Source: Mashable

Make no mistake, attention is shifting away from traditional destination sites and instead, it is fixated on personalized attention dashboards that funnel social feeds, the activity and focus of social graphs into one clickable view. It is, for all intents and purposes, changing how we discover and share information. In fact, Nielsen observed that 20% of social consumers today, use social networks as their primary navigation hubs, relying on contacts and trending themes to point them in the right direction.

For media properties and brands, optimization combined with targeted and enterprising social networking now plays an instrumental role in capturing the attention and essentially defining the action of our customers, peers, and the trust agents and authorities who influence them.

Referral traffic is quickly migrating away from traditional search to social networks, and in some cases, at alarming rates.

In November 2009, Compete observed that some of the top media properties were already realizing a dominant effect in traffic from social networks. For example, USAToday receives upwards of 35% of its referral traffic from social networks and just over 6% from Google.  People Magazine receives 23% of its referrals from social networks and 11% from Google. And, CNN earns 11% of its referral traffic from social versus 9% from Google.

Referrals from social networks will only continue to soar over time as we’re introduced to new information where our attention is focused and when our attention aperture is open to clicking through to new, socially-influenced content.

If the socialization of search and commerce is driven by any one behavior, it is that of sharing. If it wasn’t worthy of conventional appreciation and recognition before, the share economy is now certainly worthy of contemplation and analysis. In the share economy, currency is defined by likes, links, retweets, updates, comments, shares on Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, MySpace, et al. And, its impact only grows as Social Media becomes pervasive.  This is why providing the necessary means for individuals to not only discover your content, but also readily share it across the social web is paramount to the survival of brands in the era of social search and also social media.

In a recent article, TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld reviewed the state of social sharing based on data provided by Gigya, which powers sharing widgets on more than 5,000 content sites, including ABC.com, NBA.com, PGA.com, Answers.com and Reuters. In the study, it was revealed that almost one million items were shared over the Gigya network within 30 days. Facebook ranked at the top of social sharing, but Twitter wasn’t far behind.

Distribution of shared items
Facebook: 44%
Twitter: 29%
Yahoo: 18%
MySpace: 9%

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Facebook alone counts over 5 billion pieces of content shared within its network each and every week.

According to AddThis, a sharing network installed on more than 600,000 Websites, Facebook also ranked on top, but email ranked second, with print, yes print, and Twitter placing in third and fourth respectively.

Top 10 Services, Overall

Facebook: 33%
Email: 13%
Print: 9%
Twitter: 9%
Favorites: 8%
Google: 6%
MySpace: 6%
Digg: 3%
Live: 3%

Delicious: 3%

At 400 million global users strong, and rapidly growing, Facebook is a mandatory content and engagement play for any brand and media property.

In February 2010, Nielsen reported that Facebook users are averaging seven hours per month, up 10%, sharing and connecting within their social graph. If we used Compete’s numbers, Facebook would rank #2, just behind Google.

Social Architecture is How We Connect and Define Experiences

Gigya recently published a white paper that documents the shift to and the resulting importance of social search and its dependence on crowd participation.

As a result of its research Gigya recognized that online businesses must optimize in order to earn referral traffic from social networks.

With the advent of social feeds—a live stream of friends’ activity shared on social networks like Facebook and Twitter— consumers can more easily rely on trusted personal relationships to determine what’s worthwhile to read, watch, play and buy online.

Information is already socializing.

The difference between our present and our future is defined by the roads and bridges we build between relevance and prevalence.

Publishing content is no longer enough. Wiring search systems to deliver consumers who hunt for information in social networking to our existing static Web sites is outmoded. And, earning friends and followers is only as effective as our ability to return value to their feeds and online and ultimately, real world experiences. We are confusing our elementary steps towards digital and social significance with the illusion of progress.

It is now our responsibility to create and connect meaningful content directly within the places where our audiences communicate with each other and also interact with the social objects that compel them to share and react.  In parallel, we must optimize that content to improve findability and also integrate the tools and services that simplify the process for sharing within the networks where people engage today and tomorrow.  By creating a connected social experience, we activate our content and community and empower a new genre of branded information catalysts.

Everything begins with enhancing and optimizing connections and experiences for the social web. The key is to incite participation and sharing…on our site as well as across the most active social networks that are material to our business strategy.

