As we have introduced people to Twitter, we’ve had a lot of questions about the Twitter lingo. Twitter is basically just like a very short blog, but there are some key differences, mainly the built-in social community. So we’ve got a two part post that will help explain common Twitter keyterms.

Microblogging: The term microblog is a label for instant communication via the Twitter platform. It’s a compound phrase that describes the limit of characters per post (micro) and the frequency of status updates throughout the users day (blog). A synonym might be “microjournal.”

Follow: To receive messages on Twitter, you follow other people and companies you’re interested in—which means you get their messages as they post (put another way, their messages show up in your incoming timeline on your Twitter home page). Conversely, people get your messages by following you.

Tweet: Users refer to an individual message as a tweet, as in, “Check out this tweet about our new healthcare marketing package.” People sometimes use it as a verb, too, as in, “I tweeted about the stimulus package this morning.” If “tweet” is hard for you to use with a straight face in a business context, try “twittering” as a verb instead. Alternatives include “post,” “message” and “update.”

@username: For companies, one of the most useful things about Twitter is that it lets you exchange public messages with individual users. Simply start a message with @username of the person you want to reach, like this:

“@CNN I agree with your comments about the current state of the economy.”

If CNN is following your account, your message will appear directly on their Twitter home page. If they not following your account, your message will appear in their folder of @username mentions. People who are following both you and CNN will also see the message on their Twitter home page. Finally, the message will appear in search results, and people who come to your Twitter home page will see it among the messages in your outgoing timeline.

To find the public messages that are directed to you (i.e., those that start with your @BusinessName) or that mention you (i.e., those that include your @BusinessName elsewhere in the tweet), head to your Twitter home page, and then on the right side of the screen, click the tab labeled your @BusinessName. For businesses, it’s a good idea to keep a close eye on incoming @mentions, because they’re often sent by customers or potential customers expecting a reply.

Direct messages (DMs): Direct messages are Twitter’s private messaging channel. These tweets appear on your home page under the Direct Messages tab, and if you’ve got email notifications turned on, you’ll also get an email message when somebody DMs you. DMs don’t appear in either person’s public timeline or in search results. No one but you can see your DMs.

The one tricky concept with DMs is that you can send them only to people who are following you. Conversely, you can receive them only from people you’re following.

You can easily send DMs from the Direct Messages tab by using the pull-down menu to choose a recipient and then typing in your note. To send a DM from your home page, start your message with “d username,” like this:

“d LEVELTWO what do you guys think about using so many hospitals using social media?”

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The following three step social media marketing tips are from Wendi from Wendistry. She shares three core values of branded social media.

Step 1: Take Off the Reach and Frequency Blinders

Repeat this mantra as often as you need: “Branded social media is not about reach and frequency.” Too often C-levels expect scale from social media only to be disappointed by a small number of participants. But truly effective social media:

• Focuses on the end of the marketing funnel… not the front
• Gives brand advocates the tools to evangelize
• Gives brand enthusiasts reasons to get more involved

Step 2: Map Who Uses Social Technologies, When and Where

Given social media’s smaller target, the POST (People, Objectives, Strategies, Technologies) Methodology remains key components to any C-level leader who wants to create successful social media. Combining these tools with a detailed channel plan enhances the likelihood of success by:

• Examining the overall social savviness of your target
• Creating objectives up front
• Prioritizing channels by those objectives

Step 3: Link Initiatives to Measure Success for Your Brand

In an era of shrinking budgets and short-term focus, leaders need to show results in all channels quickly. To begin to understand the true impact of social media on the company’s brand, senior management should:

• Create social media programs that incent but do not require opting in
• Use analytics to size your brand advocacy potential
• Tie loyalty programs to social initiatives

Read the article from Wendistry.com

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Yesterday was a big day for Mac and iPhone users. Apple hosted its annual World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) and announced the latest updates to their wildly popular iPhone. While the majority of the opening keynote was focused on updates to the Apple products, they did allow some time for featured developers to discuss their latest technologies using the iPhone.

A very exciting presentation was done by AirStrip Technologies. They made medical devices and their presentation at WWDC 09 was about AirStrip Critical Care which delivers real time information to practitioners like ventilator flow tracings, patient vital signs data and rhythm strips.

The medical industry is flocking to the tech market and applications like this are a glimpse into the future of healthcare. Patients are looking for their healthcare providers to take steps toward advanced technologies. It’s important that your medical company show its strong commitment to staying current and valid in today’s dynamic market.

While you may not have the ability to create your own medical technologies, there are other ways to establish a presence of innovation and we can help you do it.

We specialize in:

• creating integrated marketing campaigns that include TV, radio, print, outdoor and interactive
• developing surgical cases for healthcare facilities, surgical centers and surgeons
• ensuring your staff effectively captures and tracks leads
• patient generation for individual physicians and physician groups
• website development
• pay-per-click (sponsored keywords) to drive targeted leads
• natural/organic search engine optimization to drive targeted leads
• powerful social media tools that capture grassroot leads doing research on the web
• results that are quantifiable by our proprietary software tracking and CRM system

Find out more at LEVELTWO Medical.

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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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Attention business tweeters. Don’t buy into the Twitter tools fanaticism. Automating certain functions of your company’s Twitter account is tempting, but don’t take shortcuts in social media. Here’s why.

