Today I will have the pleasure of watching @gregoryng present at the SEO Meetup (organized by none other than our very own Phil Buckley) here in Raleigh about conversion optimization. Greg is the Chief Experience Office at Brooks Bell Interactive. As CXO (Chief Experience Officer), Greg is responsible for ensuring that marketing strategies are realized through exemplary creative work. Gregory’s direct experience runs deep and includes working for clients like Dell, Bank of America, American Express, Fidelity Investments, the Salvation Army, Microsoft, DSW Shoe Warehouse, and Dunkin’ Donuts. I will follow up with a blog on what I learn from Greg. I am sure it will be a “gem”.

Here is a great list of books that deals with conversion optimization. Find them, read them, know them all. They are great. (Compliments of Bryan Eisenberg)

Psychology, Human Behavior, and Persuasion

• “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath
• “Waiting For Your Cat To Bark?” by Bryan Eisenberg and Jeffrey Eisenberg
• “Persuasive Technology” by B.J. Fogg
• “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert Cialdini
• “Your Key to Sports Success: How Understanding Your Brain Type Will Enhance Your Athletic Ability” by Jonathan Niednagel
• “Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types” by David Keirsey
• “The Art of SpeedReading People” by Paul D. Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger
• “Why We Buy” by Paco Underhill

Marketing, Branding, and Selling

• “Ogilvy on Advertising” by David Ogilvy
• “Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads” by Roy H. Williams
• “Call to Action” by Jeffrey Eisenberg and me
• “The Psychology of Selling” by Brian Tracy
• “How to Master the Art of Selling” by Tom Hopkins
• “The Sales Bible: The Ultimate Sales Resource” by Jeffrey Gitomer
• “Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing” by Harry Beckwith
• “5 Steps to Successful Selling” by Zig Ziglar
• “Focus: The Future of Your Company Depends on It” by Al Ries
• “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions” by Dan Ariely
• “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie

Usability and Information Architecture

• “Designing Web Usability” by Jakob Nielsen
• “Web Usability: A Designer’s Guide” by Jared M. Spool
• “Information Architecture for the World Wide Web”
• “Web Form Design” by Luke Wroblewski
• “The Persona Lifecycle” by John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin
• “The Elements of User Experience” by Jesse James Garrett
• “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug  (one of my personal favorites)

Copywriting

• “Persuasive Online Copywriting” by Jeffrey Eisenberg and Bryan Eisenberg
• “Breakthrough Advertising” by Eugene M. Schwartz
• “Advertising Secrets of the Written Word” by Joseph Sugarman
• “The Associated Press Guide to Good Writing” by Rene J. Cappon
• “Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer” by Roy Peter Clark
• “Copyblogger Blog” by Brian Clark

Testing

• “Landing Page Optimization” by Tim Ash
• “Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer” by John Quarto-vonTivadar and Bryan Eisenberg

SEO, SEM, E-mail Marketing, & Social Media

• “The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization” by Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin, and Jessie Stricchiola
• “Winning Results with Google AdWords” by  Andrew Goodman, while we anxiously await “Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing: An Hour a Day” by David Szetela
• “Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day” by  Dave Evans
• “Email Marketing: An Hour a Day” by Jeanniey Mullen
• “YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day” by Greg Jarboe
• “Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone Is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone.” by Mitch Joel
• “Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust” by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith
• “Twitter Marketing: An Hour a Day” by ClickZ’s own Hollis Thomases
• “Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs” by Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah, and David Meerman Scott

This is a great list.  I have read many, and have many more to read.  Stay tuned for more great stuff.

Any smart SEO professional will tell you that having a solid keyword strategy behind your social marketing campaigns is the key to achieving a high return on your digital investment. While short- and long-tail keywords each have their place within a tactical marketing plan, it’s important to know which will work best in regard to specific social media initiatives.

