According to a consumer online behavior study from Forrester Research the number of people visiting social networking sites has doubled since 2007. Forrester surveyed 40,545 US heads of household in January and February 2009 about a variety of topics including online behaviors and media consumption. Their executive summary states that,

Our 2009 data shows a stabilization of consumers’ overall time spent with online media. However, engagement with the online channel has deepened, as evidenced by the widespread adoption of such activities as social networking.

Take a look at this graphic that shows the very clear trending in favor of social networking.

Notice the not so subtle big red circle I added? It shows a large jump in the number of people that visit social networks. That’s great news! However if you look a little further down on the graphic you’ll notice that less than 20% of those surveyed read blogs, so there’s a key lesson to learn here.

When you decide to launch your business into the social networking world it’s important to incorporate your blog posts into your social network. Import your blog posts into your Facebook Page and other social networking accounts, because chances are that people may not visit your blog, but they much more likely to view your content through a social network platform.

LEVELTWO
LEVELTWO Medical

 Retweet This Post

Landing Page – An active webpage where customers will ‘land’ when they click your ad. The web address for this page is often called a ‘destination URL’ or ‘clickthrough URL.’

Below is a list of 7 deadly sins for landing page designs. The list was taken from a webinar from Tim Ash, a consultant from Google.

Have you committed one of the “7 deadly sins of landing page design?”

1. Unclear Call to Action
   Ensure that traffic is sent to a page where the desired action is clearly defined. If you wish for them to book a room night, have a large visible button that allows the customer to book a room night.
2. Too Many Visual Distractions
   A page filled with too many visual distractions, whether its photos of products or flashing banners or AdSense ads, will likely not convert as well. Keep the page simple, clean, and to the point.
3. Too Much Text
   A landing page should not be text heavy. Keep sentences short and simple, and convey your message using bullet points.
4. Not Keeping Promises
   Your AdCopy says: Buy 2 get 1 free, but if this same offer cannot be found on the landing page, you are not keeping that promise. If you have an attractive offer in your AdCopy, make sure that it is easily found on the landing page.
5. Long Forms
   Keep forms as short and concise as possible. Only include fields where it’s absolutely essential for the existing transaction.
6. Invisible Risk Reducers
   If your business is accredited by the BBB, or if your website is hacker safe and tested on a daily basis, be sure to include these logos above the fold.
7. Trust Indicators
   If your business is highly rated or raved about by another company of trust, place that logo above the fold as well. For example, if Conde Nast named your hotel as one of the “Top 500 Hotels in the World”, adding this trust indicator will surely help increase trust, and hopefully conversion.

We are Google Adword Professionals and we can help you implement a successful search engine marketing campaign. Contact us through the blog or on our website, SalesOverNight.com. If you’re company is in the medical industry check out of dedicated medical marketing website, LEVELTWO | Medical.

 Retweet This Post

You may be familiar with social software as a platform for networking and sharing content, but there’s another side to the social world and it’s a mashup between social networking and professional collaboration management software.

SocialCast is a business management software that is modeled after services like Friendfeed and Facebook. Basically it’s a communication tool businesses can use to incorporate social networking with real-time messaging to share knowledge across enterprises.

It carries many different social media standards like IM, mircoblogging, RSS, bookmarklets, email, and it’s even iPhone ready.

Why Should I Care?
It’s important because these social platforms are becoming standards in project collaboration and personal connectivity. While Facebook and other networks become a staple in our personal lives for connecting with friends and family, organizations are realizing the power of using the internet as a communication system to connect people within their businesses.

And this isn’t a new idea. Other sites like CubeTree, GoogleWave, and Yammer are also popular professional intranets. The online world is flocking to social engines like these to provide them not only with personal connectivity, but a new edge in the business world.

Is your company ready for the Web2.0 revolution?
LEVELTWO & LEVELTWO Medical
Subscribe to our blog
Follow us on Twitter

 Retweet This Post

The Internet has brought many unique benefits to marketing, including overall cost reduction for the distribution of information and media to a much broader, even global audience. This benefit alone has given online marketing a huge marketplace advantage.

Additionally, the interactive nature of online marketing, both in terms of providing instant response and eliciting responses, has also proved imperative in modern day marketing strategy. Below we take a look at four of the most powerful methods of online lead generation.

Search Engine Optimization

Configuring or optimizing your website with targeted keywords or phrases, also known as SEO, not only offers the most cost-effective method of promoting your business online, but with approximately 80% to 90% of all website traffic originating from search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and MSN, it is crucial to be at the top of the list. A first page position on Google can generate thousands of unique visitors to your website, generating the leads we want, affecting your bottom line.

Would you like your website to rank well in the organic results on Google, Yahoo and MSN? Would you like to see a steady increase in the amount of visitors to your website? If you answered yes to either of these questions, LEVELTWO can show you how to achieve effective and efficient search engine optimization results.