You aren’t fooling anyone.
Don’t forget that all those followers are real people. Interactive marketing means that you are speaking with individuals and creating relationships that continue to grow and change. A people are smart and they can tell if there is a real person behind that business’s Twitter account.

Automated responses are SPAM.
As a business, if you are using automated direct messages you should question your purpose for being on Twitter in the first place. You’re dealing with real people and they can tell that your direct message is simply a prewritten marketing message. If you aren’t taking the time to put a personal effort into each one of your messages your audience will know it.

You can’t streamline personality.
Each business’s culture is different and it takes time to develop that personality through social networking. Engaging with your customers through Twitter is not a push button program. It takes time to develop a campaign and standards for social media marketing.

If you don’t have the in-house manpower to manage a social media campaign you have two options. You can seek an outside marketing firm to help you develop a plan and execute that plan or you can stay out of the game until you are ready to take the plunge.

Don’t make the mistake of automating your social media campaign. Social media is a popular form of marketing because it’s based around real people making personal connections.

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Remember the days of dialup? The internet was on all the local 10 o’clock news channels because it was something new and different. Fast forward to 2009 and things are reversed. Customers now expect companies to have a website and if it doesn’t have dynamic interactive content then it’s nothing special. Everyday the standards are set a little higher.

So it’s a safe bet that generating business online 10 years from now will be phenomenally more difficult than it is today. That’s why it your niche company is primed for success online right now!

If you offer a speciality service or product, you are in a perfect position to dominate the market by identifying your company as the leader in its field.

However, if you offer a service or product that is more common, take the initiative and market yourself in more definitive verticals. Set yourself apart by being a specialist in niche markets rather than an entire industry.

1. The internet is a global marketplace, but that doesn’t mean you can’t define your target online audience within a specific geographic radius.
2. The big name industry players might have a strong brand, but you can dominate your market by saturating your region with content to reinforce your expertise.

As a niche company you have a strong advantage by defining your geographically targeted audience and marketing your company as a leader.

As a niche service company it is

1. Easier to distinguish yourself as an expert.
You will have less competition and more opportunity to cover your specific vertical.

2. Easier to convert a highly defined target audience.
Providing services and products specifically tailored to that vertical will result in a higher conversion rate.

3. Easier to replicate the business model for expansion
A taylor made product or service that has proven to be successful in one market is ripe for further development.

Also, take a look at why your small business is made for customer interaction.

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SocialTwist in California is debuting a new type of social ad unit that is based on word of mouth marketing and advertising.

…the company is introducing advertising widgets that come with the ability for visitors to share the ads with their friends by e-mailing them a template e-mail and link to a destination chosen by the advertiser. The widget makes a clickable Tell-a-Friend link appear at the top right of an ad unit, which pops up a box where surfers get to e-mail a template message along with the original ad and a link to the website where the ad originally appeared to their Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail contacts, or alternatively send it out to a specific e-mail address.

I went and tried out the demo page and I noticed a small note at the bottom of the pop up window.

So we’re trusting an ad distribution agency to not store our personal information? What about the person’s email that we send the ad to? Are those safe as well?

It’s an interesting idea, but the only ads I’ve ever enjoyed so much that I have shared them with friends have been videos or an entire website, not a content ad on a website. And if the ad was talking about something I might want to send to someone else, I would typically click the ad and send my friend the website URL, not the actual ad itself.

Tell-a-Friend: Word of Mouth Marketing via TechCrunch article.

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Pay-per-click – A great method to drive lots of visitors to your website that are interested in your products or services.

After the click – Understanding what those visitors are doing once they reach your website, specfically if they are not calling you or filling out a form.

5 reasons to track after the click:

1. The tracking cookie is saved on the visitor’s computer for 30 days after the visit so you can know if they click now and return to your website later.
2. Return on Investment (ROI) is the most important metric. Your cost per click or click through rate might be great, but unless you know how much you are making for every dollar you invest, the other metrics are useless.
3. You can expand on keywords that provide the most ROI and generate even more profit.
4. Keywords that contain a brand or company name may provide a lot of traffic, but when you track the ROI of these keywords you might find that they provide little to no profit.
5. After you know the visitors that are taking some kind of action on your website, you can then determine where your most active markets are located geographically and develop a campaign specifically targeting those buyers.

In order to track after the click activity (using Google Adwords) you will need to make use of the Conversion Tracking feature (pictured below).

The set up is really simple. The first step is to name your conversion action.

TIP: If your forms all send the same formated message and there is no way for you to tell where each specific form came from, it’s important be very specific when naming your conversion. In the example we named our conversion “Landing Page B Contact Form” because we have 4 different landing pages for this client and we want to know which page is getting more leads.

The rest of the setup is really straight forward so we’ll skip to the next page after you save the action and get your conversion code.

On this page you are presented with the code to place on your “thank you” page.

Read related blog posts about Search Engine Marketing

• Effective Landing Pages, 7 Tips
• What is Search Engine Marketing?
• How to do Keyword Research for Search Marketing
• What is Dynamic Keyword Insertion?
• What is Clickthrough Rate and Cost Per Click?
• How to make your Website more Trustworthy
• 4 Reasons why Traffic Quality is Important

Ask us a question on Twitter @LEVELTWO

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