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Facebook is now a household name (especially for those with teenagers in the house) and as business owners become more aware of the effectiveness of using social sites to market their business, there are many frequently asked questions about how to put your business on Facebook.

Let’s start by noting the difference between a Facebook Profile and a Facebook Page.

Facebook Profile:

• Strictly for people (not a business or product) to interact with friends and family
• Any individual can create a profile, just not a commercial business or product
• A business that opens a profile page is in direct violation of the Facebook Terms of Service and will be disabled
• Other users become FRIENDS of a Facebook Profile
• A Facebook Profile can upload pictures, videos, status updates, and can invite people to become friends

Facebook Pages:

• Designed for businesses, brands, companies, products, and celebrities
• Other users become FANS of a Facebook Page
• Can upload pictures, videos, status updates, host a discussion board, display wall posts, and other features
• Can track metrics like fans, page views, interactions, gender, age, location, language, and more
• Can not invite other members to become a fan

Example of Facebook Page metrics:

The reason for keeping companies and individuals separate on Facebook is to reduce the amount of spam. If a business was able to invite you become a fan of their page, users would be flooded with businesses looking to inflate their number of fans.

The purpose is to make the user experience as enjoyable as possible. Sites like MySpace and Twitter do not have such strict boundaries between individuals and companies. This unrestricted access has contributed to the ongoing decrease in MySpace’s traffic and could lead to the death of Twitter if stricter rules are not put into place.

This points back to the first three rules of social media marketing:

1. Content
2. Content
3. Content

If you don’t provide interesting content with a positive experience for your readers and fans you will never achieve success in developing a strong online following. It wouldn’t be good business practice to cut corners in your trade, so it’s equally unprofessional to break social networking etiquette.

Questions? Comments? Let us know in the comment box below. Or contact us here.

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As you type into the Google search box, Google Suggest guesses what you are typing and offers suggestions. In the example above, I typed “dallas den” and Google suggested “dallas dentists.”

It works by those amazing Google algorithms that use a wide range of information to predict what you are typing into the search bar. It’s a mashup between the overall popularity of various searches and the frequency of the search. The trending topics make a big difference in how these suggestions are ranked. For example, as of this morning the hot trends in the US are “home run derby 2009 winner,” “the bechelorette finale spoilers,” and “wbcn.”

You can dig down into trending topics to see the search volume index over the past 24 hours. For example, let’s look at the last 24 hours of “home run derby 2009 winner.”

You can see that there was a spike at 8pm (PDT) that trailed off late into the night, but shot way up this morning. Understanding trends like these is important for building your search engine marketing campaign.

Since Google Suggest relies on Google Trends, the current events will guide how people search for answers. If you are an advertiser that sells home run derby memorabilia, you might receive a tremendous amount of clicks over a short period of time, but the majority of those clicks would not return sales because they are visitors looking for news coverage, they are not interested in buying a coffee mug.

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Understanding the value of keywords in online marketing and taking the relevant actions is the key to making significant profits in the industry. Understanding the power of keywords means picking the right keywords, leveraging them effectively and continuously reviewing their conversion rates.

Google is not an automatic money making machine on its own. The power of Google is in the keywords, not on Google itself. The reason that keywords are so important is simple. Keywords represent a custom built service for the Internet searcher. They ask the search engine for information on specific words and the information is returned to them. Hence the reason why the premium is attached to keywords.

The success of the online marketer is therefore linked to how well she leverages her keywords. She needs to plan them very carefully and do a lot of research. Picking effective keywords takes skill and patience. Acquiring the skill helps the online marketer remain calm under pressure.

To pick the right keywords, the online marketer must constantly watch for traffic and searches for the relevant words. If she is pursuing a cost per click advertising strategy, she must also ensure she is not paying over the odds to the point where the keywords are not delivering sufficient value to her business. To gain an indication of the value of the keywords, seek competitor information on what they are spending on the keywords.

It is also very important to note that loyalty to keywords based on an online marketer’s hunch is suicidal to her business. Over 90% of keywords lose money in cost per click advertising; therefore it is very important that the online marketer has management information on conversion rates for her keywords. She should quickly identify the ones that her making her money and ditch the rest as quickly as possible. This should be an ongoing review process as keywords do run their course. The online marketer should aim to spend the bulk of her advertising budget on around the best 5% of her keywords. This is how she can consistently make money.

