TweetBeep

via Small Business Software by Robert Clough on 1/18/10

Keep track of conversations that mention you, your products, your company, anything, with hourly updates. You can even keep track of who's tweeting your website or blog, even if they use a shortened URL (like bit.ly or tinyurl.com). http://tweetbeep.com/

5 Big Trends In Marketing Automation 2010: #1 Inbound Marketing

via B2B Marketing for Faster Sales Blog by Scott Mersy on 12/9/09

At this time of year, it’s always fun to both reflect on what we’ve seen, heard, and learned over the past 12 months and to look ahead to what’s still to come. Over the upcoming days, I’ll be writing about some of the key trends I see for Marketing Automation in 2010.To kick it off, here’s trend number one.

Trend 1. Inbound Marketing “Meets” Marketing Automation
“Inbound Marketing” had a big 2009. The Inbound Marketing Summit expanded to three events (looks like they’re doing four in 2010), Hubspot continues to do a great job evangelizing the art of “getting found by customers”, and Social Media, a pillar of Inbound Marketing, might have gotten a *little* attention! Eloqua just made an announcement about this too.

Getting found, generating web traffic, and converting that traffic are all admirable goals found within Inbound Marketing. However, in a complex selling environment (usually B2B), it’s not enough. After the lead is captured, lead nurturing and lead scoring need to kick in immediately to develop relationship with the prospect.

Do Your Prospects Travel a Predictable, Linear Path?

Why? The buying process in a complex selling environment is not linear - far from it! In fact, the buyer’s interactions are all over the place - up, down, left, right, zig-zag … kind of like a game of chutes and ladders.

How does a business determine who has done more than just respond (shown inbound interest)? Which inbound prospects are truly engaged? In an eCommerce environment, the sale is fulfilled online, in a shopping cart, and it’s easy to see who completed the transactions or who abandoned. In a complex sale, however, the sale gets fulfilled through a person. A connection needs to be made, but up to 70% of inbound leads aren’t “sales ready”. In this environment, there needs to be more. After inbound interest, Marketing Automation enables delivery of appropriate messages, emails, website personalization - all designed to drive a “right-time” interaction with sales.

It comes down to a simple hard truth: Inbound Marketing by itself isn’t enough in B2B. Maximize the revenue opportunity from inbound leads and optimize the burgeoning customer relationship after and expression of inbound interest is expressed through Lead Management.

Read more: Paul Dunay recently called this Inbound Interaction Management on his Buzz Marketing for Technology blog.

Next: Marketing Automation 2010 Trend 2 of 5 - Measuring Marketing All the Way Through to Revenue …

The Power of Government-as-Platform

via GlobeSpotting with Steve Hamm - BusinessWeek by Steve Hamm on 12/1/09

The most successful companies in the tech industry learned long ago that they would be far stronger if they created an ecosystem of allies who build businesses on top of theirs. They designed their technology as platforms, or foundations, for others to build upon. (Think Microsoft's Windows and the hundreds of thousands of applications created to run on top of it.)

Now governments are following the same path--most notably the Obama administration. It's attempting to create an innovation platform that organizations and businesses can use to make themselves stronger and/or help improve the performance of government. Tim O'Reilly, the founder of O'Reilly Media and promoter of the Web 2.0 and Gov 2.0 phenomena, calls this the Obama administration's most important technology initiative. "The government is starting to think like a platform provider rather than an application provider," he wrote me in an e-mail.

The most significant step so far has been Federal CIO Vivek Kundra's Data.gov project. Launched on May 21, Data.gov is a collection of federal data housed on the www.data.gov Web site that's open to public access. It's not just a bunch of impenetrable databases, through. Kundra and his team has provided easy-to-use tools that people can use to make use of the data--and they welcome suggestions on additional data sets and tools that people would find useful. The project launched with 47 data sets and now hosts over 118.000 of them.

A couple of examples of how Data.gov has been put to use:

Datamasher: Allows people to compare vital economic and demographic data by state, and view it graphically. There are more than 1,500 mashups of data available so far.

