All local and regional businesspeople interested in staying on top of the latest internet marketing trends and strategies are welcome to attend. Our Internet Marketing Workshops will be presented by members of the Ecreativeworks team, who will share their knowledge and experiences in the world of internet marketing to help you make the most of your company’s online presence.

Our first Free Internet Marketing Workshop will take place next Tuesday, September 13, and will continue for four more installments through December 6. The full schedule is as follows: 

• Tuesday, September 13: Facebook Basics for Your Business
• Wednesday, October 5: Google AdWords Workshop
• Thursday, October 27: Social Media Workshop
• Tuesday, November 8: Google Analytics & Measuring ROI
• Tuesday, December 6: Advanced SEO Tactics

All workshops will take place at our offices in Plymouth, Minnesota. Click here for further information and to sign up for any or all workshops that interest you. RSVPs are required, so don’t forget to complete the form on the page linked above. We hope to see you here!

Often times, users won’t go through the effort of checking to see if your brand has a Twitter account when they want to discuss, have questions about or give accolades to your brand in their tweets.

A perfect example of when monitoring was very useful was when I noticed my client, Plasti Dip, had been featured on The Nate Berkus Show, a network design and lifestyle show. Plasti Dip hadn’t been informed they would be featured on the show and the users that were talking about it on Twitter weren’t referencing the Plasti Dip Twitter account. I found out about this by using Twitter’s Saved Searches Function.

To use this feature, simply login to your Twitter account and type whatever product, company name or branded name you’d like to monitor in the search box and hit return. Once results appear, click on “Save this Search” (see below).

You may also want to think about multiple spellings of your brand or product. For Plasti Dip, I have set up saved searches for the correct spelling of the brand, “Plasti Dip”  as well as a variation with no spaces. As you’ll see in the screenshot below, I’m also monitoring several other of Plasti Dip’s branded products.

Make it a practice to check your saved searches when you’re monitoring your @’s  (Replies) and DM’s (Direct Messages). You may be pleasantly surprised what you stumble upon! If you want to read more on Plasti Dip’s feature on the Nate Berkus show or watch the clip, visit Plasti Dip’s blog.

Our Trackable Social Share Icons plugin adds two important and incredibly useful features to your blog:

1)       It adds social media icons, for Facebook, Twitter, etc, to the bottom of your blog posts, pages, and excerpts. You can choose which icons you want to appear, what order they’re in, and what size they are. You can also pick from 12 different icon styles.
2)       Using your site’s Google Analytics, the Trackable Social Share Icons plugin tracks all clicks on those icons. None of the tracking information is shared with Ecreativeworks or any third party. Only those with access to your Google Analytics can see this information.

We created the Trackable Social Share Icons plugin for Ecreativeworks clients who are utilizing our custom WordPress blog services. There are a plethora of social media sharing plugins already available for WordPress, but none of them offered all three of the features that our new plugin does: Google Analytics tracking, customizable looks, and no third party information sharing.

Ecreativeworks’ new WordPress plugin works like a charm. Just install it on your WordPress blog, and that’s it. The default setting will add icons for Facebook, Twitter, and email to the bottom of your posts and pages. You can fiddle with the setup to include whichever icons you want, in any of the dozen available styles. There are additional icons for Digg, Reddit, and other popular social media outlets, as well.

The Google Analytics tracking is even easier to use. Once the Trackable Social Share Icons plugin is installed, it will sync with your site’s Google Analytics, and…Shazam! Instant, automatic click tracking for all your icons. It really is that simple.

We decided that our new WordPress plugin is just too good to keep only for ourselves and our clients, so we’ve made it available FOR FREE. Download the Trackable Social Share Icons plugin from WordPress.org today and see for yourself just how swell it is.

Kudos to Mike, the Ecreativeworks developer who built the plugin. Well done, good sir, well done.

