The Caffeinated Blog

5 More Business Social Media Sites You May Not Know About

A couple weeks ago I posted 5 niche social media sites for business - so where broader social sites may not have worked for you, these could in driving more targeted traffic to your site as well as helping to establish you as an authority and build your brand.

The post received a pretty good response, because my goal was to list sites that were not necessarily on other social site lists (and there are a lot of lists out there).  Sure, a few of the sites have been listed before, but I think they deserve more promotion than they've received.  Anyway, this prompted me to find some additional business-niche social and web 2.0 sites - and find them I did.

Here are 5 more business social sites you may not know about (or possibly overlooked):

1. SmallBusiness.com: Yes, wikis can be a great way to leverage web 2.0 technology for your business.  Not only is it a great source of small business information (with user-generated guides on everything from starting your business, financing, and marketing to e-commerce and blogging), but it's also a great place to promote your business.  You can create a profile, and if you have any small business knowledge not already covered, then you can contribute to any of the guides.  If you offer services for small businesses, then you can add a link to your site or blog to any of the small business directories listed.  Note: wikis are not for link spamming.  It's advised that you take a good look at the information available and contribute if you have something solid and useful to add, and add your links in only the most relevant directories.
2. Briz: Briz is a social networking site where consumers can interact with local businesses.  As a business, you can create a free profile, which includes a link to your website, your business address, your phone number, and even your logo (among a plethora of other things).  Consumers can search for businesses in their local areas, send messages to them, vote for them, and bookmark them.  This is a great way for small businesses of all types that serve a specific geographic area to promote themselves to and interact with their customer base.
3. Hubspot: Hubspot offers a variety of tools to help small businesses use the Internet to effectively market themselves (such as keyword research, link building, business blogs, lead intelligence, and a ton of other tools).  They also have a beta site, titled Social Content for Marketing Mavens, where you can find and post links to articles about online marketing and vote them up or down.  Plus, if you're a marketer and have a profile on LinkedIn, you can join the Hubspot Marketing Mavens group.
4. KillerStartups: Do you have a startup?  Is it killer?  Add it to KillerStartups!  They review each new business added to their system, then post them on the site so visitors can vote on "the next big thing".  It's a great way to gain insight into the popularity and viability of your startup idea.  You never know - a potential investor may just find your business and think it's "killer" enough to finance.
5. Upspring: Like Briz, Upspring allows all types of businesses to create a profile, which potential customers can find.  It works for both B2C and B2B businesses, and customers can search by business name, location, or category (which, for some strange reason, Upspring has hidden at the bottom of their pages).  Unlike Briz, you don't get all the bells and whistles for free - the free basic profile comes with your logo, a link to your website and email address, up to 1 mb of photos, and your business hours, while the Premium Listing (at a pretty inexpensive $19.98 a month) gets you the ability to add videos, coupons, and testimonials, as well as interact directly with customers and create groups.

Again, I'd like to know what you think.  Have you used these or any other niche social media sites?  What kind of results did you receive?

5 Business Social Media Sites You May Not Know About

Yeah, yeah...we all know about Stumbleupon, Digg, Del.icio.us, LinkedIn, etc. ad nauseum.  Social media marketing can be a hit or miss for many businesses, depending on the niche and how cunningly it's utilized.  But with the mainstreaming of social media comes a wealth of niche sites that could yield better results for businesses than their more general 2.0 cousins.

Here are 5 I found that you may not have heard of (and if you have, then maybe they deserve a second look):

1. Biznik:  This business networking site looks (and acts) a lot like LinkedIn; but it has quite a few additional features that can turn the volume on your promotion up to 11.  For instance, you can write and contribute articles, link your blog feed up to your profile, and find and post local business events.  You can post a profile with your photo and one link to your website; but the downside is that you have to pay a monthly fee to access other premium features (like uploading a business logo, adding more than one link, and adding the aforementioned blog feed).
2. Small Business Brief: This social networking site has been around since 2007 and has been getting its props lately on other lists social networking sites; but it's well worth a mention here.  The target audience, for the most part, are small business marketers (the most popular content is pretty much about online marketing).  It's a great place to find advice to help you market your business, or post good, relevant content of your own.  Downside: lots of spam postings that have nothing to do with small business advice.
3. Gooruze: This is a social networking site for online marketers (get it - "gurus" except with the g-o-o from Google and z-e at the end?  Meh.)  Here you can post links to "news" about online marketing, your own original articles, or questions for other online marketers to answer - all which can be rated and commented on by other members.  Best part - it's all free.  
4. Design Float:  A niche social networking site for graphic designers, this won't suit everyone; but there is a Business & Freelancing category that has some pretty good articles posted for small businesses.  If you're a designer or a freelancer, it's worth checking out.
5. FreeIQ:  This is like YouTube for business - you can watch instructional videos about small business marketing, ecommerce, sales, or post your own.  They bill themselves as "The Marketplace for Ideas", and there's definitely a lot of useful information here (especially if you're more of a visual learner).

