InsideOut Solutions

Using Pinterest to Enhance Your Online Visibility

February 12th, 2012 by

Internet Marketing Weekly:

Pinterest is an image sharing social media platform that has been gaining a rapid rise in users, 10 million so far, and is showing itself to step far and above other image-sharing sites like Picasa and Flickr in search over the last eight months.

pinterest-search-trends

Search trends for Pinterest have outranked others in 2011

Obtaining entree to Pinterest has proved a challenge for some. There are essentially two ways to go about obtaining an invite to create a Pinterest account.
The first is to go to Pinterest and request for an invitation using your name and email address. Sometimes however, the invitation never comes.

Request a Pinterest Invitation

Request a Pinterest Invitation

The other way is to ask a friend who is already on Pinterest to invite you via email, Facebook or Twitter. I’ve attempted to gain an invite both ways, only finding the latter to be successful.

Does Pinterest Have Marketing Value for Your Business?

Pinterest is all the rage right now — especially with the new Facebook integration. But can you use it for business purposes, visibility and marketing your inn, ranch or other business?
Since Pinterest, unlike other social networks, allows “do follow” on their links, rather than the more common “no-follow” with sites like Trip Advisor, the links provided on Pinterest are giving ranking benefit.
This being the case, consider implementing these practices to enhance your search visibility when using your Pinterest account for your business:

When Setting up Your Account Under “Edit Profile”:

  1. Make certain you set your profile so it is not hidden from search engines and use keyword-rich, descriptive text in the “about” section.
  2. Begin the “About” with your business URL. This is not a live link but it can’t hurt to have it here.
  3. List your web URL and also set the location to the city and state where your business is located.
  4. If your inn, ranch or other business is well represented with a Google Places page, consider using that as the landing page for your profile instead of your website. If there are great reviews of your business and services located there, then this can really add value.

pinterest-set-up-account

When Using Pinterest:

  1. Create boards with keyword-rich titles.
  2. Use well-optimized keyword text when writing descriptions of your pins.
  3. Make sure to pin attractive images. Pinterest users are all about the visual.
setting-up-pinterest-board

 What Kind of Boards Might You Create?

Pick 1-3 niches that you’re passionate about which also support what you do as an innkeeper.

  • Create a board for each of the main categories that are on your website, like rooms, breakfast items, area activities.
  • If you offer vegan, gluten-free, fine cuisine, locavore, etc., create a board that shows your finds to support this focus.
  • Design: If your inn has a unique architectural feature or design focus, create a board for this (New England Cape Cod, Beachy, Mid-century Modern, Bauhaus inspired, etc.).
  • Gardening: Do you have unique gardens, flowers, or a food garden you maintain for the table?
  • Do you offer a wedding venue, or a cooking school, or a stretch of river for fly fishing?

Inns & Associations Using Pinterest to Good Effect.

Blair House Inn Bed & Breakfast
The High Pointe Bed & Breakfast
The Flying Frog Bed & Breakfast
White Oak Manor
Shadowlawn Bed & Breakfast
California Association of Bed and Breakfast Inns

Develop a Style and Personality for Your Boards

The pin boards need to make sense for your business and you need to have enough content on them to make them worth following.

  • Create boards that reflect both your personal and business ideas.
  • Feature causes you support, area attractions, as well as businesses and people that support your business.
  • Create a group board to increase engagement. Whether your goal is to encourage your employees to spread the word about your business, or to  receive feedback from current or potential customers, Pinterest allows  boards to have contributors. Consider hosting a group board so that your followers can add their own additions and pictures.

Share content that is relevant and valuable and not overly promotional so people are able to discover new things. Facebook doesn’t necessarily allows for that kind of discovery, and the kind of conversation you have on Twitter and the feedback you receive is very different. Pinterest gives people the option to choose what information they are getting. Unlike a general Twitter feed, Pinterest users can choose to follow certain boards and select the kind of conversation they want to engage with.

