Twitter, the not so newest thing.

Like practically every website on the internet, Twitter has been around for a while.  It’s taken some time to get where it is, but these days Twitter is the newest social networking and marketing craze.  If you’re involved with lead gen or search marketing in anyway, I’m guessing you’ve at least tried Twitter.  For something so simple, its always been hard for me to explain it to newcomers in a simple way.

My best attempt so far is an analogy to an AIM away message for many college students.  When I was in school there were quite a few people that felt it necessary to tell everyone exactly what they were doing at all times via their Instant Messenger away message.  To be honest, back then it irked me a bit, so I was “that guy” who put up the same random messages over and over.  Now that I look back on it I can see how these away messages could have lead to the online networking beast that is Twitter.

Twitter is a great way to keep up with others in your industry, to get tips and ideas from colleagues and even competitors and keep up with the general happenings of others you share common interests with.  If I look back at college as a business vertical I can see how away messages were the key to its success and growth.  You want to know what the latest happenings were?  Where the big parties are?  Who hooked up with who?  Just browse your away messages.  This same thing applies to Twitter, but on a much larger and more professional (sometimes) scale.

The real point of this post is to say that networking is a key aspect of lead generation and search marketing.  While Twitter certainly isn’t for everyone, there is a big need for networking and communicating, sharing and working with others in any business or industry.  Do what it takes to make a name for yourself in your industry, and you’ll be amazed at the benefits it brings you.  I’m big on “karma” (I don’t really like that word, but it’s the best way to portray my attitude towards life); you get what you deserve in life.  The same applies to the business world.  If you provide others with your help, ideas and expertise you’ll find others will help you in return.  This could mean some good in-bound links, new projects, content pieces, blog posts, articles or just about anything.

Whether you tweet or not, don’t over look communicating effectively with others in your industry to help increase your notoriaty and grow your business.

Viral Content Creator

I came across this pretty cool new site/service today.  Basically Viral Content Creator helps content publishers, writers and affiliates brand various marketing content pieces.  It allows a publisher or creator to upload their marketing document and add various tags which will be automatically populated when a new affiliate enters their information.

All the affiliate has to do is choose their marketing piece, enter in the specified information and all the work is done for them.  They now have a custom tailored document which incorporates links with their affiliate information as well as their name and any other custom fields.

Pretty cool if you ask me check it out for yourself…

Content, Content and More Content

Search engines like unique content.  Actually, search engines love unique content.

Even that is almost an understatement.  Because search engines ultimately want what’s best for their users, they want to make sure pages that are being visited are up to date and supplying fresh, relevant content.  This means that no matter what your site targets you want to keep adding wordage which is relates to each individual page.

Every independant page on your website should have at least two solid paragraphs of copy or content.  Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. uses this to decide if what each page on your site is all about.  Sure it’s not the only thing, but it sure has hell is a big part.  So get good copy on your site, period.

You can go about this quite a few ways.  Obviously if you are very knowledgeable in the field (which you usually are, or at least think you are), write the content yourself.  Be sure to include keyword rich sentences, and while things like bolding, underlining, italics and bullets are great, try not to get too crazy with them.  You can also do additional research on the subject, to find new ideas or even new keywords to incorporate.  As always be very careful not to directly copy content from anything else on the web (this is a big SEO no-no).

Lastly, and what I do for larger clients, is outsource your content.  There are quite a few really good copywriters on the internet who are more than happy to write you some good content.  I like to provide my copywriters with a spreadsheet which t everything i’m looking for for each page.  This always includes keywords which means you know they will use words that you want to target, not what they think you should.  While of course quality control should be used when trying out copywriters, once you find a few that you work with on a fairly regular basis and know what you’re looking for, you really don’t have to worry too much about checking up on them.

So get that content up on your site, every singe stupid page of your site.   Think you have enough content on a page?  Yeah, go ahead and add another relevant and keyword rich paragraph, its only going to help you.

Halix Solutions – Business Management Client

Lead Gen 101 is proud to announce its newest client, Halix Solutions, LLC.  This experienced accounting and business management company has recently expanded into the online world.  I have no doubt that we will be able to provide them with the online lead generation services they have been missing out on. 

Halix Solutions is based in the Maryland (MD) / Washington D.C. area.  Focusing on offering sales and support for Sage Software business and accounting products, Halix Solutions is made up of accounting professionals with over 30 years of quality experience in working with M 90, M 200 and M 500.  Catering to small and medium-sized businesses, this firm will undoubtedly continue its lead in the business and accounting management vertical.

Lead Gen 101 will be implementing some new techniques to help this local company rise to the top as quickly as possible.  Without going into too much detail, the campaign will consist of heavy link building initially to drive in traffic while various other aspects are handled.  This will create a very important balance of content and web presence which is key to any successful online lead generation and search engine optimization campaign!