10 Steps for Optimizing the Brand for Social Search

1. Modernize and socialize your site to complement the experience visitors expect in 2010

2. Optimize the site and all social objects for traditional, social, and real-time search

3. Create meaningful and personable social profiles where consumers are active today (pay attention to where they will be tomorrow as well)

4. Establish an editorial calendar to produce and distribute relevant content for each and every network with cadence

5. Add social connectivity to the home site to facilitate maximum engagement (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Google, Yahoo) – eradicate proprietary login systems

6. Integrate social sharing functionality at the source of engagement – keep them on the page

7. Enable the social syndication of that content within one step

8. Manually introduce content and social objects to stakeholders and social beacons

9. Create paths that define and engender the experience you desire with destinations and calls to action integrated to close the loop

10. Monitor the activity and find ways to improve the experience and also sharing

Bonus: Give them a voice to make sharing more personal and contextual

The Future of Search and Business is Social

Indeed, the future of search is social. Better said, the future of information discovery and dissemination is social, now powered by the very people who were once fed information as dictated by mainstream media and brands.

The rapid evolution of search fuses traditional search algorithms and destinations with new formulas and services defining social graphs, social networks, semantic and real-time. As social becomes the axis for which all search is predicated, advanced SEO/SMO and a maturing human algorithm reinforced by the stature of one’s social capital will ultimately contribute to the hierarchy, placement, and findability of the content and social objects we share online.

Google and Bing are already implementing sweeping changes in their algorithms and reported results to include activity from the social and real-time Web. It’s also the reason why Google rushed Google Buzz into the spotlight. Information and activity are now influenced by the greater collective of social contacts with whom we forge relationships and relations in each and every network where we engage.

How does this information change your Web strategy for the year?

Comments

The small local business person is at a crossroads of sorts. Traditionally, this group has accounted for much of the business growth in the US and has supplied the vast majority of jobs especially to groups that are in need of a decent job. With the current climate in Washington, DC working against everything that could move the needle for this group (credit the biggest factor) the SMB needs a chance to do something for his or her business that can get them started again.

A study reported by The Center for Media Research which was done by Network Solutions and the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business says the percentage of small businesses using social media doubled in 2009 (12% to 24%). That’s good news. I wrote more about this over at Marketing Pilgrim.

Here I would like to look at it from a different angle though. My question is which businesses or business types created this increase? I have a few very unscientific theories.

• New SMB’s – I think it is easier for a new business (of which there are many due to the increasing layoffs by corporate America) to get started with social media. Why? They have no real programs that they need to “unseat” in order to use it. I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard an SMB say that they have been doing some form of marketing for years and it ends up hurting their chance to expand their marketing horizons. New business folks are more open to new ideas.

• Retail SMB’s – Small retailers have a real story to tell if they are truly a local business with personality. As I talked about here regarding Our Friends’ Closet consignment shop in Raleigh, NC, the real interest in their business are the two ladies running the shop (personalities) and the fact that they have the opportunity to showcase inventory through social media which makes their customers “check in” to see what they are carrying on any given day. B to B SMB’s don’t always have that luxury or urgency and thus they tend to be less likely to engage in social media.

• Desperate SMB’s – This is the worst case scenario. When there are no other options because cash flow is shrinking and there is no money to spend on “traditional” advertising that is not the time for the small business owner to turn to social media to “right the ship”. Social media and its impact takes time and it is not a guaranteed winner. It is best used as a complement or supplement to other marketing and should be looked at as a silver bullet that will save the day.

• Aggressive SMB’s – These are the real winners. These are the business owners who just want to win. They see that while social media may not be “normal” for them it can be valuable to them. As a result, they find a way to get involved, learn the ropes and take advantage of the situation. These folks are usually doing better than others to start and it has been because of their attitude and fortitude that that is the case.

So wherever you are in this most unscientific of polls try to move yourself into the aggressive category. While things aren’t great out there, there is still business to be won. Since we are still a capitalist country for now it is important to not sit back and wait. Get in the game. Today.