FlyOnTime.us: Allows travelers to see the on-time records of specific flights between cities.

One unintended effect: In an era when traditional media is short of people and resources, non-journalists can do their own investigating and data mining.

This notion of providing an innovation platform is central to the national innovation strategy being developed by the federal Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra. He's in the final stages of working up his platform for consumer e-health, and says he'll reveal the details soon. For now, here's a high-level teaser: "The government doesn't have to run everything. We can create the conditions whereby we improve our collective well-being."

I have a feeling that Big Government, Obama-style, is going to be a new sort of Big Government. Likely better, too.

How Technology Will Make the Biggest Impact on Health Care Reform

via Small Business Trends by Anita Campbell on 11/16/09

Would you like to ask a question of George Halvorson, the CEO of Kaiser Permanente, about health care reform and technology?

Please join me this Wednesday, November 18, 2009, from 2:30 – 3:30 pm New York time.  I’ll be live-tweeting a webcast with him.

You have a special opportunity to submit questions to him.

To ask a question, please include it in a comment below.  Or if you prefer, tweet it to me @smallbiztrends.   I will make sure your questions get passed along to him.  I can’t guarantee he’ll have time to answer all questions, but I will definitely pass them along.

Here are some questions that have already been floated by members of the Small Business Trends community:

1) Does there really have to be so much paperwork involved with health care?  Will we ever get to a system like some countries where it is paperless and takes a doctor or hospital just a few clicks to submit a claim?

2) Will things get better under the health care proposals being floated in Congress right now, or will the proposals increase bureaucracy, paperwork and costs?

3) Technology sounds great — but how exactly will technology make a difference in health care to the average person?

4) How will technology in health care impact those small businesses in the health care industry?  What about those not in the health care industry?

5) Will technology make health care better?  Or just more impersonal?

I’m sure you can think of other great questions.  Here are the event details:

What: “How Technology Will Make the Biggest Impact on Health Care Reform” with George Halvorson, the CEO of Kaiser Permanente

When: November 18, 2009:   2:30 – 3:30 pm Eastern (New York) time

Where: Online at INPUT / OUTPUT

Registration: Not required

Hashtag for tweeting: #hpio

PS, Many thanks to HP which is bringing us this event, and whose sponsorship of this site makes it possible for the Small Business Trends community to have this opportunity to participate.

From Small Business Trends

How Technology Will Make the Biggest Impact on Health Care Reform

IBM Unveils New Technology to Help Governments Improve Services for Citizens

via IBM Press Releases - All Topics - United States on 10/29/09

IBM today unveiled a new software platform designed to fundamentally change the way that local, state and national governments manage and deliver services to the public.

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Google Social Search to go live Monday

via Webware.com by Tom Krazit on 10/26/09

Google Social Search is ready to surface content created by your friends in regular search results pages.

(Credit: Google)

Google is ready to show off its concept for social search while it figures out what to do with Twitter's fire hose of data.

Last week at the Web 2.0 conference Google's Marissa Mayer demonstrated the service, which will go live as a Google Labs project on Monday. Google Social Search links the concepts of so-called "real-time" search with Google Profiles and custom search results, allowing searchers to find content created by friends or contacts with Google Profiles.

Google Social Search was developed separately without the Twitter deal in mind, said Amit Singal, a Google fellow. The opt-in service provides your Gmail contacts and friends on public social-networking services with the content you've linked to your Google Profile, such as blogs, Twitter or Friendfeed accounts, or any number of published material.

That means that if you've linked your personal blog to your Google Profile, your contacts will be able to see your blog posts related to a given query directly in their search results pages. Those links will be placed at the bottom of the search results page for now, and searchers will also have the option to refine the search results page with a new "social" link on the left-hand side of the page to focus just on content from your network.

Public social-networking content from friends of friends will also be available through this service, with a description of how that person's content is linked to your network appearing within the search result.

