There is no single tool or source to answer all your web analytics questions. But quantitative data on bounce rate is easy to find. You can learn how visitors arrive at your site, what they do while there, and a history of your bounce rate per page using Google Analytics or Yahoo Analytics, both free.
Do You Have What it Takes to Succeed in Social Media?
You can read all the articles you want about social media marketing for B2B companies, but until you jump in and do it, you probably won’t realize what you need to succeed. As many have found out, hiring a college-age daughter or son to set up your Facebook page or your twitter account isn’t the answer.
If hardly anyone is reading your blog, visiting your Facebook page or following you on Twitter, there is a good chance you may be lacking in at least one of these three success areas.
Success Factor No. 1: Content
You don’t have the foggiest idea what your customers would find interesting or engaging. You find it hard to think beyond what you sell, and you probably don’t enjoy staring at a blank page.
A content strategist can help you plan what you want to say and how you are going to say it. Content strategists know how to find engaging stories about your business or topic area that people actually want to read. And the best part … they never run out of ideas.
Content creators get the work done, creating blog posts, videos, and slide shows. Crafting messages that sound like you or your brand, only better. Content curators select the “best of the best” information and ideas, creating value for your B2B audience.
Success Factor No. 2: Technology
Words like “meta tag,” “API” and “robots” scare you. You’ve never seen or even attempted to find the traffic statistics for your website or blog. You aren’t interested in learning a whole new language.
Without knowing the technology behind social media, the best content in the world can remain lost. And without reviewing your website analytics, content opportunities will be lost.
Boosts in website traffic require link building and that means knowing where on the Web you need to be. Each social media network has its own characteristics. Do you have the patience to listen and learn?
Social media training will shorten the learning curve and let you know where you need to focus first. Mastering the technology skills can help your social media efforts deliver a better ROI from the get-go.
Success Factor No. 3: Time
Once you engage your B-2-B business in social media, you quickly understand the tedium of it all . Day after day, week after week, you need to participate, create content, and promote content. Conversations aren’t all in one place. Information needs to be posted in a lot of places with thoughtful messages targeted to the audience. It’s downright time consuming.
However, the more you are involved in social media, the greater the benefit you are likely to receive. Do you have the time? Do you know the tools that can help you best manage and monitor your efforts? Do you have someone who can do the “grunge” work for you?
Some businesses and business owners want to do social media themselves and they have everything they need to succeed: Content, Technology and Time. That’s terrific. Some may have the content, but lack the time and energy. Others may have the technological skills, but lack content.
The important thing is to not get hung up on what you don’t know.Recognize it and get some help. Hire someone to get you started. Build a team and share your knowledge. Sign up to receive some social media training. Move on. Don’t give up.
What has held back your social media efforts? What kind of help does your business need?
Here’s the Proof: Press Releases Drive Website Traffic
The results are in. Visits to contentforbiz.com more than doubled the week after we sent our first press release. We tested three distribution services: PRWeb.com, PR.com and freepressrelease.com.
On PRWeb we selected the “Most Popular” $200 visibility level. According to the analytics on PRWeb.com, the Content for Biz press release was distributed to 3,321 media outlets via email or feed. It was opened for a full page read on PR Web.com more than 1,100 times and delivered nearly 47,000 impressions across the web over the last nine days. Additionally, based on our site analytics, there were 15 direct links from PRWeb.com.
On PR.com I subsequently found out that there’s not much included in the “free” version – not even a hyperlink. Visibility upgrades range from $30.00 to $100.00, and hyperlinks are $29.95 each. To include an image, you are required to select the $60.00 visibility level. Our budget wouldn’t allow all these extras. To be honest, it really isn’t much of a comparison with PR Web at the free level. As far as visibility, the only way I could find my release on this site was to log in.
Posting on freepressrelease.com was easy. It’s just like uploading a WordPress post. Hyperlinks are free, and there are some social sharing features, but visibility was next to nil. There were no search tools on the site to help a visitor find what they are looking for.