Comments

• Great illustration of data quality problem having a business impact – bad data led a Telco to prepare a large CapEx project to add bandwidth capacity but a physical inspection showed plenty of actual capacity. Bad data had led to an unnecessary plan.
• An example given was that 20% of customers generate 80% of revenue so a loss of 1% of these good customers through bad data might make a real difference. Of course, if you don’t differentiate how you treat customers then it may not matter if you are wrong about who the profitable 20% are! Good quality data only becomes valuable if it is being used to make a difference in business terms.
• Funding must be linked to strategic imperatives – show that better data is either necessary for an initiative or that it would boost the results of those initiatives. Data quality is not likely to be funded directly.
• A lack of trust in information undermines data-driven decision making. If people don’t trust it’s accuracy then they won’t use it, or analytics based on it, to drive their decisions.
• Suitable for purpose – which questions do you want answered, which decisions are you going to make, with this data? Use that to drive quality plans
• Analytics require data governance just as they require a level of data quality – it is hard to complete using analytics without governing the underlying data
• Regulatory requirements drive data quality, data governance – must be able to meet certain standards
• Drive the scope of your data governance program based on your data maturity, organizational structure/autonomy, external/internal influences/regulations, and the degree of executive support and drive – don’t get ahead of yourself
• Business must own and drive data quality and data governance – IT must act as a custodian of the data and nothing else. This, of course,is true of rules and decisioning too.
• Measurement, measurement, measurement – measure quality, measure governance, use your BI and performance management infrastructure to monitor these initiatives just like you would any other business initiative.
• Don’t forget to modify individual objectives and measures to reflect your data initiatives

I heard lots of talk today, in sessions and out, about how hard it is to get business owners to value data quality. My view is that this is inevitable and that the solution is to tie data quality problems to business value. And, of course, if you can’t tie a data quality problem to any business value then you should question whether it is really a problem…

Comments

Within the search marketing team, a gold standard should be set as the benchmark at the highest level towards which every member on the team continually strives. When delivering client solutions, it is key that this gold standard drives the quality of the work presented to the client. What is more important is that every single member of the team delivers this identified level of service quality. Certainly, there will always be a level of hierarchy in skill sets, in which some members will have greater depth & breadth of experience; stronger analytical skills or quite simply they’ve been in the game for a long time.

This should, however, not affect the gold standard, because each team member should be armed with the resources, assistance and training in order to deliver at the expected benchmark.

It’s a Two-Way Street

How does an agency ensure that the quality of work delivered to clients meets its benchmark of excellence? The most obvious answer lies in recruitment – the agency must be able to correctly identify the types of people that meet the agency philosophy and possess the right skill set in order to deliver the goods.

However, beyond the recruitment process, once a candidate has been hired – the new team member needs to be integrated into the team so as to deliver solutions that can proudly bear the agency stamp. This is not to say that the individual should be so deeply pulled into the ‘status quo’ so as to stifle critical thought or be unable to offer a fresh perspective on how things are done, but without some level of integration – it is the individual’s stamp being left on the work and on client impressions, rather than the agency stamp. This can become a problem if there are certain individuals within the agency who are performing at a higher level than their counterparts. It may reflect negatively on the agency – if an individual is held above the agency itself and clients may poorly evaluate the agency if they notice a marked difference in service quality between team members.

Pulling in the Same Direction

By nurturing the skills and required core competences of the entire team, this not only serves to create a stronger team but it also raises the benchmark, so that the gold standard is always being challenged and driven higher. If the team shares ideas, strategies, core strengths and together, challenges the way that things are done this will not only improve the quality of deliverables sent to the client but ensure that everyone is clear on what the expectations are.

No agency will raise its gold standard by operating in silos – without spreading the wealth of knowledge, intellectual property and collective training. Without clear and effective communication, one team member’s interpretation of a service may be completely different from that of another member’s. If both interpretations are equally excellent – this is a positive result, but imagine the wasted synergy if these ideas are never shared and combined to create an even more powerful final result. Conversely, the results can be devastating if poor quality work is sent to a client because of a weak interpretation of the requirements.

In a service driven environment such as search marketing, not only is it fundamental for an agency to invest in its people, but it is equally important to ensure that the teams who work together share the same vision and have an understanding of excellence that drives up the average, rather than averaging out to a mediocre service delivery standard.

Comments

1. People are signing up for live webinars just to get the link to the recording. They never plan to attend the live session.
2. There is no sense of urgency driving people to watch recordings. The indefinite availability lowers the priority of ever watching the content.

Tim has asked his readers for commentary and solution approaches and he was kind enough to ask for my advice as well.

You may wonder if item #1 is actually a problem. “Who cares whether they watch your content in the live session? You have their name for your lead list and you have their money.” That’s a short-sighted view of the situation. There are many reasons you want your registrants to really attend. First, a webinar with a good-sized audience generates more interaction and feedback, which stimulates greater involvement in your message. Second, names captured during a registration process are not leads… They are merely contacts. If you don’t know the difference, you should do some study on the subject. Third, your content should have a purpose. It advances your goals and makes your attendees more receptive to an idea or action you want them to pursue. If they don’t see the content, you lose that.

