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Ines Hegedus-Garcia - @ines @jb140 there's a fine line bet prostituting your posts & getting quality readership - @chris_smth @phxreguy @tcar @jimmymackin

This was a tweet I received this morning from my friend Ines in reply to a conversation we were having this morning on Twitter about a recent post on HubSpot about 25 Marketing Stats for 2012.  The post to me seemed a little thin on content provided as it was basically just a list of statistics.  That however is not the purpose of this post.

The conversation started this morning when Chris, Jimmy, Jay, & Todd were discussing the completely annoying use of a Tweet This! link on every single stat on their post.  25 orange Tweet This! links in addition to the regular Twitter plugin seemed a little obsessive to me. My thoughts on the post were that they were only concerned about me sharing it out with others on Twitter. They could care less if I learned from the post, if I commented, or did anything else.

What is interesting though is that while the post is chock full of very interesting statistics that all of those mentioned above would love and share out on Twitter, (It's what we all kinda do for a living, so interesting stats that back up our points are always valuable and helpful)  the conversation turned from great stats, to poor promotion of the post by pimping it out too much.

I wish I could say this is the only example I've seen the past few days, but there are more.  Just before following the conversation above I watched a video from Gary Vaynerchuk on how poorly the Oprah Winfrey Network was promoting through social media.  Here's his rant:

Don't get me wrong, social media is a great tool to promote your products and services.  I use is solely to build and market my business. But, it has to be done in moderation.  If you try using a social network for just promoting you will get nowhere.  Some may listen for a little while, but before long, you become just noise they ignore.

Crossing the Line

What is the line where you go from successful promotion to prostitution?  That's a difficult question to answer.  I believe it varies.  Some businesses can do more promotion than others and get away with it.  Others, the slightest bit can turn off your consumers.  I think instead of trying to use a formula you need to just pay attention to your sphere.  If people are interacting with you less, your traffic is declining, and things seem to be on a downward slope, then maybe it's time to change.

I know in my business I've tested this on numerous times and have found that the minute I seem to be doing more promotion of me, my business and not others everything slows.

The Magic Formula

So, what is the magic formula to promoting things effectively?  How can I get all my stats going in the right direction?  Well, the answer is actually pretty simple.  Spend more time promoting others than yourself.  People pay attention to those who help them more than those who try to sell them something.  You can build a powerful online community by simply talking more about others good things than how great you are.  In return, you are building relationships and trust with that community of followers.  Then, when you promote something of your own, you are more likely to receive better results.

In order to get results from readers and your online community you have to first give something to them.  If not, it comes across really clear that you are just out to pimp your own products/services/things and could care less about others.

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.  When do you feel promotion turns to prostitution?

Originally Posted at: 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors

As I am currently 40,000 feet in the air on a Southwest Airlines flight back home I started reflecting on the recent conference I just spoke at for Coldwell Banker Real Estate. Whenever I go to an event either as an attendee or presenter, I always try to take time shortly after to reflect on things I enjoyed, I learned, or would like to see done differently.

As I think back on this event, I find myself focusing on something completely different. One of the things that became abundantly clear at this event is that the way companies market themselves is evolving. See, many years ago I was a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker. Their annual convention at that time was called The International Business Conference, or "IBC." Now, don't get me wrong with what I am about to say, but their event had been the same basic real estate style convention for many years. People in their suits talking about how great the market is and giving tips on how to get your clients a mortgage, etc. Most of the time was spent teaching how to convince consumers that "Now is the time to Buy" and "Real estate is a great investment."

But, this year they knew their conference needed an overhaul to match the changes that are taking place in our daily lives. The classes that would teach on a new product the company was releasing were replaced by things like 30 mobile applications for business. The neck ties were removed to symbolize a change in the mentality of leadership and that it was time for a change. I am starting to see this type of trend become more and more common at business conferences.