Originally posted at Relevant Results

Does the US Face an Innovation Crisis?

via GlobeSpotting with Steve Hamm - BusinessWeek by Steve Hamm on 8/31/09

Ever since the late 1950s the United States has suffered bouts of insecurity about its innovation lead. The Russians in space. The Japanese in industry after Industry. And now the Indians and Chinese. The latest flurry of worries was clearly brought on by a combination of the dot-com bust and the acceleration of outsourcing. It has blossomed into a full-blown anxiety attack with the global recession and the clear signal that a lot of the most obvious US innovation in the first eight years of this decade was so-called financial innovation--which brought disastrous results. Now the calls for action are louder, including this package we at BusinessWeek put together in the last issue.

How serious is the threat to America's innovation lead? There's quite a debate about that. The RAND Corporation, in its report, U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology, argues that fears are overblown. But The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, in RAND's Rose-Colored Glasses and in The Atlantic Century, criticizes RAND's researchers for underestimating the problem and missing the point. I highly recommend you read these reports.

Interestingly, the two sides aren't really that far apart where it matters.

Robert Atkinson, president of the ITIF, a tech industry think tank and lobbying outfit, says it's not where the US ranks today that matters; it's whether the country is investing for the future. He's clearly frustrated. "Innovation gets short shrift in DC because the Republicans think business should do it on its own, and the Democrats think the same thing. Neither side is backing strong innovation policies."

Titus Galama and James Hosek, the authors of the RAND report, told me that by most measures, the US is still in the innovation lead, but they cautioned against complacency. "The US continues strongly, but the rest of the world is coming from behind and catching up," said Galama.

One prime example of where the US could do better is in the R&D tax credit. America pioneered this enlightened incentive for businesses, but other countries have since come up with richer and more stimulative incentives. The Obama administration has pledged to make the R&D tax credit permanent, which would take out the uncertainty and make it easier for corporations to do long-term investment planning. That's a good start, but it would be far better to improve the tax break. America won't continue to be the global innovation leader unless it reclaims leadership in innovation policy.

Go social with these Wordpress plug-ins

via Webware.com by Don Reisinger on 8/25/09

With the help of plug-ins, you can extend the functionality of your Wordpress blog far beyond what's available to you when you add it to your server.

One of the best ways to get the most out of your blogs is through social plug-ins. These simple plug-ins can be added to your blog to help you connect socially with both your readers and their friends. They offer a fine way to build traffic to your site.

Go social with your blog

Add to Facebook If you want to make it easy for readers to syndicate your content to Facebook, Add to Facebook is the plug-in for you.

The plug-in provides a simple option at the bottom of each post, called "Share on Facebook." When the reader clicks on that link, they're immediately delivered to their Facebook page, showing a thumbnail of the image in your blog post, as well as the beginning of your post. If Facebook followers click on that link, they'll be delivered to your page. It's a neat utility. And it's a great way to share content through social channels.

Add to Facebook makes it easy for readers to syndicate your content.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Digg Digg Although its name might suggest that Digg Digg is a way to get readers to share your content with the popular social news site, it's much more than that.

Digg Digg allows you to add voting buttons to your blog. You can add a TweetMeme retweet button, a Yahoo Buzz button, and a "Submit to Reddit" option, along with your Digg button. The plug-in also allows you to decide where to place those buttons. You can choose the top, bottom, left, or right of your post.

Digg Digg is a great way to syndicate your content around the Web.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

FriendFeed Comments If you're a FriendFeed user, you know that it's a great site to discuss interesting stories. FriendFeed Comments helps you bring those discussions to your blog.

When you activate FriendFeed Comments, you need only to input your FriendFeed username, tweak a couple of settings, and watch all the comments about your blog post get added to your site. Any comment placed on FriendFeed will be displayed on your blog. You can see the discussions made between different people on the social network. Even better, all those comments are placed in-line with comments made on your blog.

