What's your official sex-toy rating?

Nothing goes viral like sex, and it's hard to find a better example of viral marketing than this fun quiz about sex toys. Enjoy (but also pay attention to the way this works from a marketing perspective).

Twitter is a complete and utter waste of time for most businesses

Twitter is a medium best suited to facilitate the sharing of inanity. Despite this, businesses have jumped on the medium and are trying to find ways to make use of it for marketing purposes.

Why are they doing this? Because Twitter is popular, and seen as a bandwagon on which to jump. Such knee-jerk thinking betrays a lack of strategic thinking within the business. The plain fact is, there is no point being on Twitter unless the company's marketing strategy provides a specific purpose for being there.

Having said that, let's examine a common use of Twitter by business. It's often seen as an ideal notification medium. And in fact Twitter's primary purpose is to notify other people about what the Tweeter is up to.

Popular Twitter celebrities such as Stephen Fry (1.9 million followers) use the medium for (I suspect) personal amusement. This is why you'll find gems on his Twitter page like this one: "Wet and windy. Then I looked out of the window and saw that the weather is too."

The difficulty for business is to translate the success Stephen Fry has had on a personal level, into a viable business strategy. It's simply not useful for a business owner to tweet about his/her epic boil lancing session. The most common Twitter strategy is...

• Gain as many followers as possible (usually with minimal thought given to who those followers are, why they're interested, and how to convert apparent interest into profit)
• Tell those followers about every new blog article, marketing initiative, shindig, and product the company launches

There are 3 inherent problems with this approach...

1. Most of the 'news' isn't inherently interesting outside the company because it's self-serving and self-agrandising (yawn)
2. The followers are almost always competitors or free-loaders rather than actual viable customers
3. The nature of the content and its followers makes it unlikely a tweet will go viral

This last point is most crucial, because it provides the key to understanding the real power of Twitter.

Successful tweets are those that get retweeted by other users. And the challenge for most business owners is to find content that is retweet-worthy.

Put another way, under what circumstances would you retweet an announcement by Company X that it has just launched Product Y? Here are a few reasons why you might...

• The businesses' own followers are inherently interested in product Y. The Apple iPad is an example of a product that was, in and of itself, exciting to a specific group of people
• A tweet that offers a very attractive special deal available only to Twitter users who retweet the offer and prove they've done so (naturally the offer must be for something the target market actually wants)
• Something so juicy it can't be ignored by those following the business on Twitter, such a link to a YouTube clip of the company chairman running naked down the street while being chased by bears. Sadly, there are very few company chairmen that find themselves in this situation. And even fewer that caught on film

In all 3 cases a small business will struggle to produce anything that meets these criteria. And if that's the case, the business must ask itself whether or not Twitter is a waste of its time and/or money.

The plain fact is, most business owners are far more interested in what they're up to than the rest of us. A dentist may like to think the wider world is interested in his/her new comfy chairs, or the redecorated waiting area. In reality, none of these things are retweet-worthy. Most of us are simply too busy to care.

Even a business that employs a social media marketing expert to manage it's Twitter presence will struggle to find retweet-worthy content. It's difficult to come up with genuinely compelling ideas. And even harder to have it infect the 'Twittosphere'.

But even if a business down come up with something retweet-worthy, and it does catch on, the question of its own target market remains.

Will the business attract genuine prospects in its target market, or merely act as a source of useful information to its competitors, time-wasters (literally) and marketing free-loaders?

If a business can't attract it's target market, there are far more profitable ways to invest it's marketing budget.

Is professional SEO really worth the money?

There are so many resources that teach you how to do your own SEO it's worth asking the question - is professional SEO worth the money?

For example, this SEO training is specifically designed to help non-technical people do their own search engine optimisation (it's superb).

So why pay hundreds - maybe thousands - to a SEO professional when you can do it yourself for free? As always, the answer comes down to your particular circumstances...

• Do you have time to do your own SEO?
  Getting to the top of Google may require months of tedious effort on your part. Is this really the best way to invest your time?
• What is your time worth to your business?
  If you're paid well you're almost certainly better off paying a professional to do SEO for you.
• How quickly do you want to get to the top of Google?
  A professional can almost certainly get you to the top of Google faster than you. For a start, a pro doesn't have to learn how to do SEO.
• Can your business stand the 2-3 months it will take to undo a mistake?
  If you make a mistake that results in Google punishing your site, it can take several months of misery while you attempt to undo it. A professional won't make these types of mistake.
• Is being at the top of Google likely to be a profitable investment for your business?
  There's more than one way to get traffic to your site, and sometimes SEO isn't the best way to do it. A professional will tell you if there's a better approach.
• Are there problems with your site that hold it back in Google?
  Many web designers have incorrect ideas about what makes a site 'SEO friendly'. Sometimes they do more harm than good, and create problems that must be fixed before a site will rank well in Google.

These last 2 points are especially important. It entirely possible that getting to the top of Google won't help you achieve your business objectives. If so, an experienced pro will tell you and recommend more viable alternatives.

This could save you months of effort, and direct your energies toward more profitable activity.

This alone could be worth thousands (i.e. far more than the cost of an initial SEO report). Not to mention the opportunity cost to your business.