Gauging Success With Feedback

You may want to look at all of your social media platforms as away to deepen your relationship with your customers. With Pinterest, an image you upload that is repined by others about a recipe, for example, may help as you develop new ones for your guests. If you see a particular room or garden feature being re-pinned, you may consider offering to feature that room in a promotion, or do a blog post on your gardening techniques.  You can gauge the most shared content as a way to improve how you speak to your fans, guests and followers.

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Your Website Branding Should Be Your Own Brand, Not Anyone Else’s

February 5th, 2012 by

Internet Marketing Weekly: Don’t Cede Your Website’s Branding to Promote the Brand of a Paid Membership

Post No Bills: Don't allow other brands to dominate your website.

Don't allow other brands to dominate your website content or important code.

Your website is your property (heck, even the place it is kept is called your domain). As a business, your website is the primary place to market your business online. Anyone who reaches it, whether by search engine or referring site, should be enticed to stay there and learn more about your company, not given every opportunity to be sent off to another website before they can get to know more about your services or products.

If a paid membership website asks you for advertising space on your website, which many do, be careful about how far you go in promoting your membership in, and association with, that organization.

We received word recently of a paid membership organization - which we’ll call “X Directory” – offering a “marketing tip” it ostensibly received from one of its members advising each member to add the X Directory name to the “Title line” of their website home page.

This “tip” is recommending that you promote your membership in X Directory on the Title tag of home page: the most important page of your website. The Title tag of a website is the primary tag search engines use to determine validity of your website for keyword placement. The first 65 characters of the Title tag are all that you have to promote whatever keywords you want to be most competitive for on that page.

Also important to note is that the title is also what shows up as the link in search engine query results.

Yahoo Internet Search

Would Yahoo's search query results for "internet search" be improved with "Powered by Bing" in the linked title? It may be factually true, but it isn't helpful for building Yahoo's brand.

By giving prominent title positioning for the name of X Directory on your home page, you are telling the search engines that this name is important to this website. Yet, it’s not your business name, nor is it related to you in any way accept that you pay X Directory for membership; membership that’s supposed to promote your business. If X Directory is advising you to promote theirs in such an invasive and aggressive way, you have to ask yourself if X Directory has your marketing interests in mind.

Whose Brand Are You Promoting?

Brand confusion

Who's in charge here - Sample Inn or X Directory?

We’ve also heard requests from paid membership directories advising members to add their directory’s logo and link placement “above the fold” in the header section of the layout on a member website’s home page (or, in some cases, all pages). As with ceding space on your title tag, giving prime page layout “real estate” to an external link is not recommended from an website marketing point of view. This is especially true now that a Google Page Layout Algorithm Improvement is, as of January 19, penalizing websites that have too much advertising or other “non-content” located “above the fold” of a web page.

The first thing we recommend you do when you see advice like this is check the value of the source. When it comes to a paid listing on an online directory this is easy to do in Google Analytics.

If you have Ecommerce tracking set up, it’s a matter of tracking the that referring site (and any affiliated sites) as sources of transactions. If you pay X Directory $1,200 per year to be listed on the X Directory website and affiliates Y Directory and Z Directory, you would look at those Ecommerce transaction sources to see what your $1,200 bought you in terms of online revenue and take that into account as as a major part of evaluating your membership with X Directory.

Evaluate the Ecommerce revenue of paid directory listings.

Ecommerce revenue should be a primary consideration when evaluating paid directory listings. Looking at X Directory's revenue for the last 12 months, is $1,200 per year worth it?

If you don’t have Ecommerce tracking in place, you can still evaluate your paid online directories with Google Analytics by looking at visit quantity and, most especially, quality from those sources of website traffic.

Bottom Line: “Membership Has Its Privileges” is the slogan of American Express. Of course, membership also has its price. When it comes to paid directory listings, a reasonable price might include a reciprocal logo link with the logo given correct alternate text and placed “below the fold”. It may even require home page placement of that link. From a website and search marketing perspective, it should never include the requirement or even suggestion to surrender valuable space in your home page title tag or the “above the fold” content of your website pages.

