For the past several years we have been repeatedly harping on how social media is going to be ever more important to search engine optimization, visibility and clicks. Yesterday Google sent the clearest signal yet. The time for action is now. Actually the time for a social media strategy was years ago for many businesses, but let’s not quibble over nuance.

Yesterday Google released ‘Search Plus Your World‘, which melds Google’s new social network Google+’s search inline with Google’s normal search properties. And while some social has been appearing in SERPs (search engine result pages) for years, this level of prominence is so pronounced to actually draw fire from competing social networks like twitter.

To help understand how this impacts you or your companies visibility in search, consider that a searcher may see different search results if for example:

• They are using incognito or other browser privacy mode.
• Not logged into Google, cleared data, history and/or cookies.
• Logged in and has not cleared the aforementioned data.
• Logged in and socially active on other networks such as Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, et al.
• Logged in and have a Google+ account, unless they use the button to hide personal results.
• Have opted out of personalized search altogether.

In short, there are instances where your more socially active competition may show up in Google search results, and you will not.

Late last year, one week after the launch of Google+ Pages for brands and businesses, we ran a Google+ webinar and seminar where we asked our clients to wait for Google to fix ownership and notification issues before jumping in. Google fixed those issues in late December and we changed our stance to go, go, go. We are now urging those of you who still have not, to jump in. Need more proof? This has changed visibility of brands on Google.

Not sure how to get started? Let us help you with your social media strategy.

Far too often in business we either clamor for the old, familiar marketing methods that are well past their viability, or we waste time and money trying every new marketing trick that comes along. Without analyzing, tracking, or at the very least asking customers, what marketing piece moved them to action, we are left to attribute it to where we believe it came from without regard to truth or evidence.  Lacking stats, you allow the new marketing wiz kid to talk you into dropping everything for social media. Lacking stats, you may believe the agency of record when they tell you to keep doing more of the same. Does this sound like an optimal way to operate your business? Do you leave expenses, consumables, and wages up to such flippant record keeping?

My challenge to you is to start thinking of your marketing like the other critical components of your business. When you open the business each Monday morning, make sure marketing is on the checklist.

Let us help you review your marketing strategy checklist.

Online marketing is subject to constant change. It reminds me of a phrase I learned not long after moving to Indiana. “If you don’t like the weather, stand right where you are – it’s sure to change in five minutes.” Well if there’s anything more subject to change than Hoosier weather, it’s the wild world of online marketing.

Let’s take it one step at a time, first the landscape. Not long after coming on board, Google unloaded a major change in the algorithm it uses to display search engine results. At the time I felt fortunate that I wasn’t going to have to learn how these ranking factors work all over again six months later – then Google pushed another update… six months later! It was then I realized these changes are something I’m just going to have to get used to.

Think about it… in the last year we’ve seen the introduction of Google+, huge changes in how Facebook displays user profiles, and my Twitter profile design has changed twice! To some degree these changes were responses to each other, in an effort to stay ahead of their competition.

In addition to these relatively “old” social media platforms, the tools we use on these platforms are ever changing. While you may develop a loyalty to a particular brand of tools (Can I get a “heck yeah” team Hootsuite?), the capabilities of these tools change to adapt to the ripples caused by changes with the social media platforms. These changes also create opportunities for new tools to be introduced.

Ultimately the online marketing landscape is very fluid and entrepreneurial. That being said, it’s not a lawless frontier that operates without rules or structure. If that were the case it’d be impossible for anyone to find long-term success using online marketing. So how do you navigate a path to success when change is swirling all around you?

It’s important to remember that technology is a tool, not a strategy. When you are trying to determine how to achieve your online marketing objectives, make sure they are conceived based on strategy, not the tools at your disposal. You could start a Facebook page because it’s free and you have a Facebook account and there’s lots of people using Facebook. However, if there’s no use case for your customers to interact with your brand on Facebook, the effort you put into building and maintaining that page might have been better spent purchasing a license for an inexpensive e-mail mailing service and writing a monthly e-mail to a list of subscribers.

The basic rules of marketing still apply, which is why no matter how much things change when it comes to online marketing I will still be able to have an impact because I know to stay focused on client objectives, understand what they are trying to communicate and learn with whom they are trying to interact. These are the elements you build a strategy around – once the strategy is set we can figure out what tools we need to use to make it work and add value!

Online marketing is a fast-moving, fast-paced field that is constantly changing and evolving. That may be a big reason why it’s hard for me to believe I’ve been working exclusively in this field for just over a year. I thought this would be a good opportunity to collect some thoughts I’ve gathered over the last 12 months.

