10 steps to start implementing Social CRM.

1) Understand your Conversation Map. Listen and understand the social media conversations from advocates to influencers and from detractors to consumers.

2) Understand the Social Graph of your customers. This is very important - it refers to your current customer in your CRM system, marketing database or customer datamart. Are they on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, forums, external communities, etc., etc?

3) Have a Social Graph of your Best Customers. Are your best customers using social media?  Can you start engaging them for your own pilots? Can you engage them? What other types of customers can you engage? Again, these are known customers in your CRM system or Loyalty Program.

4) Establish processes & requirements to meet your goals and objectives based on current needs and the analysis from the above 3 steps.

5) Get ready to put together a social media plan based on the requirements and processes. Do you need to be on Facebook? Do you need call center integration? Do you need to integrate social media marketing with your marketing automation? Do you need a community to provide ideas and collaboration for customer support? Do you have a Social Media Manager ad policies in place?

6) Create specific use cases for your integration points to capture data. This is not just about technology but also about customer experience, culture and processes.

7) Have your traditional CRM ready for social media. Do you have the workflow, processes, rules, data structure, training, call center, people, etc., ready to manage communities and social media channels?

8) If your customer or influencers are already collaborating using social media, is your enterprise ready to collaborate internally? i.e. Social Business, E 2.0.

9) Like in CRM... Do you have the culture, people and change management attitude to really change?

10) Improve your CRM ecosystem - this should be step 1. Fix what is not working today!

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5 Steps to Google Places Optimization

It’s been an active year since Google introduced Google Places as a replacement for its Local Business Center. Not only have the name and the look changed, but Google Places results have come to dominate the search results for many queries with "local intent". 
While the traditional rules of on-page optimization are still paramount, having a well-optimized Google Places profile is now essential for local businesses to get themselves above the fold.

If your local business doesn’t have a Places page or if it isn’t properly optimized, you could be missing out on well qualified traffic and leads. Here’s our quick and easy plan for achieving Google Places optimization Zen. 

1 - Claim or Create a Google Places Page

Chances are that your business already has a Places page, even if you never set one up. Start by doing a simple search for your brand name to see if one already exists. If you see a listing for your business, click to the place page and look for the “business owner?” link, then follow the instructions to claim it. If you find that you don't have a places page, start a new one at google.com/places. 

2 - Verify Your Google Places Page

Once you have claimed or created a Places page, the next vital step is to verify it. Until you verify your listing, it won’t be considered “trusted” because the search engines don’t know that you are actually the business owner. As a result, it may not appear in the search results, or how often it appears may be limited.

The verification process is easy, but it takes time. Follow the instructions when setting up your Places page or by clicking the verify link when you are logged in to your places account. You might be given the option to get a phone call, but will likely have to wait for a postcard in the mail (which takes 2-3 weeks.) 

3 - Optimize Your Places Page

When you finally have your Places page verified, there are a few things you can do to optimize your page and make it easier for potential customers to find you.

• Optimize your business’s title – Your title in Google Places should be your business name, and possibly include some reference of your location. For instance, if you own a franchised business, including a location keyword is important to distinguish yourself against other area franchisees. Use HubSpot’s Keyword Grader or the AdWords keyword tool to better understand how users are searching for businesses like yours using city and state names.

• Include keywords in your Places page description – Write a brief and concise description of your business, and be sure to include a keyword or two from the last step (don't go overboard adding keywords, though.)
• Choose a few appropriate categories – Choosing the right categories is important, and you can include up to five – but only include categories that are actually relevant to your business.
• Make your Places page as complete as possible – It’s generally thought that more complete Places pages have an edge over less complete pages in the eyes of the search engines. Photos, videos, links to your social media profiles, hours and additional information can help to make your Places page more engaging and appealing to users, too. HubSpot’s Google Places page is a great example.

