Kiwano Marketing » ninja tips

Ninja Tips: The Best of Social Media Metrics & SEO from the F5 Expo

kiwano — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 16:16:35 +0000

The Vancouver community turned out en masse at new ‘changing technologies’ conference player, The F5 Expo, this week. Vancouver is really coming into its own as a hub for fast and furious new media development. That being said, conferences like F5 have a long way to go before becoming truly useful to a wide audience. For newbies, the seminars would have been a chaotic introduction to social media with too much terminology and ‘in-crowd’ jokes. For those of us more up on the lingo and best practices, there wasn’t enough meat for our conference-going buck.

Still, there were some useful takeaways that I’d like to share on two of the seminars throughout the day:

The Metrics of Social Media: Buzz, Bust, or Booming?

Chip Off The Old Block: Instead of designing one apart from the other, your social media strategy should overlay on top of your existing marketing plan. Just like with any other marketing tool, having goals and a roadmap before you start will determine what to measure, how to tweet and, most importantly, how to measure success.
What Should I Measure?
- Quantity (number of followers, number & velocity of click-thru rates) and quality (kind of followers, engagement) are both useful indicators.
- Sentiment (positive & negative associations) calculated by algorithms are decidedly less useful.
- Most small businesses plagued by the problem of not enough attention, so until it becomes truly unmanageable, certain measurements are better off being tracked by the human eye.
And The Experts Weigh In: The two most metric-rich campaigns you can run these days? Google Adsense and Facebook campaigns.
Some Nifty Tools:
- Netvibes (at-a-glance custom dashboards)
- Social Media Firehose (Google-style alerts for social media)
- Scout Labs (all-around social media tracking, mid-range paid tool)

Search Marketing in 2010

Top Tips for SEO-friendly Websites:
- Don’t confuse search engines with poor markup
- Build content
- Build links
- Keep your content (and links) up to date
- Make sure that your content communicates the goals of your website
- Inbound links are very important, especially if they’re high quality
  - Guest posting, link affiliation, etc. are good ways to make this happen
  - Authoritative is best (the big names on the web)
  - Get listed in more directories, especially local listings
SEO or PPC?
- Long term, SEO is more helpful
- Short term, PPC is a great add-on and generally leads to extra traffic
- Users are 25% more likely to click-through if you’re listed as paid and organically ranked, whereas if you’re one OR the other
What NOT To Do:
- Using nefarious tactics will cause search engines to flag your site as unsafe
- Hosting malware, link farms
Other Bonuses:
- Tag all your images and videos so they’re being indexed properly
- Hosting a video on YouTube, Vimeo, as well as your own site may seem like content duplication, but fantastic for SEO
The Final Word: SEO and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) shouldn’t be an afterthought when building a website. It should be built right in.

Special thanks to Amanda Farough of violetminded Design for contributing her takeaways on the Search Marketing seminar.

Did you attend F5? What did you think of the conference overall? And what were your top 3 takeaways?

Ninja Tip: How to Land a Mentor

kiwano — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 15:50:15 +0000

I’ve been asked this a lot by other entrepreneurs recently: where do you find your mentors?

To answer this question properly, you first need to know why you’re on the lookout. What kind of advice or expertise are you hoping to get out of mentoring? Conversely, what knowledge, skills or enthusiasm can you offer in return? Mentoring isn’t about finding the one key individual who will solve all of your problems by dolling out connections and sagely wisdom on a timely basis.

Here’s the truth: mentors typically are very, very busy people. They usually have their own corporate jobs, consulting practices, and/or may be advising others on the side. If you’re looking for hands-on help with the day-to-day operations of your business, or just someone to keep you accountable, then try starting out with a partner with complementary skillsets or a business coach.

Having a mentor is just like any other kind of relationship building– both sides need to benefit from the mentorship in some way. This may be as simple as sharing similar interests, or seeing a future opportunity to do business. Often times, personalities and mindsets need to mesh.

Above all, mentors need you to understand that while they’re invested in your business and can be counted on to see you through the rough patches, they also want you to do your research before asking the questions. Most of the time, the solution can be found within you and your business partners.

Have more to say? Drop me a line or comment below.

Networking Ninja Tip: Rockin’ the Presale

kiwano — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:15:54 +0000

This week, the topic of discussion for my mentorship group was sales. We discussed many ideas around the art of selling, but there was one that stood out in my mind. A common barrier in the presale process was that certain clients focused on telling us about their problems, instead of fully listening to our solutions. Others were only interested in the facts and benefits of our services; in other words, the hard numbers and measurable ROI.

My next ninja tip is: in order to sell, you first need to invest in your client.

This may seem like a backwards process to some- can small businesses really afford to sink so much time and energy into the presale process? Shouldn’t our end goal revolve around getting as many proposals out the door as possible?

To me, the number one advantage small businesses and entrepreneurs have over larger entities is our ability to listen to our audience. Whether it’s through social media, networking, or one-on-one meetings, I never take for granted that individuals have taken time out of their busy lives to stop and have a conversation with me.

So, the next time that ‘pesky’ client requests a face-to-face meeting, or wants you to forward yet another quote or financial statement, I challenge you to see this exchange as a positive investment of your time (and theirs). In asking for more information or telling you about their problems, what they’re really asking for is: will my investment be reciprocated? It’s up to you to show them that yes, their time is indeed valuable and worth every moment of yours.

Have more to say? Drop me a line or a comment below.