Keywords and not Google is the key to making money in an online marketing business. Understanding the power of keyword leverage, being consistent and unsentimental in the use of keywords and picking the right ones are the keys to success in the industry.

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Perfection is not a business quality, it’s a goal. No one ever achieves it because you can’t make everyone happy. There are always going to be problems and conflicts. So with that in mind, it’s logical to understand that there will always be negative reviews for companies.

Your small business is built for customer interaction
What to do about a bad review
When to confront a negative review

Matt McGee over at smallbusinesssem.com has posted a great blog post that discusses why negative reviews are actually good for businesses. Below is an excerpt from his blog post.

How Negative Reviews are Good for Business

1.) They create trust. Negative reviews provide balance. No one expects a product or service to be perfect for every person. Negative reviews help customers confirm they can live with the product’s faults and/or the company’s faults.

2.) They provide honest feedback. Reviews of your product or service are a focus group of sorts; honest reviews tell you what you’re doing right and wrong. Rather than avoid negative reviews, use them to improve your products, services, or business processes.

3.) They can improve your SEO. You’ve probably heard that good keyword research and good copywriting involves targeting the terms that your customers use. Well, negative reviews offer a peak into how your customers talk about your business or products — the terms they use, the concerns they have, the places where there’s friction between what you advertised and what you delivered. There may be good keyword research and copywriting ideas in those negative reviews.

4.) They help you make better business decisions. If one of your products or services continually gets negative feedback from customers, that’s a strong hint that you should either make dramatic improvements in the product/service or just get rid of it altogether. If patients love how you take care of them, but repeatedly say your waiting room is too small or too loud, it’s probably time to make some facility improvements.

5.) They offer a golden opportunity. A negative review is an opportunity for you to shine, to show you care about making things better — not only for the customer who left the negative review, but also for the countless others that are reading.

Read Matt’s entire blog post here at smallbusinesssem.com.

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Everyone wants the success of Google and as of this morning Microsoft has launched its latest attempt at stealing some of Google’s search dominance with their release of Bing.com.

Live.com, Microsoft’s major search engine, now redirects to Bing.com. I did a quick test search comparison using our company name, LEVELTWO, and I found very different results from Google’s results for the same search. Bing returned many more social network results than Google. Our Twitter account was ranked third on Bing, which Google ranks it 8th on their search engine. I think this is a good thing since social networks will often provide more current and up-to-date information than a static website.

Videos
Another interesting (maybe annoying) feature is the autoplaying video previews. By simply holding your mouse over the video search results the video will automatically start playing with sound. While this was a cool feature, I was quickly overwhelmed with multiple videos blasting sound through my speakers. However there is a mute/unmute button on each video which makes browsing video previews much less assaulting to your ears.

Search Categories
Over on the left side of the screen you’ll find a search categories list that are dynamically generated according to your search phrase. I tried several different types of broad searches and they all returned a different list of categories to accompany my search.

Overall, I think Bing is an improvement over Live search. I don’t foresee people leaving Google to use Bing as their primary search engine, but this friendlier platform certainly makes Bing a great secondary search engine.

Bing.com

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Just this week hulu announced their new desktop viewing software. It features a sleek new look that’s optimized for use with standard Windows Media Center or Apple remote controls, allowing you to navigate Hulu’s entire library with just six buttons. While some video distribution sites might be worried about their place in the market, we are excited to see yet another step closer to the internet becoming integrated with our operating systems.

With all of the online applications now available it is not too far in the future that the internet will become the platform for all of our personal computing tasks. Maybe we’re already there! Webmail, online calendars, invoicing, faxing, making phone calls, and of course the huge popularity of iPhone apps that integrate an online cloud computing system with the mobile software.

You can do it all on the internet. If the future of personal computing is online, that’s where businesses need to focus their marketing efforts. Facebook is replacing your address book and Twitter is replacing texting. As the social networking industry works its way into our daily lives, businesses can’t afford to not be apart of the shifting technology. The search market is integrating with the social market, search is universal!

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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

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Finding a search marketing company is easy. Just do a quick search and you’ll find tons of companies demanding that they are the best. So you’ve find ‘em, the hard part is choosing which marketing agency to use for your search marketing campaign.