If social media marketing hasn't worked very well for you on the bigger sites, then maybe you should dig a little deeper and check out some of these niche sites - you may be surprised at the fruits of your efforts.

Tell me about social media sites you've found that have worked for you.  If there are some diamonds in the rough, then I may be inclined to post them in another list. :-)

How accurate is Google's keyword research estimates?

The other day I found this great blog post from Yoast.com about the accuracy of Google's keyword traffic estimates.  I was in the middle of doing some keyword research for a client, and needed traffic estimates in numbers to provide him.  Joost de Valk makes the point that Google's estimates in it's keyword tool are waaaay off vs. what actual analytics show (Google Analytics, no less), about "110-220 to 1".

Now, I know that the estimated search volume (and estimated clicks) are, yes, estimates; but about 200 to 1?!  Seriously, Google could be a little more accurate, even with estimates.  If you're doing research on those all important long-tail keywords (like I was), this could throw you for a loop.

Has anyone else seen a discrepancy like this?

The Positive Side of Negative Keywords, Part 2 - Negative Match Types

Last week, I posted this introduction to using negative keywords to get better traffic and save money.

Now, I want to talk about (and get opinions on) another part of negative keywords that many Adwords advertisers may not be aware of - negative match types.  Here's what they look like:
Broad negative (default): -memory cards
Phrase negative: -"memory cards"
Exact negative: -[memory cards]

I wanted to talk about these here, because Google doesn't even go into much about these.  After much searching, I found this post on the Inside Adwords blog from November 2007.  It actually provides a pretty decent chart that explains the different negative match types.

This is really good information to have, as I found out managing a rather large Adwords account.  I had all broad negatives; but upon generating and checking several search query reports, I found that my ads were still being served on keywords I thought I'd eliminated with negatives. 

I eventually brought my costs down by changing all of my negatives to negative phrase match; but who know how many hundreds of dollars I wasted on those keywords!  It's really too bad that Google kind of hides it away, as many new, less experienced advertisers don't have that much of a budget to just throw away.

I'd like to get others opinions - how long were you managing Adwords campaigns before you found out about negative match types?  Once you started using them, did you see a significant difference?

The Positive Side of Negative Keywords (or, How to Stop Paying Way More Than You Should for PPC)

In my last post about getting started with Adwords, I talked about the 5 basic things you need to know when building your first campaign on Adwords.  I also mentioned that I would post some more tips.  While it’s been over a month, I believe that it’s never too late to dispense some good Adwords advice – especially if it can save you money.

And save you money is exactly what negative keywords can do.

First of all, if you’re new to advertising on Google, you may be wondering what negative keywords are.  Well, negative keywords are best described using an example (let’s use the greeting cards example from the last post):

Let’s say you sell greeting cards on your website, and you’re advertising on the keyword “cards” (phrase-matched).  By advertising on this keyword, you’re pretty much covering the gamut of greeting card types (birthday cards, get well cards, anniversary cards, Christmas cards, etc.).  However, I would be willing to bet that you’re also getting (and paying for) quite a bit of traffic from keywords such as memory cards, business cards, baseball cards, video cards, and a host of other keywords where you really don’t want your ad to be.  What’s worse is that by appearing on these untargeted keywords, you’re inadvertently lowering your quality score, which effects how much you pay and where your ad appears (basically, the lower your QS, the lower your position and the more you’ll pay).  This is where you can use negative keywords to your advantage.

All you have to do is add negatives directly to your keyword list, like this:

-memory
-baseball
-business
-video

This will prevent your ad from being shown on those unwanted keywords.

So how do you find negative keywords to add to your account?  Here are a few ways:

Adwords Keyword Tool

The easiest way to find negative keywords.  This is what I used to find the negatives I used in the example above.  I put in the keyword cards, unchecked “Use synonyms” (so I just got results containing cards), and ran the tool.  If you sell greeting cards, you’ll see in the results all the keywords you don’t want to advertise on and will want to add to your negative list.