If we stipulate that having people see your content is desirable, how can we help it occur? Here are a few ideas. Finding the ones that are appropriate for your audience and your goals is an exercise left for the reader:

1. Advertise extra content in the live session that will not be made available in the recording. This might be extra (or all the) Q&A time with the expert presenter. Or it could be a case study or group exercise. Make attending the live session have perceived value up front. It’s perfectly fine to tell people that you are doing this to encourage a large and lively live session.
2. Use a giveaway. Some companies like to offer all attendees a special goodie such as a white paper or software download. You can advertise that this is only available to live attendees. Or you can always go to the live drawing approach for an unrelated but desirable toy such as an MP3 player, Kindle, or so on. I don’t like these as a way to pull in registrants, but I do like it as a way to get registrants to attend! You can advertise the drawing AFTER people have signed up, giving them notification in their login instruction email.

How about encouraging people to go ahead and view on-demand content? Are there ways to bump up the perceived priority of watching the recording? Here are a few ideas to get you started:

1. Let people know that the recordings are only available for a limited time. This is my LEAST favorite approach. The whole value of recordings is that they can keep working for you over time.
2. Give people a time-limited password. “This password expires at the end of the week/month/geological era.” It is easy in most systems to change a recording’s password.
3. Use the advertiser’s trick of “The first 50 people to view this recording get something.” You don’t tell your audience when the 50 limit has already been reached or how many people have viewed already. You can then play the game either way… Stop giving the freebie after the first 50 or keep giving the freebie to everybody. Don’t stiff the first 50 though… That’s dishonest and illegal.

With these concepts as starting points, I’m sure you can come up with other variations. Good luck, Tim!

Comments

What makes a loyalty program successful? Both customers and marketers agree: deeper engagement and personalized contact drives loyalty, not mass blast communications and gimmicks.

The Marketer’s View

Most marketers (61 percent) believe that loyalty program participants are the best and most profitable customers. So it is not surprising that an almost equal number of respondents (65 percent) view customer loyalty program investments as a very essential, or a quite valuable part of the marketing mix. Where they fall down is in extracting greater value from customer loyalists. When it comes to in-depth profiling of customers, the vast majority of marketers still only aggregate and analyze limited customer data sets. 73 percent collect basic demographics and 68 percent track the location of members, but critical insights — such as advocacy rates (14 percent), brand loyalty and attachment (27 percent), personal preferences (31 percent), satisfaction levels (33 percent), and product preferences (38 percent) — are not being leveraged.

The Consumer’s View

Today’s consumer loyalist wants essential information delivered through multiple channels in the most relevant, personal and customized way possible.  More than half (58 percent) say they want more compelling personal benefits and services, as well as more relevant offers or individualized deals.

Customers are issuing a very clear warning to marketers: Give me relevant communications that reflect my history and connections to you, or I’ll go elsewhere with my business.

Smart marketers will respond by taking what they know about customer wants, preferences and behaviors and be more targeted, efficient and relevant in their messaging to improve response rates and increase customer gratification and purchase intent.

Comments

Vanessa has a new book coming out called “Marketing in the Age of Google“, which I’ve had the opportunity to preview and it reminds me of how important it is to draw attention to her exceptional insight. My kudos for the book:

“Finally! A C-level book about smarter search engine marketing.  Marketing in the Age of Google by Vanessa Fox is undoubtedly, the search marketing bible for senior executives looking to maximize business growth through search engine marketing. This is a must read and if you don’t, your competition certainly will.”

In this interview you’ll discover the importance of SEO strategy, dealing with CEOs and social media, search personas, operationalizing Social Media and SEO, thoughts on upcoming search innovations and her favorite search engine (not what you think).

Let’s start off with an elevator bio: 50 words or less? (Not to be confused with the escalator bio, which is much shorter)

I’ve been involved in user experience, product development, and web development since the mid-90s. I was able to draw on all that background when I worked at Google and built Webmaster Central. We realized that we could provide a lot of key information to site owners (in ways such as diagnostic tools and education) to help them see better results from organic search acquisition. Now post-Google, I’m focused on that same goal.

Many companies are approaching social media tactically and making big mistakes. There’s a lot of encouragement for corporate social efforts to start with a strategy first. Do you think the same is true with SEO? Are companies approaching SEO tactically with little consideration of a search strategy?

Oh absolutely. True search strategy is integrated into overall product and business strategy, and too often whoever is responsible for SEO isn’t involved those parts of a company’s planning process. Unfortunately, that means that in some cases, those doing SEO focus on what they can accomplish tactically. Certainly, many tactical elements of SEO decoupled from strategy can improve search acquisition (particularly regarding architecture), but without a strategy, you can only go so far.

