SES New York (live from Michigan)
Last week many SEO industry gurus gathered at the Hilton New York for Search Engine Strategies Search Engine Marketing and Optimization Event. We wanted to attend the event, but it was in the cards for a variety of reasons. However, I did listen to a few of the Webmaster Radio’s broadcasts. It seemed like a really informative week with top panelists and speakers, and in judging from some of David Szetela’s tweets, very fun week as well. I must say being in Manhattan at highly regarded event would be great, and we are putting it on our calendar for next year.
In watching the conference from afar, it struck me how I could track and gather information being discussed. I did this primarily through Twitter, with the aforementioned Szetela as well as with the web radio broadcasts that were conducted from event. Now, this event didn’t have any TV coverage, it did get some Wall Street Journal coverage. However, through all of the interactive tools available, Webmasters Radio, blogs, and Twitter, I was able to follow the conference quite well. Not that I was totally glued, there IS client work to care of first and foremost of course - but I was able to hear many experts speak on search engine marketing tips, tactics, and trends.
Now, of course following this conference from afar cannot replace the experience of attending SES NY. The interesting point to think about here is how social media and online communication tactics can enhance the experience of an event. I wonder how this could be applied to events in Lansing. Is there value in using these tactics to build interest and value around the upcoming Greater Lansing Strategic Business Luncheon, or Ignite Lansing. Combine this mentality with Bob Ruggio of Webgio’s Guest Blog Post on my blog on how he used social media for a critical crisis rallying cause.
I attended the Central Michigan PRSA’s guest presentation by Jim Tobin of Ignite Social Media. (not related to aforementioned event) Ignite is a social media agency, not an ad agency or search engine marketing agency, a social media agency. He had some great insights, but the most important one was that it’s still not the technology, its the people driving it. Not a new point when grappling with technology in a business environment, BUT, one that most be remembered and refreshed when a small-medium sized company begins a social media initiative.
Bring this all together: think about how to make this work for a local event, or a product launch, or a tradeshow. There are tremendous opportunities here to build audience beyond a local reach, such as following SES Strategies NY, but as Jim Tobin points out, it can’t just be about starting a Facebook page. You must have the people as the touch point, and making sure content is fresh and relevant. All examples and things to think about as we continue to help companies use the web as a marketing tool.
Joe on Twitter
Well, I finally got aboard and started my own Twitter account. I should be updating it frequently, http://twitter.com/jfordnetvantage, and don’t forget about our Netvantage Twitter account, http://twitter.com/netvantage. My tweets will be focused on search engine marketing, although as you can imagine my thoughts may wander to other things as well. If you are wondering how best to use Twitter for your business, my colleague Adam Henige wrote a very good post on it. Looking forward to gaining followers, and following others! Drop a line if you want me to follow you.
Lansing Small Biz Customer Service Rants
Note: This is not a normal post on how search engines impact small business.
Okay, we are in a recession, right. So someone tell me if I am off my rocker in being miffed by the lack of customer service and process I am seeing, and how there is opportunity here to make supposed money in this economic environment.
Situation 1: I receive a direct mail piece from Case Credit Union saying I am qualified to re-finance my truck, which is through them. Now, I completely realize that this does not automatically mean that I will be able to refinance it, and that I will get a lower rate/monthly payment. I figure I give it a shot. I call, and of course get lost in the phone directory, and have to hang up and call back. Once I finally reach someone, I talk to a very nice customer service lady. She takes my information, and of course we get to the credit check situation. Spare some details, we go through my information and she states she is going to go to underwriting on it. Now, this while process goes about 40 minutes on the phone. I now have some time invested in this. I realize I may not qualify for the re-fi, but figure it’s worth the shot. She does not give me a time when I will get a decision, but we end our call. That was Thursday. It’s now Wednesday AM. No call. What is wrong with this picture???
Situation 2 Hot tub repair. We bought our house in July of 2007. It came with a hot tub, and we enjoy it. Within the last month, it has started leaking into my deck. I understand the hot tub is coming of age, and this is normal. I figure I can tear it apart and investigate, OR given the disaster that that would develop from me trying to do that, I will just call and have someone come out and look at it. I understand this is going to cost money. I try searching on some keywords and actually really have a tough time finding someone to call. I finally find a firm, Hot Water Works. Very nice website, good verbiage regarding their service. I am convinced. I call. First, the guy can’t take my call because he is “upstairs”, so I need to call him back. I understand that, ourphones here can be odd as well. (thank you Comcast). So I call back. To paraphrase the conversation, Nope, I don’t know the model, OK, sounds like the pump. My question: How much to come out - Answer - $95. OK, I guess I can do that. They need me at the house when the guy comes, etc. He shouts over to someone next to him about going out to Mason that day, muffled response on background, and then he tells me that he will figure out a time and call me back. It is not the next day. No call.