Pay-Per-Click

If your practice is new to the web and you would like to generate business from your website immediately, Pay-Per-Click advertising could be the solution you are looking for. PPC advertising offers direct advertising to millions of people per day and is targeted by specific keyword searches so you can reach your practices’ audience. Pay-Per-Click advertising is an auction-based bidding system where you compete with your peers to achieve prominent positions in the Paid Search Results.

Media Purchasing

Sometimes just getting your name out there is enough to convert a prospective patient into a real patient, but to really get the most return on your marketing investment you need strategic media purchasing.

At LEVELTWO, our specialty truly is strategy. From innovative research tools to highly targeted demographic placement, we don’t just purchase media, we generate leads with every buy. So whatever your current circumstances are we can provide direction through creative, innovative and effective marketing solutions.

Social Marketing

As the Internet continues to fuel our economy and our society, it is more important than ever to participate in social marketing. Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace are just some of the social marketing networks that can do most of the work for you.

By interacting with your followers, you can not only generate leads, but you can form unique relationships with them. And we can show you how use these relationships as effective marketing tools that directly increase your bottom line.

Interested in adding one or more of these tools to your online strategy? Contact us or give us a call at 469-619-0573

 Retweet This Post

Over at The Washington Post, they have a great interactive steak guide. They break them down into 3 different topics, steak that is worth tracking down, popular picks, and overlooked gems. They even give tips on how to cook them.

Hanger
So named because it “hangs” from the animals’ skirt or diaphragm. Quick-cooking, with a flavor profile and chewy texture similar to those of skirt steak.

Flatiron
Named for its shape. Relatively tender even though it comes from the tough chuck. The gristle that runs down its center can be removed easily. Also called top blade steak.

Flank
A lean cut that comes from the animal’s belly. It pairs nicely with the big flavors in Asian preparations. Cut on the diagonal into thin slices (against the grain) to give it a more tender texture.

Flap
Tough, well-marbled meat from the loin, sold either as a whole flap (hence the name) or in thick 1-inch strips. Its square shape makes it a good choice for carving into kebabs.

Skirt
Thinner and smaller than flank steak; located near the hanger on the animal. A traditional choice for beef fajitas. Cut into thin slices and serve with Tex-Mex flavors.

Chuck Eye
Neatly trimmed and more tender than chuck shoulder steak. It responds well to marinades and is best served medium-rare.

Check out all their steak tips over at WashingtonPost.com and have a happy Memorial Day weekend!

 Retweet This Post

www.LEVELTWOMedical.com

We’re excited to announce the launch of our new website focused on medical marketing. Generating leads in the medical industry requires an arsenal of tools. We specialize in a variety of marketing tools including:

• Integrated Marketing Campaigns
  – Creating integrated marketing campaigns that include TV, radio, print, outdoor and interactive
• Lead Generation
  – Patient generation for individual physicians and physician groups
• Lead Capturing
  – Ensuring your staff effectively captures and tracks leads
• Website Development
• Website Marketing
  – Search Engine Optimazation
  – Search Engine Marketing, pay-per-click (sponsored keywords) to drive targeted leads
  – Media Purchasing
  – Social Marketing, powerful social media tools that capture grassroot leads doing research on the web
  – Tracking CRM Tool, results that are quantifiable by our proprietary software tracking and CRM system
• Online Branding

Take a look at our portfolio and client list. We currently provide healthcare marketing for many medical leaders in the industry and we’d be happy to answer any questions you might have about generation for the medical industry.

Visit the new site at www.LEVELTWOMedical.com

 Retweet This Post

It’s Friday! We’ve filled your head with lots of information all week long and your RSS reader is full of blog posts about online marketing and why you could be doing it better. So let’s take a break from the marketing advice column.

I’ve put together 8 of my favorite websites that have nothing to do with work. When I close down the blogging machine around here I open up my personal RSS reader and enjoy a collection of sites that always entertain me. Here they are in no particular order.

1. Neatorama – There’s always something entertaining to read about.
2. Lifehacker – A collection of tips and downloads for getting things done faster.
3. Digg – Tech, business, science, gaming, lifestyle, entertainment…
4. TechCrunch – One of the most popular tech news sites.
5. Pandora – Free music played based on your tastes.
6. Ning – Social networks for anything and everything.
7. GoodReads – A social network for people who love to read.
8. InterfaceLIFT – Free high-resolution wallpapers.

Those are some of my favorites. What are yours?

 Retweet This Post

We’ve encouraged you to take the plunge and create something new for your company. We’ve shown you how to gather customer reviews, connect with new prospects, monitor your online reputation, and create fresh content for your readers to enjoy, but the fact is you’ve got a day job!

