GlobeRunnerSEO

CEO of Globe Runner, an SEO Services Company.

I am an artist, entrepreneur, and motivation speaker that does speaking engagements and   seminars.  I understand business and have experienced the power of search engine optimization first hand.  I spend all my free time with my wife Heather, 3 year old son Keegan, and twin boys Trevor & Elliot.

As an expert in search engine optimization and search marketing, I founded GloberunnerSEO with the objective of helping small to medium sized business leverage the power of search engine optimization to become more profitable.

Globe Runner SEO works as an online partner, dedicated to the profitability of their clients.  We take the time to get to know our customer’s business, understand there online objectives, and help develop strategies to meet their goals. Creating long-term results with a vision toward the future.  “We only accept clients that we firmly believe will profit from our efforts.”

- A Slideshare Presentation by Hoover’s and Ideahaus Communications Director Kevin Popovic -

With new platforms and services appearing almost daily, social media is providing the ability to create a new type of customer relationship that can translate into real dollars for your organization – if they’re used and managed correctly.

The Slideshare presentation above is a detailed recap of  Hoover’s and Ideahaus Communications Director Kevin Popovic’s exciting webinar from Wednesday, April 7th that looked into social media and how your sales team can make the most out of it.  Key points covered in the presentation were:

• The differences between key social media applications
• How to facilitate your sales process using them
• New opportunities for Sales and Marketing to work together
• The impact of Satellite Marketing™ on your sales organization

We have also provided a video similiar in content to the presentation above where internet marketing expert Kevin Popovic addresses the Western Masachusetts Advertising Club during a workshop on “satellite marketing.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRcYjhUB_Ik

To see the original webinar in its full version, visit the registration page.

Learn more about the speaker Kevin Popovic by visiting his company page.

Kevin Popovic is an internet marketing expert with over 25 years of experience in helping clients understand the various types of communication, their opportunities, and how they can capitalize on them to build their brands.

Kevin started his company Ideahaus® in 1990.  Today he works directly with CEO’s, C-Level Communicators and Entrepreneurs to help shape their company and build their brands.

Kevin serves as a Communications Director who helps develop communications plan, including schedules, budgets and metrics for everything a company uses to communicate. He  works with existing marketing teams to lead the development of most types of creative and communications resources. He is also responsible for managing the accounts, as needed, as an adjunct to a clients leadership.

Visit Kevin’s company website at http://ideahaus.com/ or Contact him at http://ideahaus.com/contact/

Facebook is Changing the Way We Interact With Brands

Changes are on the horizon for Facebook.  And the newly proposed modifications might not make everyone happy; Facebook “Fan Pages” as we know them will soon be a thing of the past and the way we interact with those Pages will change for better or worst.  In this article we will take a quick peek at some of the changes to come and briefly explore what this says about Facebook’s grip on the market.

But I Liked Facebook the Way it Was!

It is a widely accepted truth that Facebook is a powerhouse in the social media game.  With that said, their true strength in the market may be even more impressive than one could have imagined.  It is easy to look at the staggering user numbers – 400 million active users, 50% of which sign on at least once a day.  While those numbers are impressive and telling, the true measure of Facebook’s market dominance might better be measured by how they go about implementing changes to their website. 

Can anyone recall just how many times Facebook changed their user interface without asking if their users actually wanted a change?  How about the numerous occasions where the Privacy Policy was modified and made public only after a social media uproar shined light on the policy changes?  In keeping with their “we’re going to do what we want and you will eventually get used to it” relationship with their users, Facebook is now making a sweeping policy change to their Facebook Fan Pages which will affect more than just the casual user. 

So What’s Behind the Change Anyway?

The “Become a Fan” concept we have all come so accustomed with will soon be replaced by “Likes.”  Facebook Fan Pages (or whatever they end up being called) will no longer accumulate ‘Fans’ but rather ‘Connections’ (much like your personal profile pages it seems).  Those easy to understand call to action buttons labeled “Become a Fan” will now display a more ambiguous “Like” mention with a thumbs up logo. 

