going public.

There is another new story, however, that very well could change how the entire Internet operates – eventually.

(Source) On February 1, 2012, the United States Patent and Trademark Office recorded the assignment of 49 granted and 42 pending patent applications from Mosaid Technologies Inc., to Google, in a transaction executed on January 27, 2012.

So what are these patents about? Fiber optics. And Google has announced that it will deliver fiber optic Internet access to Kansas City this year. Now, why would Google do that?

One reason. Speed.

Google is very concerned with making the Internet faster. Fiber optic promises to do that to the tune of 20,000 times the speed of regular dial-up access. If Google’s experiment in Kansas City goes well, they may very well roll that service out to other major cities across the nation. And eventually it could cover the entire U.S., then the whole world. That might mean free Internet access to end users the whole world over.

Well, seemingly free. You’ll have to follow the money.

Why would Google partner with a city like Kansas City? Because the city itself would pay for the service. That might put a few local ISPs out of business. City residents could log on to their Internet through their phone service, which would also serve as a cable TV service among other things. The city could sell its services to citizens as a bundle or a la carte, or it could be taxpayer funded. Either way, it’s possible that end users could get phone service, Internet, and cable TV much less expensively than they get them all right now.

While Facebook’s IPO may have stole the news this week, I think Google’s news is much bigger with much more potential to change how the Internet, and other telecom networks, operate. What do you think?

Do Online Coupons Work?

There’s a new business tool that keeps getting more and more popular everyday. It’s called online coupons. The way they work are fairly simple. You come up with an offer, then you go to a coupons or daily deals website and upload your offer. But there are several of these types of websites and they all differ in terms of how the service works.

What they have in common is they offer the ability for you, the small business owner, to reach new customers by providing an online coupon.

If you’ve created coupons before, then you know they can take on different forms. You can offer perpetual coupons that don’t have an expiry date or you can create a one-day coupon that is good only for one day. You can offer a general coupon for your business or promote specific products. Offer discounts on minimum purchases or 2-for1 offers, etc.

Online, these coupons work the same way. The difference is, you never know who is going to find them. You aren’t mailing them to people. So there is the potential to have a coupon brought in by someone who has never shopped at your store.

Online coupons can be printed, downloaded to mobile phones, e-mailed and shared with friends, or simply offered with a discount code. With a discount code, your potential customers just call or walk in and give you the code as if they had the coupon in their hands. The benefit to you is new business and a happy customer.

In the new age of marketing, some things are done the same old way. Other things are done a little differently but based on the same principles. Online coupons fall into the latter category.

Why It’s Good To Know Google

Google has a added a section to its website called Good To Know. It discusses web security, search, and other pertinent information for using Google’s products and services and for staying safe on the web. Every web user should get familiar with the Good To Know information provided by Google for free.

And that’s includes Scotland business owners.

Even if all you do is put up a website for your business and you don’t actually use the web, you should become familiar with Google’s Good To Know information. You know why? Because it can help you in your business.

For instance, the section titled “Your data on the web” discusses cookies and IP addresses. These are questions that your site visitors likely will have about the web in general and your business in particular. You’ll want to know how to answer their questions.

While the information isn’t in-depth knowledge, it does provide a good introduction to web security and information that could be useful to your business.

Among this information is Google-specific information regarding personalized search, Google+, and even how to use Google Docs for privacy. Other information is more general regarding web security and protecting your personal information. If you decide to use cookies for your Scotland-based website, then you’ll want to know this information for your own use as a business owner involved in online marketing.

Don’t wait any longer. Go to Google’s Good To Know website and start digging around. Learn what you can so you can teach your customers.

The Most Important Metric

Do you know what the most important metric is for your website? Is it links? Is it keyword relevance? How about unique visitors? Traffic?

Certainly, all of those are important. Especially traffic.

How are you going to sell anything if no one is visiting your website? It’s not likely to happen, is it?

But let’s take a step back. What are you selling? Is it a necessity or a luxury? How many have you sold in the last week, month, or day?

Wait. Stop right there. How many have you sold?

Know the most important metric now? If not, allow me to spell it out for you. It’s conversions. How many widgets have you sold?

To be sure, you can’t sell anything without great SEO, links, traffic, social media presence, etc. Those are all necessary promotional tools in your online marketing toolbox. But even if all of those other metrics are sky high, if your conversions are low, then you aren’t making any money. Why are you in business?

Making the right connection with the right audience is crucial to converting traffic to sales. When you convert traffic, you make money. The question is, what converts traffic?

Content. Great content. The right content. The best content that is optimized, linked to, and well trafficked. With a great call to action. That’s what converts.

Is your traffic converting? If not, why not? It’s the most important question to answer because the answer leads to making the most of the most important metric: Conversions. Think about that.

10 Uncanny Online Marketing Ideas

Would you like to do something different in 2012? Would you like to take your online marketing to a new level? Then try one of these 10 online marketing ideas.

1. Get involved in your community – Don’t just give money to a charity. Pick a community organization that you support or whose mission you believe in and volunteer. Put that organization’s badge on your website to show that you support them.
2. Hold a webinar - Online webinars are great ways to get the message out about your local business.
3. Answer questions – Invite customers to ask you questions on your blog, or join a Q&A website like Quora.
4. Create an e-book – Turn your blog content into an e-book and sell it on your site. Create a Kindle and ePub format and sell it through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
5. Video interview – Interview a high-profile person in your niche and post the video on your website and YouTube.
6. Enter a partnership – Find someone whose services compliment your own and start an online partnership to promote each other’s services.
7. Offer online coupons – Go to an online deals site and create a coupon offer. Promote it through social media.
8. Build an iPhone app – It can be something real simple, but an iPhone app is very brandable.
9. Customer photos – Post pictures of your customers on your website.
10. Online course – Create an online course as a membership site to teach people how to do something.

