- 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/

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

Finally!  A Way to Track Your Facebook Fan Page

If only there was a way to track Facebook Fan Pages with Google Analytics…

As Facebook Fan Pages gain momentum as a leading Social Media Marketing outlet, the need to effectively track this medium becomes all the more important.  Up until very recently, the only way to monitor your Fan Page was through the extremely limiting Facebook Insights.  Insights provides page administrators limited data on visitor demographics and fan interaction but is unable to report on visitor statistics, traffic sources, keyword data and some of the other extensive reporting that Google Analytics provides.  Thanks to some crafty out of the box thinking by London based web developers Webdigi, the code has been cracked and now everyone can track their Fan Pages using Google Analytics.  In this post, we will show you how to track your Fan Page with a step-by-step guide, including the necessary links to generate your personal Google Analytics tracking code that will be installed on your page.  We will also introduce you to the Social Media monitoring tool Unilyzer and show you how it can be used in correlation with Google Analytics to extract even more detailed and valuable information from Facebook and other Social Media outlets.  Let’s get started. 

Google Analytics for Facebook Fan Pages + Unilyzer = Tracking Bliss

Once you complete the installation of Google Analytics on your Facebook Fan Page, take your tracking to a new level using the Social Media Monitoring Dashboard from the Unilyzer (www.unilyzer.com).  The Unilyzer is a data-to-dashboard tool that uses Google Analytics to pull data from a wide range of Social Media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as well as social bookmark sites like Digg, Stumble and Delicious – using this data, the Unilyzer generates a personal dashboard with insightful charts and trending arrows which allows you to adjust your Social Media marketing efforts accordingly.  Before we tackle the process of tracking the Facebook Fan Page on the Unilyzer, let’s take a look at the following step-by-step guide you will need to follow to install Google Analytics on your Fan Page.

Google Analytics Installation Guide for Facebook Fan Pages

Installing Google Analytics on your Facebook Fan Page isn’t all that complicated, but you will want to closely follow the steps provided below as there are a few moving parts.  Luckily, the aforementioned web development company Webdigi (www.webdigi.co.uk/) has written up an extremely comprehensive “how-to” that will facilitate the process.  Let’s take a look at some excerpts from their article below.  If you’ve already installed Analytics to your page, scroll down to the “Unilyzer” section to learn how the Unilyzer, when used in correlation with Google Analytics, allows for an even more extensive tracking experience.

How to setup Google Analytics on your Facebook fan pages

“The workaround we use in our code is to include Google Analytics as an image instead of setting the standard Javascript. This method tracks every visitor to the custom facebook pages on Google Analytics. It required a combination of server side cookie management and an additional <img> tag to the bottom of the facebook fan page. Here are the steps to get Google Analytics working on your facebook fan page.

1) Setup Google Analytics account. If you already have one, create a new website profile. You can name it facebook.com or facebook.com/your_page_name. You will finally get your tracking code which looks like this UA-3123123-2
2) Create your custom img tag for each of your pages you like to track. EG: contact form, services, products etc. You can use our tool to create the Google Analytics link generator for Facebook pages.
3) Add the entire custom image html tag from step 2 to the bottom of each Facebook fan page that you need to track.

That is all there is to it! Google Analytics is not real-time, so you will need to give it some time. Approximately a day before you see the fruits of your “hard” work.”

For advanced users

“Use this method, if you don’t want to use our hosted link redirection as mentioned in the method above. You can download the entire source code which is just about three files to get this setup working on your own server (running PHP4.3 or above). The code is written in PHP and essentially creates the Google image tracking URL with the referrer, page information, ID, etc. The additional advantage of hosting this on your own server and domain is that visits from your website to your facebook fan page gets tracked, etc. You will also be able to customise further if you wish. Please do share any useful updates you apply to the tracking link code.

Facebook – Google Analytics Version 1.1 (Updated 21st Feb, 2010).  For advanced method – Download this code to use on your server.

If you don’t have a Facebook fan page yet, visit our tutorial for code and help on creating customised Facebook fan pages.

PS: We could not find any other source / blog that described how to get Google Analytics on Facebook fan pages! There is support for canvas pages and applications but nothing for Static FBML fan pages. Hope this helps and please leave your comments below.”

UPDATE:
1) A lot of users have asked how to track visits to the wall. Yes, this can be done. Please see the comments by iphp below.
2) Here is a screenshot to a staticFBML where the code should be placed

Source: http://www.webdigi.co.uk/

Google Analytics is now tracking your Facebook Fan Page – Wait, it gets better…

Facebook Fan Pages have really caught on as a great way for individuals and companies to create micro-communities of followers of their brand and/or cause.  Now that you have the capability of installing Google Analytics on your page, take the next step and use a tool that works with Google Analytics to even further enhance your tracking and monitoring efforts.  The Unilyzer (www.unilyzer.com) is just the tool you need if you are looking for even more in-depth reporting on your Fan Page and other Social Media channels.  We will first take a look at what the Unilyzer is and how it works before moving on to a more detailed explanation of how the Dashboard can be customized to report on specific information. 

The Unilyzer – a new comprehensive Social Media Monitoring and Tracking Dashboard 

A bevy of tools for tracking social media have been developed over the past few years, many of them quite effective in what they do.  With that said, they all have their shortcomings – too expensive, lack of reporting breadth, uninspired user interfaces, minimal tracking channel capabilities.  Some tracking tools are great but medium specific, reporting on only one Social Media outlet and requiring the user to manage multiple monitoring tools in order to get a truly clear vision of their Inbound Marketing efforts.  The new Social Media monitoring Dashboard Unilyzer, developed by Eman Bass, provides a great overall package combining a great user interface, numerous customizable data points, user-friendly functionality, and broad reporting on all of the major Social Media channels.  And now that Google Analytics can be easily installed to track Facebook Fan Pages, the Unilyzer is even more attractive as it offers the best combined analytical reporting of Fan Pages the market has to offer.  For more information about the Unilyzer’s tracking and reporting capabilities, visit www.unilyzer.com or click here to watch a short video that describes the Unilyzer’s basic functions.

All in all, the fact that we now have the capability to properly track Facebook Fan Pages is a very good thing and it will give Page administrators a level of insight that Facebook Insight does not.

Are you looking for referrals, website traffic, feedback, communication, or establishing yourself as an expert?  I already know your answer, “I want all of those things”.  You will get more bang for your time if you focus on one goal at a time. My personal recommendation to beginners is to focus on the goal of establishing yourself as an expert and authority.  By reaching this goal the other goals will fall into place.

What Can I Contribute?

Social media is not like traditional advertising or marketing. It is more like referrals, in networking it is not about making sales at the after hours mixers.  You need to build a rapport with your online network by providing good information, recommending resources, and sharing ideas and feedback. Think about what you can give to your audience. What information or ideas do I have that would be of interest to your network? Approach it from the attitude, ‘I am here to help’ before you even think about asking for the sale. Start by writing articles in the range of 300-500 words and posting them on your website or blog. Then read about how-to Repurpose Your Content and turn the same information in your articles into tweets, wall posts, and videos.

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If your domain is long, contains dashes or numbers, there is a possibility that the user will completely forget about it. After two or three days they won’t even remember that your site exists. A short and memorable domain, will stick in the mind of the visitor. With a memorable name, even if they don’t remember the exact website address, they can type the catch phrase into Google to find your website again.

I recently stumbled upon a domain name study by Daniel Scocco in 2008. The results were pretty interesting. In his analysis, he gathered the top 250 most popular websites in the world (according to Alexa) and counted how many characters and words their domains had.

• Average number of characters in a domain name: 7.15
• 70% had less than 8 characters
• The most common structure was 8 characters and 2 words
• 86% of the domains had a .com extension
• 4% contained numbers and only 3 used dashes

What insight can you take from this research when it comes to picking a domain name for your blog or website?

Follow these six GOLDEN rules when picking a domain name:

1. Keep it Short (target around 8 letters)
2. Memorable & Catchy
3. Easy to Spell (phonetic, spell it like it sounds)
4. Descriptive and Brand-able (think Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter)
5. No Hyphens or Numbers
6. .COM Extension

The bottom line is a name alone won’t make your website successful. It’s only a name. Good content, products, and services make a website a success. That being said and all other things being equal, a website with a good domain name will always outperform a competitor with a bad or average domain name.

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If you post a video and get 1 million views for a video and only 3% of those viewers visit your site that is 30 thousand visitors! If 3% of those convert into sign-ups or customers, that is 900 signups or sales! Sound good to you?

I know it’s very difficult to get a video with 1 million views, but take a look at YouTube and see what videos are popular. Why are they so popular? What is so good about them? It’s not the production value, it’s not because they have celebrities or cost a large amount of money to create.