For instance, if you’re looking at search acquisition strategically, a large part of your assessment is around what your potential customer base is really looking for and how you can best meet their needs. Where that meeting first happens is often in the search results, but in order to have the potential to show up there, your site needs to provide what it takes to meet those needs, and that often lies beyond the SEO department.

Even with highly technical components, having a strategy can help ensure that you’re tackling the more impactful issues first and that you’re laying groundwork to ensure that any new infrastructure elements are search-friendly from the start. That prevents you from spending all of your time fixing issues that just pop right up again.

How can we get the C-Suite to overcome their fear of change when it comes to the importance search and social media within a marketing strategy?

I think the situation is already starting to change. Many marketing departments already realize that search and social media are important aspects of a comprehensive marketing strategy in today’s online world. The question becomes what to do with that knowledge. Traditionally, marketing has been able to operate well in silos. As long as everyone was working towards the same marketing message and vision, they could build their campaigns separately. But that’s no longer true. Truly effective search and social media strategies are integrated into larger marketing strategies and often that bridge needs to span beyond marketing and into web development as well.

In terms of implementation, it can significantly easier for a marketing department to have an agency build a microsite to support a campaign than to engage directly with the development team, but in terms of effectiveness, it’s more difficult to truly integrate search and social media.

“SEO isn’t voodoo or magic or spam.”

Some key things to consider are:

• The consumer experience – can the consumer easily engage with your brand if each social media site you are active on leads back to a different domain and has different goals? If the consumer is engaging on microsites named for particular campaigns, are they getting positive brand reinforcement or just a positive experience with that particular campaign? Do they have a clear path back to the brand or are you just adding confusion? What happens when the campaign ends? In some cases, building social media engagement via a particular campaign and building a microsite to support these efforts can absolutely be effective. But it’s important to make these decisions as part of a broader, more long-term plan and to understand the complexities.
• How search works – SEO isn’t voodoo or magic or spam. But it does require a firm understanding of both how search engines technically crawl and index pages and how searchers behave.  The company needs a search advocate who either understands it and can help ensure it’s taken into account during every step of the process, or needs to gain that expertise, whether it’s through hiring a consultant or firm an hiring someone in-house.
• Key metrics – Search in particular is very measurable, key is knowing what to measure and what the metrics mean. With web analytics and search data, you are overwhelmed with hundreds of data points. It’s easy to either dismiss them all or to fixate on certain ones that don’t seem to show progress. While some key pieces of data are important for any business, many of the important metrics tend to depend on your business goals and your customer base. Building an effective framework for measurement can alleviate the hesitation some may feel at expanding into these types of marketing efforts.  I still see a lot of powerpoint slides prepared for board meetings that showcase visits to the website as the key metric and that’s almost never the right primary measure.

A lot has changed in search technology and how search results are displayed over the past year or so. Since we’re in the new year, any predications on major changes in the nest 6-12 months?

This is difficult to answer, as we’ve seen a lot of experimentation in the last year and many of the changes will likely be based on the searcher data that results. We’re still watching to see what’s going to happen with Microsoft and Yahoo. If that deal indeed goes through, it’s not clear exactly how that will change things, so a lot is in flux.

For instance, will Yahoo still offer BOSS, which currently powers a number of smaller search engines? I’m not sure that they can without a crawling infrastructure and index of their own.

But certainly we’ll see continued evolution beyond text-based search results. The major search engines have to balance richness against complexity. I find the ability to view search results just from the last week or just from forums, for instance, really helpful, but if those options were front and center, they’d likely confuse many searchers who just want to type into the box and get back an answer.

Of course, the solution Google is skewing towards is personalization. Google will ask for less interaction, but will show you more variety in results based on your online behavior. Microsoft seems to be taking a different tack – they’re also providing more variety (for instance, with categorized search) but are also providing more ways to interact directly within the search results (such as with the Farecast integration).

Please explain the notion of search personas and why they’re important.

Searcher personas and search acquisition workflows are integral to the way I approach search strategy. Before you can start attracting visitors to your web site, you need to know who you are attracting and why.  I always start with asking what the goals of the business and the goals of the web site are. From there, we can work backwards to who the company wants to attract to help them meet those goals, and then dive into the goals of that audience.

With that information, we can build searcher personas, which are similar to typical personas, except that they start with understanding what the audience wants to accomplish and what they are searching for. This leads to a user workflow that starts at least two steps before the user accesses the website. And of course, with search and social media, every page of the site is the home page, so the user workflow assessment evaluates each page to determine if it meets the searcher goal and if it draws the visitor deeper into the site to meet the business goal.