As a general rule of thumb, long-tail keywords rank better for conversion, while short-tail keywords are more useful for developing interest and driving general traffic. However, all things considered, web traffic that doesn’t generate conversions is only worth so much. Here are a few tips for building a winning digital keyword strategy that can be easily worked into your overall search and social media marketing approach.

Twitter

Your Twitter keyword strategy must reflect and respect the fact that this platform operates in real-time. Focus on short-tail words and phrases that can be easily digested, indexed and found by an audience searching for related topics. Long-tail keywords are unlikely to produce a high ROI due to the very nature of Twitter – a constant stream of new information combined with an audience that embraces the 140 characters, less-is-more mentality.

Keep in mind that hash tags are keywords too. Use them frequently to engage with people who tweet and are searching for updates or following threaded conversations on a particular subject. Hash tags help bridge the gap between the today’s immediate conversations and the yesterday’s relevant news. Also, never forget about your competitors – their company names can serve as keywords as well.

Facebook Social Ads

Facebook keyword strategy is somewhat different. Many organizations are finding extreme value in Facebook’s highly targeted advertising campaigns. Though these small side-bar ads only enable you to target a short-tail keyword or two at best, advertisers can drill down an extremely precise demographic – from specific location, age and sex all the way to relationship interests, workplace and keywords. Use these to your advantage. Leveraging filters on the front end will help deliver your message to a much more qualified lead, yielding higher potential for conversions.

Outside the advertising sector, long-tail keywords can pull more weight on Facebook than their short-tail counterparts. Remember that everything you write on Facebook or any other social media platform is indexed by search engines (unless your privacy settings are set otherwise). Because Facebook allows for more substantial interaction through fan pages, groups, event pages and more, long-tail keywords can be effectively targeted in a number of ways. Facebook’s viral nature combined with substantial internal linking can mean higher rankings and conversions for your business. Keep this in mind when writing on a page or using the FMBL tool.

Metrics

Measurement is an important part of evaluating any social campaign’s success and can be helpful in identifying key areas for improvement. If you’re using Filtrbox or another social media measuring/monitoring platform, don’t hesitate to explore your options and use more than one. Why? Because you can. The more you listen, participate and contribute to the conversation, the more successful your long-term efforts will be.

Using a tool like Filtrbox or Radian6 allows you to create even more unique search capabilities inside your metrics campaigns. These tools help create Boolean based searches with your keywords, using operators such as “includes,” “must include” or “have at least one of” these types of keywords. This tool alone can allow you to search the entire internet in seconds and get a better understanding of how other content is being purposed. For example, if you wanted to do a search on “home security systems Raleigh,” it may be more beneficial to search on “home security” with the “must include” operator, “Raleigh,” and the “have at least one of” operator, “system.” The Boolean evaluating conjunction (AND) allows you to see results of the first two parameters as true, and the disjunction (OR) evaluates the argument if either one of the parameters is true. This is extremely helpful in data mining your keyword results based on a specific segment or campaign.

Highly targeted PPC campaigns can also be a powerful way to turn qualified leads into customers. When developing a PPC campaign, always know your industry’s click-through rates to help quickly eliminate or validate specific keywords throughout the research process. Also keep in mind that geo-based optimization combined with a long-tail keyword strategy will always yield higher conversions.

Other Long-Tail Keyword Tips

• Are YouTube videos part of your overall marketing strategy? Make sure you’re optimizing the content that accompanies them with long-tail keywords. Remember, Google owns YouTube and continues to index new sites and material thousands of times of every day.

• Incorporating long-tail keywords into your local business listings in Google, Yahoo and Bing is an easy optimization opportunity that many companies miss out on, and one that can pay dividends if executed in coordination with other on-site SEO tactics. Because Google lists a few local results above the organic results when users search for geo-based information, there is a unique chance to overtake your competition in the rankings and steal their web traffic (and maybe even their business).

Which keyword strategies have you found effective in regard to social media marketing?