Search Query Performance Report

You can run this report at the campaign or ad group level, whichever works best for you.  It will show you the keywords for which your ad is being served and getting clicks (which unfortunately means that if you find any unwanted keywords here, you’ve already spent money on them).  If you already have negative keywords in your campaigns and/or ad groups, then it’s a good thing to run this report every now and then to make sure your negatives are working for you, and you’re not wasting money on unwanted terms.

Just searching

I managed campaigns on Yahoo, and their platform doesn’t have a negative keyword tool; so I ran searches their site with Search Assist turn on.  This showed me terms that contained my keyword(s) and had been already searched on.  I was able to pick out negative keywords from there.

You can also use Google organic search results to find negatives, simply by looking for search results for your keywords that are completely irrelevant.

 
Your own analytics

If you’re running Google Analytics or any other analytics package on your website, it will tell you the keywords that are driving traffic to your site.  Run a weekly or monthly report and see if you can spot some negatives.

So, the overall takeaway here is negatives are positive.  By implementing and continually expanding your negative keyword list, you’ll increase your CTR and Quality Score; but most importantly, you’ll save loads of moolah.

You Get What You Pay For: Understanding the Value of Your Content

In the one month that I’ve been a freelance copywriter, my biggest frustration has been losing projects to other “writers” who’s proposals were filled with really bad grammar, horrible spelling mistakes, and even “text-speak” (you know, things like “ur”, “lol”, etc.); however, their proposed cost was 10 times less than what I was proposing. Forget the years of experience I outlined, the variety of samples I provided, the glowing feedback I presented, and the triple-proofread proposal I submitted. What the buyer wanted was cheap and fast.

This has made me wonder about the value many businesses place on their website content. I mean, if you have a website, you have to have high-quality, original, compelling, and informative content. Content that will help your site to:

• Rank high in search results
• Keep visitors longer
• Bring in new visitors
• Generate leads and/or sales

So if you want content that will do all of this (and more), and you don’t have the time/expertise/in-house staff to do this, then naturally you would want to hire the right freelancer to create high-quality content so your investment will yield a return many times over.

Let me repeat that and highlight the keywords here:  You want to hire the right freelancer to create high-quality content so your investment will yield a return many times over.

Here’s the breakdown:

Your website is one of the most, if not the most, valuable asset of your business. The content you put on that website is its centerpiece – what everyone will be reading to find out what your business does and decide if they want to purchase from you or not. By hiring a freelancer with the knowledge and creativity to write content for your site that does all of the things I listed in the bulletpoints above, you’re making an investment in your business. That investment, made wisely, will then yield a return in the way of increased sales, higher search rankings, more new visitors, etc.

Is this a cheap investment? No.

So when you’re looking for a freelancer to create this killer content for your site, think about the value you place on that content and its ability to sell your products or services and build your online brand – then decide how much you’d be willing to invest to ensure you achieve that value. Then measure the freelancers you’re considering by the quality they can deliver, not how much they can deliver for how little. Quantity does not equal quality.

Should You Still Advertise on Yahoo?

Unless you’re a Neanderthal who’s finally coming out of your cave to speak after 30,000 years, you may be hearing all the brouhaha (or, Microhoo-haha…that was a joke, I’m here all week folks) about Microsoft’s bid to take over Yahoo. We all know that Yahoo hasn’t been doing too well, and Microsoft wants to sweep in like Mighty Mouse to save the day.

So, have businesses started becoming wary about advertising on Yahoo? Turns out, no. They still have the second largest piece of the search pie, and they’ve just increased their share of search advertising dollars, according to a recent SearchIgnite report. Meanwhile, Google and MSN have decreased their shares.

But what about the recent news that Yahoo will be displaying Google Adwords ads in its results in a 3-week test? Is this good or bad news for businesses currently or considering advertising on Yahoo? Well, if you think about it, it’s bad news, since it will increase competition and costs for advertisers.

This is a shame – my personal experience advertising on Yahoo has been good. Their program and platform is pretty solid, and I have gotten better ROI advertising on Yahoo than on Google. If Yahoo becomes flooded with Google ads, costs will rise and ROI will tank (especially since many ads displayed Google, especially through its content network, are highly untargeted – big loss for the people searching on Yahoo).