Without this framework, it’s difficult to fully realize the potential of search.

“If a company is serious about building search and social media into their organizations, they need to make a real commitment to building that expertise”

Advice given in some Social Media/SEO sessions at conferences can be quite varied from recommendations to automate duplicate content on bookmarking sites to the importance of listening and engagement. What is it that marketers should be paying attention to when it comes to Social Media and SEO?

That’s a broad topic but one thing marketers should think about is how search and social media can work together. When you’re working on a viral campaign, make sure links are designed in a way to provide SEO benefit (via their structure and anchor text). Realize that with search, social media efforts can have long lasting impact beyond the engagement. If you help someone solve a problem, that discussion may later surface in search results for someone else looking to solve that same issue. I’ve seen companies build pages that expire after 90 days.

Any tips on operationalizing SEO or Social Media in organizations? How can companies move from where they are to making SEO part of processes?

This happens as search and social media become a regular part of the business (product development, marketing, customer support, etc.) and not a separate silo. But if a company is serious about building search and social media into their organizations, they need to make a real commitment to building that expertise (through hiring a consultant, training, hiring someone in-house, or some other way of gaining expertise). I’ve seen so many organizations who felt search was important but implemented it ad hoc based on random advice different people would read online (like this interview! ) So, while it was great that everyone in the company was empowered to drive SEO, one programmer who decide to add nofollow tags on all the footers, and someone in marketing would change all the title tags to be a certain number of characters, and without a comprehensive strategy, and without any barometer of what was a valuable use of time, the company can feel like SEO was a failure for them.

Let’s say someone reads your new book, Marketing in the Age of Google, and they “get it”. What should they do next to take that appreciation for a strategic perspective and start improving their marketing?

In the book, I provide a number of suggestions for getting started. If the company already has an in-house SEO or consultant, then involve them in high-level strategy discussions. How can search data help influence product strategy? How can the technical team build search best practices into their development process? How can marketing better integrate search acquisition?

If search is new to the organization, it’s probably worthwhile to hire someone to help build a strategy that works for the organization: benchmark where things are, flag any big issues, help build in search best practices at the key points of the organization, develop searcher personas and workflows that can be used as templates for future development.

Once search is built into existing processes, ongoing search strategy is much easier and companies can see much better results.

If you were a search engine, which would you be?

It would be the Urban Spoon iPhone app: always traveling and surrounded by delicious food.

Thank you Vanessa!

Comments

A recent survey conducted by Citibank offers a contrary point of view, citing small business executives who believe social networks offer no benefit or promise to expanding their business. This isn’t all that uncommon however. The truth is that without knowledge or direct experience, it’s virtually impossible to envision the potential of something where they’re most likely absent as a consumer themselves.

But, if a conversation takes place online and you’re not there to hear it, did it actually happen?

Of course it did…and it continues – with or without you.

The “I” in ROI does not stand for ignorance. It does however stand for investment and in cases where new media is “new,” it also stands for intelligence. We’re learning together and that’s both an opportunity and an impediment. We need guidance to better understand the promise and also how to reap its reward.

Ad-ology published its “Small Business Marketing Forecast 2010″ report that revealed that among the other benefits of social media, lead generation is the biggest benefit of online networking. Other benefits ranked as follows…

Keeping up with the industry

Very Beneficial: 16%
Somewhat: 29%
Not Beneficial: 55%

Monitoring what is being said about your business

Very Beneficial: 16%
Somewhat: 28%
Not Beneficial: 55%

Generating leads

Very Beneficial: 16%
Somewhat: 34%
Not Beneficial: 50%

Competitive intelligence

Very Beneficial: 14%
Somewhat: 29%
Not Beneficial: 57%

Improving customer experience

Very Beneficial: 12%
Somewhat: 29%
Not Beneficial: 59%

Resolving problems

Very Beneficial: 11%
Somewhat: 22%
Not Beneficial: 67%

Finding vendors/suppliers/partners

Very Beneficial: 10%
Somewhat: 28%
Not Beneficial: 62%

Recruiting for new employees

Very Beneficial: 8%
Somewhat: 19%
Not Beneficial: 73%

Background checks – employees, suppliers, etc.

Very Beneficial: 7%
Somewhat: 20%
Not Beneficial: 72%

Among those surveyed, Facebook appeared as the most beneficial social network. Perhaps tied the reverberation of activity across social graphs. LinkedIn, while cited less often, ranked just below Facebook, but ahead of Twitter – for now at least.