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Adding a Facebook Subscribe Button to your Personal Profile

January 29th, 2012 by

Internet Marketing Weekly: Facebook Timeline and Enabling the Subscribe Button

The new version of Facebook for personal profiles called Timeline, will become mandatory within the week to all users. If you haven’t voluntarily enabled it, now is the time to add a great cover image that tells your story before the switch takes place. This article will not only tell you how, but includes a downloadable template.

Once you do this, consider enabling the Subscribe button on your profile. If you’re an innkeeper who likes to post things about your inn on your personal page, you can set those status updates to “public.” When you do so, anyone who has subscribed to your personal profile will get to see your posts. They won’t, however, be able to see any status updates you earmark for friends, or special sub-groups you’ve created.

Enable Facebook Subscribe in your Personal Profile

Enable Facebook Subscribe in your Personal Profile

The way that Subscribe works is any and all Facebook users can sign up to get the PUBLIC posts in their News Feed of any user who has enabled Subscribe. Please Note: Subscribe is optional.

Facebook is pushing the Subscribe option (maybe to compete with Google+ ?). For Facebook users that have enabled Subscribe, the button now shows in the Comments plugin on websites, so you can easily find and subscribe to new people. Plus, Facebook recently introduced the Subscribe button plugin which you can add to your website.

Though it would seem the Subscribe option is designed for public figures, you may fid this a useful addition to your personal profile if you like to mention the activity happening at your inn, ranch or other business. If you’re someone who only uses your personal profile as a gateway to your fan page, then adding the subscribe button, and posting as the owner of your business makes a lot of sense.

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Why "Search Plus Your World" Means Google+ Business Pages Are Now Essential

January 22nd, 2012 by

Internet Marketing Weekly: Google’s new “Search Plus Your World” presents marketing opportunities to businesses with Google+ business pages.

search plus your world (SPYW) toggle

Search Plus Your World provides marketing opportunities to businesses.

Google’s moves toward personalizing search results took a dramatic turn a little over a week ago with the introduction of Search Plus Your World (SPYW). Now when you do a Google search while logged in to a Google account, you might see results from your Google+ network integrated into the search results.

Google+ isn’t SPYW’s only source of personalized information: you might also see photos on Flikr, threads on Quora, and other publicly available information.

Even if you’re not signed in or don’t have a Google+ account, you might see Google+ content on search results pages. This dramatically heightened visibility of Google+ pages creates a huge marketing opportunity for businesses. (Read more about how you can create a business page on Google+.)

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5 Steps to Help You Start Tweeting

January 15th, 2012 by

Internet Marketing Weekly: Strategies to help get started with Twitter, a quick and easy marketing tool that will gain you exposure.

Market with Twitter
As we move into 2012, it is a great time to start your Twitter account. Twitter is an easy and quick marketing tool. Tweeting, if done correctly, can help you to gain exposure for your brand and drive traffic to your blog and website. If you’re not sure how to get started, here are five steps to help.

1. Create a Strategy People will Follow

Be yourself, be real, interact and show who you are. These are guiding principles of all great Twitter accounts. Contributing original, funny, interesting or useful ideas is the best way to develop a following. Most people will look over your account before deciding to follow, so there must be a good reason to follow you in a quick glance.

2. Don’t Forget the Real Life Connections

Use the search box at the top of your Twitter account to search for people you already know. Locate their accounts and start to follow them. They will often follow you in return. Also, go out and locate other professionals or experts in your area of business. Twitter is a social network, so the more social you become, the more followers you will have.

3. Come one, Come all!

One of the best ways to get started with Twitter is an open invite. Use your newsletters and blog posts, and add a Twitter widget to your site or to Facebook. If you start to proactively reach out to people, your followers will grow.

4. Interact and Engage

After completing the steps above, you should have a number of followers. The number one reason why Twitter accounts fail is because there is no dialogue. Make sure to respond and get involved with your followers’ comments and accounts. Twitter works very similar to high school — if you sit down to lunch with a group of people you don’t know, pretty soon you’ll make a few friends. Twitter followers are always looking for a good laugh, so remember to keep it light and show off your personalty.