The first lesson I’d like to focus on is the value proposition. Prior to joining Cirrus ABS I worked in the public sector. Unfortunately there is a highly visible example of how irresponsible government employees behave in the news right now, but responsible public sector works are always trying to figure out how to stretch their resources to provide the most value. When business increases in the private sector, it’s usually accompanied by more income and you can use that influx of cash to address resource shortfalls – this doesn’t happen in the public sector.

Just because you have additional resources to throw at a challenge, it doesn’t mean that’s going to be the most productive use of that money. From a marketing standpoint in the public sector we focused on how we could make the most use out of any activity because our greatest commodity was time. The more efficient we could be with time, the more flexibility we had to address resource allocation issues. This is a valid lesson that can be applied to online marketing in the private sector as well.

Many times when I discuss online marketing with others in the community the focus is on using a particular tool (i.e. “Is Facebook important?”, “Do my customers really use Twitter?”, “Do I need a Google+ page?”), rather than on what they’re trying to accomplish, like increasing sales from their current customers, bringing more new customers to their establishment, or introducing new products and services.

Once you focus on a goal, you can start developing a strategy to achieve the goal. It may include some or all of the channels mentioned above. It may use completely different channels you’ve never heard of. It’s very easy to spend lots of money on social media and see no results from your effort.

Anyone can accomplish anything when it comes to online marketing, it’s really just a matter of how much time do you want to spend maintaining the solution  and how much money are you willing to spend supporting it. At first there may be some guesswork involved at where those lines intersect, but over time proper data analysis will reveal the value and how much effort and money is necessary to achieve your goal.

Over the last year working with Cirrus ABS partners and potential partners, it’s clear to me these lessons from the public sector are even more critical in the private sector, especially given the current economy. Working through how to develop a strategy to achieve business goals is far more critical than embracing the latest fad. Learn more about how we approach online marketing consulting and let me know if we can help you out!

To highlight this point, the folks at Brafton have produced a fantastic infographic on the matter. The stats should open even the reluctant marketers’ eyes to the value of generating quality content. Businesses pay attention – “content is king!”

Still not creating content on your website? Can’t create content on your website? Not sure how, please investigate our Web Development, Search Engine Optimization, or Writing Services or  call us at 1-877-817-4443 or email us today.

Social media ROI was the topic of a recent Twitter chat I participated in, and to say it was entertaining would be an understatement. The subject of measuring social media always seems to stir up controversy as part of the group proclaims social media ROI doesn’t exist, can’t be measured, and is as mystical as a unicorn, while the other camp retorts with, does so and can too. In the heat of the debate few ever stop to consider the value of social media, which is different from ROI.

While the ROI of social media is at least as trackable as other traditional forms of marketing, a higher standard seems to be set for it due to a general lack of awareness and the current stressed economic climate. And while I don’t want to get into tracking listeners to leads, viewers to visitations, and reading to reward, we need to accept that most businesses really are not tracking traditional marketing to any real depth, either. In fact, all too many businesses were until recently happy to continue to place value in a book where the main selling point was based on distribution, which was tantamount to tossing it out of the back of a truck. Distribution does not equal usage. Those same people now demand social media be measured down to every follower, like, connection, tweet, post, and QR Code scan.

Now I could go into a bevy of methods, tools, metrics, and KPI (key performance indicators) for doing just that, but rather than starting with the ideal, how about we start with something practical? I want to empower you with a simple three-step process so you can START measuring social media now and leave the door open for a lengthier post another day.

Three Steps to Start Social Media ROI & Value Measurement:

1. Have visitations to and leads from your website (online properties) increased?
2. Is customer satisfaction, client/customer engagement, and issue resolution better or worse?
3. Have you seen an overall lift in revenue, project acquisition, shortened sales cycle, or reduced cost to acquisition?

If the answer to any of those is, I don’t know, then the issue isn’t likely with social media or the tools to measure it. The evidence isn’t always buried as far as we would like to believe and may not require expensive analytic packages.  Sometimes we just need to step back and look at the books.

Contact us for help with your social media strategy or consider attending our NetCentered Marketing Webinar Series.

Picture by Rob Boudon

In Bieber’s case, he had something to deliver and was able to break through. There’s no doubt it took some hard work on his part, but there are a ton of people out there that are delivering quality content on social media channels who get missed. If you’re using social media, how do you attract attention to your content?

An important key to social media optimization is organization. If you can’t find a way to organize the flow of information from social media inputs in a manner that allows you to:

1. digest what information you need to find,
2. share that content with relevant contacts, and (hopefully)
3. promote your content through those contacts to others in their social media networks,

your content is not going to get the attention it deserves.