Why you may ask? It's simple. Large corporations like Coldwell Banker are starting to realize the importance of having a strong presence in the social media sphere. So, instead of a conference like this being filled with real estate coaches, the speaker lineup was filled with social media advisors like myself, Chris Brogan, and even the folks at Google.

The concepts of using digital marketing to become trusted agents in a digital world is now more important than ever as consumers are using sites like Google, Facebook, and Twitter to make decisions. These decisions are based upon the following five factors.

1. What do my peers recommend? During the Google presentation Sam Sebastian gave an example home buying scenario. Instead of grabbing the yellow pages and looking for the fanciest advertisement of a real estate brokerage, the couple turned to their Facebook account to ask friends which neighborhood they should consider when buying their next home. Based on what the consumers friends and peers online say about a product or service can now be the decision whether you get the sale or someone else. Not only did their friends give them advice, but one even gave them a specific home listed with an agent. Peer recommendations are becoming more and more powerful each day. Sites like Yelp and Foursquare are more influential in decisions consumers make than ever.

2. Who has been there to assist me in a time of need in the social sphere? Someone that is not sure what to do in a certain situation may ask for help. Businesses need to be monitoring on a daily basis what others are saying about your business, your brand, and industry via services like Google Alerts, Twitter search, BackType, etc. Being a social media winner in your industry will turn potential consumers into raving fanatics who grow your business for you. The business who goes the extra mile will be rewarded handsomely for their efforts.

3. How findable are you online? When someone goes to Google and types in a term relative to your business are you showing up on the first page? If you think ranking well in the search engines is not important, ask a successful real estate agent online. One in every three unique visitors to a real estate site is via search according to Google. Understanding how SEO works and positioning your business in the search engines properly for specific keywords applicable to your business can pay off with major dividends.

4. How is the their user experience? Let's be real here, if consumers visit your site but the user experience is terrible it will affect the possible current and all future transactions with that consumer and possibly even their entire sphere of influence. One of the things I do a lot is evaluations of websites for clients. They do not understand why their current design and site is not converting leads, and most of the time it is because of design of the site. Remember, you are on your site daily, you helped to build and design it, so you know how the site is supposed to work and how to get to the conversion state. But, have you had a stranger look at your site? Here is a good litmus test: Have friend or family member that has not been to your website go and try to go through the process on their own. How easy is it for them to navigate and get to your point of sale? When I do an analysis of a site, many times I pull it up for my wife and watch her try it out. She is a pretty savvy online user, so when I see her struggle I know we need to make adjustments. It's important to put on a pair of consumer goggles and look at our site from their eyes. If they experience confusion, too many clicks, or slow loading pages, you will not convert them and they will go find another place to purchase their products and services.

5. How mobile are you? Piggybacking off of number four is the question: How does your site work on a mobile device? If you do not have some sort of mobile option of your site available you are missing out on one of the fastest growing sections of the online market. In the past year mobile queries have grown by 4 times according to Google. By the end of 2011 more than half of all Americans will own a smart phone device of some sort. If you are using a platform like WordPress for your site make sure to at least have some sort of mobile plugin in place. I enjoy the WP Touch Plugin which gives a quick mobile version of my blog. These type of plugin also help immensely in load time for a blog post. If your site is huge to load on a mobile device it could cost someone who may be visiting from another country $10 just to view. If that's the case, you better have something really awesome and important to them or you will lose them and all their friends forever from visiting your site.

These five things can make or break your business online in this era of new media marketing. They are more important than knowing how to create viral videos, schedule tweets, or even upload a photo to Facebook. Keep the consumer in mind first and how to help them make more informed decisions and they will trust your business more than ever. The more they trust you, the more then will support and promote you to their peers. This is the beauty of social media and how it can be optimized to assist your business in growing online. Use it properly and it will make your business very successful. Use it improperly or ignore it and it could destroy your business permanently.

If you read this post and realized that your business is not following these steps, please contact me, and let's get started putting your business on the right path!