5. Consistency is the Key

If you follow the first four steps, in a few months, more people will be following and interacting with you. The worst thing you can do with your Twitter account is lose traction. The one way to avoid this is to keep a consistent stream of information going. I recommend that you post at least twice a week. As you grow your account, you might find yourself tweeting daily.

For more information and a deeper look into Twitter, please read a great post written by our very own Social Media Marketing Strategist Laura Alisanne, Twitter for Your Business: An Intro Guide to Get You Up & Running.

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How To Increase Your Chances of ROI Using Facebook

January 8th, 2012 by

Internet Marketing Weekly: Social Media delivers a return on investment differently than traditional forms of outreach. In utilizing Social Media, ROI happens through meaningful “many-to-many” interactions with your online community.

You’ve followed the advice of your marketing expert, and created a Facebook Fan Page for your business. You add a couple of the most recommended APPs including a “welcome” tab and “incentive” or “fan-gating” tab, as well as a custom profile image. You slowly, but steadily build a following of fans over several months. You post on a semi-regular basis, perhaps two to three times per week.

Feeling you’re doing everything right, you wonder, “why am I doing this?” “Is it actually increasing my revenue?” Am I seeing an upswing in bookings or sales?” “How can I measure this?” “Is all the time I spend on social media giving me a return on my investment?”

Great questions all, and it would be worrisome if your weren’t asking.

Facebook User Growth Chart by Ben Foster

Social Media is a relatively new animal. It is certainly newer than the acronym ROI.
With classic ROI, you look at what you put in: be it advertising, specials, promotions or marketing, and you watch. If “x” number of dollars were spent on this print ad campaign, or “y” dollars in promotional merchandise giveaways, then you expect a certain number of dollars to be returned to you via purchases, or bookings from your efforts.

One of the reasons you’re in business is to make money. But top performing marketers will tell you that the real commodity in business is not actually money, but people.

Social media, being “relationship” and “sharing” based, helps your business grow by fostering loyalty to your brand. LOYALTY is the steam that drives the potential to increase your profits. Building relationships takes time. This is a long-term investment.
In the world of social media, the number one way to increase your following is by actively engaging your fans in what they care about. Engagement fosters loyalty.

The Cold, Hard Truth

1. Once a fan “likes” your page, they very, very rarely return to the page itself. About 98% of the time, a fan never looks at your fan page again (unless you offer a repetedly compelling reason to go to it). That’s why installing a multitude of Apps as tabs on your page is secondary to posting engaging content that fans want to interact with.

2. It has become increasing more challenging to show up on your fan’s News Feeds. Facebook delivers content to a fan’s News Feed based upon how that fan interacts with fan pages they’ve liked, their friends posts, etc. Now it is important to post 1-3 times a day, with content that is relevant to your fans. The once-per-week post is a thing of the past. It will garner you very little.

What Are Effective Forms of Engagement?

The most successful forms of engagement come in one of three ways, but all are nestled under one umbrella: Engagement (aka participation).

Zappos featured fan photo


1. Ask Your Fans to Share
Request that your fans share their photos and experiences on your page. Then reward those fans by featuring them. Zappos, one of the most beloved retailers in the US today, does this very well by asking fans to post pictures of themselves, their kids and their pets with a Zappos shipping box. The participation level is enormous. Zappos rewards the fans who have participated by featuring one of the fan’s photos in their ever-changing profile image on their Facebook fan page.

2. Promotions:
These can be a fantastic way to engage your fans. Keep in mind that Facebook has strict rules about conduction promotions. The biggest rule to keep in mind is that you must use a 3rd party App if you’re going to conduct any kind of drawing, sweepstakes, contest or competition. Your own content in an iFrame app qualifies so long as you include the correctly worded disclaimers. Refer to this helpful post for more information.

 

Surf Dog Ricochet's Dirty Dog Photo Contest on their Facebook Fan Page

3. Give-Aways:
Give-aways can take many forms, from helpful information and links to resources to enhance the life of your fans, to freebies like a magazine subscription for the best (or first) fan to comment on a topic you choose, or photo posts that get the greatest number of likes (votes) from fans. Surf Dog Richochet does this quite often, and in this example, they’ve clearly stated that for the photo posts of “Dirty Dog Photo Contest” likes equal votes, and the greatest number gets the photo poster a perk like a $25 gift card to Petco, Surf dog Ricochet t-shirt, or “Paw it Forward” wristband.

Since Facebook changed the way users interact with fan pages back in November, it is possible for fans and non-fans alike to post on your wall, comment on, and share your content. What this means it that now, not only is it important to acquire fans via “likes,” is is also important to create content that non-fans want to share.

A Fan Base Can Grow Your Brand (aka business):

50% of small business owners reported gaining new customers through social media – most notably through Facebook and LinkedIn. *(Neilsen)

51% of Facebook users and 64% of Twitter users are more likely to buy from the brands they follow. *(Mediabistro)

Even if you have 500+ fans, it only takes 20 people to create meaningful many-to-many interactions and bring an online community to a significant level of activity.*(Ning)

Mediabistro infographic

The top seven post types that foster engagement:

1. Use images in your posts.
2. Keep it short and sweet as much as you can.
3. Keep the “I” to a minimum.
4. Include a call to action.
5. Give timely information that includes tips and links to useful resources.
6. Share a great cause that you believe in and want to support.
7. Share video. (Make sure it’s useful, or humorous or uplifting content).

And the final, and essential element, check your page regularly, and make sure you respond to comments. If your fans have taken the time to read and respond to your posts, then they deserve a response from you. If fans feel that you care enough to respond, they will feel their time has been well-spent.

Measuring Your Success

Find out how you’re doing. Study Your Statistics and Results using Facebook’s built-in “Insights” data.

Facebook offers some really great analytics for pages. Pay attention to them. If you see a big surge in fans (or a drop off), look at what you’ve posted recently and see if you can figure out any trends. Then post more of that kind of content (or less, in the event that you’re losing fans, or the engagement just isn’t there).

Sources:
Ning: http://www.ning.com/about/press_release_062011/
Neilsen: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/social/
Mediabistro: http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/small-business-social-media_b14294

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Internet Marketing Resolutions for 2012

January 1st, 2012 by

Internet Marketing Weekly: Use the Lessons from 2011 to Plan Your Internet Marketing Resolutions for 2012 and Increase the Effectiveness of Your Online Efforts

At the start of this new year, you may be experiencing an internet marketing hangover from 2011 and who could blame you? It was a hurricane (no mere whirlwind) of changes this last year. Highlights included:

Google

Panda bears may be lazy, but Google Panda has been anything but with 9 major updates since its release in 2011.

Panda bears may be lazy, but Google Panda has been anything but with 9 major updates since its release in 2011.

Google released 21 major updates in 2011, up from eight in 2010, five in 2009 and two in 2008. Most of these updates were centered around updates named for an endangered bear. In terms of search engine marketing, 2011 could be called The Year of the Panda. These updates were implemented to return higher-quality search query results by placing quality websites near the top of the search results and lower the rank of low-quality sites. Many complaints, a request from Google for help in gathering data, and several updates later, it appears Google Panda is finally starting to deliver on its promises.

Mobile Device Internet & Search Usage

According to StatCounter, the mobile device market for internet use continued to grow throughout 2011, rising to from just over 4% in December 2010 to 6.5% overall in November 2011.  In the search market, mobile devices now account for 20% of search engine queries.

Social Media Marketing

Google Plus logoGoogle+, the search engine’s latest and strongest foray into social media, was opened up for business profiles in November.

Facebook News Feed

Showing up in the news feed of your Facebook fans becomes increasingly important as your fan base grows.

Facebook announced their new Timeline personal profile feature, which rolled out worldwide on December 15, 2011.  The biggest lesson of 2011 for businesses on Facebook, though, is the need to be active and effective in engagement via the news feed of your fans.  The reason for this is the relative lack of traffic to a business page once “liked.”  A PageLever study of Facebook analytics shows that as your fan base grows the percentage of fans visiting the business page shrinks.  This does not mean that you don’t need to worry about the branding and extra features of your business page; it does mean that you will need to increasingly focus on the timeliness and engagement effectiveness of your postings to compete for visibility to your fans.