Build Links With a Simple Contest

Ok well this is an example of a great way to increase traffic and links to your site.  We all want others to link to our websites, but the tough part is getting that link.  Generally a website owner or specialist wants something in return.  Typically that would be a reciprocal link, but the reality is that when you link back to the same site that links to you, you basically lose credit for that link.

Contests are a great way to increase in-bound links to your website.  By offering bloggers a free entry into your contest by simply writing a post about it, you’re sure to get some good links which will hopefully spread throughout the blogging community.

Below is an example of what a blogger might post to enter our most recent contest:

So BizziBid, an online home improvement resource and contractor referral service is running a great $300 home depot gift card giveaway.  I’m encouraging everyone to check it out and enter.  Posting about this contest in your blog is well worth the 10 minutes of your day.

I know everyone could use a little extra cash for a home improvement project.  Personally I’d probably blow it all on tools that I’ll only use once…

Check out details below and let me know if you win!

BizziBid’s Home Depot Gift Card Contest

The Economy’s Effect on Online Lead Gen

The only way you don’t know that we’re in a recession right now is if you live under a rock, and even then you probably figured it out.  While the fait of the U.S. Economy has yet to be determined, it certainly has had an effect one almost everyone’s life.  The websites I run definitely aren’t an exception.

While traffic to 4 out of 5 sites has increased in the past month we just haven’t seen as many leads.  While a few new strategies that were incorporated this month take some time to take effect, in an ideal and normal world/economy we would have expected to see a steady increase in the amount of leads coming in.

If you haven’t noticed already a majority of the websites I run are home improvement based.  As both great information resources and contractor referral services these websites make money by generating leads for contractor clients of ours.  When we set monthly goals back in May, we didn’t and couldn’t have really taken the economy into account.  Now that I step back, look at numbers and think about exactly what could be causing our lack of growth in leads this month, I can’t help but think that spending habits play a part in it.  Homeowners are waiting to see what will happen with the election here in a few days along with a few other factors.  They simply aren’t going to spend money on unnecessary home improvement and remodeling projects when they don’t have to.  Sure there is still a market for repairs, which will always be around, but now the question is how do we better target that.

Looking at keywords and pages that are performing well and leading to actual leads will help you determine what you need to do to continue to grow and profit in the current market.  Make adjustements and additions to pages that continue to make you money and work with the market.  I’ll be making quite a few changes to my plan of attack in the next month or two to determine how to get our leads back on a continually growing pace.

Simply put, every business has to adjust and evolve to cater to it’s clients and their needs.

My Current Venture:Link-Building

I’ve been neglecting this blog a bit recently, so I figured I’d post up what has kept me so busy; link-building.

As I’ve stated before, I’m constantly learning and evolving as my online advertising and search engine career moves on.  I have to admit I can accredit my a lot of new found knowledge to Jon Payne and Tim Staines.  Owner and star employee, respectively, of Ephricon Web Marketing these guys know what they are doing when it comes to building links for websites.

A Very Brief Background

Inbound links to your website help greatly in the eyes of search engines.  They want to know that others approve of and endorse the products an information your website has to offer.  While various links give differing amounts of “SEO juice” quite a few inbound links can really help your rankings.  A simple way to measure the importance and value of your inbound links is to look at that pages Google ranking.  This isn’t everything but a quick and easy method of determining which links are better.

So anyways, after meeting with Jon and Tim and quite a few follow up emails I’m looking to develop new means of link building for the LSM websites (BizziBid and Roofing-Directory) I’m currently working on.  It’s not just me looking to get as many links as possible, but I’m actually trying to make a name for myself in the online home improvement community which can help these sites quite a bit.  With my continually growing online social network I’m hoping to produce great links and partnerships to increase rankings across the board.

Well this post isn’t too lengthy, but I’d figure I’d at least get something up here.  I’ll continue to update as I come across new means of link building and new ideas for getting links on high ranking websites…

Deferences Between SEO and SEM

For some of you reading this you might be asking, is he really reviewing something so simple? The truth of the matter is a majority of people and even advertisers don’t really understand which is which. The terms SEO and SEM are simply tossed around when a true understanding of their key differences is not present. I’ll start this off at an even more basic level to make sure all my readers really know what’s going on. SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing, while SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Notice how both involve search engines, this is where a majority of their similarities end.

Search Engine Marketing can actually be compared in a broad way to all sorts of other traditional advertising. This is ad space that is paid for on search engines. Just as you would pay to have a 30 second television spot, you pay search engines like Google and Yahoo to have your page come up first for specific keywords. This is a quick and easy way to make your site accessible to web users looking for your companies products and services. SEM advertisers can bid on ranking positions by paying the highest amount for certain search terms. This ensures that you have the absolute highest paid spot if you can afford it. The problem here is ROI. At what point is it not worth paying for a top spot?