These videos are crazy popular because they are extremely funny, or cool, or amazing for some reason. The videos can be planned or spontaneous, but they are NOT selling something, they are NOT outwardly trying to get customers or build their mailing list. If you want to create a viral video you cannot be selling in the video. Instead, let the video generate buzz for you!

Another great idea is to give the viewer something in your videos for free. Teach them something, give them information they are looking for, entertain them. Become an authority on your topic, and they will love you and gladly tell others about you.

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Authority sites generally have more content and more pages than other sites. The search engines feed on content-rich websites and those with many pages and much content per page will do better when going head-to-head with a smaller site. If your site has links from other authority sites, your site will be considered an authority site as well. Search engines generally give more weight to the incoming links from authority sites as long as their main keyword is the same as your own.

How do you establish your site as an authority site?

• Add more pages to your site
• Add informative and engaging content to those pages
• Get other authority sites to link to you

Article writing is a great way to “kill two birds with one stone.”  If your site is built using WorPress, then each time you add a post, you are adding a page to your site.  All your articles should use permalinks!

• Learn about Permalinks
• Learn about Marketing with Articles

You can write your own articles.  If you don’t have time, then delegate this task to someone else, or hire a copywriter to do this for you. If you already know how to write content-rich, keyword-rich text, then you can take this task on with very little expense. If this is not your strength, then you may delegate this task or hire someone else to do it. As an alternative, there are online article exchanges where you can pick up content simply by linking back to the author’s site.

Once you have more pages with more content, you will need to solicit other authority sites to becoming link partners with you. This can be accomplished through email. Some will and some will not answer your requests,  and of those who answer, some will and some will not link to you. The content and design quality of your website will determine whether others will want to link to your site.

Optimize your article pages to be crawled by the search engines. If you are using WordPress, make sure to categorize and tag your articles using your targeted keyword phrases. It also helps to have the title of your articles include some of your keyword phrases, because WordPress automatically makes that title’s H1 title tag.  Good luck!

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Paid Placement –  when you pay to have your site listed under specific keywords, you only get charged when your listing gets clicked, hence the term pay-per-click. The amount you pay is determined by a bid system. The more competition in a keyword category, the higher the price per click will be.

Below is a screen shot of search results in Google. The organic search results are highlighted in green, and the pay per click positions are in pink. The three highest bid advertisers are listed above the organic results, and the remaining advertisers are listed in descending order on the right sidebar. Google looks at more than just the bid to determine your ad placement. Your site must be relevant to the keyword phrase you are competing in. This is to avoid search result contamination. Regardless of how high the credit card companies bid, they won’t appear under the search term ‘bubble gum’ on Google.

So, which form of traffic is better, organic or paid? Not all traffic is created equal. While organic traffic is free and pay-per-click costs money, that is not the only way to evaluate their performance. The best way to know, is to look at your Google Analytic’s report (more info on Google Analytics) and see which traffic source is generating the most time on site, lowest bounce rate, and pages per visit.  The source that brings quality visitors to your site is the best. Quality visitors spend a longer period of  time on your site and browse your site, looking at multiple pages. The longer they are on your website, the better chance you have at converting them to customers.
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Google returns data about that specific keyword phrase and various combination’s of the phrase. Next to the keyword phrases is the number of times the phrases were entered into the Google search box. In our example, ‘Wedding Invitations’ was searched 1.2 million times in the month of September. As you scan down the list you will see other phrases like ‘Wedding Invitation Wording’ searched 135,000 times last month.

If you think about it, this tool is also telling you online demand for a product. 1.2 million people were searching for wedding invitations online. Those people searching for wedding invitations are looking to research, shop, and price compare. Those are potential customers!

However, the most powerful and effective keyword phrases to position your website around are the less competitive 3-5 word keyword phrases. These phrases will produce more targeted traffic on your website. Think about it. Which is better, a customer looking for ‘Wedding Invitations’ or ‘Starfish Wedding Invitations’? The bride specifically searching for ‘starfish invitations’ knows what she wants, versus the bride entering in ‘wedding invitations’ is just starting her research and is more likely to be window shopping (not ready to buy).

In brainstorming keyword phrases try all the combination’s. Experiment with plural and singular spellings. Common slang terms and acronyms for your industry are a good starting point. Ideally you will end up with a list of one hundred or more keyword phrases. This is the list that you should begin to strategize your website and blog content around. These are the keyword phrases you should begin to include in your article writing. Read my post on article marketing for more information.

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