FriendFeed Comments will display comments from the social site.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Instant Highlighter Instant Highlighter provides readers with the option to highlight different portions of your blog posts and share that with Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, and other social sites. They can also save portions of your blog post for their own future consumption.

But to do that, they'll be brought to the plug-in's developer page, giving them a variety of options to choose from. It's a little confusing at first and I'm not quite sold on the implementation. It might annoy some readers. But if your readers like it, the plug-in could significantly improve your chances of getting your posts on social networks. Test it out to see what your readers think before you commit to Instant Highlighter.

Instant Highlighter is a test case.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Social Bookmarks Sharing your content on different social networks is extremely important as you try to build your blog. Social Bookmarks will help you do just that.

When you activate Social Bookmarks, it automatically adds several social-networking icons to the bottom of each of your blog posts. When the reader chooses one of those options, they can send your post's link to their social profile. The list includes Delicious, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo Buzz, Digg, and more. Adding content to the profile is quick and easy. It's a really nice app. Check it out.

Social Bookmarks is a great way to get readers to share content.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Twitter for Wordpress Twitter for Wordpress allows you to place your Wordpress updates into your sidebar for all your readers to see.

After it's activated, Twitter for Wordpress won't automatically work. Instead, you'll need to either drag-and-drop a Twitter widget into your sidebar or you'll need to add some simple PHP code to the sidebar to have it display your Twitter updates. The Twitter widgets make it look nicer, but if you want a simple status message on your sidebar, the second option is fine. Twitter for Wordpress is a nice plug-in if you want something simple.

Twitter for Wordpress is OK, but not great.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Twitter Friendly Links Since many Wordpress blogs don't provide the most Twitter-friendly links, Twitter Friendly Links helps solve that problem by automatically shortening your blog's URLs.

When readers share a blog post with their Twitter followers, the link won't show the full post URL. Instead, the Twitter link will display your site's domain, followed by a unique identifier. It's similar to TinyURL or Bit.ly, but instead of those domains, you'll see your own. It's a simple feature, for sure, but it's extremely useful for those who don't want to lose Twitter-based traffic due to a long URL.

Twitter Friendly Links makes your URLs much nicer.

(Credit: Kovshenin.com)

My top 3

1. Digg Digg: Getting your content added to important content-syndication platforms is made simple with Digg Digg.

2. FriendFeed Comments: FriendFeed is a great discussion platform. It's even better when it's on your blog.

3. Twitter Friendly Links: There's something simple, yet compelling about Twitter Friendly Links.

10 Valuable, Actionable, Take-Aways From the SEOmoz Pro Training Seminar

via SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog by Whitespark on 8/31/09

Posted by Whitespark

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

Whitespark is an Edmonton Search Engine Optimization and Web Design Company in Canada

Having recently returned from the SEOmoz Pro Training Seminar Series, I wanted to recap a few of the things I learned, and create a list of actionable items that I need to start implementing in my SEO business. I'm writing this for my own reference, but figure that I might as well write it as a YouMoz post as it could be useful for those of you who couldn't attend. Of course, what I found valuable and actionable may be different from what other attendees found valuable, so if you attended the seminar it would be great if you could share your top take-aways in the comments. The conference was packed with a ton of useful information, and this list focuses on the items that I'm currently excited about.

Take-Away #1 - Ask For A Link In Order Emails (And Other Customer Communications)

Tom Critchlow suggested asking for a link in your order emails. It's a genius tactic, and I'm ashamed to say that I have heard this tip a few times before, but haven't implemented it yet. That's no good. This is so simple, so easy to do, and potentially so valuable that there is no excuse for not doing it, right now.

If you control the code on your e-commerce sites, then stop reading right this minute, fire up your code editor, and add some kind of version of this text to your outgoing order confirmation emails:

Do you have a website or blog? Link to us! Just copy and paste this code: Subtly Optimized Anchor Text

If you don't control the code, then stop reading right this minute and fire off an email to your dev team.

I just did this on five different e-commerce sites I manage and it took me exactly four minutes and 12 seconds. You do the math and figure out what the ROI is on that, even if it results in just a few extra links.

