web traffic – Small Business Odyssey

May 17, 2012May 17, 2012

Pinterest: Pinlet Magic for Small Business Marketing

Pinterest is a social networking site where people share images and photos by adding them to “pinboards”. It has achieved phenomenal growth – growing faster than Twitter and Facebook during the same early stages of its growth. Pinterest is now the 3rd ranked social networking site behind Facebook and Twitter and is ranked 39th in the world in terms of website traffic.

Some interesting facts for small business owners:

Pinterest is generating more traffic to blogs than Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn combined (www.mashable.com)
Pinterest users are 10% more likely to buy than users who arrive from other social media sites*
Pinterest’s percentage of all social media driven purchases is growing and is expected to reach 40% (while Facebook will drop from 82% to 60% and Twitter drop out of the purchase picture)*
Facebook bought Instagram for $1billion to ward off competition from Pinterest.

* Source: http://mashable.com/2012/04/29/pinterest-interest/

[Image source: Screen capture taken from my Pinterest site: http://pinterest.com/ronpassfield/]

Adding images and photos to Pinterest

Pinterest enables you to create pinboards on any topic and to add pins via upload from your computer or via a pinmarklet tool which is added to your browser toolbar. So you can pin images from any website of your choice but what you have to watch here is the copyright restrictions of the source site. Some websites owners are particularly aggressive about protecting their copyright.

The pinning tool (pinmarklet) is shown below together with the image it creates:

You can see from this illustration that you have a thumbnail image taken from the website, the option to post to one of your established pinboards (using the drop-down menu) and the ability to add comments before you post. Pinterest will automatically pick up the website address of the image source. However, you can also add your website address to the comment section and it will be automatically hyperlinked (made clickable).

Some websites have the Pin Symbol to enable you to easily pin from their site. Popular sites that people pin images from are:

http://www.squidoo.com
http://www.masterchef.com.au/
http://www.wizzley.com
http://www.tumblr.com
http://www.flickr.com (Flickr has recently developed an arrangement with Pinterest to ensure that photos are properly attributed and to prevent the sharing of photos that the originator does not want to share – check out the Creative Commons Attribution option).

Pins are shared by “likes” (as with Facebook) or by being repinned by another Pinterest member. To build up your following on Pinterest, you should like pins and repin images that you are interested in and follow people you admire or who share the same interests/geographic area.

Pinterest, Pinlet Magic and small business marketing

Two types of Pinterest pinboards that are attracting heaps of traffic are quotes and inspiration. What Pinlet Magic brings to Pinterest is the ability to create your own quotes, inspirations and affirmations by using a special purpose Pinmarklet which is also added to your browser toolbox:

When you click on the pinmarklet for Pinlet Magic you see the following image:

Here are some of the features of Pinlet Magic:

you create your own quote or affirmation (in the left box)
you can decide the font, font size and font color
you can add an author name or your website address to the bottom of the quote/affirmation
you can preview the quote as you create and customize it.

Additionally, you can decide the color of your background, the border, add one of the preset colors/templates or upload an image to serve as the background. This part of the Pinlet Magic tool is very flexible:

As you can see from the extract from my Pinterest site in the header image for this post, I have two pinboards covering Inspirational Quotes and Affirmations – and I create quotes/affirmations that are consistent with the nature of my offline human resource development business.

Here’s an example of an affirmation I developed using Pinlet Magic and my own photo (the emphasis is on active listening):

Here’s another example. This time I have developed an Inspirational Quote using Pinlet Magic and my own photo of a Stradbroke Island view at sunset:

Each of these images on Pinterest has a link back to my small business website, Merit Solutions Australia.

When you purchase Pinlet Magic you also receive other resources such as sources for quotes, updates, hints and ideas and free access to a closed Facebook discussion group where a growing community shares their quotes and willingly gives “likes”, repins” and “follows” for quotes they admire.

Pinterest has opened up a new arena for small business marketing and Pinlet Magic provides a great boost to building your personal branding, business brand and website traffic.

February 7, 2012February 9, 2012

The Challenge of Daily Blogging and the Need for Improved Personal Productivity

There are many things that work against you when you attempt to achieve daily blogging.

However, the effort to maintain a daily blogging schedule is well worth it. I noticed that since I have missed a few days of publishing Small Business Odyssey, the Alexa ranking has changed from 860,000 to 1,100,000 – in other words, my web traffic has dropped.