So what was so wrong with the verbiage “Become a Fan” that has Facebook modifying a utility that thousands of brands and causes have happily adopted?  It surely isn’t ease of use or popular demand – Fan Pages have never been so en vogue.  There must be a good reason behind this, but something tells me it has more to do with increasing revenues than it does with making Facebook users happy.  Either way, given Facebook’s current dominance and strategic partnerships with other large web channels, there probably isn’t much we could do about it if we wanted to. 

How do you perceive this move from Facebook?  Should they be more ‘user first’ oriented?  Share your comments below and let us know what you think.

Article written for Unilzyer by Nick Frank:  Follow Nick on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Nick_J_Frank or see his blog at http://mynicknews.blogspot.com/

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzcQZ8PaE7w

Here is the Audio Text (in case you prefer to read about it instead of watching the video):

In this video, we will be taking a look at the Unilyzers dashboard Data Woogit section. By understanding how the tool is laid out and how different parts of the dashboard relate to each other, you will learn how to read between the lines, or in this case between the trending arrows. Lets get started.
Make sure you are signed in to your account and then click the Unilyzer tab at the top of your screen. As you can see, the Unilyzer dashboard is divided in to multiple sections, with each one displaying unique data relating to the accounts you entered on the Settings page found here (mouse over settings tab). In this section, eighteen Data Woogits are available to be customized to your liking. This is where you can start defining which tracking elements are the most important to you and organize the data accordingly. If you have not yet defined the ranges for the boxes, many of them will be empty.

Lets start by going over the process of adding a new data range to an empty box. Click on the + sign of an empty box to bring up the customizable metric tool. When the customize box appears, click on the dropdown menu labeled choose to see a list of metrics that can be tracked for any particular box.

You have a choice to track any of your social media outlets such as Facebook or Twitter, or you can add a social bookmark site like Digg. For this Woogit, lets choose Google-Twitter. Users sometime question the difference between Google-Twitter and Twitter and why the different metrics are available. Using the Unilyzer, Google-Twitter will track Visits, Time On Site, etc Whereas Twitter tracks Followers, Following, Tweets, etc The Unilyzer retrieves web traffic data from Google (thus Google-twitter) and we get metrics about each twitter account such as the number of tweets, directly from Twitter. Now that we understand this variation, lets get back to adding your account.

If you have multiple accounts that you are tracking, you will be asked to define which one this particular box will monitor. Once you have chosen the proper account, you will be presented with 5 different tracking ranges New Visits, Stickyness, Time on Site, Visits and UPV. For this example, lets select New Visits by clicking the button located to the left of the text. To finalize your selection, click the Save button. Now your dashboard is starting to come together. All 18 of the Data Woogits can be customized in the same way, and then changed as many times as necessary. Customize all 18 Woogits and arrange them in the way that is most suited for your tracking needs.
The Data Woogits are also interactive and you can see more information by mousing over hot-spots. Lets look at the Twitter Woogit we just created as an example of how this works. Move your mouse over the Twitter icon located in the top left corner of the Woogit. A small text box will appear and display the account for which the Woogit is tied to. If you are tracking multiple accounts, this can come in handy. The second hot-spot is found by moving the mouse over the trending arrow. A text box appears and displays the percentage of change the trending arrow represents compared to the time interval directly to the right of the one you are currently viewing. In this example, we are tracking the Current time period Therefore, this percentage number tells us that we are trending up at 167% compared to our 30 day stats. More information about how to understand the time intervals is available in our tutorial video catalogue. Now that you understand how to customize a Data Woogit, try to populate all 18 with the metrics that matter the most to you.
We will talk about all the available metrics for your configurable Data Woogits in another video, and a separate video is available which discusses the meaning of each metric.

-Video Script written by Nick Frank

The Unilyzer is a low-cost web analytics and socail media marketing analytics dashboard. If you have a Unilyzer account, this video will walk you through the process of adding accounts to your Dashboard.  As you may know, the Unilyzer tracks Facebook Fanpage, Blog, Website and other domain metrics and also acquires data from Twitter, Youtube, Digg, and Facebook directly.  The Unilyzer unifies and analyzes social media marketing and social network metrics to give you a 360 degree view of your domain’s social media and internet marketing “eco-system.”  At a glance, the Unilyzer lets you compare the quality and quantity of social media traffic vs. pay-per-click vs. organic traffic, and enables you to quickly compare the quality of traffic from Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and many other social media channels.