Getting impatient, I do more searching yesterday afternoon, find Dietz Pool, which is a well-respected pooland spa supply company in Mid Michigan. I call, talk to a more friendly person. He says he will get with a service person and call me back. No call.
My hot tub continues to leak and ruin the deck wood. I will continue to make payments on a truck that has become an awful money pit. In the grand scheme of life, these are tiny issues. That is not the point. The point is that there are 3 examples of situations where I have MONEY TO SPEND IN THIS ECONOMY. And the response I get it is…… crickets.
Situation 4: This is less a service issue, and more a courtesy and a truer reflection of these times. Last week, I was leaving the IT Council meeting when my 2004 Chevy Silverado with 121,900 miles makes an exploding sound, and will NOT go forward in drive. I can go in reverse, I can limp it in the first gear. And I do all the way to Shaheen Chevrolet, which out of probably bad, lazy habit we tend to go to for all of our cars repair. I am sure this has cost of thousands of extra dollars over the last 6 years, but that is another story for another day. Regardless, the service there was good, my tech manager was receptive to my pain of my truck dying, etc.
The only concern I had was this: Shaheen’s courtesy car gave me a ride to Enterprise rental car around the corner. A very nice lady helped me with my car an paperwork, and away I went. Got the terrible call later that afternoon that a sprocket in the truck’s transmission had to be rebuilt, and it was going to be between 1700-2000 dollars, (of course with labor discount - yeah good one)
The next day, Shaheen got the truck done on time, which was great, and I went to turn in the rental car. $67. For some reason, I was under the impression that Shaheen was going to pick this up. Cough - $1854 of work had just been done, do you think there were going to pick up the $67 tab for the rental car. Rental car lady calls dealership to verify. Ah, no. ”Customer pay, and he should know that” Why would they. Why would they do that for a loyal customer that has always gone to that dealership for repair and service. I can only imagine in a better economy that this would have been covered. As a result, I will be looking for a new oil change place for both our vehicles, not to mention repair service.
Situation 5: Over the Christmas break we had some nasty wind at our house, and lost some shingles. I wasn’t sure if this meant replacing the section of the roof, the whole roof, etc. First call was to my MEEMIC insurance agent, Winston Insurance in East Lansing, which of course just simply gave me the 1800 MEEMIC number. (I really think I should be an insurance agent) Anyways, I did the normal phone chain battle and got connected with a MEEMIC claims rep. She gave me the instructions - pictures, two quotes, $500 deductible, etc, and her contact information. Having never filed a claim before, this was all new to me.
Well, did some Google searching and found Exteriors of Lansing. Got connected with a very nice lady there. She was to come out and do an estimate — the problem was the weather. We had a good deal of snow, and she wasn’t actually able to see the damage. I held off on getting a second roofing firm lined up until the weather cleared. Finally she was able to come out a month later as the snow cleared. Didn’t need a new roof, but could just replace it. The cost really was barely above the deductible. Got a secondary quote. Went back to the MEEMIC claim rep, had to push her a bit to get a response, but within 3 business days she got back to me. All got approved, and Exteriors came out to do the work. Check from MEEMIC came quickly. Good customer service, good story.
A week later, we got another horrible wind storm. I lost more shingles in the same problem area, including some of the newly patched ones. Some of the other shingles we flapping in the wind. Called Exteriors. ”No problem, we will come back out and take a look” I thought, cool. That day when I got home, I when to look, and I couldn’t really tell what had been done. It appeared that the shingles had just been patted down, and I wasn’t sure if this was just them settling after the wind, or if they had actually came out. Given the forthcoming rain forecast, I was concerned. Called Exteriors next morning. My contact was not in, but the lady transferred me to the service coorindator. He has not heard anything of this, and it wasn’t in his records or job schedule. Okay? Takes down my information, says they will take a look, doesn’t give a time frame. Concerned, I call back later in the afternoon. Relay the story to the another person, and she says: “Yes, they were out yesterday, I overheard them talking about it this morning” WTF? So I ask if my original contact is in, not until tomorrow morning is the response. At this point, I am very confused.
Next day call, talk to my original contact. She says they will send someone back out. (?) That evening, check on the roof, and the whole section up to the peak was replaced. Now, that is good for me. And I commend Exteriors of Lansing in their work. But I don’t know if I would recommend them due to the massive confusion. The lesson here is process in customer service. Couldn’t all of this confusion have been avoided? You would think there would have been more a process in place to take my call, answer my questions, and let me know what was going on. AND at the very least a follow up phone to say that the work had been done, thank you again for your business.
I know, with absolute certainty, where all of our clients at Netvantage Marketing stand. Sometimes our clients are confused about results and reports, but we immediately get them on the phone to address those needs. They are NEVER left in the dark. Granted, we are in a position where they aren’t bringing us a broken truck. But, if a client calls or emails, we call back right away. A client called my cell phone last Friday night at 7:30. I answered. Same client texted me at 1:30 on Saturday with a question. I answered immediately. And of course you can imagine that if someone calls looking for assistance with SEO or search engine marketing, we immediately respond and get them their information within 24 business hours. If we wrap up an engagement with a client or one of our web design partners, we always follow up with a thank you.
I don’t have my MBA in customer service, but I think as a relatively new small business owner I am paying more attention to how other small businesses handle their clients and prospects. And in this “recession” I am confused how a business would just leave money or client satisfaction on the table. Please respond to this and tell me if my expectations are too high, or misguided. Again, in this recession,,,,,
Greater Lansing Entrepreneurial Awards Musings
Well, the Greater Lansing Entrepreneurial Awards were earlier tonight at the Downtown Radisson in Lansing, and it was a very nice event. Netvantage Marketing was in attendance. We were nominated, but obviously we didn’t win, nor did we expect to. We are still in our infancy as a company, and we were very surprised to have been nominated. (any time the culprit wants to admit it, please come forward)
At any rate, it was a good gathering of business minds. We were very, very pleased to see both partners, clients, and those that have done projects for win awards. Among those were Scott Mc Auley, McSquared Technology Group won, whom is a parter of ours, and as well as Jeff Detloff of Providence Consulting, whom are clients of ours. We are very happy that two very deserving and long standing IT firms were honored.
Also honored as Liquid Web. Frankly, I was shocked that such a company had not yet won. This is one of the fastest growing companies in Michigan, this is a company that is doing REALLY cool stuff. And they are just now winning? This is a company that takes a proactive approach to search engine marketing, managing it very well internally. The real shame was that Matt Hill, CEO was out of the country, and Travis Stoliker Director of Marketing, was sick. However, Matt’s Dad accepted, which was neat as well.
In summary, great to see our partners, clients, and friends get honored tonight. It was a very nice event, and great to see a lot of the business partners at the event that we have forged relationships with in our first 10 monts of existence. No, of course we didn’t win, and as I said, nor should we. However, I am very pleased to see us getting ingrained into the Lansing business community, and it is great to see IT companies in Lansing be honored for their hard work!
Guest Blogger - Harnessing the Power of Social Networking
The blog post below is courtesy of Bob Ruggio, of Webgio.
Webgio is one of our web solutions partners, based out of New York, and Bob is one of the sharpest minds that I know when it comes to web strategy, and has a great pulse on emerging tech trends. He was kind enough to provide a guest blog for me.
Harnessing the Power of Social Networking
Article by: Bob Ruggio
Social networking has been a media buzz word over the last few years.
Sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter are connecting friends, businesses and information through the World Wide Web via any device, anytime and anywhere. I personally think social media is in its infancy and yet to be fully tapped. This is what makes it such an exciting topic to follow. In mid December I had the opportunity to experiment with this technology in a non-conventional way. The outcome was a viable model for harnessing the power of social networking within communities, businesses and organizations to achieve results.
Here’s how we did it -
The Challenge
A Central New York family of twelve lost everything in a fire in the middle of winter and needed the help of the community. Unfortunately every possession was lost, the children only had the clothes on their back and some evacuated without shoes into the snow covered streets.
When hearing this tragic news, the number of children involved, and losing every possession including car keys, it was a moment in my life that I felt the need to step up. My next immediate thought was “What could I do to help?” And within seconds I was planning to use a social networking solution.
Action Taken
I choose Facebook as the social medium because that network had the largest number of community members within my network who could provide local support for the victims. It all started as a simple note and making friends aware. The family needs were clothing, nonperishable foods, toys, financial gifts and a key ingredient of helping us spread the word.
Within minutes of our first post, a flood of questions came in from the network. Within hours we had over one hundred members participating.
Until this event I never truly felt tapped into the sheer power of social networking on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.
The first thing we did was coordinate with volunteers and local businesses to identify drop zones for donations. Next we conducted a needs assessment with the family for ages, gender, shirts size, pants size, and shoes size. This information was then updated on a newly created group called the Angel Donations Network. The use of a group vs. a note gave us several advantages for administrative control and communication over the project.