While you're at it, think about other places this could be added to. Put it in the footer of your email marketing, put it on your website somewhere, maybe even put it in your email signature. You'll be surprised what people will do when you tell them to, and "link to us" is a clear and direct call to action.

Take-Away #2 - Use The Top Pages Tool To Identify Your Competitors' Link Bait And Learn From It

Rand pointed out that you can use the Top Pages Tool (Pro only) on your competitors' sites to see the pages that have earned them the most links. Run this on a good set of sites in your industry to learn about what kind of link bait content will likely be successful for attracting links to your own site.

Take-Away #3 - Use The Google Adwords Keyword Tool To Identify Keywords That Have High Search Volume, But Low Competition

Ken Jurina from my home town of Edmonton, Canada showed how you can run your keywords through the Google Adwords tool and then sort the columns to identify high search volume keywords that have low competition. Optimize a page of your site for these terms for some easy pickings in the rankings!

Take-Away #4 - Use The Top Pages On Domain Tool To Find Linked To Pages On Your Domain That Should Be Redirected

This may be old news for many of you, but somehow I missed a great YouMoz post from Richard Baxter where he describes a sweet side-effect of the Top Pages Tool. You can run your domains through it and it will show you all the pages that have in-links, but that are now 404ing. Redirect them and keep that link juice flowing through your site!

You might be thinking that you can identify these cases in Google Webmaster tools, but there are a couple scenarios I can think of where you might not be able to:

1. You're analyzing a site for a prospective client where you haven't been given access to their Webmaster Tools.
2. When the old domain has been redirected to a new domain. Webmaster tools won't show you the data if the entire domain has been redirected (I think), but the Top Pages tool will. This is the case that Richard points out in his post. This is awesome because now you can 301 those "lost" pages too.

Take-Away #5 - Use The Competitive Link Finder!!!

Nick just posted about this hot new SEOmoz tool, so maybe you're already aware of it, but I saw this for the first time at the Pro Training Seminar and it is crazy awesome. Looking for some links? This tool makes it so easy! They have officially called it the Competitive Link Finder, but I like to think of it as the "Link Intersect Tool". You punch in your domain, and your competitors' domains (works best with 3 or more competitors), and the tool magically shows you the pages that link to multiple competitors. If they link to a couple of your competitors, then chances are good that you can be included in that list too with a carefully crafted email.

Take-Away #6 - Optimize Your Google Local Listings With these Tips

David Mihm is a great speaker and his talk was full of great info. Here are some of my highlights from it:

• It's better to claim your listings manually, even for multiple listings. Google trusts these more as bulk uploads are susceptible to spam.
• Use Keywords in the Business Title, but don't overdue it. (I can say from experience that this is a huge LBC ranking factor.)
• Adding custom categories can be a helpful ranking factor. Use the maximum # allowed. (I have also found this to be a big factor in my own Local rankings.)
• "Citations" are the links of Google Local rankings. Get listed on Localeze, InfoUSA, Openlist.com, etc. Americans should check out this list of places to get citations. Others should check out David's guides to citations in Canada, UK, Australia, and Continental Europe.
• You can also identify citation sources by checking the "Web Pages" tab of your competitors.
• You can use the search engines to find even more citation sources:
  • yourcity, st blog
  • yourcity, st directory
  • yourindustry, st blog
  • yourindustry, st directory
  • yourindustry yourcity, st blog
  • yourindustry yourstate directory

Take-Away #7 - Use the Google Adwords Content Network To Find Sites To Buy Links From Directly

Tom Critchlow mentioned this tip in his talk. Building links can be hard work. If you have more cash than time and want to just buy some links, this is a great tip for identifying potential link sellers. If they are trying to make money on their sites with Adsense ads, then chances are good that you could contact them about "purchasing some advertising". If you're willing to walk a grey line, well, then this could be an interesting tip for you.