How does your organization incorporate keyword strategies into your social media marketing campaigns?

What successes have you had in using long-tail vs. short-tail keywords for social media marketing purposes?

Moving downtown has been nothing less than exhilarating. The challenges included creating a brand, establishing a local presence, and generating awareness that Twine Interactive was amongst the upper echelon of internet marketing agencies. The keys to our success involved a serious word of mouth marketing campaign as well as strategic hiring within our local community. Last year was a great year for us overall. We increased total revenue over 1026 percent and doubled the size of the business.

Since establishing our new office space on Fayetteville Street, we have sought out some of the best and brightest talent. Jennifer Griffin came on board in November as Marketing Director. Not long after that Wayne Sutton joined us as our Social Media and Community Manager as well as Wesley Hare a very talented graphic designer, and we were very excited about going into 2010 with a stellar team.

However I’ve come to a decision where I have to change the direction that I was heading just a few months ago. My business partner Brian and I have built and streamlined a well-oiled machine for design and development. I can honestly say that I have enjoyed meeting and working with everyone at Twine Interactive.  Was every moment paradise with peaches and cream, no.  I am not sure I know of any work place that is.  However, at the end of the day our focus was the same. Deliver a premium product/service to our customers and be proud of what we have done. My business philosophy has always been: get in, make your money with a laser focus, and then get out. Simple right? It’s worked for me in the past and I hope it will do the same going forward. This said, starting tomorrow, I will be officially leaving Twine Interactive to embark on new endeavors.

Starting next week I will be launching my own consulting business directed more at digital word of mouth marketing, brand strategy, and new media campaigns. I will continue to work with Twine Interactive on web design and web development projects and have only the best hopes for the continued success of the company. I would like to personally thank Brian Henderson for embarking on this successful journey with me. By going in this direction I will have the opportunity to reach some of my personal goals and further develop my marketing leadership. Over the next few weeks and months I will be announcing some new clients, initiatives and other news so stay tuned. You can follow me at my blog jeremysaid.com and on Twitter @jeremysaid.

Wish me luck!

8 ways that I use Google Wave

Google wave is becoming more and more useful everyday in our work and personal lives. I find myself opening up Google Wave as part of my initial set of tools I use to start the day. Even in it’s pre-beta state, Google Wave has become an integral part of the day to day operations at Twine Interactive. While I am sure this list will grow, here are 8 ways that I currently use Google Wave.

1. Customer Deliverables.

At Twine Interactive, we have found there can be a breakdown between sales and well the rest of the company (yes, I am the one who does most of the sales so it’s my fault). We decided to implement a structure where the deliverables from a proposal and a contract are moved over into a customer wave. The wave is named with the customer name so that it is clear what each wave is about as well as searchable. The details of the deliverables are at the top so it is plain and clear for all who are on the project as well as the project manager. Once the details of the execution are established, all to do’s are then put into basecamp for trackable milestones and time frames.

2. Various topics that my business partner and I need to discuss on a weekly basis

Brian and I have weekly meetings to discuss projects, issues, accounts, etc. If you are part of a partnership, or running a business, lessons learned documentation is crucial to demonstrate . Based on your exit strategies, if you decide at some point to merge or get acquired, documentation on an ongoing basis showing progress in communication, execution and company growth is essential for anyone to see, especially those parties interested in your business. This can include timeline of events, common customer problems and how they were resolved, decisions that were made at specific dates and measuring ROI on some of those decisions. This are just some of the content inside this wave.

3 Staff meeting notes

Everytime we have a staff meeting (and if you have been following Wayne on Twitter) you know we have a lot of strategy meetings on Twine Interactive branding. When we are all in a meeting together, strategizing or simply brainstorming, all ideas are posted in waves. This also allows us to go back and check on things that were once discussed.

4. Business Coach Timelines

Our business coach keeps up accountable for the things we do. His to do’s and deadlines are supposed to be put in Google Wave (we are almost there, but the concept is still solid) and documenting each meeting and what our homework is coming out of each meeting. Also, as he has ideas or thoughts that he wants to talk about in upcoming meetings, they are all documented there. (Again, this is still in concept as we are moving towards doing this. Everything is setup, now execution is forthcoming)

5. Employee reviews

Ok, so right now I am little scared of this, but because all of our employees are stellar employees, there is nothing but 5 star ratings whenever they go above and beyond the call of duty. I wonder if anything will ever go in there thats not 100 percent positive. Do you think employers will ever use Google Wave in this way?

6. Blog Content ( I wrote this blog in wave )

Yes, blogs. I am currently writing this blog in Google Wave. Every blip is a new blog and when I have ideas for new blogs, I create new blips, post my bullet points about the main topics I want to get across and go. Also works great when I want Jennifer to come in and edit them.

7. Scope Documentation at a Customer Site.

While taking notes at a customer location, if multiple people are taking notes into different waves, they may be processing the information differently in their respective brains. It’s interesting to see how information is translated and re-documented after a customer staff meeting. This is a great tool to allow multiple people to take notes on the same meeting and then re-group to strategize about execution plans.

8. Content strategies

Recently we have had several meetings on content strategy as you steadily see our content increasing weekly on our site. We review our content strategies every Monday morning and make sure they are documented. We come up with interesting titles about things we want to write about, assign/choose who is going to be writing them, and put a date on when they are going to be posted. We go back and look at them each week and make sure we are on target with forward thinking, as well as differentiating content.

Overall, Google Wave is becoming a widely used tool in our everyday arsenal at Twine Interactive. As it’s still in developer preview mode, and has not reached the beta mode yet, we will continue to see enhancements to its functionality. As you can see from the above information, it’s really all about structuring documentation and content in a very easy reviewable but searchable format. If you are a business and trying to figure out how to use Google Wave, hurry and get on board. Also, I have plenty of invitations, so let me know if you want one. Anyone else have any more use cases to add? I would love to hear them.

As I approach and check in, I find out that I have just become the mayor and ousted @1918 for mayorship.  That was cool, but what happened next was even cooler.  When I checked in inside the Foursquare application, my phone showed a message that said “Special Here” with an arrow pointing to click to see the next page.  It was looked like I had just won something and I was excited!  It was the feeling you have as a kid at Christmas about to open an early gift (which I will have you know, my Dad always knew when I peeked and taped the present back together, ha).  Not only was I excited to discover my prize, but I was exited to witness The Pit’s new interaction, embracing Social Media.

I quickly clicked the “Special Here” offer and to my surprise another treat was waiting for me!  Naturally, I was congratulated on my newly crowned mayorship, but more importantly, there was a great offer.  As the mayor I deserve a little appreciation.  Man, was I tickled to death and so excited to see the participation, not to mention the fact that I felt like I won something.  However, most people will definitely feel like the brand is watching and listening, which is extremely important.  This is the image that appeared on my iPhone.

I just wanted to share my experience and show a real life example of The Pit’s use of Foursquare and social media combined with word of mouth marketing to increase visibility and brand awareness.  Great job to Phil for the excellent prelude post and hats off to The Pit for embracing this change in how we talk to our customers.  Side note:  The Pit is the only one in Raleigh currently using this feature.

Here is a link on foursquare’s website that shows all of the businesses using foursquare and mayorship to reward customers.  http://www.foursquare.com/businesses/

Our first speaker was Karlie Justus.  She is  the PR/social media officer with the N.C. State Fair and N.C. Dept. of Agriculture. First of all, if you do n ‘t know Karlie, she is an absolute delight to talk to. She always has a smile and is very upbeat.  The topic was the NC State Fair case study and their outreach strategy using social media.  Karlie had some great information to share with us and awesome statistics.  Not to mention lessons learned, which are always imperative in any case study.  We all like to know and hear about success stories.  However, we also love to learn what not to do.

One of the main points of Karlie’s presentation was the ultimate goal of the campaign, which was to reach new audiences. They wanted to reach the media but in a new way. They understood that the local media is also using social media and wanted to reach out through those channels.  They changed the website with a new design that also included their social media networks as well as key blogs around unique content only found at the fair.  Deep fried types of food is always a hit when it comes to the fair and proved to be a good blog resource as well.

A great strategy that I saw was their reach out strategy to local bloggers and to get local community  people involved.  Suzanne from the Pretty Swell blog was named the Ambassador.  I really like this strategy of using local firestarters and their networks to help outreach involvement. They help you do some heavy lifting around creating content and they do it because they want to.  That means more organic content coming from a reputable source.  They used Facebook and Twitter to drive awareness, contest creations, customer service, monitoring feedback, and just building buzz.  They found that each platform had a specific niche and yielded better results around different outreach initiatives.   The Deep Fried Tweetup at The Fair was also very popular.  There were over 150 people in attendance.  This event also was broadcast via livestreaming.  Thursday proved to have the highest online activity of any other days surrounding the fair.  There were over 60 tweets per hour, over 2000 unique visits to the webpage and 43 uniques viewing the live streaming.

Successes:

• Brand awareness
• Relationship building
• Community engagement
• Customer service
• Media attention
• Understanding which tools function best for to attain specific goals

Challenges:

• Internal commitments because of time (heavy volunteers)
• Content creation
• Tonality through social media
• Need for a social media policy

What’s next? A focus on more specific content, year round exposure, annual tweetups and internal education on using social media. And of course, a social media policy.  Great job Karlie. Thanks for all the information.

Speaker 2 – Jason Peck

Jason Peck is Social media manager at @eWayDirect, a sports enthusiast and an all around good guy.  Tonight Jason talked about online and branded communities.
One of Jason’s main points was that branded communities bring you closer to your customer, and brings your customers closer to each other to share their experiences. I completely agree with this notion as well. Many times when doing a website, we only focus on the website and don’t tap into a marketing strategy that can co-exist with the website.  Driving traffic is one thing, but then having a reason for your customers to interact with you is a completely different ballgame (in other words conversion).  I am convinced that branded communities with the right customer can be a game changer for customer experience, interaction, overall online presence and a bottom dollar increase.

We all know that Facebook fan pages are trying to become an online community for most brands.  Jason points out a couple of good examples of the differences between Facebook Fan pages and a branded community. Some things that a branded community can offer that Facebook may have challenges with are:

• Protection of data
• Exclusivity
• Acquisition
• Research
• Measurement
• Aggregation
• Loyalty program integration

All of these are actually good points.  A question I have is, will Facebook ever incorporate more features into its fan pages in order to give a more community feel?  WordPress has some great plugins for creating a community found here via mashable Great article that allows you to increase some of the features in your community.

Jason talked about a client they have called ELF or eyes, lips, face.  You can imagine the products that they sell are around beauty and cosmetics. One of the main goals of this campaign was to identify brand advocates and deepen relationships amongst current and even new customers. By becoming a part of this community, customers have exclusive access to beauty tips, current deals, customer service, feedback on products, a customized desktop alert program and many more features. It also allows them to aggregate all of their content from the social media sites.

Results are as follows:

• 4500 current members
• 56k visitors in the last 3 months
• 5k unique visitors
• Average revenue 270 percent higher among current members than non members.

Which goes to show that building a community develops deeper relationships,  increases customer retention and the ability to re-market to a specific niche that is not only familiar with the brand but trusts the brand and products they provide.   Great job Jason.  You definitely challenged me to think outside the box with some of our current customers and how to get them better engaged with their customers.

The after party next door at the Big Easy was also a hit.  I think the best part of the night there was TheRab showed me a new iPhone app called stachetastic. Here is a picture of me using stachetastic. Anyone think I look like Chuck Hester? he he. Movember shout out.

To all those that missed the event, we hope you show up for the next one in December.  Details to be provided.  Keep checking the Facebook fan page for updates.  Once again thanks to Karlie, Jason and Ourhashtag for creating such a great event.

Last night’s main speaker was none other than Laurie Ruettimann who gave a completely awe-inspiring performance. She is an industry vet, well sought after speaker, writer and thought leader. Her topic tonight was on using some of the more well known social media tools to  land a job as well as some interesting thoughts on personal branding and a couple of key HR concepts. Couple of key points:

1. The biggest HR secret (and she even said it’s not really a secret) is that people hire you because they like you.

2. Another interesting point, HR people hire you within the first 11 seconds of meeting you, seeing you, talking to you, etc.

3. When looking for jobs online, find people in the company that make the hiring decisions and find out how to get in touch with them. (i.e. Linkedin)

4. Companies would much rather hire people through networking.

5. Twitter Search is a great resource. Look up things like job angels. Also, using a tool like Indeed.com which is a great site that pulls all jobs into one search from a multitude of sites. (Laurie mentioned something here about her brother-in-law maybe needs to use this site, funny!)

6. Job boards are worthless. Don’t use them, they are full of spam and MLM’s.

7. 4 keys to success. Presence, ability, skills, and a way into the company.

8. Laurie says networking should be selfless. If you call into a company, offer something to them, help them with something or give them something that they can use, make sure it’s not one sided.

9. Burning bridges is a thing of the past. If you have a really bad experience with a company or an interviewee, don’t be afraid to put it out to your networks and talk about your experience. (talk about controversial)

10. If a company is checking you out online and judging you for things online that could possibly be incorrect, or worse, not even be you, be ready to move onto the next opportunity.

Some great comments tonight that made everyone laugh.

• I am the @waynesutton of the Kozlowski family (The Winner)
• Nut up and be a man and go home (Very nice Laurie)
• Zach Ward = Astroboy… ( I love it)
• Love what you do (and you too can work 110 hours a week like Zach)
• Brian McDonald you can not wear any more earth tones
• That girl was a HOT MESS!! (My favorite) – Lylian

I have seen tons of resumes over the years and done many interviews. One thing that drives me absolutely crazy is a canned cover letter. One that you see taken right out of a book. @Cord mentioned that he will still receives resumes that have the “insert_company_here” statement in them.  I can hardly fathom that someone would do this, but  yeah, this is an immediate dismissal right into the digital paper shredder. Be original in your cover letter. Find something to say that no one else does. Tell us why you want to be a part of our team, because our team really becomes our family. I personally would love something like a video resume, (even though Laurie says be-careful with that) but it shows me creativity. Tell us something you saw about us or on our website that you liked or disliked. Grab our attention, show us you care and be memorable.

To end the meeting @dgtlpapercuts gave some great shameless plugs (Wayne said he counted 10) and shared with us some personal branding tips and techniques.   Another plug for Jeff, check out his personal blog here. (because I can’t write all the plugs in) Jeff L. Cohen’s Blog Also, you can check out his business card WP theme at www.jeffreylcohen.com. Ryan Boyles also mentioned you can check out Free Digital Business Cards

The night ended with a bang and a video that I will never ever EVER forget. Wayne and Jeff were sitting at the top of Dorton Arena and talking about the October 22nd Deep Fried Tweet up “staring Jeff and Wayne. The event will be held in the Folk Festival Tent from 7 to 9 p.m. on Food Lion Hunger Relief Day. Bring four cans of food for Free entry to the fair. Be sure to take advantage of free registration for the Deep Fried Tweetup here Deep Fried Triangle Tweetup. (I hear that attendees will receive neato badges for the event). The night ended with some good beer, great conversation and flying nerf missile fight. It was awesome. Don’t miss the next one.