According to LinkedIn:

“Now you can search for companies not only by attributes such as location, industry, and size but also by how you are connected.  You can filter a set of results to include only those companies where you have a direct connection or broaden your search to include companies in your extended network. Results are personalized for you based on a number of factors including the keywords used in your search, any filters you have applied, and your overall connection strength to that company.”

Here’s a great video from LinkedIn that demonstrates their search feature:

So, for your company’s sake, get LinkedIn today. This may just be a great place to find leads, educate your customers, entice great future employees, gain credibility and much more. Not ready for social marketing? This will be a great first step and arguably the best one for any industrial small business.

Also, I would like to give a shout out to Reelseo.com for turning me onto this cool video–they posted this in their blog this week also. Thanks for the great post.

You can also check out our linked in page if you would like.  Feel free to poke around and see who we are, and if you like us, leave a recommendation.

1. Social search results will now be mixed into the “normal” search results.
2. Links shared by people in your social circle might show up higher on the search results pages.
3. Updated controls for connecting your accounts in your Google Profile, including being able to privately connect accounts.

Here’s Google’s video explanation of social search:

So what does this mean for your industrial website? Basically, search results are getting more personalized, and social media is becoming a larger influence in what searchers see.  Additionally, your keyword rankings mean even less than they did a few weeks ago because personalized results are getting even more personalized.

Internet marketing isn’t just about SEO and pay per click anymore – social media needs to be part of your online strategy.

But, there will always be the ridiculously uninformed business owner or entrepreneur who thinks it really is as simple as “being Number One on Google.” The video linked below is from an SEO company in Australia*, and, as far as the uninformed buffoon type of SEO client is concerned, they hit the nail on the head. With a really, really funny hammer. (It’s also, in and of itself, a good example of how to use sites like YouTube as an effective marketing tool.) Enjoy!**

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIAEy4fshOE

* As they’re in a different hemisphere, it’s probably safe to say they’re not really our competition, so I don’t feel bad about linking to them.
** The video does contain a bit of blue language (as does the comments section below it), so watch at your own discretion.

For Tracking Visits from Email Campaigns:
Google Analytics URL Builder – this is great for tracking email campaigns, especially if you’ve bought an ad/link from a 3rd party. Email links show up as “direct traffic” in Google Analytics, so measuring the effectiveness of email campaigns are can be challenging.  You can use the URL Builder to help you create the link that be placed in the email, then you’ll be able to see all the traffic you get when someone clicks on that link and if any of those visits converted.

For Tracking Visits from Twitter:
Goo.gl  URL Shortener – this handy tool works great for social media like Twitter. Long URL’s can be troublesome for the 140 character limit in Twitter, especially if you want to have a detailed comment with it or you expect lots of re-tweeting. Paste in your long URL, click “Shorten” and voila, you’ve got a short URL for your Tweets. Then, log in to Goo.gl with your Google ID and you can see how often that short URL was clicked.

Video Marketing—As Scott pointed out in a blog a few days ago, adding videos to your site and creating a YouTube channel for your company can have huge benefits for your business. Almost everybody carries at least a rudimentary video camera with them*, and it’s so easy to edit and upload videos now that there’s no reason not to. The saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words”—a talking picture is worth 14,753.6^†. What better way to show potential customers and clients what your company can do than by literally showing them what your company can do! One recent study showed that conversion rates from YouTube are up to 20 percent higher than conversion rates from traditional search engines. If it’s that easy and that effective, it’s definitely a must.

Social Network Optimization—I mentioned in previous blogs that social networks and social media are rapidly taking over the world as we know it. But, this is not necessarily a bad thing. You can use your Facebook and Twitter accounts to update your customers/clients on any and all new developments in your company quickly, easily, and, best of all, for free. Keeping them up to date on your latest and greatest will also keep you front and center in their minds when it’s business time. Tweets, Facebook updates, and the like are also a great opportunities for link building and generating referral traffic. Again: fast + easy – expensive × effective = a must. Facebook and Twitter may not always be the King and Queen of the social networking prom (remember Myspace? Didn’t think so), but social networking itself shows no signs of slowing down, so this one will be a key SEO focus for many years to come.