Then something special happened as donations began to pour in on the first day. Traditional media outlets learned of our use of the social networking tools to help the family and this created a viral media buzz.
For some reason traditional media loves writing about social networking.
This resulted in people joining Facebook through traditional media awareness such as television and newspaper. It was very exciting being able to harness on a small scale the power of social networking, turning what started as a dripping faucet of data, into a full water main break of information flow by Facebook members. This presented one of our biggest challenges, controlling the information of the social network.
As donations came in volunteers kept inventories and relayed data from the donation drop zones to the Facebook inventory. We learned to control the information through the use of well crafted press releases posted to the Facebook group. The press releases served as what I call a “valve”. The press release valves gave us control over the flow of activity and information. After this discovery we now had the ability to turn a dripping faucet into a full water main break of information flow on command. This served as an effective tool in the project.
The Results
As in any project, this didn’t go without logistical challenges but some amazing social networking lessons were learned while using social media.
In the end social networking helped catalyze traditional media and successfully rallied an online community around donating all basic needs for the family within 4 days.
The first lesson learned from this experiment was the speed that we were able to enlist the help of community members. Within minutes we began helping this family. Very few phone calls and most communication happened by social media.
The second lesson was the level of awareness we could achieve by using social media. Each member of the Facebook group was able to stay up to date with posted statuses as the family was helped. This allowed for easy viewing of outstanding donation needs against current inventory levels. From a management standpoint this was vital to in achieving our objectives responsibly.
The third lesson was choosing the correct mediums, frequency, and timing around using each. I viewed this as situational. In this experiment we used Facebook notes then shifted gears to a group to allow more advanced features of control.
The forth lesson was balancing traditional media with social media at a low cost or no cost based on the “buzz” of what you are doing.
Traditional media is always looking for a good story to fill a newspaper or evening news spot so exploit that gently.
Lastly and probably the most important lesson was learning to control the flow of information by carefully crafting press releases in the Facebook group. This served as a valve for speeding up and slowing down the flow of efforts and activities based on needs. This allowed us to effectively communicate the message at specific frequencies and outline specific actions the group could help with. It gave everyone direction and turned what could be chaos into social harmony.
Summary
Social networking has many uses and can be very powerful. I believe we’ve only seen the tip of the ice berg on harnessing its true value withinc ommunities, businesses and organizations. Since this event I’ve had the opportunity to use this model to help a small business build its clientele base and develop a means for effectively communicating messages outside the use of traditional mediums. While both projects are small in scope it has yielded the results we set out to achieve in both cases. The next time you have a community or business challenge try tapping into the power of social networking as a solution or compliment to the main plan.
==================================================================
About the guest author:
Bob Ruggio is a Sr. Business Analyst, Project Manager and .NET Developer specializing in building and growing businesses using next generation web solutions. He holds a Computer Science degree from Hawaii Pacific University, a Master’s Certificate in Applied Project Management from Villanova University, a Certificate in Entrepreneurship from Syracuse University’s Whitman’s School of Management, an M.B.A. in Management from the State University of New York at Oswego, and multiple computer based technical certifications.
Landing Pages and Natural SEO
Landing pages have been a topic of discussion lately with clients, so I think it is an appropriate discussion point for today. I have written about landing pages before, with an emphasis on matching your users expectations’ with their click through. If a user performs a search, and clicks on your ad, be sure you are matching their expectations. I elaborated on this specifically with my geographic blog reference, written in January.
Besides the obvious geographic considerations that I pointed out in that post, there are some more detailed considerations for landing pages, the main one being using very subtle variations in your keywords, and the corresponding landing pages. You may have 4 to 5 landing page variations constructed for your ad groups with your pay per click management campaign. For example, in a campaign focused on shoes, you may have different ad groups set up for red shoes, green shoes, and blue shoes. The most effective approach to converting visitors when they arrive to your site, is to be splitting your ads for each color of shoe and sending users to the corresponding page.
Now, within this you may have the same pricing, benefits, consulting footwear staff, and support service no matter what color shoe your visitors are interested in. Thus, the content structure for red shoes, green shoes, and blue shoes may be exactly the same, only the header text, visuals, and content differences being the color of the shoe.
Setting your landing pages up in this fashion will increase conversions. However, if you are not careful, this can be intepreted as duplicate content by a search engine. As we know, this is not good from a natural search engine visibility standpoint. Given this, it is important to write code with your meta data on these pages so that they are not followed by search engines. This is known as no follow, and can be implemented by the code below underneath the title tag of your page:
<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW”>
Taking these steps will ensure a stronger conversion probability for your PPC campaign, and not endanger your site from a natural SEO standpoint.