Facebook

Very Beneficial: 10%
Somewhat: 23%
Not Beneficial: 14%
Do not use: 53%

LinkedIn

Very Beneficial: 6%
Somewhat: 15%
Not Beneficial: 13%
Do not use: 67%

MySpace

Very Beneficial: 6%
Somewhat: 11%
Not Beneficial: 15%
Do not use: 68%

Twitter

Very Beneficial: 6%
Somewhat: 13%
Not Beneficial: 12%
Do not use: 69%

YouTube

Very Beneficial: 5%
Somewhat: 10%
Not Beneficial: 12%
Do not use: 73%

The study shows that education and awareness are needed among small businesses to better understand the promises, advantages and the commensurate commitments necessary to generate visibility and ultimately the activity necessary to sustain or at the very least, contribute to a lucrative and growing business.

31 percent of small businesses claimed that their primary hurdle was the perception that “our customers do not use social networks.” Equally, business owners complained that they do not have the time or resources necessary to run an effective social media marketing campaign. Sound familiar?

While yes, it’s true, small business owners must focus on the core products, services, and values of their business. However, without visibility, customers do not possess the information necessary to connect the dots between their want or need and you.

The Top 10 Ways to Monetize Real-Time Conversations in Social Media

No story is complete without providing ideas to move forward and compete for the future. By competing for the future, we also cultivate a flourishing state of “now.” One of the primary advantages of social media for small businesses is the relatively low cost associated with uncovering relevant conversations within your geographic or service area. It’s how we can identify and personally connect with customers. It’s how we learn what they’re seeking. It reveals interests and cravings.

For example, take a moment to run a real-time search activity search using Collecta to get a feel for the volume and velocity for relevant conversations online. Then, run a local search on Twitter (choose by geography) using a keyword related to your business, but not necessarily that of your business or product name. For example, Pizza, Coffee, and local yogurt shops are searching those words specifically to offer specials and free items to those within proximity to stop in and give it a try. Business owners report that while offers and freebies reflect a notable investment, they always increase clientele and business overall.

To help entrepreneurs and small business owners capitalize on the “now” or real-time conversations populating social media, Web 2.0 investor extraordinaire Ron Conway offered his vision for the top 10 ways to monetize real-time conversations.

10. Lead generation
9. Coupons
8. Analytics, analyzing the data
7. Enterprise CRM
6. Payments
5. Commerce
4. User-authentication, verifying accounts
3. Syndication of new ads
2. Advertising – Context and display ads
1. Acquiring followers

New mobile social networks such as FourSquare, Loopt, Gowalla are also emerging that connect people within local areas based on where they are and what they’re doing. These services require you to “check in” to a location or an establishment and as such, local businesses are encouraging patrons to do so by offering incentives, “check in here on FourSquare and get a free slice of pizza or a free beer.” Why? Each time someone checks in, their social graph follows the establishments they frequent and as such, brands the venue within a very trusted circle. There are also opportunities for paid sponsorships. Each time I check in to venues in Redwood City, a local wine shop and tasting room, Savvy Cellar, pops up with a “nearby special.” If I pop in and show my iPhone with the special, I receive 50% off any tasting. Brilliant.

To learn more about specific examples for increasing awareness and revenue using Social Media, please read Forbes’ piece on 21 Top Twitter Tips (Story | Through Pictures)

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1. Buy them essential web books, videos or audio recordings. Create a mini reference library.

Many people are motivated to learn on their own, and enjoy self-study. By buying quality resources that your team can access, you’re helping them train themselves very affordably.

Compare the cost of a few good books or videos to the increase in traffic and conversion they can bring. Forget the stock market or bonds, self-education is the best investment you can make.

What’s more, if you invest in a few classics like Don’t Make Me Think, new additions to the team will be able to benefit as well. While a conference might help increase knowledge of a few team members, that typically won’t benefit the rest of the team. (It is possible, however. My fellow Quebec blogger Claude Malaison writes (in French) about organizations ‘building a collective memory‘ on his blog.)

2. Join your team members for group study sessions.

Joining your team for such study sessions shows a certain humility, and recognizes that you can learn from them as well.

As to group study, it’s value is borne out by the research. My mom’s got a masters in education and her thesis was about group work. One of the things she found out while writing her thesis is studies demonstrate that you remember 95% of what you teach others, but only 10% of what you read, which is why group study is so powerful.

3. Create contests. Pit teams against each other.

Training can be more than a responsibility, it can be a game. By making it a contest, the competitive spirits on your web team will find more motivation to learn.

As well, if your organization is large enough for it, you can pit parts of the web team against each other. This will encourage the stronger members of each team to help the weaker members improve their knowledge and skills.