Daily blogging enables you to build momentum both with your writing and your blog traffic.

Photo Credit: cambodia4kidsorg

Creating a related blog – How to be productive

Sometimes you may need an infusion of new ideas or a new perspective on your blogging. This can come through creating a related blog and using a drip-feed automated process.

Over the past week I’ve been building another WordPress blog, a productivity membership site:

http://www.how-to-be-productive.com

Whilst the membership site was pre-built in terms of its drip-feed content, I decided to develop audio content for the first 9 lessons via Audacity. Again, once I gained momentum in creating these recordings, I found the task easy and enjoyable. I was able to produce the audios (MP3’s) for the membership site on personal productivity in two sittings – one involving three recordings, the other six.

The associated task of inserting the audios into blog posts was made so easy by the very clever, free software, podPress, discussed in an earlier post.

So while I was not writing and publishing on my Small Business Odyssey blog, I was developing and refining my productivity membership site hosted on a WordPress blog.

Personal productivity and daily blogging

While the creation of the new productivity site may seem like a diversion from this blog, I believe that it actually reinforces the Small Business Odyssey blog. Personal productivity underpins much of what I am writing about on Small Business Odyssey. Fundamentally, if you can’t improve your personal productivity as a small business owner, you will have real difficulty engaging in any form of small business marketing. Worse still, you may end up doing the wrong kind of work (e.g. wasting hours on Twitter, reading and writing Tweets).

One of the core challenges involved in daily blogging is, in fact, finding ways to improve your productivity. To make the time to achieve a daily, published blog post (a minimum of two hours taking into account locating images and editing), you need to find ways to improve your use of time.

There are numerous things that can distract you or consume your time as a small business owner and it is easy to fall into old habits ( e.g. reading emails for hours) – with the net result that you do not make time for blogging.

Over the past three weeks, for example, I have been engaged with others in creating four tender submissions for our human resource consulting business. a mind-numbing task but essential for business survival and growth in the current economic and political climate.

It would have been very easy to give up daily blogging but I had to find a way to schedule my blog writing at a time when my productivity and creativity were at their best – early in the morning.

To engage in daily blogging, takes a huge commitment but it is rewarding both intrinsically (personal satisfaction and sense of achievement) and extrinsically (increased web traffic and income).

December 29, 2011December 29, 2011

Google+: Why Small Business Must Get Involved with Google Plus

Google Plus is Google’s new social network launched in June 2011. Google+ will be an integral element in small business marketing into the future. It will not only enable you to build your personal profile but also build your business brand online. Google Plus membership has already reached 62 Million and is growing at the rate of 625, 000 new users per day.

Why bother with Google Plus?

Google views Google Plus as extending its capability (and value) beyond its traditional search engine focus to social networking. However, these two major arenas of Google’s activity should not be seen as separate. Google has already made it clear by its own words and actions that the Google + social network will feed search engine results. It has also shown the intention to rapidly integrate other Google applications into Google Plus, its new social network.

Google has already integrated Google+ into its toolbar as shown in the images below:

This icon. ‘+Ron’ , provides a direct link to my Google+ account. In the following toolbar image, you can see how Google integrates ‘notifications’, ‘sharing’, ‘profile” (thumbnail photo) and ‘settings/help’ icons for ease of access:

As we progress through my blog posts about Google Plus, you will see that Google is deadly serious about this new social network – it is not just a new ‘plaything’. Wherever you go on Google, including the search results, you will see increasing integration of Google+. Google played around with its early social network, Google Buzz, but has since canned it to build Google Plus – all the time using Buzz as a learning laboratory. If you have any doubts about Google’s long-term commitment to Google Plus, just check out Google’s own announcements re its ongoing Google + updates.

Integrating Google Plus into your small business marketing will no longer be a nice option (initially, Google+ was invitation-only), it will be an essential element. Otherwise, you will see your online marketing progressively vanish into the background as Google takes over the foreground with its Google Plus social network.

As mentioned in my earlier post on the major changes for small business marketing in 2011, Google+ is one of Google’s strategies designed to wrest back the Number One web traffic position from Facebook. The similarities between Facebook and Google Plus will hit you immediately, so this new social network represents head-on competition with Facebook. As a small business owner, you can stand on the sidelines and watch the battle or you can engage with both these giant networks and ensure that you have a sound footing online – this is where the action is and where the people (your customers) are.

What is significant about Google Plus?