So, should you advertise on Yahoo?  It's up to you (and your budget), but I would have to say yes.  Despite all the Yahoo drama, it's worth it to test the waters on Yahoo, especially since it's the second largest search engine in terms of searches - it's exposure you can't afford to turn your back on.  Start small, and monitor your costs (just in case the 3-week Adwords test messes with your CPCs).  If it doesn't work, you can always wait until after someone buys Yahoo to test it again.

Do you currently advertise on Yahoo?  Has all the back and forth between Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, et al affected this?  Have you seen any significant increases or decreases in your costs?  Have you increased your Yahoo budget, or scaled it back as a result?

5 Tips for Your First Google Adwords Campaign

Advertising using Google Adwords may look easy to many first-timers, but it's quite deceiving.  Under that deceptively simple facade is a complicated structure of rules, algorithms, features and options that, if not used correctly, can make managing an Adwords campaign a nightmare - costing you money, time, and sales.

So, I've put together these tips to help any first-time Adwords advertiser get the most from their campaigns, without wasting money.  I think the overall theme here is "targeting, targeting, targeting".

Start small:  It can be all too tempting to just start entering tons of keywords when you first start setting up your ad groups, but it's best not to be overly-ambitious at first.  Pick the top 5 keywords that represent your products or services, then do your research around those by finding the best (read: most targeted) keywords you can possibly be on and what they're going to cost.  You can do this before you start setting up your ad groups by using Google's Keyword Research Tool.  Simply type in a keyword that you want suggestions for (you can also choose to get synonym suggestions), and hey presto - there you go. 

After you get your suggestions, be sure to select "Exact" under the Match Type column (more on this in tip #3).  To see your estimated costs, select "Show Estimated Avg. CPC" from the "Choose columns to display" menu, then put in the maximum cost per click you want to pay.  You can also display the "Estimated Avg. Position" column to see where you would be ranked at the max CPC you're willing to pay.   

Now, choose 5-10 keywords for each type of product you sell, and which have a decent volume of traffic and high enough positioning for the max CPC you're willing to pay.

Use Ad Groups to your advantage:  You'll want to make sure that your keywords are grouped in the best way possible, whether it's by product type, offer type, etc.  For instance, if you sell shoes, you may want to set up ad groups around different types of shoes, like women's, men's, and children's.  This is not just a way to organize your keywords, but a way to target your ad copy and landing pages and get the best click-through rate and conversion rate you can possibly get.  The better your click-through rate, the better your Quality Score, which determines where your ad will be placed and how much you're going to pay per click.

Know your Match Types:  Google has 3 different match types:  broad, phrase, and exact.  Here's how they work:

• Broad - when you first add your keywords, broad match is the default option.  The keyword women's shoes, for instance, is simply added to your ad group as  women's shoes.  Your ad would then show up on any searches that contained the word women's, or which contained the word shoes.

• Phrase - Using the same example, women's shoes would be added to your ad group as "women's shoes" (quotes around it).  Your ad would then come up on any searches that contained the phrase "women's shoes", in that order (so, your ad could come up when someone searched for red women's shoes, or women's shoes size 7).

• Exact - Women's shoes would be added to your ad group as [women's shoes] (brackets around it).  Your ad would come up on only searches for the exact keyword women's shoes.

Let me just say this: broad match is evil.  Don't use broad match.  Just trust me on this.

You could use phrase match, but if you're just starting out, the best thing to do is to just use exact match.  Exact match has the least traffic, but it's the most targeted, since your ad will only show up on those exact keyword searches.  Track your results for a month, then you can either start adding more exact match keywords, or you can add some carefully researched, highly targeted phrase match keywords.  Remember: targeting is key.  The better your ad is targeted, the better conversion and return on your investment your going to get.

Target your ad copy: Remember what I said earlier about your click-through rate?  This is how you can improve it.  If you have a compelling ad that speaks to exactly what searchers for your products are looking for, then you'll get a lot more clicks than if your ad was general, un-compelling, or (worse) didn't make sense.  If you've grouped your keywords well, then you'll be able to write a good ad that tells the searcher "I have this exact product you want to buy - come take a look!". 

If you have an ad group for children's shoes, for example, you may want to write an ad like this:

Brand Name {KeyWord:Children's Shoes}
Huge Selection of Children's Shoes at
the Lowest Prices.  Shop Now!