The answer is in Search Engine Optimization. The thing with SEO is that you don’t have to pay a dime for it. SEO optimizes your own website to allow search engines to understand that individual pages should rank highly for certain search words and phrases. The real question is how, and while there isn’t an exact answer there are a lot of things we know can help. Search engines like to see lots of unique content. To them this shows that you have information on your site which can be used by visitors which is relevant to their search terms. You also want to have as many inbound links from credible websites that you can. These act as referrals to a search engine. If a site they deem credible or sites within the same industry have links to your site you’re going to see an increase in your search rankings.

Basically you need to know that SEO is what you can do to your site to make it rank organically, or by itself, for many search terms. All you need to do is include them in the text of your site. SEM is paid advertising which will help to generate more traffic, but at a cost. Search engine users also know when a listing has been paid for rather than if the search engine has actually deemed it relevant to their desired search. Now you can be sure to know the difference between SEO and SEM!

Quality v Quantity

This is a problem that has been going on since the beginning of modern commerce. Actually I’m sure it’s been going on since ancient times during the good old barter system. Here’s the problem; obviously consumers want as many leads as possible, period. The common misconception is that the more leads you have, inevitably the more business you will make (given you’re product is actually marketable). While logically this makes sense it is far from the truth.

This is where quality plays a key role in lead generation. Sure, a company like Home Depot can go out and buy a million leads but what are they getting out of that? Low quality leads means it will be harder for them to sell their product, disinterested contacts and bogus information. So yes the amount of leads was massive, but how many actual sales were converted? Hardly any, meaning ROI is way down. Now make quality of leads a factor in the situation and you can see that quantity really means nothing. That same company can use less money to purchase one thousand good, high quality leads and turn more of them into real sales because they are dealing with consumers who are actively interested in their product or services.

You can think of this as almost an equation.

Q = Quality (as a percentage)

A = Amount

S= Sales

A x Q = S ex. 1) 100,000 x 0.001 = 100 ex.2) 1000 x 0.99 = 999

If you’re quality percentage is extremely low (0.1% or .001) you’re not going to net very many sales, but if your quality is quite high (99% or .99) your sales will skyrocket.

Now the question is how do you determine if a lead is high quality or not? It all depends on how the lead was attained. Was a consumer forced to give their information in order to obtain something else (i.e. co-registration) or maybe some sort of gimmick was involved in order to create a lead which really isn’t there (e-mail blasts). Quality leads are obtained by gathering information from consumers who are actively looking for your services or products. When a potential customer is looking for you, you know they are definitely interested in what you have to offer. This is why search engine marketing and optimization are key to generating successful, quality leads.

Sure a massive amount of low quality leads will sell, but for how long? Once a client realizes that their ROI is horrible you can be sure they are going to look elsewhere for their leads. A successful lead generation business will invest heavily in search marketing to obtain high quality leads which keep clients happy.

Advertising costs money, period.

I’ve working in advertising for just over three years now.  I know to most that probably doesn’t seem like a long time, but in these past three years I have worked with a quite a variety of forms of advertising and an even bigger variety of clients.  The one thing I have noticed throughout this broad spectrum is clients adversity to spending money to make money.  Yeah I know it’s a cliche statement, but it’s true.  All forms of advertising cost money, plain and simple.  What advertisers need to really be thinking about is their return on investment (ROI).  Since we’ve already determined that you’re going to have to spend money, why not get the best return on that money spent?

Each form of advertising has it’s pros and cons, obviously.  TV, radio, magazine, newspaper and  guerrilla advertising have been around for quite some time.  Only recently has online advertising entered the picture, and just as most evolution occurs, it’s for the better.  Online advertising is a great way to specifically target your exact audience and find potential customers who are actively looking for your services.

Still, online advertising costs money!  This seems to be the single handedly hardest thing for me to get across to many of my potential or current clients.  No matter what they think, I can’t just wave a magic wand and have customers banging on their door.  True, online advertising is the most cost effective means of lead generation, but it ain’t free.  With the right funds to invest into proper SEM and SEO strategies you can start your lead generation campaign off on the right foot.  Although results won’t be instant, you will certainly see a good increase in leads after your initial investment.  That’s why it’s called ROI; you have to invest first and THEN see your return.

So no matter what you’ve seen or heard, there are no secret get rich quick plans on the internet.  Just as you can’t put your phone number in the phone book and expect to have your phone ringing off the hook, you can’t only build a website and expect to see leads flooding in.  Take your time, do your research, implement proven successful online advertising techniques and you will see the fruits of your labor.