Twitter announced a new interface that is billed as more “follow friendly.”  YouTube announced a new design to enhance its social interactivity features.  All of these social media outlets are increasing their competitiveness for their slice of your social media marketing efforts.

Recommended Internet Marketing Resolutions for 2012

With 2011 now in the rear-view mirror, it’s time to make sure your internet marketing efforts are ready to meet the challenges as they emerge in 2012.

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Which Blog Posts Attract Readers?

December 25th, 2011 by

Internet Marketing Weekly: Evaluate Your Blog Posts Using Google Analytics to Help Plan Future Blogging Efforts

How cute can you possibly get?

Find out which of your blog posts are most attractive using Google Analytics. (Hint: people like baby animals.)

You diligently spend the time to write a weekly blog post, and here at the end of December, you’re looking back on the past year, wondering how to maximize your efforts in 2012. How many people are reading your posts? Which posts are irresistible, and which inspire yawns? Find out using Google Analytics.

Identify what makes a post attractive

Some people will find your latest blog post in search results. Others might find a link to your post on Facebook or Twitter. Your more devoted readers might follow your blog through an RSS feed. So what makes a link to your post intriguing enough for these potential readers to click?

Google Analytics can show you which posts attracted the most visits, allowing you to draw conclusions about what types of posts your readers prefer.

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5 Steps to Creating a Blogging Calendar for your Business

December 18th, 2011 by

Internet Marketing Weekly Feature: Creating a blogging calendar will help you to become a successful blogger.

Content is King when it comes to Internet Marketing. A blog is going to become your number one tool for developing fresh, new and relevant content. But I often hear from business owners, “I don’t have enough time to blog”. That is understandable, business owners are usually focused on the day to day operations of their business. This post will show you ways to make blogging a part of your day to day operations.

Creating a blog calendar

Creating a blog calendar will make your life easier.

Step 1:  Locate a desktop calendar or an online calendar. Choose a calendar that best fits your needs. The Google Calendar  is a great free resource to use.

Step 2: Calculate how many times a month you are going to blog. You should keep in mind 2 blog posts a month should be your minimum (4 blog posts a month should become your goal). Once you have selected the number of posts your are going to write for the month. Select the day on the calendar you will launch your posts. Keep in mind that having a consistent day of the week is a great plan and will help you to become more organized. For this example, we will use Wednesday as your post day. Go back at least four days on that calendar and start to write what you are going to do to prepare that Wednesday post. Day 1: gather information for your post. Day 2: gather images for your post. Day 3: rough draft of the post is written. Day 4: final edits and posting. This strategy will help you spread out the work. You can do a few minutes of work a day. Instead of trying to spend an hour or two coming up with all the info and then having to write and publish the post.

Now that we have our day of the week selected for posting and created a few days of lead time.

Step 3: The next step is Brainstorming topic ideas. One place to start is your local Chamber of Commerce, or any other community based groups. They often times have great calendars of events and are very tied into what is happening in your area. Research all the events, festivals and concerts that are scheduled for the upcoming year. Add those dates to your blogging calendar. Remember that when your going to blog about an event that you need to write and publish the post weeks prior. By posting weeks before the event it will give you a great shot at being found in search.

Step 4: Once you have a calender filled in for the whole year. Take a moment and start to look for blank weeks or a month where you might not have any posts scheduled. For these weeks you should start to fill in anything your business is doing over the next year you would like to promote. Recipes, local hiking trails, bike trails are great things to add to your list. People read blogs looking for local expertise or information about your area. You can use those empty weeks on your calendar to show your readers that your are an expert and resource for your area.

Step 5: Set up a system to alert yourself to blog. I personally miss the days of post it note chains that would snake across my desk. Removing each note as the weeks moved forward. Fortunately technology has advanced and there are many ways to send yourself reminders. Live gets busy so any tools you can use to help remind your self to start your blogging process will help.

With the new year rapidly approaching, it would be a great time to start to develop your calendar. A successful blogging strategy would make for a great New Year’s resolution.

I hope you found this information helpful and I wish everyone a Happy New Blogging Year!!

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