An email newsletter, in comparison, usually takes considerable more effort to send out multiple times per week. In addition, social media giveaways on Twitter and Facebook have the potential to go viral if people deem it worthy enough to share with their friends.

Below are four exmpales of examples of companies adroitly using Facebook giveaways

The Oreck Challenge

For most people vacums aren’t very sexy, so the challenge for a copany like VacummClearners.net is finding a way to draw users in and keep them coming back.

VacuumCleaners.net came up with a great plan for its Monthly Giveaway for an Oreck XL. This promotional offer awards monthly winners with an Oreck XL Classic Upright valued at $349. And the process is kept super simple so visitors just have to “Like” the page and fill out a tiny entry form.

Cleaning up in the Facebook space

Allu Skincare makes a natural facial cream used to restore the youthful appearance of the skin. They are spreading the word fast by holding a Weekly Facebook Giveaway in addition to several other promotions like random giveaways to twitter followers. Free trials for consumers to test the product at no risk.

Existing customers may sign up to the “Be the New Face of Allu Photo Contest,” where the winner becomes the new model for upcoming promotions. Photo and video contests are excellent because they build up User Generated Content and empower brand advocates to spread the word about your products or services.

Fashionable Facebook 

Fashion Retailer Isn’t She Lovely Store offers a variety of modern women’s fashions and currently attracting fans with a $40 Cashmere scarf in separate Twitter and Facebook Giveaways.

Facebook and social media giveaways are excellent marketing tools for SMBs and consumers are more apt to support and remain loyal to brands when they have a good incentive besides hearing about your boring company news. The benefits are instant, can be viral and definitely last for years. So empower your fans to spread the word about your business and remember not bore them with constant promotional status updates. Keep it entertaining.

New Breed of Ad Man.

Advertising, sales and marketing have been done in one form or another for thousands of years. Now we’re in the midst of heralding in a new breed of “Ad Man” who specializes in getting your business coverage on relevant social media sites. If done right this new social media barker can deliver an avalanche of specialized traffic in a few scant hours.

Why They Are Important to Your Business?

It’s nearly impossible for your content to go viral without the aid of social promoters.  Your stuff has to be extremely funny, helpful or amazing for the most part and this type of content can’t be easily produced by businesses. But if you are able to create and infographic or an article which will be funny or useful to your customers then social promoters can help you land the initial set of votes needed on each specialized network in get your content seen and then voted up to the front page of each network.  This process is called “seeding,” and is very pivotal in getting viral promotions to reach thousands of people quickly.

Other benefits include, increased social proof and search engine visibility; social proof increases sales and customer interactions because people tend to do things which are already popular, and because “up votes” on most networks count as “backlinks” which improve your rankings in Google.

Who Are They and What do they Do?

Usually these promoters are top performers on various networks like Digg.com, Reddit.com, StumbleUpon.com, Delicious.com among many others. They submit interesting stories to these sites and acquire votes for each story through their network of friends and fans.  Anything they “upvote” is likely to get exposure because many people “follow” them on these networks.

Connecting with Social Promoters.

While social promoters may be popular, they often aren’t overtly well-know We can’t tell you who these people are because they may suffer serious penalties from the networks they operate on if they are outed.  Many social networks have strict rules against promoting content on behalf of a business so the social promoters may get their accounts downgraded or deleted entirely.  On top of that, the people in their networks may be penalized as well.

Social promoters spend countless hours strengthening their personal profiles on these top social networks so their votes will be powerful.  And they spend a great deal of time connecting with other users on these networks so that they can get extra votes when they have something to promote.  Therefore, they want to keep this large investment in time as safe as possible.

In order to truly maximize your marketing spend, finding the best ad channel for your business is the first step. Of course, every business presents a unique challenge and avoiding channels that are irrelevant to your goals is imperative to your success.

That’s because millions of marketing dollars are flushed down the wrong ad channels daily. In fact, a survey by research firm Experian found that five percent to 30 percent of marketing budgets are wasted as a result of bad data alone.

That’s a pretty significant portion of any budget.

And from there it only gets worse: add more marketing dollars wasted on business lunches, trade shows, and other sales tactics that are never going to directly lead to revenue.  The reality is that most small businesses don’t know how to track return on investment (ROI) per ad channel because it can be a rather complex affair.

However, fear not. There is a three step process to help you determine the best places for your marketing budget, but first ROI must be tracked.

But before you begin, check our video here on the importance of RIO tracking.

Step 1: Research & Discovery

Determine the strengths and weaknesses of your business: What advantages does your product or service have over competitors?  Do you have any unique selling points like free shipping, free consultation, money back guarantee, 30 day warranty or similar aspects?

Research competitors’ tactics: What channels are your top competitors using?  Contact their marketing agency and request a similar proposal.  If they are publically traded you may be able to get highly specific insights into their tactics.  If not, there are a number of free and cheap tools online which can give you great competitive insights.

Research new tactics relevant to your customers/targeted demographic groups: Your competitors might be doing well but are they leveraging cutting-edge tactics like Social Media Marketing or Viral Content Development?

Start preparing your platform (website or CRM tool) to track ROI: Can your website determine what traffic sources delivered the most sales for the least amount of money?  Check if your sales staff can attribute each sale to a specific lead source  Can your retail locations determine if increases in foot traffic were due to specific promotions/advertisements?

Step 2: Planning & Strategic Development

Determine ad channels to test based on competitors and past successes: Refine your list of tactics to the top five to 10 channels and be sure to record the results in a centralized location (spreadsheet, database or analytics platform) so you can make a quick comparison as to which results in the most sales for the least amount of money.

Customized messaging: Refine your sales pitch and Calls to Action per ad channel in order to address each specific audience and then create multiple variations because the way you say things can have a massive effect on conversion rates and sales.  And it is nearly impossible to determine what combination of words will work the best without testing on your actual customers.

Custom images and creatives: Similar to sales language, your creatives (banner ads, TV commercials, product photos etc.) should be catered to each channel and have a number of variations.  You may find that loud and distracting ads work well on Facebook but not on the Google Display Network.  Larger ads always perform better than smaller ones and video ads perform even better.  Some experts even recommend making up to 10 variations per ad.

Step 3: Initial Testing & Implementation

Initial testing: Use a small portion of your overall budget to determine what messaging and creatives are delivering the best results.  Which ones have the highest click-through rates, highest conversion rates and lowest cost per acquisition rate.  Most importantly, what is the ROI per channel? What geographic regions and times of ad delivery impacted these numbers most?

Implementation: Once you have the previous questions answered there should be a clear winner, but don’t focus your entire budget on this specific channel yet.  There are still a number of important questions that need to be addressed.  Are you tracking your customer’s progress throughout the entire sales cycle? If not you will miss important stages costing you sales and making customers leave like shopping carts requiring way too much information or not functioning properly.  Getting relevant customers to your “point of sale” (website/store location) is only half the battle; from there you need to focus on conversions or closing the sale.  This process is called Conversion Rate Optimization which includes things like speeding up the checkout process & conveying credibility to the customer more effectively.

Conclusion

I wish there were a magic bullet that would find the best place for you to spend your marketing dollars in order to generate the most revenue but it does not exist yet. Extensive research and testing must be done in order to make an informed decision based on solid data for your unique situation. These three steps should give you a good understanding about finding the best advertising channels for your business but it definitely gets more complex.

If you would like a free consultation on this process and what it can do for your bottom line just drop us a line.

In just a few short years mobile devices have transformed the way we communicate in so many ways. With every iteration of the iPhone (ie. iPhone 4s and iOS 5), update to the Blackberry and release of the latest alleged iPad killer, marketers are discovering new ways to reach their target audience.

And because mobile tools like the iPhone4S – Apple sold 4 million in less than one week – are really no longer even primarily phones but rather multimedia devices capable of powerful computing , savvy business owners are now finding multiple platforms to place their marketing messages.

Some quick stats to consider:

• Mobile marketing is on track to top $1.1 billion this year and $1.5 billion next year, according to eMarketer.
• More than two thirds of the world’s population has a mobile subscription, and mobile users are highly active.
• Facebook recently reported statistics indicating that over half of its 500 million subscribers access Facebook from a mobile device and exhibit twice the activity level of non-mobile users.

All this mobile growth means searches from smartphones and tablets are on the rise and new technologies are allowing us to factor users location into search results. Today’s smart phone gives marketers the ability to push more information  more easily. In turn this is increasing the importance of  local Search Engine Optimization; and mobile site optimization is becoming equally important.

In fact, Google is on track to earn $2.5 billion this year in mobile ad sales, Larry Page told investors recently during Google’s third quarter earnings call.  That growth is led by mobile search activity, with mobile display ads following behind.

If it’s good for Google make sure it’s good for you. And same goes with Apple and the iPhone. These tools are changing marketing.  Here are five thoughts to consider when deploying a  mobile marketing strategy.

1. Check the metrics. The first and possibly most important step is determining where you are now. Have a look at the traffic on your site and study exactly how much of it comes from mobile devices. Chances are the numbers are pretty high considering mobile searches have grown four-fold this past year. When you learn just how much mobile business your website is doing you’ll understand why it is so important to optimize for mobile viewing.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about mobile optimization on the Blue Fountain Media blog in recent months. Once you’ve decided to get started, have a look at my mobile optimization articles to get you moving in the right direction.

2. Integrate, don’t profligate. Be judicious with your mobile marketing spend. Once you’ve decided to go mobile and launch that sharp promotion, make sure you’re not serving up ads to quite mobile devices. A study of 10,000 mobile users by analytics firm Zokem shows mobile usage increases in the evenings and on weekends. These are a marketer’s prime hours when people are on the go.

Adjust the times during which your ads show. A one-size-fits-all timetable won’t perform as highly when you’re geotargeting. Set your delivery times accordingly so that each market is advertised to during the appropriate time of day.  If you are running an in-store promotion or special offer, place a coupon directly into your ad and customers can email or SMS your offer to themselves for future in-store redemption.

And location will continue to be the main driver of local mobile advertising’s growth. Because current generation smartphones and mobile computing devices are equipped with location awareness, large brand advertisers are developing campaign objectives by tailoring messages depending on audiences location.

3. Ready, set, action. It’s been said many times before, but can’t be said enough: Please, people, make it easy for visitors take action. Smartphone users typically click and type less than those using a desktop computer. Design for goal-oriented users. Mobile users are less likely to be “surfing” the Internet than when they’re tethered to their PCs. Most users accessing the Internet from a mobile device need fast access to either information or services.

Go back to your website analytics and use an advanced segment for mobile users to see how they have been interacting with desktop features on your site. This will provide insights into the kinds of services they will want to access most on your mobile site. Make those buttons big and clear to help convert those searches into sales.

4. Location is everything. Granular targeting (the ability to hyper-target based on demographics, geographics, lifestyle, ect.) is helping reach consumers more efficiently, creating real-time buying opportunities. Of course, this is truely relevant to mobile users, and this type of savvy mobile marketing can immediately increase business.

For example, if you have a traditional bricks-and-mortar store, target customers coupon accompanied with a map and some directions from their current location. Its easier than you think.

5. On the fly. Like most aspects of your business, be ready to adjust your mobile strategy on the fly. Constantly examine your metrics to see what is working and what maybe isn’t optimized to its fullest potential. These numbers don’t lie.

Analyzing your mobile ad campaigns can help you better understand the users visiting your site, the actions they are taking, and their path to conversion. You can then use this data to improve your website and marketing campaigns, and better track results against desktop campaigns.

Conclusion

Designing websites for mobile conversions is going to be paramount as more people consuming content on their handhelds will increasingly demand mobile websites that are quick and easy to use and the easier you make things for visitors the likelihood of converting them increases.

Start building out sites now that make it easier to convert visitors on a mobile device. Keep this in mind: to convert users on mobile you MUST play to the strengths of mobile devices.  We’ve long moved passed the days when replicating the desktop experience was good enough.

Check out some more tips to help make mobile conversions easier.

Please visit the Blue Fountain Media Business Learning Center when we take a look at how Apple’s iPhone 4s voice recognition, dubbed Siri, is going to continue to alter the mobile marketing landscape.

When clients initially come to Blue Fountain Media, our team always makes a point of asking them if they are satisfied with their website’s performance. Many of them find this to be an intriguing question. They know their sites can be doing better, but they’re just not sure how.

In our years of launching and re-launching websites, we have developed some tried and true ways to enhance and increase the performance of the sites we work on.

But first, let us define what we mean by performance.

When doing business online, performance means:

• Increased conversions
• More prominent placement in Google search results
• Greater repeat visits and customer retention
• Ultimately greater sales and brand exposure

So, how do you go about increasing the performance of your website?

1. Create Effective Landing Pages

A landing page is a page designed to receive the traffic generated by a specific marketing campaign. The job of a landing page is to convert that traffic into actions, such as a phone call, sign up, download or a purchase.

Usually, the most effective landing page is not your homepage, but a far more targeted page focusing on a single message. Let me give you an example of how this works.

Focus your message

Say that you are a store like Macy’s, a store with hundreds of product lines and thousands of products. When Macy’s advertises or markets a specific product or vendor online, it will direct the traffic to the specific page of the product or vendor being promoted. So, if Macy’s is promoting a sale on handbags, it is far more effective to drive traffic to a landing page featuring handbags than it would be to send them to the Macy’s homepage. Think of it as eliminating the middleman.

Every step you can eliminate in the purchasing process increases the likelihood of nailing down the sale. Similarly, for a service provider, if you can direct someone interested in a very specific service to a landing page featuring that specific service, then you are far more likely to convert that individual into a client than if you sent them to a page featuring multiple services.

Provide value added content

The web has done an amazing job of empowering consumers. Online, brands no longer have the luxury of delivering a one-way marketing message. To message effectively on the web it is critical that you provide information that serves the needs of your target audience.

For example, if you are selling a camera, provide value added content educating the visitor on the features, ease of use and specifications. If you can, it is even more effective to add a brief video tour of the product as video is more effective in creating a conversion than just a picture and a price.

Similarly, if you provide a service, focus on providing your visitors with practical information that both demonstrates your expertise and serves your client’s needs.

When clients receive more useful information on a product or service, they are more likely to buy. This is the kind of information that enhances your brand, builds trust and makes people want to do business with you.

Provide calls to action

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make online is to forget to give visitors the tools to take the next step, whether it’s making a purchase or requesting more information. If you are using your website to drive business, then give your visitors the “keys” to the car.

If you want them to buy, give them a large “buy now” button. If you want them to request a quote, then put the button right in their line of vision and make it large enough so it can’t be missed or ignored. Even if you just want them to take a baby step, give your visitors the opportunity to “inquire about this service/product” or “learn more, share, forward to a friend, request contact, download now,” etc.

Whatever action you desire from your visitor, make sure that is simple and intuitive for them to take that action!

The SEO Value of an Effective Landing Page

An effective landing page will not only help you get immediate conversions, but is a great tool for SEO (search engine optimization). As discussed above, a well-targeted landing page should provide explanations and detailed information on specific products or services. This kind of information is filled with the keywords that search engines, such as Google, love. As users search for the kinds of products or services you provide they will be much more likely to find you if you are at or near the top of the search results.

2. Improving Your Message

Visitors to any website have a remarkably short attention span. To capture them and turn visitors into customers or clients, you need to deliver your company’s central messages clearly, quickly and convincingly.

This can be accomplished by keeping your message simple and not overwhelming your visitors with massive blocks of text. As a major user of the internet, I can tell you my eyes glaze over when I see large paragraphs of text on a homepage or on any other landing page.

I always advocate using sparse copy and large fonts to get a visitor’s attention. The main job of a homepage is to deliver your central message and then create pathways to the internal landing pages that best serve the needs and interest of the visitors.

A great example of this is the Zappos.com homepage. They Use large fonts, keep the copy to a minimum and provide clear paths to the appropriate internal pages (“Dresses for all Occasions” “Fall Catalogue,” “faux and fabulous,” etc.).

While the subject of online messaging is brings up too many areas to handle in a single article, let me focus on one tool that can be particularly effective in delivering your core company message: video.

A video gives you the opportunity to speak directly with current and potential customers. It not only puts a human face on your company, but it can be a great way of demonstrating your expertise and your value proposition.

Many businesses are reluctant to create videos because they feel as if they need to have Hollywood quality production values and feel that such production values require an enormous investment. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Creating a quality video today is dirt cheap. You can buy a decent video camera for about $100. You can post the video to YouTube and then use that video right on your home page. Deliver your company’s message honestly and passionately and you will find the video to be a very powerful sales and marketing tool.

3. Give Your Visitors a Reason to Come Back

There are millions of people surfing the Internet. It takes work, marketing and creativity just to get them to come to your website for the first time. Once you are fortunate enough to be on a visitor’s radar, then it is critical to keep them coming back to your site again and again. Why? Because studies show that visitors to your site are rarely converted on the first visit.

The key to getting repeat visitors is to give them compelling reasons to return. Some of things I see on successful sites include:

• Practical articles providing information of real use to your visitors (example, is a ‘how to’ or ‘benefits of’, ‘new technologies’, ‘best practices’, etc)

• A regularly updated blog or another content driven portion of your site. Don’t be scared to incorporate videos.

• Opportunities for user-generated content

• Sign up to newsletter and/or RSS feeds and make sure its informative

• Practical “how to” advice

4. Make Better Use of Social Media

It seems like most companies have finally understood the fact that you need to be involved in social media. Unfortunately, very few companies have a clue as how to use social media effectively on a company website.

Just putting a bunch of icons like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn on the top of your website is good, but is mostly ineffective as the vast majority of users don’t click on them.  So how do you use social media as a business-generating tool?

The key is to integrate these platforms with compelling content on your site. If you provide interesting articles relating to your business, articles that visitors would really be interested in sharing, then give your visitors the opportunity to share that content through a variety of social media platforms.

If you provide great content, your visitors will email it to a friend, Tweet about it and even “like” that content and share it on Facebook. By having your visitors do your marketing for you, you have created a path to a much larger audience.

5. Measure and Monitor Your Results

This final point is- by far- the most important point I will make in this article. When potential clients come to my office, I always ask them about how their website is doing.

• What kind of traffic are you getting? Where is it coming from?
• What is your conversion rate?
• What is your bounce rate (the percentage of visitors that see your homepage and leave before going anywhere else on your site)?
• How much time are they spending on your site?
• What is the last page they visit before leaving your site?

Amazingly, the vast majority have no clue as to how to answer these questions. These same people, if they have a brick and mortar store, can tell you exactly how many people come to their store, how many purchase and how many just walk out without buying anything.

Owners of brick and mortar stores watch customer behavior carefully and then adjust accordingly.

When you fail to monitor the behavior of the visitors to your website, you miss a huge opportunity to make the same kinds of adjustments that will enhance your business. If 70% of the people coming to your homepage leave without looking at any other page on your site, then you had better make some serious improvements to your homepage.

If people are trying to buy products on your site but abandon their purchases during the checkout period, then you had better fix the checkout process.

The good news is that this kind of information is not only readily available; it is free with services like Google Analytics. It is quickly installed and will immediately provide the kind of data and insights that will help you grow your business.

In Conclusion

Your website can be and should be your single greatest marketing and sales tool. By following some basic principles, you can greatly increase the performance of your website. At Blue Fountain Media, we implement these principles on our clients’ websites and marketing campaigns and enjoy sharing in their successes.

If you are looking to improve the performance of your business’s website, we would be happy to hear from. Please give us a call at 212.260.1978 to get the ball rolling.

Many small business owners have heard of search engine optimization, yet few know how to properly plan and execute one entirely through. SEO is the process of improving rankings of web content in search results for keywords that are of value. If completed correctly, SEO can help bring your website out of obscurity of being buried deep in search results and into the bright light of a page on search result.

One of the most common misconceptions is the belief that it is one time process. On the contrary, SEO is a continuous process that should always be reviewed, updated and enhanced. At Blue Fountain Media, we have worked on many successful ongoing SEO projects with our clients. In our experience, there are certain issues that keep coming up and there are (fortunately) some simple fixes for some of the biggest problems.

Here are four frequent problems and solutions someone might encounter frequently during their SEO efforts.

Broken Links

A link directs visitors to another webpage. The two types of links: internal and external. Internal links are links on your website that help navigate visitors and search robots throughout the website. External links are links from other websites linking to your site. Both are very important to helping your site rank and both can hurt your SEO if they ever break.

Here are some ways broken links are created:

• Someone links to a page that is not accessible anymore
• Someone changes the name of a page and did not update the internal links on the website
• The server that hosts the page is no longer working

Checking for broken internal and external links should be done frequently to give your site the ability to rank the best it can.

Tools to Use

Google Webmaster Tools is a free tool that everyone should be using. Besides being free, it has such features as setting up automatic email alerts. To sign up, all you need is a Gmail account, your site’s URL, and your FTP username and password to verify that the site is yours. That’s it. To find out whether you have any broken links, head to the Crawl Errors section under Diagnostics which can be found in your dashboard menu.

Another tool I recommend is Screaming Frog. It’s also a free tool that you can install onto your desktop to audit your site for broken links, images, Meta tags, duplicate content, and much more. It’s pretty simple. All you do is add a URL of page and let the software do all the work.

Spelling Errors

Spelling errors happen to everyone. We all have used “Your” when we meant to use “You’re” or “There” instead of “Their”. If you’re smart, you asked someone to read over the blog post or your web page content before you published it and the mistake was caught just in time. If not, spelling errors can go unnoticed for a while negatively effecting the site’s ranking and making your site look unprofessional and spammy.  Also, spelling errors can cause your content not to even show up in search results.

Tool to Use

I use CheckDog to search for spelling errors on our website. My favorite feature is the automatic spell check which allows you to set up regularly scheduled checkups. The report you receive also comes with screenshots of the page that has the error/s.

Page Speed

As of April 9, 2010 Google added page speed, the time it takes for your site to load as a new factor to its algorithm for web search ranking. Google’s internal study found that internet users want faster websites and will spend less time on a site if loads slowly. In addition, a faster site improves users’ experience and conversion rates.

Tools to Use

Page Speed is an open source add on for Firefox/Firebug that examines the performance of web pages and gives recommendations of improvements. Two examples of how to improve page speed are:

• Cut down page time by reducing the number of cookies requested per upload of the site

• Place website stylesheets at the top of the document to speed up the translation in browsers

Meta Tags Errors

Meta tags contain data that provides search spiders with specific information about the content on that page. On site elements have a great impact on website’s search engine rankings. It is important to continuously review these elements for errors and mistakes.

However, identifying every page on your site for missing title tags, alt attributes, pages that are blocked by robots.txt when they shouldn’t, and finding 302 redirects instead of 301s is a long and tedious assignment for anyone, but it must be done. Here are few tools to the rescue.

Tools to Use

SEOMoz has many terrific tools that I use and one of them that I use frequently is SEO Web Crawler. To use this tool, you have to register with SEOMoz for one of their pro membership or try a free trial. The crawl report is very detailed and includes information about such elements like missing, title tags, client & server errors, long URLs, and other important on-site factors.

In Conclusion

Search engines offer businesses a great way to be found by qualified customers. A high placement in search results can mean a significant boost to the bottom line. However, many businesses fail to take full advantage of the opportunities presented by SEO. At Blue Fountain Media, using the most advanced and up to date SEO techniques and solutions, we have achieved remarkable results for many our clients. Please call us at 212.260.1978 to get started.

Online retail sales have increased 14 percent since July, according to a recent MasterCard report, and now eMarketer is optimistically predicting these numbers to double during the upcoming holiday season, despite a flailing economy.

As the online space continues to grow, more businesses are building out ecommerce websites in an effort to reach wider, often global, audiences to boost sales.

So with that in mind, here are five tips to building an ecommerce website.

Set Goals

Each page on your website should have a clear purpose. For example, your homepage should entice visitors to move forward to other pages like your category page or a direct product page. Many homepages suffer from over listing and providing too many choices that often overwhelm and confuse visitors. Instead, try organizing your homepage into simple categories that will guide visitors off your homepage to the pages they are looking for.

Get Users to Come Back

Look for opportunities to bring your visitors back regularly to your website. The more a visitor visits your website, the more likely they will make a purchase. For example, Living Social.com brings visitors back by sending regular emails announcing new deals near their location about products they might find interesting.

Simplify the Checkout

Create a checkout process that makes it effortless for your visitors to get their products. For example, don’t ask for unnecessary information from the customers. It has been proven that the more fields there are in a Web form, the fewer people fill it out. Also, the pages in your checkout process should be clearly labeled and free of clutter. For example, visitors should be able to easily distinguish between a shipping form and a credit card form.

Contact Information

Display your contact information visibly for your customers. This way they know how to contact you if they have a question. Don’t frustrate them by having them scour your entire site to find your contact information or it could lose you a sale.

Security

Shopping online offers a lot of benefits but many customers are still hesitant to buy because they are worried about having their information stolen. Do everything you can to keep information of your customers safe. And display those trust symbols (i.e. VeriSign & McAfee) proudly on your site, indicating that your checkout process has been verified and is secure.

In Conclusion

Your ecommerce website should be effective in converting your visitors into customers and having them become repeat customers. Building an ecommerce website requires skilled professionals with knowledge of the industry and a proven track record.

If you are looking to launch a new website or re-launch your current website, we encourage you to get in touch with us. We would be happy to discuss your online business goals and how Blue Fountain Media can help you to reach those goals. Please give us a call at 212-260-1978. 

When you are in business, you can’t afford to ignore new ways of getting the word out about you and your company.

You’ve probably been hearing about Google+, the giant search engine’s venture into the world of social networking. The fact is, Google+ is the fastest growing social media platform in history, with over 25 million users in the first two months.

If you are not getting the word out about your company on Google+, you are missing a golden opportunity to promote your business.

You may ask yourself, with all of the other social media platforms out there; do I have the time or inclination to get involved with yet another time eating networking site? Is it worth my time to spread myself out even thinner?

When the social media outlet has “Google” in its name, the answer is… absolutely!

The Size and Power of Google

Google may never catch up with Facebook in terms of size of membership, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a worthwhile venue for your business. Google+ has tried to take the best features from all of the major social media platforms. For a full overview of the features, check out Google’s tour of the features.

Let’s take a brief overview of Google+’s features:

Google Profile

Google+ allows you to create a personal profile, where you are given the opportunity to provide fairly detailed information on your work, family, interests and expertise. These profiles are completely searchable and, by using the appropriate keywords, can help a thought leader to reach a wider audience.

Once you have created your profile, you have the opportunity to share your expertise and information by posting content and links to content on your profile page. The content is fully searchable and will lead potential followers, customers and clients to your work. Unlike Twitter, there is no character limit to the content you can post. Google+ makes it simple to upload links, photographs, videos and slides.

Google + 1

Google+ includes a feature that can help to broadcast your content to a broad audience. When people see the content you’ve posted, they can use the “+1” function to endorse the content and forward it on. In other words, if your content is given a “+1,” that content is then broadcast to everyone who follows the person who liked your content.

Google Circles

So, now that you’ve created a profile and loaded your content, how do you get people to follow you? Google+ has “circles” that allows you to segment other Google+ members into categories of your choosing. For example, you can create a “family” circle and include all family members. For thought leaders, you can create circles that pertain to your area of expertise or that include target members of the press and/or influencers.

My personal group of circles includes “business journalists,” “tech journalists,” and journalists working for specific outlets (i.e. Wall Street Journal). By creating these specific circles, I can see the content that these journalists are posting to the general public. When I see their content and I can offer my own expertise and get on their radar.  If journalists choose to include me in a circle, it gives me a chance to put my content in from of them and may lead to them using me as a source on a story.

Google Hangout

Another interesting feature of Google+ of particular interest to business owners is the “hangout” function. “Hangout” allows you to invite up to ten people to join you in a video conference where you can make a small group presentation or any kind of meeting of your choice.

For business owners, this provides a number of interesting opportunities. You can hold seminars, client presentations, mini press conferences or roundtables. If you have a video of a prior speech or seminar you’ve presented, it gives you the opportunity to schedule small scale webinars.

So far, only individuals can create Google+ profiles, but that is about to change. Due to the overwhelming interest from businesses, Google has decided to create a special mechanism just for businesses.

When this feature launches, it will present even more opportunities for businesses to generate revenues. As of now, business owners can talk about their businesses as individuals, once the business pages launch, owners will be able to better combine their messaging with the specific business goals of their companies.

How will Google+ business pages differ from the company pages on Facebook? For one, the Google+ brand pages will be backed by Google’s powerful analytic tools. It will be easy for businesses to monitor which content pieces are getting the most attention and which ones aren’t resonating with their audience.

Furthermore, Google has a powerful Ad delivery network that will allow businesses to better connect with their audiences. It is unclear what the advertising model will be on the business pages, but you can expect Google to exploit the power of Google+ to generate considerable advertising revenues.

Most importantly, Google+ business pages will have the power of Google search behind them.  Again, it is unclear how Google+ results will be treated in the overall Google search algorithm, but businesses can’t afford not to have a presence on Google+.

In Conclusion

When Google steps into the social networking world, businesses are sure to follow. If your business isn’t a part of Google+, you can be assured that your competitors’ businesses are there!

For business owners, Google+ represents a golden opportunity to gain the attention of an even wider audience and to serve your current constituency in even more effective ways. If you have real expertise to share, then Google+ is a necessary arrow in your business marketing quiver.

Millennial marketing is not some Madison Avenue focus group, but rather a term you’ll be hearing and learning more and more about in coming years as the population segment referred to as Millennials hits its stride.

Also known as Gen Y, the generation born between the early 1980’s and the early 2000’s is already considered a primary or secondary audience for nearly three-fourths of all marketing campaigns in the United States. The 80 million or so Americans considered Millennials are digital natives who came of age alongside the Internet, which has had a huge impact on how they interact with brands and make purchase decisions.

And now they are on the precipice of big things.

According to a recent study from Digitas, Millennials are about to take a sharp swing upward in the luxury brand space. That is because a nice chunk of Millennials are on the doorstep of affluence, with an increasing number expected to earn $200,000 or higher in the next 10 years making them a massive target for luxury consumer marketers.

Another study suggests those that already qualify as wealthy are 17 percent more likely than their older (35+) counterparts to make a luxury purchase.

And while they were practically raised on brands, Millennials have an innate distrust of marketing. Still, this latest batch of twenty-somethings demand personalization, mobility and have an overriding need to be recognized as individuals.

It may be a lot to ask if you’re tasked with improving a company’s online marketing ROI, but soon they will be in charge. You better start getting to know who they are and how to reach them

Here are a few more hints: They are well-educated, and have also been well-praised by a generation of doting parents, which has led to negative stereotypes regarding their sense of entitlement. So they are hard to please yet at the same time demand to be pleased.

They favor Chanel over Banana Republic; BMW over Cadillac.

They’ve been exposed to interactive messaging from an early age and are adept at tuning out what is not relevant to them. However, they aren’t unreachable. Below are a few key steps luxury brands should take to make sure they’re reaching Millennials:

1. Start now. There’s already a small contingency of Millennials coming into a modicum of wealth, and studies predict that more will join their ranks over the next 10 years. A universal truth about luxury brands is that consumers feel loyal to them. Start building that loyalty online  now so that Gen Y will already be attached to your brand once they can afford to buy it.

2. Engage online. It’s no secret that the Millennial generation is active online. They’re not your core audience yet, so don’t drop your core marketing tactics, but this is where the next generation of buyers is most active right now. You should have a strong presence online (especially in social media) and use this time to start listening. Find out what they like and dislike about your brand and start gathering insights on how you can strengthen your brand in their eyes.

3. Be genuine. Gen Y believes they can see through phony marketing messages and have developed a love/hate relationship with certain over-the-top branding (Think Louis Vuitton). Rather than using loud and overly promotional online messaging, identify what they like about a brand and develop a story around it that they will be excited to follow.

4. Leverage peer recommendations. With social media becoming an increasingly important part of Millennials’ daily routines, it’s important to keep peer recommendations in mind. This generation has 24/7 access to their social circles and it’s highly unlikely that they’ll make a major luxury purchase decision without consulting their friends and, or family first.

5. Focus on experience. Hard selling is considerably less effective than creating a memorable brand experience. Static messages don’t register, so figure out how to get Gen Y to interact with your brand. It could be online in the form of a game or a microsite, or maybe it’s a live event or sponsorship. There’s an excellent example of how LVMH moved from hard selling to creating an enjoyable online experience in this NY Times article.

6. Show value. With the proliferation of online product reviews and peer recommendations, it’s becoming more important than ever to highlight the value and quality of your product. Millennials do extensive research before buying a luxury product, so make sure your positioning is very clear on the reasons your product is the best.

7. Offer exceptional customer service. Gen Y is hyper-connected and they expect their brands to be as well. Make sure you’re available on multiple communication channels to answer any questions they might have, without being pushy or trying to upsell. Upsell is seemingly less necessary with Millennials than with past generations because they are exceptionally loyal. According to a report by Edelman Digital, 70 percent will keep coming back to a product or service they like.

8. Do good. One of the best ways to start resonating with Gen Y now is to engage in social good. They grew up with volunteering as a major part of their high school and college requirements and consequently, being socially conscious has become a part of their core belief system. Show that your brand cares about humanity and the environment and you’ll start to build a positive image in the eyes of Millennials.

Brand and online reputation management is a big deal these days.

The increasing ways in which you can interact with customers online certainly has been a boon for businesses, but it also has unintended consequences; namely the ever growing possibility of being smeared by just about anyone with an Internet connection and a grudge.

And it doesn’t take much to tarnish the reputation you worked so hard to build.

According to a recent study of nearly 800 businesses, 65 percent of managers say it is hard to know exactly who influences online opinions given the proliferation of social networking websites, blogs, photo and video sharing sites, discussion boards and just about any other Web venue that allows users to share information.

This proliferation has made the ongoing monitoring of your professional reputation as important as locking your office doors before closing shop for the night. If you are dedicating resources to building a brand online, it only makes sense to also devote resources to protecting your online reputation. After all, what good is having a reputation, unless it’s a positive one?

Luckily the basics of online brand reputation management can be tackled with several free tools that help protect the very business you and your team work so hard to secure.

Of course, like so many undertakings on the Internet, your search should begin with Google.

Me on the Web

Google recently added Me on the Web to its dashboard to help users keep track of online mentions. Simply set up search alerts for data points incorporated into any Google profile, such as company name or email addresses and wait for the results to roll in.

This is a perfect baseline approach that helps users understand and manage what others may see when they perform a search for your operation. To sign up for search alerts through Me on the Web, log into the Google Dashboard and set up alerts by checking the boxes besides the alerts available.

The Me on the Web tool also provides links to resources offering tips on counteracting inflammatory and generally erroneous information posted by third-party sources. The new tool also includes links to resources about managing online identity and removing unwanted content.

Google Alerts

These alerts allow you to monitor news while also keeping tabs on the competition. Companies can use this tool to follow all kinds of searchable content from new Web search results to images and even news stories that include your brand.

Perhaps the greatest advantage Google Alerts has over other solutions is its ability to deliver information via email and RSS reader. Apply settings and the news will automatically start heading your way.

Just Google It

Perhaps the simplest and most intuitive method of reputation monitoring is the basic Google (as well as Bing and Yahoo) search.

Twitter

The micro blogging site Twitter has become one of the most popular ways for brand managers to introduce their business, services and products to the online world. It is also one of the easiest ways to monitor what is being said about your company in real-time, and then engage in those conversations.

To monitor a keyword, brand or product name conduct a Twitter Search within the application at search.twitter.com. Click on the RSS feed for that search query and add it to your RSS reader. Every mention will be sent directly to you.

If you’re interested in watching references to your Twitter user name, click the @ tab on the website, or the @ reply function will show every tweet that responds to you or mentions you.

Also, applications like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Seesmic and others all provide quick social media posts from multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Yahoo! Site Explorer

The ability to inspect external links to your blog and company website allows you to see who is linking back to your online properties. It’s important to keep tabs on this type of activity because often people posting negative comments will provide a link to your business.

Yahoo’s Site Explorer is the perfect tool for this. It’s easy to use and you only need to enter your URL to view activity across the Web.

Knowem

In the world of online reputation management, it is important to know who is actually who. That is why you should incorporate Knowem into your reputation management tool list. It checks the availability of your company and product names on over 400 social networking and bookmarking platforms. Knowem is a good way to discover if someone is posing as you or if it’s just a coincidence.

Social Mention

Social Mention is a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content into a single stream of information. The tool monitors more than 100 social media properties and determines the strength, sentiment, passion, reach, number of minutes per mention, number of unique authors and retweets, post rank, and sources of comments about your business.

Delicious

The social bookmarking service Delicious enables you to discover Web bookmarks that mention your name, services, or competitors. Use the search box or the Delicious tag page to monitor your online reputation.

Bonus Tools

Board Tracker: Searches discussion boards and forum threads.
Monitor This: Search aggregator monitors your keywords on up to 26 search engine feeds.
Wiki Alarm: Follows Wikipedia updates and notifies you when pages are edited.
Yahoo! Sideline : A desktop application that tracks Twitter in real-time for your brand/keywords.

At Blue Fountain Media, we regularly counsel clients on issues relating to online reputation management and social media messaging. If you have any questions or concerns relating to this field, please do not hesitate to give us a call at 212.260.1978. We are happy to help.