4 – Google Places Rankings – Citations, Not Just Links

Links to your website have an impact on Google Places, but many believe that reviews and simple mentions of your business across the web are of equal or greater importance. Search engines likely use mentions as a means to measure the “buzz” around local businesses (which don’t always have websites, and as a result, can be harder to judge the popularity of.) You can look for opportunities to build up citations on -

• Directories – Claim or create your listing in each of the major directories, and make sure that your information is consistent across all of your listings (here is a good list of places to start.)
• Review sites – Reviews give search engines a signal that your business is a real place that is known and liked (or disliked) by real people. Encourage your customers to leave truthful reviews of your business, and claim your listing on the major review sites to make sure that your listing information is complete and consistent.
• Local Resources & Events Pages – Look for local directories, business listings, and event pages for opportunities to list your site. Start with your competitors – visit their Google Places pages and see where their citations are coming from (you’ll see a list of links titled “more about this place” at the bottom of the page, which is a great place to start.)

5 - Don’t Forget Your Website!

Not only will a well-optimized website attract organic search traffic by itself, it’s also the best citation you are likely to get for your Google Places page. In addition to following basic on-page optimization guidelines, be sure to have a local phone number and local address in plain text somewhere on your homepage.

Read full article at Hubspot.

Google Compete : Travel Hotel Consumers: How Online Research Affects Bookings. Summary

• Half of all hotel researchers indicated researching exclusively online  Friends, families and colleagues were the most-used offline sources to learn about hotels

• Half of hotel shoppers reported using search engines in their research. Online clickstream behavior indicated that a third hotel shoppers are referred by search to a hotel website

•  Price was the leading reason for why consumers booked on a specific hotel website Receiving rewards/points was also a strong driver

•  Higher costs per night and longer stays increased the length of time consumers spent  researching hotels online The share of researchers using online sources also increased for longer hotel stays

• Nearly a third of hotel shoppers indicated viewing an online advertisement during their research process. Booking online was the most dominant channel. 

• Only 1 in 6 bookers indicated booking over the phone or in person Hotel bookers are using fewer travel sites to conduct research than year-ago levels indicating more focused shopping activities

Google CPA: How to make sure it works for you

Google Adwords CPA (cost per acquisition), is where you bid per acquisition and leave Google to adjust your CPC accordingly. However a CPA campaign will only work well if it has enough consistent data to work with. Read how to assist Google to give you the best ROI.

At face value a Google Adwords CPA campaign is attractive to businesses who don’t wish to get involved with their adwords campaigns too much, rather concentrating on converting leads to sales, or visitor optimization. i.e. what happens after the click.

However although this model is open to all there are some conditions which need to be met to allow Google’s algorithm to perform.

Firstly, and most importantly, you need to have been supplying Google with consistent conversion tracking, from consistently running campaigns. The bare minimum sample is 50 conversions, and a similar spending pattern over at least two weeks of conversion data.

This is the minimum, seeing as you are handing Google licence to spend your money for you, it might be worth planning ahead to allow enough time for seasonal, or short time frame variance to play out. You’ll need to plan ahead anyway as the option to run a CPA campaign will not be available until enough data had been collected via conversion tracking.

It is important to be spending consistently, that is not turning the campaign on and off manually all the time. I know this is a temptation for start-ups who are using Adwords for lead generation, and once enough leads are in, switching off to save expenditure, but this will play havoc with the algorithm (I have that on good authority from a Google rep I spoke with today).

If your current advertising budget means that there is not enough to be spent all month long, then why not cut back with Google ad scheduling? This way you can reduce the hours that the ads are shown in an automated and consistent way, but leave the campaign on. In a previous contract I used to severely reduce advertising over the weekends as that particular industry browsed but didn’t bite from Friday evening to Sunday lunchtime.

Once enough data has been collected, the CPA option is clickable, and it is worth noting that CPA campaigns are available for Google Search as well as the display networks.

The two work slightly differently however. On the display network your ad will be shown more to websites which perform to your chosen acquisition bid price, and less (for less CPC) to those sites that don’t perform.

For search CPA its is more of a case of adjusting the bid price to meet the CPA. It’s a kind of automated bid monitor taking advantage of changing market conditions. (Not all advertisers advertise all the time creating moments when competition is less and therefore the bid cheaper). I don’t know this next bit for certain, but I suspect that your ads position on the page moves around as well to meet this cost adjustment.

I’m told that currently 70% of ad spend is on Search, and only 30% on the content network. However I wonder if that will change as marketers become more comfortable with CPA bidding? I will be looking for any avenue to get the overall CPA down regardless of traffic type. How about you?