As your SEO experience improves over time, so will your ability to spot the sort of problems that stop a site from ranking well in search engines. The thing is, a professional can tell you within minutes if there's an existing problem. And either fix it immediately, or explain how to get it fixed.

All it takes is a professional SEO report. I'm not talking about a free automated report you find on a website. I mean a report prepared manually by an experienced professional that looks in-depth at your site, likely keywords, internal links, external links, the strength of your competition in Google and all the other factors that go into a SEO strategy.

This report will save your business a lot of time, money and lost opportunity. Isn't it the logical next step for your business?
Click here now...

Strategic Business Networking

This resource on Business Networking London describes 28 different ideas that combine to form a powerful business networking strategy.

The first page lists all 28 methods and gives a brief description. You can then click through to more detailed information about the idea itself. As I write this, only the first page is posted (the detail pages are not yet in place). But they're not needed to benefit from this information.

The summary information is enough to understand the principles involved, and I thoroughly recommend it to you. It's a brilliant way to approach business networking, and turn it into a highly profitable source of revenue for your business.

How to Attract the Right People to Your Site - The Web Marketing Process Part 12

This article is part 12 of a series. You'll find part one here. And part 11 here.

Get live updates as each new part is released: Follow on Twitter.

Who buys your product or service? As soon as you know the correct answer to this question, you'll find it much easier to attract the right people to your site.

It pays (literally) to know exactly who you're marketing to, because it makes it easy to find the people you need to promote your product or service to. And finding the right people is half the battle.

For example, my DIY SEO Seminar teaches people how to do their own Search Engine Optimisation. It's specifically designed to appeal to small business owners that lack the money to pay a professional SEO company.

Armed with that knowledge, it's relatively easy to find the type of person I need to promote my DIY SEO Seminar to. For example, a lot of small business owners are members of BNI. I am a BNI member, and can visit different BNI groups (i.e. subbing in BNI vernacular).

Of course, finding your target market is the first part in a 2 part process. You must also have something to offer. And the thing you offer must be compelling.

Your offer should appeal directly to your target market, and attract them to your site to receive that offer. The medium you use will affect the kind of offer you make. For example, I can offer BNI members a free featured listing in my directory. This provides SEO value, and so appeals to people who are already thinking in terms of realising SEO value.

In web marketing terms, where the goal is to send targeted people to my website, I might start by writing an article about Search Engine Optimisation. I may then get that article published on a dedicated article site such as Ezine Articles.

The article will end with my profile, where I make a specific offer to the reader and send him/her to a landing page on my website. We'll look at landing pages in more detail when we get to the "Leads" component of the Web Marketing Process (see part one for more information).

My article is about SEO, and will be read by people with an interest in SEO. The article will be designed specifically to appeal to small business owners who need to do their own SEO. It's purpose is to sell the idea that...

• Most small business owners can't afford to pay for SEO
• SEO isn't difficult - anyone can do it
• They can do their own SEO and save thousands of pounds

The article will be published on an article site that has its own built-in community. That subset of the community interested in SEO will read the article. And a further subset of people are likely to be interested in learning more about SEO. In my profile, I'll construct an offer aimed at these people.

This sends targeted traffic to my site. It also has the potential to convey SEO Benefit to my site. But this isn't its main purpose. And visitor generation doesn't end with the links in the article. The article is merely a filter designed to weed out unsuitable people (i.e. those outside the target market). To have it do its job, I need to send people to the article itself.

Why not simply send them directly to my site? Because the article is the filter that weeds out unsuitable people. And because the article prepares the prospective client to buy by...

• Selling the idea they can do it themselves
• Establishing my SEO expertise

The article isn't sales copy as such. It must offer genuine value to its target market. It must have utility value in and of itself. By making the article useful to my target market, I ensure they read it all the way through.

Those that click the link and visit my landing page are now fully qualified prospective clients. And I'm in a good position to convert these visitors into leads.

As you can see, it's in my interests to send as many people as possible to the article. To achieve this I'll do the following (at the very least)...

• Tweet about the article and link to
• Ask key people to retweet the article
• Comment on relevant blog entries and link to the article
• Write a short article for my own blogs that then link to the article
• Link to the article from my Facebook page
• Ask key clients to link to the article from their Facebook page or group
• Use deep linking techniques to boost the SEO value of the article
• Encourage people to link to the article as a valuable resource
• Post in relevant forum discussions and link to the article from my signature
• Submit ads to classified sites that link to the article
• Submit links to the article to directories that allow deep linking
• Email clients and subscribers and recommend the article
• Hand out links to the article at networking meetings (free article about SEO)
• Link to the article from all my websites
• Ask key clients and individuals to link to the article from their sites and/or blogs
• Offer to write guest articles for 3rd party blogs that then link to the article (or that serve the same purpose as the article and link to the landing page)
• You'll find more link building ideas here

The point is, this approach uses a 3rd party article community to obtain free traffic. And then attempts to generate additional traffic.

The article acts as a filter, ensuring that I send highly targeted and motivated prospects to a landing page designed specifically to receive them. I don't simply link to the landing page, I make an offer designed to appeal to the target market.

This is one way that professional web marketers generate free targeted traffic to a web site. And it's highly effective.

In part 13 we'll look at how to use SEO to generate targeted traffic within the Web Marketing Process.

Subscribe to this Blog with Feedburner
Enter your email address:

Get a FeedBurner Account