Google Plus has already been lauded for its ease of use and flexible privacy settings (addressing one of the key problem areas of Facebook). As Google+ is in its early stages, it is also possible to get access to people you would not normally be able to link to.

So here is a list of key things you can do (explained in detail in later posts):

create a comprehensive personal profile
build ‘circles’ (add people to different circles/groupings and control the access and distribution of your information via your circles)
share photos and videos
develop your ‘stream’ (similar to Facebook’s ‘News Feed’ – integrating ‘status updates’ and content such as photos or videos)
private message other people in your circles
create a hangout (an evolving facility to engage others in live conversation via video and text chat – considered by many to be the real technological breakthrough for Google Plus)
create ‘sparks’ – recommendations
build business pages (sound familiar?).

Some commentators are suggesting that with these features and the growing integration with Google’s own applications, Google Plus represents a combination of Facebook, Twitter and Flickr rolled up into one state-of-the art social network.

How to Join Google Plus

You can join Google+ via a link on the blog/website of a Google+ member. You will see the image displayed at the top of this post and the sign-up box as shown in the following screenshot:

Alternatively, you can go directly to Google Plus and click on the following image and this will take you to the signup page indicated in the above image:

Note: You will need a Google account to join Google Plus (with either sign-up option).

With each advancing day as we move into 2012, Google Plus will become more critical to small business marketing and this will be progressively explained in succeeding blog posts (which symbolically will take us into the New Year).

December 26, 2011

7 Major Changes in Small Business Marketing in 2011

As 2011 comes to a close, it is instructive to reflect on the massive changes to small business marketing that occurred during the year and to look at their implications. These changes were driven by a number of landmark events that spawned innovations.

One of the key drivers of the changes that small business marketing confronts today, and into 2012, is the direct competition between Google and Facebook for Number One position on the Internet (and all the revenue that goes with this position). The impact of this competition is being felt throughout the Internet marketing world and in social media. There are many people becoming disengaged by the endless changes created by the two Giants of the Internet as they try to outpace each other. One possible prognosis is that this could open up the arena for another player who undermines the customer base of the both the big players, as Facebook did to MySpace.

I want to focus on seven (7) key changes as a way to highlight the impacts from a small business marketing perspective. This approach is in line with my suggestion to write blog posts in sets and sevens. So here are the seven key changes in 2011 affecting small business marketing:

1. Google Places upgrade and resurgence

Google introduced improvements to Google Places, the platform for local businesses to highlight their location, hours of business and their products/services. Along with these changes, Google gave new prominence to Google Places in local search results, changing the display and increasing the value of a Google Places web presence. Sadly, very few small businesses understand the value of this change and have failed to take up their allotted Google Places website. In 2012, Google Places will be an absolutely essential part of your small business marketing. Without it, you may find yourself dropping deeper and deeper in the list of local search engine results as your competitors make full use of this facility (one which Google itself hosts!).

2. Changes to Facebook Pages

The big news of 2011, was that Facebook had more web traffic (visitors) in March than Google and took over the Number One position in terms of search engine volume. The race is now on and Google and Facebook are involved in a head-on tussle to capture (or retain) the number one position. This competition has generated many changes on both sites. Facebook has made major changes to its Facebook Pages to make further inroads into the business market. These changes have complicated the scene for small business marketing. It has meant that many small business owners have had to ignore Facebook or engage small business marketing consultants (who are struggling themselves to keep up with the changes). But how can you ignore the Number One source of web traffic that is also a social media site with over 700 Million members?

3. Introduction of Google Plus and Google +1

Google quickly responded to Facebook’s resurgence with the introduction of its own social network, Google Plus. It also introduced an equivalent to the Facebook “Like” in the form of the Google +1 button. There are other major changes in Google’s search algorithm and results display that accompanied these changes. The challenge for small business owners is, “How can you keep abreast of these changes and their implications for small business marketing?”. Again, you cannot afford to ignore the Google changes or your competition will be appearing in a much more prominent way than you as Google attempts to “reward’ those who get on board with its new social network and related changes.

4. The resurgence of LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the world’s largest online network focused on business and in 2011 grew to over 130 Million members. LinkedIn is a new and growing force in small business marketing. Depending on the nature of your business, it can be a critical component of your small business marketing, particularly in the light of the overall growth of social networking which looks like continuing unabated in 2012. The introduction of status updates by LinkedIn is an attempt to utilise its growing power to move into the Big League occupied by Facebook and Google.

5. The growth of local marketing

During 2011, there was a massive switch of focus by Internet marketers from affiliate marketing to local marketing. This was driven in part by two influences, (1) the decline of affiliate income owing to the depressed economy in the US and (2) and the recognition that around 80% of business for offline businesses comes from within a 5 kilometre radius. The changes to Google Places and the emergence of social networking ‘review” sites, intensified this new focus. What it means for your small business marketing is that you have to make the most of online local marketing tools because your competitors are being courted daily by Internet marketers who see this area of consulting as a the new “goldmine”. The new superstars of Internet marketing generate their income from monthly retainers paid by businesses, small and large, for local marketing services.

6. The massive growth of mobile marketing

With the advent of the Smart Phone and the associated growth of mobile usage, mobile marketing has taken off as the new frontier for Internet marketing. This growth is being aided by the focus on local marketing and has spawned the development of thousands of apps for mobile phones. Two new areas of online riches are emerging, (1) the creation and sale of mobile phone apps and (2) the development of mobile marketing strategies and tools (software). As a small business marketer, you are going to need mobile compatible websites and mobile marketing tools. One advantage of Google Places discussed above is that it is already mobile-compatible – which is another reason why it is so critical for small business marketing.

7. 2011 – The Year of the PlugIn

With so many changes on so many fronts, WordPress developers have had a field day. There has been a massive growth in WordPress Plugin development in 2011. I receive an invite every day to purchase two or three new plugins. It is becoming increasingly difficult to keep abreast of these software innovations. However, the WordPress plugins are designed to make it easier for you to accommodate your small business marketing to the changes that are occurring in Internet marketing. Many of the plugins help you to automate your small business marketing process.

In succeeding posts, I will further explain these 2011 changes and highlight their implications for small business marketing moving into 2012.

December 18, 2011

Squidoo is a Search Engine!: Implications for Small Business Marketing

Squidoo is a search engine in its own right with other 2.5 Million lenses focused on key topic areas. Even experienced lensmasters tend to forget this aspect of Squidoo.

As Squidoo grows so does its data base of information. So if you are searching for information on specific topics, you will increasingly find quality, focused information by searching Squidoo.

In fact, one of the reasons that Squidoo exists is to improve search engine results. Often you find that websites that gravitate to the top of the search engines are those that have cleverly manipulated the search engines’ algoriths, including automatic generation of backlinks. You have probably found that you are often disappointed by the information that is first displayed by a search engine.

Squidoo was designed to provide webpages that are windows (lenses) to relevant information on a topic. The concept of the lens is that it is not an end in itself but points to other relevant resources. The lens is intended as a mutimedia index to rich information resources about a topic.

Squidoo is intent on maintaining the quality of lenses and has many mechanisms in place to reward quality and remove spam-type web pages. This is one of the reasons Squidoo has banned certain topic areas that tend to be predominantly spam attractors.

Implications of the Squidoo search engine for small business marketing

The primary implication is that in addition to web traffic via other search engines, your Squidoo lenses can attract traffic from within Squidoo itself, from other Squidoo lensmasters. This not only serves to build exposure to your small business but increases the value of your website with other search engines such as Google.

Squidoo insists on original content and has even created an Originality Pact. One of Squidoo’s endearing features is the constant encouragement to develop your personal creativity and to stand out from the crowd, to show that you have something unique to offer (your Unique Selling Proposition – USP?). As the Squidoo editors explain:

Squidoo is an opportunity for you to share your point of view, your take on a specific topic. That’s why lenses are called lenses — they snap your point of view in to focus.

There are many Squidoo lensmasters who demonstrate by their creativity and commitment that they are able to produce quality lenses providing real value to readers – they pride themselves in the quality that they produce. Squidoo recognises these Lensmasters as Giant Squids, people who have achieved excellence in at least 50 lenses. The Giant Squid status tends to attract more interest and more traffic to your website and I have found that it gives you a real standing with Google and the broader Internet marketing community.

In the Originality Pact, the Squidoo editors encourage you to stretch yourself, create quality lenses and to brand yourself as a person of substance who consistently offers readers real value:

This is an agreement to create, craft, build, bake, innovate, write, opine, talk, storytell, review, recommend, and stand out from the crowd. That’s the magic of Squidoo.

So a key implication for your small business marketing on Squidoo is that you brand yourself by the quality (or poverty) of your Squidoo lenses – your lenses will be found through the Squidoo search engine, so how do you want to be seen?