Take-Away #8 - Enjoy Some Serious Link Love By Becoming A "Green" Business

Also from Tom's talk, "going green" can be a great way to get some authoritative links! There are a ton of sites out there that will list your business if it's "green". Ethical Directory, EcoFirms.org, Guide Me Green, etc. If you're not green now, then figure out what you can do to be more earth friendly in your business, get a badge and info up on your site about it, and then contact all these sites that list green businesses.

This tip got me thinking about other angles for this. I can imagine plenty of link opportunities for a shoe store that sells "vegan shoes". I can imagine a pet supply company that donates a portion of its profits to animal shelters. I can probably think of something along these lines for almost any business.

Take Away #9 - Use Seth Besmertnik's Market Opportunity Calculator To Help With Your SEO Sales Pitch

Seth Besmertnik's talk was super funny, and super valuable. One of my favourites of the seminar for sure. He showed us how to demonstrate the value of SEO, and how to keep an SEO project on track.

You can download his presentation and a number of useful spreadsheets here: How to Win SEO Budget and Influence your CMO. One that I particularly like is the Market Opportunity Calculator. All you have to do is this…

• Input the list of keywords in Column  B
• Input Current Rank in Column C
• Input Global Monthly Search Volume in Column D
• Input Conversion Rate in Column R
• Input Average Value per Conversion in Column S

… and the Excel template will produce stats on what your current market share is for those terms, and what your potential market share could be if you had top positions. It also gives you a great looking pie chart that should make the serious ca$h value of SEO very clear to your potential clients.

Take Away #10 - Start Working On Your Conversion Rate Optimization Immediately

Is it just me, or do many of you also suck at Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)? After seeing Ben Jesson's presentation on CRO, I felt like I had just received a serious wake-up call to remember why I'm optimizing websites in the first place. I've been so caught up with increasing my clients' ranking and traffic, that I have not been giving nearly enough attention to making sure that the visitors we do get become customers. Sure, I have dabbled in this a little bit by removing extraneous text from my forms, moving the important stuff above the fold, and dropping in a few starburst graphics to get attention, but damn, I have a lot to learn. Fortunately, Ben's presentation was full of great advice and direction.

There are many things you can and should be doing to better understand your customer's needs so that you can properly address them on your website. If I had to pick out a few pieces of wisdom from the presentation for you, it would be these:

• Implement tools on your website to learn from your customers. Find out what their objections are to buying your product, signing up for your service, subscribing to your e-newsletter, or whatever conversion goals you have, and then make sure you address those objections clearly on your site.
• Get some unbiased feedback on your website (not from your friends or family.) Ben's tip: ask someone at a café if they wouldn't mind giving you some feedback on your site. Tell them you've just had it redesigned and you're just not sure about it. Offer to buy them a coffee. One of the best quotes from the seminar was when Ben said something like "The sign of a good usability test is when you're holding back the tears because they told you the truth about the problems with your site."
• Here is a list of good tools for learning about your customers
  • GoogleTalk Chatback (I just added this to my site and it is super easy to implement)
  • Tell-a-Friend-King
  • Kampyle
  • iPerceptions 4Q
  • Distilled Reputation Monitor
  • CrazyEgg (I have used this, and it rocks)
  • SurveyMonkey
  • Ethnio
  • ClickTale
  • Google Website Optimizer
• Long sales pages are ok when done right. In fact, they are often necessary to be able to address all the different objections your customers might have about your products or services. Check out the Conversion Rate Experts optimized SEOmoz Pro Page, or the Amazon Kindle Product Page for two very successful examples.

Conversion Rate Optimization has a massive return on investment. Get started on it right away!

Check out these great articles on the Conversion Rate Experts website, and also sign up for their newsletter. I have been on their list since January, and they do not spam you. They just send you an occasional email every few weeks that is full of good tips.

 

Well, that covers the top take-aways I can think of at the moment. I am certain that I forgot a few gems, so please, if you attended the seminar, it would be great to get your additions in the comments. Hope this post is helpful to you!

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