In summary, our little test proved that you get what you pay for. The PR Web Distribution service helped to increase website traffic vs. the prior week by 210 percent, while the free services did not appear to provide any measurable results.
Tip: Check out a free tool called Press Release Grader to optimize the press release for the web. It’s an extra step, but well worth your time.
What’s your favorite B2B press release distribution service?
From Glut to Glam
Stop. Take a hint from a road sign and understand the power of a word. Brevity gets attention. Precious minutes are wasted listing reasons to stop or giving instructions on how to stop. In its aloneness, Stop is powerful.
Brevity ensures that a reader gets the message. This trend is taking hold at companies large and small. On the website of Kraft Foods a five word headline, five short sentences each with a link, and a six-topic menu bar introduces the viewer to the company.
At the Pepper Construction Group, a general contracting construction management firm, the Home page contains a four-word headline and triple menu bars: one at the top by location, near the bottom by topic, and at the bottom with subject icons. News links are included. This information design is ingenious.
Emphasis Gets Lost When Overstated
On these sites nothing is overstated. It appears glamorous in its constraint compared with the glut of information most people see each day. Sensibilities are soothed rather than taxed. Information designed in small chunks like this is functional. A practical reason to limit word count is the click through. When introductory words are of interest to readers they act. Their click through is measurable.
When a not so prominent lawyer’s bio runs 851 words, perspective is needed. MicroSoft’s chairman of legal affairs wrote his bio using 421 words and Chicago’s largest and most prestigious law firm’s chairman uses only 326 words. It is a conversation. Don’t go on and on. Stop.
The Smart Ideas File
As a content writer and strategist I go through a lot of information every week. I rely on my own systems (using various methods for filtering the glut including Google Reader that I described in another post). I keep them in a “Smart Ideas” file. I remember some content from mere memory. Smart ideas don’t grow easily but this week’s plums were there for the picking.
From the Supply Side Community forum Alissa Marrapodi, managing editor for Inside Cosmeceuticals, writes:
“The consumer is driving the cosmeceutical market. No longer are manufacturers introducing niche markets and suggesting consumers’ needs proactively; but the consumer is putting their demands out there via social media, etc., and manufacturers are now reacting and responding to consumers. The shelves are not setting the trends; consumers’ demands are…A total of 63 percent of purchasing is driven by beauty blogs.”
From Seth Godin’s blog post on How to be Interviewed:
“If your answers aren’t interesting, exciting or engaging, that’s your fault, not the interviewer’s. “ He also says that interviewees don’t need to take every question posed literally. Redirect and talk about what you care about.
From a live conversation with Investment Banker Doug McConnell:
After a meeting with owners of a B2B company start up, Doug said to me: “It’s good to have an outside source filtering industry information to them. Entrepreneurs tend to become insular, only seeing what they want to see.”
Questioning Smart Ideas
Sometimes I ponder questions posed in an article, even when it’s the smartest sounding idea. In her article, A Better Way to Get Vitamins, Anita Marlay, R.D., L.D. writes: “Really, wouldn’t eating an orange for a snack make better sense than eating a processed fruit snack with added vitamin C?”
It would seem so, but another choice is emerging through the fast growing Functional Foods industry. Commercial organic farm operators that pick fruit when it’s ripe and freeze dry it immediately can create powerful antioxidant rich compounds. New ORAC (total antioxidant capacity measurement) tests show a fresh plum has an ORAC value of 9.49 (per gram); compared to a dried plum (prune) with an ORAC value of 57.7 (per gram). The same is true of grapes. Fresh grapes have an ORAC value of 4.46 (per gram) versus dried grapes (raisins) which have an ORAC value of 28.3 (per gram).
What makes sense is that drying removes the water and concentrates the antioxidants. Bio technology firms are positioned to partner with companies to offer new food or beverage products that are not only convenient but lend scientific support to the effects of added nutritional ingredients. That’s a long answer to her question, but sometimes it’s good to stop and think about what you know.
Do you have a smart ideas file? How do you retain those you’ve read or heard?