Notice the {KeyWord}...Google has a nifty feature that allows you to dynamically insert your keyword into your ad - use this feature.  Research has shown that ads that contain the keyword that was just searched will get more clicks than ads that don't.  However, make sure that your ad will make sense when different keywords are inserted using this feature.  Your ad may contain the keyword, but at the end of the day your ad will just look strange if it doesn't make sense.

Also notice the ad body didn't have dynamic keyword insertion, but it still hit the target by mentioning children's shoes.  This is why it's so important to group your keywords well in the beginning.

Target your landing pages.  You've placed your ad on the best, most targeted keywords you can buy, you've written compelling ad copy that gets tons of clicks, and you've got loads of traffic coming into your site - where are you sending that traffic? 

This is where your landing page comes in.  Simply put, it's where clickers land after they've clicked on your ad.  Let's say you sell all types of greeting cards.  You're advertising on the keyword [birthday cards], and your ad talks about birthday cards.  So, what page on your site would you send them to?

        A. Your homepage

        B. Your get well cards page

        C. Your birthday cards page

If you chose C, you would be correct (and actually making sales).  And why not your homepage?  While it may convert into sales sometimes, what you don't want to do is make someone go to the effort of searching all over your site for birthday cards (they were just on a search engine, for Pete's sake).  Send them to what they were looking for in the first place - you sell birthday cards, show 'em birthday cards without making them look for birthday cards.

While there's a lot of other things that you will need to know to advertise on Google, these 5 tips will get you started and through the setup of your first campaign.  I'll be posting more (and slightly more advanced) tips in the near future, so stay tuned!

Help your designer today - join the 2008 Gmail Appeal

I was emailed this great video today, which was posted by the Email Standards Project:

Email Standards Project - Gmail Grimaces from Mathew Patterson on Vimeo.

If you're an email marketer, you (and your designer) have probably had first-hand experience with this as well (I know I have).   I personally have had to do the "Make it Work" dance between my boss and my designer ("You mean there's nothing that can be done to fix that header?  But half of our list is Gmail!").  It's frustrating, I know - and we're not alone.   

How can you help?  Check out the Project's "What You Can Do" page.  Stumble it.  Stumble This Post.  Blog about it.  Help me help the Email Standards Project help...uh, you - and thousands of designers and email marketers around the world - to get Gmail to change their HTML email standards.

Thank you for your support.

What South Park Teaches us About Online Business

Sounds a bit strange, I know; but sometimes the most valuable lessons can be gleaned from the strangest places.

I know of course that South Park episodes tend to have some sort of lesson embedded into each one - even if the way to those lessons is outlandish, over the top, and ridiculous - but this was kind of a side lesson that I pulled from last night's episode, "Canada on Strike".

The plot of this episode was about, well, Canada going on strike, because it feels unappreciated on "Canada Appreciation Day" by their more-than-unappreciative neighbors to the south.  The head of the WGA (the World Canadian Bureau - yes, that's not a typo, and yes, the episode was meant to mock the recent writers' strike) demands more money for Canada - from the Internet.

So, our lovable little heroes, in an effort to get their favorite Canadian TV show Terrance and Phillip back on, call the, um, WGA to ask them to stop striking.  The WGA head, thinking he's talking to a serious negotiator, demands money from the Internet.  So, the boys try to think of a good way to make money from the Internet.

This is the part that got me thinking about this post.  So many people go into an online business thinking that "if we build it, they will come".  That's not true - it takes hard work, and a product that thousands of other websites aren't already selling.  It takes research into your market - your competition, your potential profitability, your product's potential demand, etc.

So, what did the South Park boys do?  They posted a video on YouTube of Butters singing a song called "What What - In The Butt".  They then made 10 million "theoretical" dollars off the views their video received.  OK - maybe I'm reaching here, but they came up with an idea for something that was somewhat unique and could go viral pretty quickly - meaning it had enough demand to sell well.

How else can you decide what to sell online?  Here are some ideas from About Online Business:

• light and easy to ship, or
• a digital good that is downloaded (e-book or software) ,
• not perishable or fragile,
• doesn't have to be seen and held (designer fabrics, perhaps),
• has enough demand to make your venture profitable,

• and, has little competition from large online companies (niche products).

So, as Kyle and Stan would say at the end of each episode, "I've learned something today".  I've learned that some pretty good lessons can be learned from some strange places, and also that "theoretical" dollars are not a good substitute for real dollars.  If you want to start an online business (and make real dollars), do your research.