Besides the main prize of bragging rights for the week, weekly winners might get to select Friday lunch (pizza vs souvlaki) and the monthly winners can pick an activity for the whole web team.

4. Recognize web team members for contributions to the business.

It’s worthwhile to test your team’s knowledge, as an intermediate goal. But ultimately the point is to help the business, so why not offer awards for “idea or improvement of the month”?

Give kudos to whoever contributed the idea generating the greatest conversion lift, or reducing the volume of support calls or boosting average order values etc. And you can make it a virtuous circle by making the award a new purchase of their choosing for the team’s reference library.

5. Give non analysts access to “read-only” analytics.

This way, people who’ve contributed to growing the traffic, conversion rate or other KPIs can login whenever and see the effects of their own work.

Craftsmen get to see feel and see the results of a job well done, and cooks get to eat their own food.

Shouldn’t your team get to see the effects of their work?

6. Build relationships with 1-on-1 time.

Spend time talking to team members individually over coffee or lunch, especially outside the office. People are more willing to help/listen if they like you.

It also means they’re more likely to bring up problems they’re having, since you’ll be more approachable. You get more bang for your training buck as a result. Compare that with the large numbers of high school graduates who read at a fifth grade level to understand what I mean…

7. Make the experience interactive and social.

No, I’m not referring to social media. I mean, social interaction like in the offline sense of speaking to someone 1-on-1.

I stole this trick from Dave Lloyd, SEO manager for Cisco, who used it at SMX West 2009.

Check out this video which my friend Chris Silver Smith filmed of me using it at SMX Advanced ‘09, and the audience’s enthusiastic response.

While Twitter search won’t let me dig up the tweets that got, take it from me that the feedback to that was very positive.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that training your web team doesn’t need to be drudgery, doesn’t need to be a chore. You can make it fun and enjoyable if you use the right techniques and the right motivation.

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What is one of the critical differences between successful businesses owners and unsuccessful businesses owners?

It’s not how much money they start with, or where they come from.

It’s not their level of education.

It’s not who they know.

The majority of truly successful business owners have one thing in common…They are really good at deciding exactly what it is they want. Then creating a detailed plan for getting it and putting that plan into action.

You see, successful people don’t just wait around for things to start happening…They make things happen. And not just any old things…The right things.

That’s why, last week, I talked about the power of creating and writing down clear, well-defined intentions or goals for your business.

If you’ve already done that, congratulations! Just taking that one simple step is often enough to get you moving down the right path.

But here’s the catch…If you really want to achieve success quickly, you have to do more than just set clear goals or intentions (A la The Secret). You need to come up with a doable plan for achieving them.

Now I’m not saying you have to spend weeks creating a 30-page business or marketing plan (though that’s a good idea in some situations). But you do need to have a well-thought out, written plan of action.

So, in order to help you do just that, I’m going to take you through a simplified version of the process I use to create highly-effective Marketing Success Action Plans for my clients…

Let’s say you want to grow your business by 30% next year.

Start by listing three objectives, or targets, you could hit that would let you reach that goal. I don’t advise choosing more than three unless you’ve got people to help you. Otherwise you can get overwhelmed and never get anything done. Fewer than three is fine. For example, you could decide to increase return visits by 10%, attract 20 new customers per month, and develop new products or services to generate an additional $X a year.

Whatever you choose, always give yourself specific numbers, or targets, to hit. That way you have benchmarks you can refer to later to make sure your plan is working.

Next, come up with one strategy for achieving each of your objectives. More if you have fewer than three objectives.

Say you want to increase return visits. A good strategy could be to send out a regular newsletter to your current clients. Or a series of follow up mailings.

Now, make a checklist of all the steps you need to take in order to put each of your strategies into action. Whatever you do, don’t skip this part…It’s critical.

So to start a print newsletter, at minimum you’re going to need to: pick a marketing angle, come up with a name, decide how often you want it to go out, write or get content, purchase a template or hire a graphic designer, choose a printer, find a mailing house, compile your client database and get the whole thing put together and out the door.

Finally, create a detailed timeline with deadlines to get it all done.

Whew! Now you have a goal, and a plan reach it. And you can start taking action by checking things off of your new to-do list.

Of course, don’t forget that some plans are going to be easier to implement, and/or more effective, than others. So take your time researching options and choosing strategies. Better yet, unless you really know your stuff, consider hiring a professional to help you make the best decisions for your business and your goals.

Remember, this is the blueprint for your future success. It’s worth the extra effort!

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