Google Plus gives people a new chance to organize their social media accounts. If you haven’t heard about Google Plus, it’s a new social media platform from Google that does an excellent job of integrating different Google services and platforms into a single format. Here’s a great “cheat sheet” for the uninitiated!

A key concept to Google Plus is the use of “Circles” to organize your friends. Circles are very similar to Facebook’s “friend lists” and grouping mechanisms on other social media outlets, but they’re more prominently displayed and you can add people to a circle without their specific permission (for now) – so you can see any of their “public” updates, but not content they’ve restricted to one or more of their circles.

Circles present an excellent opportunity to get organized and digest social media content, promoting content to specific audiences, and respecting your various audience groups to avoid deluging them with information they might not find relevant. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t post something to all your contacts about what you’re doing, but limit the regular traffic to contacts interested in those content areas.

By organizing contacts into circles you can coordinate how your process social media messages by setting up circles for key contacts, thought leaders, family and close friends, folks in your community, social media addicts, etc. If you’ve already gone through this process with Twitter or Facebook, you can mimic those circles or just start from scratch.

Getting your social media organized should start with two simple questions:

1. What do you want to read about?
2. What do you want to write about?

There are a number of “luminaries” that are able to quickly digest and promote quality content. Organizing these contacts into a circle provides you a quick and easy reading list that gets you the latest and greatest information about your topic in one location. By sharing and interacting what they produce you create opportunities for more interactions with these social media “publishing houses” that could open up opportunities to have your own content broadcast through their channels.

Then you have your own fan base to think about – the whole concept of circles derive from social circles that we all run in… I have friends that cross many of these circles, others that really only belong to one. I do know that all of my friends from college in Washington, D.C. probably aren’t all that interested in the latest happenings from Northeast Indiana unless they grew up out here just as all the raving Hoosier, Boilermaker and Fighting Irish fans out here could care less what the George Washington Colonials are up to!

By organizing your contacts so you talk about your passions with those who care most about them, you show tremendous respect to your audience and increase the chances that your content will be seen and generate some reaction. More than any other social media platform, Google Plus provides an interface that not only speaks directly to specific audiences – it seems organized around that very concept!

So think about how you want to get things organized… draw up some topics. If you need help with this, just contact us at Cirrus ABS – we eat online visibility strategy for breakfast and would be glad to help you sort through what areas might generate the best results for you or your organization. In my next post I’ll identify tools you can use to help speak more directly to those interests (note, an editorial calendar might come in handy here), then wrap it up with how you can use your new found organization to people who might help your content get more attention.

[Update: to be clear gplus.to is NOT an official Google product!]

I went to several HTTP status code checkers and sure enough http://gplus.to/kevinmullett, as seen below, is a 302 redirect rather than the preferred 301 redirect. In short this means that any potential link juice stays with the domain gplus.to instead of being passed to https://plus.google.com/111355895099122965371 my actual Google+ account. At least that is the commonly held opinion based on what we’ve seen in the wild. Most URL shorteners like bit.ly use the 301 HTTP status code. It could and has been argued that some link juice will pass and that eventually Google figures out that it isn’t a temporary move. BING has indicated in the past they don’t index 302 URL’s, but in other instances indicated they treat 302′s the same as a 301′s. Either way I would feel a lot better if the correct 301 moved permanently status was given.

A larger point to be considered is who in the heck is gplus.to owned by and will they be around? I don’t know for sure, but research seems to indicate that it is hosted by Natro Communication in Turkey. See WhoIs and Netblock owner.

What does this all mean? It means I am not likely to be adding the gplus.to link to profiles and almost certainly will not be adding it to any printed materials.

Have you created a gplus.to link already? Does this change your mind on usage? Will you use it anyway? Comment below or hit me up on Google+ » http://gplus.to/kevinmullett. See what I did there?

This screen grab shows an alert from Skype showing that you can now download a beta version of their application which allows you to instant message your Facebook friends right from inside the native Skype window.

While this is hardly proof of what is to be announced on Facebook Live Wednesday, it certainly shows that in addition to other joint ventures, Skype and Facebook don’t have a hostile relationship such as the case with Google and Facebook.

What do you think it will be? Will you be listening in? Comment below and let me know.

Trick Google+ invite system into letting you in! We here at Cirrus ABS love social media and just couldn’t wait for the almighty Google to let us play with the new Google+ system. This Google+ invite trick should get you into the new Google+ interface, even if you were/are getting the Google+ “we are over capacity” message. Good luck, it doesn’t work 100% of the time, and let us know if you make it by commenting below or hit me up via @kmullett on Twitter.

Did it work for you? Comment below and let us know and if you like the video please consider subscribing to the Cirrus ABS YouTube channel or find us on Twitter or Facebook.