• Youtube vs. Facebook
• Facebook vs. Twitter
• Twitter vs. Facebook
• Delicious vs. Digg vs. Technorati

These are just examples, you could actually compare them all at once using Unilyer’s interactive line-graph.  Watch this video to learn how:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcKepNlx3UE

The Unilyzer is a low-cost web analytics and socail media marketing analytics dashboard. If you have a Unilyzer account, this video will walk you through the process of adding accounts to your Dashboard.  As you may know, the Unilyzer tracks Facebook Fanpage, Blog, Website and other domain metrics and also acquires data from Twitter, Youtube, Digg, and Facebook directly.  The Unilyzer unifies and analyzes social media marketing and social network metrics to give you a 360 degree view of your domain’s social media and internet marketing “eco-system.”  At a glance, the Unilyzer lets you compare the quality and quantity of social media traffic vs. pay-per-click vs. organic traffic, and enables you to quickly compare the quality of traffic from Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and many other social media channels.

Video Script:
The Unilyzer was designed to enable everyone the opportunity to watch the growth of their Social Media accounts and web traffic. In this video, we will be taking a look at the Unilyzer dashboard and some of its basic features. By understanding how the tool is laid out and how different parts of the dashboard relate to each other, you will learn how to read between the lines, or in this case between the trending arrows. Lets get started.

Sections: The Graph (Trend Line Graph)

Make sure you are signed in to your account and then click the Unilyzer tab at the top of your screen. As you can see, the Unilyzer dashboard is divided in to multiple sections, with each one displaying unique data relating to the accounts you entered on the Settings page found here (mouse over settings tab). Lets start at the top left hand corner and move clockwise through the dashboard.
In this widget, the Unilyzer displays graphical data of your visits for the time period you have chosen here (mouse over the time intervals). In this current view, we are looking at the last 7 days of activity. Details of how to understand time intervals will be discussed in a separate tutorial. This widget is interactive in a few different ways and can be customized to your liking.

First and most importantly, you will need to choose what data your graph will display and/or compare by selecting from the dropdown menu labeled Google Analytics. Here you can choose one or multiple data points to graph by placing a check next to the existing accounts. Once you have made your selection, click the Go button next to the dropdown tab and the Unilyzer will calculate your data and display your new graph for the time and data points you have selected. You can then mouse over the white circles found along the graph to get detailed information of the number of visits for each medium and the date for which the stats were tracked.

If you are tracking multiple accounts, you can select which one you would like to view by scrolling to the bottom left of the widget and clicking on the plus sign located here. Choose the account you wish to track and click apply selection to change your graph view.

-Video script written by Nick Frank

Okay, here are the three key steps required to add Youtube Video to your Blog:

1. Upload Your Video to Youtube.
2. Download and install the Wordpress Plugin named “Smart Youtube.”
3. Place your embed code into your Wordpress Blog Post by copying the video URL from Youtube to your post and changing http:// to httpv:// (notice the ‘v’ character).  The video will be automatically embedded to your post in the proper way.

For example:

        www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiXZz4N97Pc

If you want to post a high quality/HD video you would use httpvh:// (‘vh’ for video high)

To embed a playlist use extension ‘vp’

www.youtube.com/watch?v=528026B4F7B34094

Additionally, you can set how do you want the video to be displayed in your RSS feed. Smart Youtube can show the preview image of the video (automatically grabbed from Youtube), the link to the video, or both.  One recommendation is to enable only the preview image.

If you want to go to the source for more information, here is a link to see instructions on how to embed YT videos in Wordpress:  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/smart-youtube/installation/.

In this Unilyzer Blog, you can read more about the benefits of adding video to your blog, read the article on this blog name Dominate with Video, http://www.unilyzer.com/social-media-marketing/dominate-with-video/.

Good luck!

The Unilyzer is a low-cost web analytics and socail media marketing  analytics dashboard. If you have a Unilyzer account, this video will walk you through the process of adding accounts to your Dashboard.  As you may know, the Unilyzer tracks Facebook Fanpage, Blog, Website and other domain metrics and also acquires data from Twitter, Youtube, Digg, and Facebook directly. 

The Unilyzer unifies and analyzes social media marketing and social network metrics to give you a 360 degree view of your domain’s social media and internet marketing “eco-system.”  At a glance, the Unilyzer lets you compare the quality and quantity of social media traffic vs. pay-per-click vs. organic traffic, and enables you to quickly compare the quality of traffic from Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and many other social media channels.

Here is the vidoe script in case you would like to read about it:

The Unilyzer was designed to enable everyone the opportunity to watch the growth of their Social Media accounts and web traffic. In this video, we will be explaining the process of adding your website and social media outlets to the Unilyzer. Lets get started.

If you havent done so already, go to Unilyzer’s Home Page and click the Member Login tab located here. Enter your credentials and click the Login button to enter your Unilyzer. You will be redirected to the Settings page, as indicated here on the colored tab. The first thing you will want to do is add your Google Analytics Account. This is the most important account to enter as the other metrics will need to use this data to properly Unilyze your data. Before we go any further, make sure you are signed out of any Google accounts such as Analytics or Gmail as this will interfere with the setup process.

Now, lets scroll down to the Google Analytics loader and click the Add Google Accounts button. A new browser window from Google Accounts will open and you will be prompted to enter your Google username and password. Enter your credentials and validate. We are now redirected to a new page where Google asks you to grant access to your Analytics data. Simply click the Grant Access button and you are almost done. We are now redirected back to the Unilyzer where you will be asked to verify which account you want to add.

If you are a subscriber of either the Unilyzer Pro or Premium versions, you can add multiple websites at this time whereas the Lite Version and Free Trial can only track one website. Place a check in the box next to the accounts you want to Unilyze and click the Pull Data button. The Unilyzer will begin to pull your data. This process usually takes between 30 seconds to 2 minutes depending on your connection speed.

When the upload is complete, you will see a check mark and the mention Account Added directly to the right of the website that was installed. If you will be tracking multiple accounts, simply repeat the process with the other Google Analytics accounts that the Unilyzer has found. When done, click the Finished button located here. When done correctly, you should see your website listed here, in the Google Analytics loader. You have now successfully installed your Google Analytics account and your Unilyzer is now reporting on this data.

Before we install the other accounts, lets go and take a look at what your Unilyzer looks like. Scroll to the top of the page and click on the Unilyzer tab. You will see that the Unilyzer has already generated significant reporting about your website. Another tutorial video about understanding the different sections of the Unilyzer Dashboard is available in the Video Tutorial section.

-Video script written by Nick Frank

Unilyzer Dashboard Tracks Facebook Fanpage Traffic

Does it help to know which channel is working best for you?   Social Media Marketing can be time consuming, so after awhile you might ask yourself, “how should I spend my time and money in a way that gives me the most ‘bang for the buck’” ? Or, in CFO speak, “which channel is giving me the most ROI”?

Well, the answer is probably different for everyone, depending on your product, service, or content and depending on who is your target audience.  But, here is one way to get a good idea of which channel is best for you: line up key metrics for each of your social media networking channels like Facebook, Youtube,  & Twitter. Do this on a side-by-side basis, like in the image above.

I personally do this with my Unilyzer Dashboard because I understand things better and faster when they are presented using charts and graphs. Now, in this example,  “a picture paints a thousand words.”  I lined up three key analytics metrics, Visits, Stickyness, and Time On Site – all provided by Google Analytics, which is one data source for Unilyzer.  Now, I clearly see the difference in visitor behavior based on which social media channel they came from.

See how 60% of people visiting my site from Facebook stick around and spend an average of 10 minutes and 1 second on my site?  Now, see how only 67% of visits from Twitter stuck around (did not *bounce) and those that stuck around stayed for an average of 1 second, while 100% of visits from LinkedIn did not “bounce” and they stayed for 2 minutes and 1 second on average.

So, what does this tell me?  My interpretation: well, my tweets generated curiosity – but not real interest, while my facebook marketing efforts hit a home run (got to the right target audience), and my LinkedIn visitors are interested in my site as well. The ironic thing is that I spent most of my day watching my tweet deck!  So, what to do from here?

Well, now that I have insight, I can make adjustments to my overall social networking campaign. What I do know is that Facebook is the best social media marketing channel for my specific product and service.  It might be different for you, but line up your metrics and find out!

*Bounce: a term used by google analytics which means that a visitor came to your domain, then left within 5 seconds – therefore, they bounced off your site.

I could talk about social media marketing analytics, reporting, and metrics all day long, but to keep it real, let’s stop here.  Look for more articles on the Unilyzer Blog about how to use social media marketing analytics to help you monitor and manage your social media and inbound marketing campaigns.

As a final note, I realize that this approach to measure traffic is based purely on traffic metrics (quantitative measures) and doesn’t consider leads or branding (qualitative measures) related to social media marketing campaigns; however, this is a good start and a good approach for sizing things up.

in to What Your Following Wants

What’s in a Number?  Quite a Bit Apparently

Okay guys, can we go ahead and agree that Social Media is good for business?  At least in an empirical data kind of way?    Well, you might be surprised at how many skeptics are left out there.  Everybody knows “that guy” who will never be seen on Facebook and thinks that Twitter should never have been invented in the first place.  The funny thing is, “that guy” all too often happens to be a marketing manager or marketing influencer for their respective company.  For the good of everyone, new and concrete statistics are now available to add to your pro-social media arsenal.  When “that guy” says you are wasting time creating a Facebook Fan Page, you can remind him that 60% of people surveyed were more likely to refer a brand to a friend if they are a fan of that brand.  And for Twitter? Try 80% more likely.  “That guy” might waive this off as crazy talk.  If he does, forward him the rest of this article – We found some pretty compelling arguments and stats that are hard to dismiss.

Social Media Fans Much More Likely to Buy

Recent findings by Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate have given some reassurance to social media marketers looking to substantiate the time and money they put in developing a fandom on Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets.  Take a look at the graph below where US internet users were polled on their Facebook fan habits:

We can see from this graph that Facebook fans are much more likely to not only buy your brand, but to recommend it to their peers.  Most of us could probably have guessed as much – when people are engaged with a product or service through channels such as Facebook and Twitter, brand visibility is heightened and they have a better chance of staying on the customer’s radar.  The trick for brands is to understand why people become fans / followers and then to capitalize on this built-in communication channel by making sure they are telling them what they want to hear. 

Why Your Fans are Fans and Why Your Followers Follow You

So what do your fans want to hear?  Why did they become your fan in the first place?  More data from the study referenced above sheds some light on these questions.  In the graph below, we can see that 61% of “Max Connectors,” or users having 500+ social media connections became fans or followers of a brand to learn about new products, services and features.  This group was also driven to fan or follow a brand to learn more about the company culture, worker’s policies and other corporate information.  For the rest of the users (<500 SM connections), 65% engaged with the brand in order to stay abreast of sales and new deals, while 61% were looking to learn about new products, features and services.  Not to be forgotten, many fans also cited entertainment as a factor in their decision to follow a brand.  Here is the chart:

And what about Twitter?  Do you know why your followers are following you?  If not, you may not be telling them what they want to hear.  The chart below shows strong evidence that supports the notion that many users follow brands on Twitter in order to receive exclusive deals and offers.  Being a customer of the brand and looking for interesting or entertaining content came in neck and neck as the second and third primary reasons users follow a brand on Twitter.

Dig Deeper, But This is a Good Place to Start

Any company with a product or service should keep these easy to remember stats in mind when developing their social media strategy.  While there are countless other ways brands can optimize their social media efforts, the basic concepts laid out above are a great place to start.  Knowing why people follow your brand on social media channels and comprehending what they want to hear is powerful stuff.