14 Tools to Legally Spy On Your Competition

1. Statbrain – Using several sources, Statbrain’s algorithm computes the number of visitors to a website based on offsite factors like backlinks, Alexa Rank etc. Statbrain does not have access to log files or any hit-counter information. Use this as a rough relative benchmark of your traffic to theirs. First run your website and compare the results given by StatBrain to your actual results to get a sense of its accuracy in your category. Figure out what the multiplier is and then try it on a competitor.

2. AideRSS – Find out which of your competitors’ blog posts and topics are engaging people. This should provide you with a list of topics you should be covering. Engagement doesn’t necessarily mean your competitor’s opinion is right or even agreed with — but it does mean the engaged people are interested in the topic and therefore why not your opinion on the topic.

3. FeedCompare – If you use Feedburner to track your rss subscribers you can compare the size of your feed to others. Just like in #1 above, figure out your own multiplier and then compare it to the competition.

4. Xinu Returns – Xinu Runs a report from multiple sites to tell you how well a site is doing in popular search engines, social bookmarking sites and other technical details. How well are you stacking up against your 5 biggest competitors?

5. Google Trends For Websites – Enter up to five topics and see how often those topics been searched on Google over time. Google Trends also shows how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and in which geographic regions people have searched for them most. You can learn more on how to use this from our friend, Avinash Kaushik.

6. Google Insights for Search – With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames. Again, Avinash explains how to use this well.

7. Microsoft’s Keyword Forecast tool – This tool forecasts the impression count and predicts demographic distributions of keywords.

8. Microsoft’s Search Funnels – Customers often perform searches by typing related keywords in specific sequences. This tool helps in visualizing and analyzing the customers’ search sequences. Search Engine guru Mike Grehan explains the value of these query chains.

9. WayBackMachine – Go back in web history to see how your competitors’ site has changed through the years. Look for the things that have stayed consistent, because those might have been the most successful. In the same vein, what have you changed on your own site during that time? It’s easy to lose track, particularly of your own work, and to think of your current site as “how it’s always been”.

10. Web Page Speed Analyzer – Compare the download speed of your pages with those of your competitors to see which are loading quicker. Quicker loading pages tend to have an advantage at converting visitors. This analyzer provides a detail analysis of the page elements. For a rough comparison of two pages side by side try WebSlug. And, WebWait is great when you want to get accurate speed results from the visitors perspective because WebWait pulls down the entire website into your browser, so it takes into account Ajax/Javascript processing and image loading which other tools ignore.

11. Web Page Readability – By comparing the readability score of web pages you can optimize your writing and make sure that you aren’t creating overly complex sentences and paragraphs for your audience.

12. Attention Meter – Attentionmeter gives you a quick snapshot comparing any websites you want (traffic) using Alexa, Compete, and Quancast.

13. Websitegrader – Website Grader is a free tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective. Also worth checking out Twittergrader to check on your competitors’ twitter accounts.

14. Google Alerts – set up searches for your competitors, key employees, and keywords to monitor their activity.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it: Try some (or all) of the above techniques and report back on your intriguing espionage! This tape will self-destruct in 10 clicks.

Top 9 variables to maximize your linking strategy

In order to maximize your linking strategy for your top keyword phrase, it is useful to take a look at what makes up a high-quality link. Here are the top variables to keep in mind when you begin to execute your strategy. 

1.Your keyword phrase must be in the Anchor Text from external links pointing to your landing page, which needs to topically be about your product or service. 

2.The quantity of external links pointing to your landing page is a search relevancy variable. The more links pointing to you, the more important you are. 

3.The quality of external links pointing to your landing page is important. If the link exists as part of a content-rich page, this is even better. 

4.The in-bound links pointing to your landing page need to come from a wide variety of websites. Having a thousand links coming from just two websites is of low value. 

5.The Page Rank of the page where the link originates is very important. The higher the Page Rank the higher quality the link will be. 

6.In-bound links to your landing page that come from topically relevant websites are of higher value. 

7.Links from third-parties that point to your in-bound links is a quality factor. If lots of high-quality sites are linking to the websites that are linking to you, the links will be of higher quality. 

8.Links from pages that are just one or two clicks from the referring home page are more valuable than links that are buried seven levels deep. 

9.In-bound links that are tagged as “no follow” are of no value to you.