Local Search Marketing—Thirty years ago, if your business wasn’t listed in the local Yellow Pages, you might as well not have existed. Now, Google and other search engines are the new Yellow Pages, so if you’re not showing up on Google when local customers are searching for your goods or services, the same holds true. Even if you do more business on a national level, once you’ve built up a good search engine ranking on the local level, you’ll start to see better results from national-level searches as well, as Google et al. will recognize your site’s credibility and improve your overall ranking. No matter how big your company is, it never hurts to pay attention to the small stuff.

Mobile Marketing—This one is kind of tricky, because it can be difficult to know where/how to differentiate between your regular online presence and your mobile-friendly online presence. However, as more and more people are using smartphones**, it’s important that you cater to the phones’ full capabilities. Maybe you don’t need your own iPhone app, but a coupon or QR code that can be downloaded right to a potential customer’s phone can certainly make your business more attractive. Many companies have even created mobile-friendly versions of their sites (with the “m.” prefix) that feature more smartphone-ready content. Everyone and their mother has a smartphone now^††, so, like social network optimization, mobile marketing promises to be an important factor in SEO for quite some time.

I hope this list has been at least a little bit helpful and informative. Let us know what you think in the comments section, and keep an eye out for new SEO trends on the horizon. They’re changing all the time, so it’s good to be prepared. My prediction for the biggest, best SEO trend of 2012: blimps. Don’t ask me how, don’t ask me why, but trust me—blimps.

* Hint: It’s your cellular telephone.
^† Rounded to the nearest tenth.
** They’re not that smart. Mine can’t even tie its shoes.
^†† The day my Dad gets one will truly be the dawn of a new age, however.

Facebook is pretty much the biggest thing in the world—it seems like every other news story you read has some sort of Facebook connection, it’s inspired a best-selling book, and the founding of the company is now the basis for a critically-acclaimed and award-winning movie (but so help me, if The Social Network wins the Oscar for Best Picture, I’ll eat my hat**). So, with the possible—some say unavoidable—creation of a Facebook-based search engine, will Mark Zuckerberg and The South Seas Paradise, Put Your Blues on Ice, Cheap at Twice the Price Band at Facebook revolutionize the way the world uses its’ wide web, again?

Facebook already has a sort-of search engine option on the site, which has proven to be fairly effective and popular. But, the introduction of a full, Googlesque search engine would likely elevate the social networking titan to Khan-like*** levels of world conquest. If it’s already the world’s most popular website, will adding a feature that rivals the functionality of its’ nearest competitor turn Facebook into a one-stop shop for everything on the internet? Not quite, but it will certainly make things interesting for those of us in the SEO and internet marketing business.

Most companies large and small already have a Facebook presence (after all, it’s easy and free), so adding search will allow a lot of business to be done without ever having to leave Facebook. The bigger, more complex parts of e-commerce will still have to exist outside Facebook (for now), but if B2B and B2C connections can be made more quickly and efficiently on Facebook, it seems inevitable that Google’s stake in the search game will be drastically lowered.

While no formal announcements regarding the addition of a search feature have been made by Zuckerberg or other Facebook representatives, it does seem like a logical next step for the company. The site already does a brisk trade in advertising, so that’s pretty well wrapped up for them; e-commerce is a huge undertaking that they’ll likely pass on (at least for the foreseeable future); search is essentially what drives the entire internet, they’ve already got a basic foundation in place, and, as far I know, Earth itself is not actually for sale. So, what better way for Facebook to continue its world domination than by beating its competition at their own game? Stay tuned—two years from now we may be writing articles about optimizing your Facebook Analytics account.

* Original title: “Facebook Search Engine of Death 2000”
** Luckily, I have a hat made of beef jerky for just such an occasion.
*** Genghis, not Noonien Singh