We’ve put together 10 questions to ask your search marketing company before you sign that contract. You’ve let the salesmen do the talking, now it’s time for you to ask some questions of your own.

1. Does the contract include ongoing maintenance? The search marketing world is always changing and if you stand still you’ll get left behind.
2. Are they certified search engine marketing professionals for the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN)?
3. Each campaign should be custom tailored for each client. Ask them if they use any template campaigns.
4. Ask if they use any blackhat tricks. Blackhat are methods that are not honest and could result in getting your website banned.
5. An honest search marketing agency will never guarantee conversions, only a specific range of traffic increase can be guaranteed. A well planned campaign will yield a return on investment, but there’s no way to predict the level of activity.
6. Ask to see example campaign landing pages or websites. What’s your first impression? Would you buy it?
7. Do they offer on-demand campaign reporting or do they email you a spreadsheet once a month?
8. Do they make use of multiple search engines? A strong SEM campaign will be diverse.
9. Be wary if they say “yes” to everything. A successful search campaign requires a minimum level of investment. If they say that $200 a month will get your website ranked first in Google you might want to get a second opinion.
10. Do they track everything about your campaign? This includes the number of people who see your ads, the number of clicks, what they do once they reach your landing page, and how many of those visitors fill out a form or call your phone number. Call tracking is key to search engine marketing.

Honesty is the best policy. We know there are a lot of other marketing agencies out there, but no matter who you choice it’s important that you are informed about what you’re getting.

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Owning a blog is no longer a luxury, it’s a necessity!

The online market has changed. Customers not only expect you deliver great products and services, but they also expect you to innovate the latest technologies and provide fast customer service. A good way to help your customers and prospects stay connected to your business is by creating an online presence that keeps them updated on the latest news and trends.

We’ve heard a lot of reasons why some companies don’t want to embrace the online social networking environment and we’d like to share our thoughts on three of the most frequent arguments against social media marketing.

1. You don’t know my business like I do.
   You’re right. No one knows your products or services like you do, but you’re missing the point of a blog. It’s about delivering interesting content about your industry. Let your main website be your selling platform and use your blog to reach out to people that are interested in your industry. The blog is not a place to broadcast your sales pitch, it’s a place to connect with real people, not the mindless masses.
2. People won’t read my blog.
   Successful blogging doesn’t mean you have thousands of readers a month. A blog can be successful with only a few hundred readers, especially if you work in a small niche market. Success is measured by the amount of interaction and connectivity you make with your readers, not simply the volume of readers.
3. It won’t help me sell my products.
   Wrong. Not only will a blog help you sell more products by creating deeper relationships with your current clients, a blog and social media campaign will reach more viewers than other types of internet marketing. For example, if you advertise on a few search engines you are not reaching the vast number of other networks that people commonly use to search for information. Unless you are publishing blogs, your prospects will never find you on popular blog search engines. If you don’t create videos, you’ll never be found on a YouTube search result.

Do you have a specific question about social media marketing. We dare you to ask us about it in the comment box below.

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Question: When is the best time to deliver an ad to a prospect?

Answer: During the research phase.

So how do you do it? As business owners, how can you actively deliver your marketing message at just the right time?

Great news! There are two approaches.

#1 – Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
When a prospect types in a search phrase into a search engine that contains keywords referring to your industry niche, using search engine marketing you can deliver a relevant ad directly to them right when they are in the correct buying phase.

In this example the prospect is looking for weight loss surgery. That’s a pretty broad search phrase so you may not want to spend money on an ad for someone just in the interest phase.

So in this example the prospect is much more specific in what they are searching for and they have entered the research phase and that’s when you can deliver a powerful ad specifically tailored to their search.

Learn more about search engine marketing.

#2 – Social Media Marketing (SMM)
When a prospect searches on a social network for a specific product or service unless you have a profile setup on that specific platform they wouldn’t see your ads. By developing a social campaign that targets searches outside of the search engine realm you will gather traffic that would not find you using a search engine.

Another exciting aspect is that you can directly contact a prospect as they begin the research phase. For example if someone on Twitter asks:

You can set up an alert that tells you exactly when someone uses any keyword you specify. In this example, one of our clients wants to know anytime someone mentions their back pain. So as soon as this tweet popped up, they were able to respond with a link to their herniated disc section of their website. Now that’s powerful marketing.

Learn more about social media marketing.

LEVELTWO

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