How can anyone expect to accomplish all of this on their own?

If you want a strong social media campaign that includes all of these aspects, you can’t accomplish all of this on your own. It takes team work and we’ve got the perfect team to help your brand finish the marathon.

Here are five benefits to hiring a marketing agency for your social marketing campaign.

1. Leave the research to the professionals.
   The internet is a big place and it is a full time job trying to stay on top of the latest trends. By using a marketing agency to manage your social media campaign you are able to monitor the progress rather than the day to day grind.
2. Things happen fast on the internet.
   A video or subject matter can become viral in a matter of moments, especially with the popularity of microblogs and instant communication. If you don’t know where to look and how to monitor these hot topics these opportunities could pass you by.
3. Your social sites should still look professional.
   It’s true that a blog and social networking campaign is an intimate window into how your company works, but it is still very important that you present yourself in a professional manner to any visitor that stops by your blog or adds you to their social network. The internet is a great place to try new things, but your professional creditability is not one of them.
4. It takes a village to develop a successful campaign.
   There are so many aspects to a social media campaign that it is impossible for one person to connect with with the different channels. It requires a team of skills including designers, coders, developers, copy writers, creative thinkers, and campaign administrators.
5. Social media marketing is only a part of the strategy.
   Each customer is different and you can’t expect all of your business prospects to fit into the same mold. You have to engage in a universal marketing strategy in order to gather as many leads as possible. Your social networking should be accompanied by a blog, which could be supplemented by some pay per click advertising, which could be optimized by running a radio ad or posting a billboard, which would strengthen your online ad banner campaign. By entangling your prospects in many different marketing channels you increase the likelihood of a conversion.

Interested in learning more on how LEVELTWO can help you better your marketing campaign? Give us a call at 469.619.0573 or email us.

 Retweet This Post

About a month ago we shared some tips on harvesting and managing customer testimonies. Today we’ve got a new tip for gathering feedback from your customers and new visitors. It’s a feedback form from GetSatisfaction.com.

Get Satisfaction is your connection to the community of people who use your products and services. It’s a unique way to create a transparent, free-flowing dialogue between you and your customers. Make it your entry point into the conversation and transform your customer service from a cost center into an engine for building culture and creating evangelists.

- Create and retain passionate users
- Get users involved in improving your products and services
- Reduce customer churn and repetitive support tasks

Take a look at this image from the GetSatisfaction website.

Customers can:

- Find a company or product
- Ask a question and share how they feel
- The business will get an email notification of the new activity
- Other visitors or customers can join in on the conversation and contribute to the discussion
- The visitors and the company are now connected in an interactive discussion that will help your company address the needs of the customers

There is even a built in reputation management system so that you can keep track of what people are saying about your product or services on Twitter. Also, see our post about our own online reputation management product.

LEVELTWO on GetSatisfaction. Leave a comment!

 Retweet This Post

We’ve given you tips on how to create an easy alert when your company’s name or brand name is mentioned on the internet. We’ve also talked about inviting your clients to participate in reviewing and rating your services. But it takes time to sort through all of those results and figure out what is important and what’s not.

Online reputation management is extremely important because the internet is the new word of mouth. It is critical that you know when a client is not happy and is broadcasting it through the social networks, but how do you manage tons of information in an efficient and productive way?

Let’s take at look at LEVELTWO’s online reputation management tool and how it can give you a dashboard view of the state of your brand’s online reputation.

Results by Tone

Above is a chart of posts on the internet that contain your company’s name or brand. It is broken down by tone. For example, a blog post might say “XYZ Company delivered my order today and it works great!”. That would be an example of a very positive result. A neutral result would be something like “I just drove by XYZ Company on my way to the mall.” And of course a very negative result would be “XYZ Company never showed up at our scheduled appointment! I’m never using them again!”

Positive and Negative Brand References

Above is a chart showing positive and negative brand references. By clicking on the negative opinion bar graph you can quickly drill down and see what posts referred to your brand in a unfavorable way. This is extremely important for making those after the sale follow ups.

Search Results by Channel

Above is a chart of results broken down by the different internet channels by which they are broadcast. In this example we can see that the majority of posts are from blogs and microblogs, but we can also see that there is some discussion occurring in message board forums and social networks.

Demographics of Author

Above is a chart showing the demographics of the authors of our search results. From the example we can see that the majority of people discussing our company are males from ages 25 to 49.

Map of Search Results

Finally, we see in the picture above a map of all the search results by geographic location. You can click on each pushpin to dig down deeper into those specific search results in that geographic region.

So there you have it, a quick overview of some of the tools that we have to offer if you are interested in online reputation management tools for your company or brand. To learn more and get a free demo of your own online reputation contact us using this page.

 Retweet This Post