Make 2012 the year to try something different. Take your online marketing to a new level and think outside of the box.

178 Social Media Accounts, Really?

It turns out that the average number of social media accounts owned by corporations doing business online is 178. Which has me wondering, how many people do these companies hire to manage those accounts? And just what are they doing with them?

Seriously, if you have 39 corporate-owned Twitter accounts and 30 corporate-owned Facebook accounts, you’ll be paying out the ying-yang just for the staff to manage those accounts. That’s assuming that you have a steady stream of content flowing through those accounts daily. And if you don’t, then why do you have them?

Social media is not so important that you should have that many accounts. For most businesses, search traffic still accounts for more than 80% of website traffic. And it converts better. So why so many social media accounts?

I think this happens because company marketing representatives think it’s easier to manage social media than search engine optimisation. And it is. Truly, it is.

But … SEO delivers better results. And that can’t be beat.

If you own a small business in Scotland, don’t think that owning more social media accounts will result in better online marketing. Typically, it just means throwing more money and time at a tactic that doesn’t produce the best results. You’d be better off putting the same amount of time and energy into SEO, creating iPhone apps, and building up your content management system.

Then, if you have anything left over you can use it for your social media marketing efforts.

Start A Conversation

The best way to land a new client today is to start a conversation. By that I mean enter into a dialogue with your audience. You can do this in a number of ways.

First, start a blog. A blog is the perfect conversational marketing tool. It allows you to start a conversation and interact with your audience in a nonthreatening manner. No hard sell. Just dialogue. If you respect your audience, they’ll return often.

Next, join a forum. Forums have been great places to start and join existing conversations for a couple of decades. If you do it correctly you can build a brand using forums as conversation starters.

Thirdly, join a few social communities. Facebook is good, but it’s a general community. It’s like the United States. Broad and non-specific. There’s nothing wrong with being a member of a social network with a broad reach, but you also want to join a few that have a narrower, more specific audience that caters to members of your niche. Join the conversation at these communities and start a few of your own.

We live in an age of conversational marketing. No longer is it acceptable to broadcast your message like a dictator. Be invitational, not confrontational.

SEO And Social Media – Through Google+?

It’s the beginning of the year, the time when SEOs start to make their predictions for the upcoming year. One popular SEO who makes predictions every year (and is sometimes right) is Rand Fishkin. This year’s predictions include three things that appear to be intricately linked.

1. Google will finally kill link spam for good
2. SEO without social media will be a thing of the past
3. Great SEO will no longer be possible without Google+

It’s easy to see the connection between Nos. 2 and 3, but what about No. 1?

If you consider that link spam has been the dominant negative for the past 10 years, due largely because of Google’s emphasis on links throughout its history, then you can see the connection better. Google has been unable to correct the link spam problem until now. If anything, it’s gotten worse.

So Google+ could be the answer. If you are a registered user of Google+ and your SEO hinges on its use, you will be less likely to try anything that goes against Google’s guidelines. If you do and you get caught, then you could have your Google+ profile de-listed. Any sites connected to it will also lose rankings.

There goes all that hard work.

Beyond that, if Google+ usage is factored into your overall SEO, it only seems to reason that Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora, Facebook, and other social media site usage will follow. Bing will likely respond by making Facebook more prominent in its search results.

In this scenario, if you want to rank in Bing, you’ll use Facebook. If you want to rank in Google, then you’ll use Google+. LinkedIn and Twitter will no doubt fall in there somewhere.

It seems rather intuitive. Don’t you think?

4 Online Marketing Tactics To Deploy In 2012

Online marketing isn’t dead. In fact, it’s as alive now as it ever was. If you are wondering what 4 ways to promote your website and business are most effective in 2012, here are 4 top-notch areas to focus on.

1. Article Marketing – This is one specific sub-category of search engine optimisation that has been around as long as the Internet itself, but the practice has changed. Instead of mass submittals, you should send a unique article to high profile high traffic websites within your niche.
2. Social Media – Social media is far from being dead. But don’t try to join every website that promises a pot of gold. Stick to high traffic websites with traction. That includes LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+, though not necessarily in that order. If there are high traffic websites within your niche, join them too.
3. Video Marketing – Videos are still hot and I suspect they will be for a long time. You can use them on your own website or use them on sites like YouTube to drive traffic to your website.
4. Mobile Marketing – Thanks to iPhone apps and other smartphones, mobile marketing is becoming the thing to focus on in 2012. There’s no reason you can’t make it work for you.

If you employ these four online marketing tactics in 2012, you’ll be well ahead of most of your competition.

4 Reasons To Get A Gravatar

Do you know what a gravatar is? A lot of small business owners don’t. It’s real easy to define and real easy to get one. But first, let’s answer the question: Why do you need one?

1. A gravatar will identify you as a non-spammer. By registering your own gravatar you are telling bloggers and other content providers with an image who you are and that you are a legitimate commenter.
2. Your own personal gravatar brands you and your business online.
3. The gravatar makes you more recognizable to other Internet citizens and commenters.
4. Your identity will be less easily stolen or manipulated with a gravatar.

Gravatar stands for globally recognizable avatar. It is just what it says. You will be more recognizable around the globe just by the image associated with your comments.

You can have your own gravatar in five minutes by going to Gravatar.com. Get an account and upload the image you want associated with your e-mail address.

It’s important to note that you can have a separate gravatar for each e-mail address that you use for commenting on blogs, in forums, and on social media websites. Your gravatar is associated with a single e-mail address, which makes it brandable and authentic.