Originally Posted at: 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors

I must start this post by stating that I am a complete statistics junkie.  I love studying my Analytics in Google and trying to figure out the patterns of my visitors.  I can get lost for hours dissecting my data and enjoying every second of learning more about my consumers and what they want, what patterns they follow, etc.

I recently read through a presentation that Jay Thompson gave on "Conversion Optmization For Your WordPress Blog."  In that post he shared a bunch of links to different ways to monitor how people are using your site.  There were a few that stood out to me, one of which was clicktest. It's a simple setup where you can upload an image, and have people do a simple test on your site.  You can either make it a multiple question type test where people can view the image for 5 seconds and then answer questions on what they remember, or as I chose, I ran a test with a screenshot of my site and asked people to click where they would go next when visiting my website.

There is a paid and a free section to the site.  I signed up for the free version which gives you about 20 tests.  To get a few more clicks and test results for free, they allow you to share your test on Facebook & Twitter.  You can also participate in others tests to earn a few more clicks.  By doing this I was able to get a good mix of results to the test from random visitors along with current and potential clients who know me.  This means I had a good mix of new and returning visitors to my site.

So What Did I Learn?

I was pleasantly surprised by the results that I received from my test. I have broken down the findings into the 5 main things I learned about consumers visiting my site:

1.  They Want To Know More About You- When I studied the notes for my site, the first thing I learned is that people do want to learn about you the person behind the business as well as what the business is about.  The hottest section on the heat map by far was my about page.  This made me realize quick that I need to go back through those pages of my site and make sure they are in the best condition possible delivering the most amount of quality information to consumers about what we do, who I am and yet still give them something of value to want to stay at our site.  In the past I always focused my time and effort on providing quality content in blog posts and I know my about section is lacking because of it.

2.  People Click Pictures- If you look the results for my site, you can see that people were clicking on my image in the blog post.  Normally when I write a blog post, I do not set the image to go anywhere with a target link.  So, when someone clicks on the image, it just shows the raw image file.  I learned though from these tests that people actually click on the image on a regular basis and that it is pretty important to have that image linking somewhere.  So, when you place an image on your blog posts, make sure that they deliver something of value.  Either link them over to a page inside your site that continues the conversation on the topic or to an external area that gives more information on the subject you are covering.

3.  People Like Search Options-  This one didn't catch me by surprise as being a popular area of the site.  I know when I visit a site I am not familiar with I like the ability  to find a search button and get directly where I want to be instead of surfing through the entire site.  I was however slightly surprised by how popular it actually was.  What I learned here is that it is imperative for a site to have search button in place in a clear visible position for consumers.  Remember, the easier the navigation is to get consumers where they want to go, the more productive your site will become.

4.  Call To Action Buttons-  I wrote about the importance of a clearly defined sidebar before here on my site, but this test helped to confirm my point.  Having clear call to action buttons on your site above the fold is very important to consumers and they will click on them.  The fourth most popular place people clicked on my site was the call to action button for our Custom WordPress Site Design.  I knew already that this page was the most popular static page of our site from studying our analytics over the past few months, this test just confirmed that validity in having that button on my sidebar.

5. It's OK to Have Products Front & Center-   I've debated having the Products & Services tab at the top of my site.  My one thought was that maybe it was too in your face and turned away consumers that were coming to gather information from a blog post.  My other argument though was that if I moved it to an interior section of my site, it would make it almost impossible for consumers to find their way to that section.  And while it may turn off a few consumers by it being on the main screen, I came to the conclusion it is imperative to keep this here because if consumers cannot find my products or services then it will make it almost impossible for me to earn a living.  And while I really enjoy sharing good information with my sphere, I still need to be able to support the family.  I also think this is the other major contribution to our Custom WordPress Site page being so popular.  This is one of the very few pages on my site that you can get to by either using the main navigation at the top, or the sidebar button.  Clearly though, people want to know more about our products and services when visiting the page as that is the second most popular section of the site.

So do you know what consumers do when visiting your site?  If not, it may be time to find out.

Originally Posted at: 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors