Two Thirds of Twitter talk is Twaddle

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Two Thirds of Twitter talk is Twaddle….

Jeremy Nelson-Smith, Internet Marketing Consultant LondonThis blog was prompted by an article by Fred Attewill in the Metro free newspaper that many Londoners grab on their way down the Tube every day.

I quote “Tweeters admit only 36 per cent of the tweets they receive are of any interest, about 25 per cent are actively disliked and the rest are instantly forgotten. That means 130 million messages a day sent out on Twitter are simply not worth reading”.

I can’t speak for the veracity of Mr Attewill’s research but by any account those are pretty staggering numbers. Basically it means that tweeters are flooding the online world with a load of junk that hardly anybody is interested in. If you use Twitter you may agree (I do). Personally I think this applies as much to business-to-business tweeting as it does to ‘proper’ social tweeting.

The main point of this post is to encourage you (in your business tweeting particularly) to:

a) Only spend some of your precious work time tweeting if you know that your target audience actually wants to receive your tweets (you can ask them via an email or web page poll). You may be surprised (pleasantly or otherwise) at the answers you get. If you carry on tweeting regardless you may be spending a lot of time that you could be devoting to other more productive internet marketing activities (I know some companies that do this, in the mistaken belief that they are going to drive web traffic, build their online customer base etc.).

b) Only tweet when you have something genuinely interesting and worthwhile to say. Your followers will thank you I can guarantee it and you’ll keep them following you for longer.

c) Don’t use your tweets to sell, sell, sell; keep them informative and relevant to what your audience wants to know about and your sales or new business enquiries will benefit.

Can using Twitter as part of your internet marketing mix work? Yes, of course it can, but like everything else you are (or maybe should be doing: Facebook anyone?) it has to address the needs of the most important people of all, i.e. your existing and prospective customers.

So keep your tweets customer-focused and highly topical and relevant!

Thanks for reading as always.

Jeremy

 

 

 

The Rise and Rise of the Smartphone

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Jeremy Nelson Smith Internet Marketing Consultant LondonThe Rise and Rise of the Smartphone. An interesting question for anyone involved in Internet Marketing: How best to connect with customers using smartphones?

A short article in the February 16th Metro that mentions recent survey data from Cisco Systems, the computer networking company, should be a clear indication to both internet marketing consultants and business owners (who depend more on internet marketing to drive sales), that the world of mobile is one that must seriously be addressed in terms of ensuring that the demands of consumers are met.

According to Cisco mobile devices will outnumber the world’s population in just four years; by 2016 there will be more than 10 billion devices that connect to the internet.

About 90 per ent of mobile data will be viewed via smartphones, laptops and portable gadgets Cisco say. The computer networking giant predicts that mobile data traffic will grow by almost 80 percent a year.

All of this has major implications for anyone who is involved in marketing products and services on the internet.

Asking how best to connect and service the requirements of both existing and potential customers who use smartphones is one that should be uppermost in the minds of business owners and their advisors right now.

Thanks for reading.

Jeremy Nelson-Smith, Internet Marketing Consultant.

www.theinternetspecialist.co.uk

 

 

Internet Marketing Consultant London Blog: Setting Your Website Objectives

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Jeremy Nelson Smith Internet Marketing Consultant LondonIt never ceases to amaze me how many businesses do not take the time to set even the simplest of objectives for their website.

Many businesses actually develop a strategy, even a complicated one, without having any clear idea of what objective(s) the strategy is designed to achieve. I was always taught that setting objectives comes before developing a strategy!

Objectives do not have to be complicated. One side of A4 or less will suffice to put them down, so they can be referred to, progress measured, amendments made.

So, if you really, really want your website to maximise its ROI (return on investment) I heartily recommend you:

1. Set SMART* lead generation objectives.

It’s essential to set SMART* lead generation objectives so that you can determine what does and doesn’t work. Set specific targets which you can track and measure.

Check your progress regularly, at least once a month (more often for some activities like new Google AdWords campaigns).

If you don’t spend time setting your objectives, how will you ever know how successful (or not) your lead generation programme has been and what ROI it has delivered? Just do it!

(*SMART = Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-limited)

Wishing you every success with your business!

Jeremy

Setting objectives is just one of the many tips to be found in my free booklet ‘How to Generate More Revenue from Your Website – Guaranteed!’. Visit my Home page to get your copy!

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Internet Marketing Consultant London Blog: New Cookie Regulations – how will they affect you?

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Jeremy Nelson SmithNew Cookie Regulations – how will they affect you?

New cookie regulations came into force in May 2011. Website owners have until May 2012 to comply. So, if you’re a website owner you need to a) be aware of the regulations and b) ensure you comply with them by May 2012.

These regulations are designed to ensure that visitors to websites are made aware of how the site uses cookies and that their consent is obtained for the use of certain types of cookie.

So, what are cookies? Most of you reading this will know what cookies are but for those of you that don’t here’s the definition from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO):

A cookie is a small file, typically of letters and numbers, downloaded on to a device when the user accesses certain websites. Cookies allow a website to recognise a user’s device. (More info on cookies at  http://www.allaboutcookies.org)

The regulations are complex and by no means completely clear, which is why the Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham issued his ‘Half-term Report’ into how compliance with the regulations is going (or not), on 13 December. You can download a PDF copy of this from http://www.ico.gov.uk/news/blog/2011/half-term-report-on-cookies-compliance.aspx. Just click on the link in the fourth paragraph.

I strongly recommend that you read the document and talk to your web designer, web master or web/internet marketing consultant to ensure you comply with the law. If you don’t have any of these and want clarification about how the rules might affect you then please email me at jns@theinternetspecialist.co.uk.

The good news is that for many businesses, particularly those using cookies mainly to collect anonymous website traffic data (through Google Analytics for example), it is not going to be too difficult or expensive to comply. But comply you must!

Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

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Internet Marketing Consultant London Blog: Lead conversion fundamentals – maximise visitor engagement and response

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Jeremy Nelson SmithLead conversion fundamentals – maximise visitor engagement and response

Attracting quality visitors to your web pages is hard work which takes time and money. It makes sense therefore to ensure that your visitors are as engaged as possible when they land on your site.

So:

1. Make sure your content loads quickly so visitors don’t have to spend time waiting for it to appear, particularly images and videos. Note: Google now takes page load time into account as part of its ranking algorythm.

2. Have a clear call to action on as many pages of your site as possible, even if it’s just a ‘Call us now!’ button. Note: it’s amazing how many web sites I still see where you really have to hunt around for the contact phone number, or go to a Contact Us page to find it. Put your phone and email contact details on every page!

3. Give your visitors a compelling reason to respond to your call(s) to action. Think what it would take for you, as a visitor to your own site, to respond to your own call to action, then apply that.

4. Update your content and even your page layouts regularly. Your website is your shop window. Do Harrods or Selfridges leave their shop windows the same day after day, month after month? No, they most certainly don’t! They respond rapidly to marketplace changes and trends and dress their windows accordingly. You can apply that thinking to your main landing pages (not just your Home page).

Hope you found the above useful.

Wishing you all the best with your business.

Jeremy

For a copy of my free guide ‘How to Generate More Revenue from your Website – Guaranteed!’, go to www.the-internet-marketing-expert.co.uk

Internet Marketing Consultant London Blog

 

Internet Marketing Consultant London Blog: The Wonders of Google Analytics (Part 2): Visitors Flow Report

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Jeremy Nelson SmithThe Wonders of Google Analytics (Part 2): Visitors Flow Report

Do you want to see a flow diagram of just how your visitors are moving through your web pages, whether they’re reaching the right pages or abandoning their visit too early?

Well, thanks to the new Google Analytics Visitors Flow Report you can now see graphically just how your visitors are proceeding (or not) through your web site.

The Visitors Flow report can be found at Standard Reporting (top level orange nav bar) / Audience / Visitors Flow.

Visitors Flow is a graphical representation of the paths that your visitors took through your site, from the source, through to various pages. It also shows where along their pathways they exited.

If you move your mouse over each page name a pop-up window will show you the total visitors, the through traffic, i.e. the visitors that went on to another page and the number of drop-offs, i.e. the visitors who left at that point. This is obviously very, very useful in identifying whether your visitors are intereacting with your content in the way that you would like.

Another brilliant feature is that you can view the flow for different visitor segments (e.g. new visitors, visits with conversions, mobile visitors etc.). Just select the segment you want from the drop-down above the report.

You can also vary the number of visible connections between pages by using the Connections slider to the right of the Select a Segment drop down.

All in all Vistors Flow is another excellent improvement to the functionality of Google Analytics.

Wishing you success with your internet marketing

Jeremy.

P.S. For a copy of my free guide ‘How to Generate More Revenue from your Website – Guaranteed!’, go to www.the-internet-marketing-expert.co.uk

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Internet Marketing Consultant London Blog: The wonders of Google Analytics (Part 1): new Real-Time Visitor Reporting

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Jeremy Nelson SmithThe Wonders of Google Analytics (Part 1): new Real-Time Visitor Reporting

A lot of people say negative things about Google wanting to dominate the online world, dominate the Universe etc., but on the whole I’m not one of them. When you look at what they provide for free to the SME owner or senior manager it really is quite remarkable.

The latest incarnation of Google Analytics is a case in point. Google Analytics has always been a pretty amazing free tool for businesses of all sizes, particularly SME’s for whom enterprise level analytics tools are too over-size in terms of features and too expensive. However, the latest launch of Google Analytics goes way further than before with some really useful and very cool features to help you in your analysis of exactly what’s happening on your web pages.

For example, how would you like to see how many people are visiting your website in real-time ? And see what pages they’re looking at right now? And see what URLs and which countries they are coming from? And what keywords they’re using?

Well, now you can. Here’s how:

1. Log in to your Google Analytics account.

2. Make sure you’re using the new version by, if necessary, clicking ‘New Version’ in the top right navigation bar.

3. Click Home in the orange navigation bar.

4. Click Real-Time (Beta) then Overview in the drop down menu.

5. You can get also more detail by clicking on Locations, Traffic Sources and Content in the drop down menu.

Pretty impressive, I think you’ll agree. And pretty useful, particularly if you’re running AdWords campaigns where a real-time view of what’s happening on your pages is really, really helpful in assessing your campaign effectiveness. Thanks Google.

More on the new version of Google Analytics coming in Part 2.

Wishing you success with your Internet marketing.

Jeremy

P.S. For a copy of my free guide ‘How to Generate More Revenue from your Website – Guaranteed!’, go to www.the-internet-marketing-expert.co.uk

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Internet Marketing Consultant London Blog: Two essential tips for engaging your website visitors and converting them into buyers or new business contacts.

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Two essential tips for engaging your website visitors and converting them into buyers or new business contacts.

Getting quality visitors to your web site is the first step in generating maximum revenue from your website. The second is to engage those visitors and give them a compelling reason for carrying out an action which results in you obtaining their contact details for your new business database.

Here are two ways you can do that:

Tip One: Provide free content that delivers real value.

It’s unlikely that visitors will buy your product or engage your services the first time they visit your website. This applies particularly to service orientated websites; after all, they probably know little about your company and have no relationship with you.

But if someone visits your website and then leaves without giving you their contact details, you’ll have no way of following up, building a relationship with them and turning them from a prospect into a customer.

You need to offer your prospects something valuable in return for their contact details before they leave your site; a valuable, compelling, can’t ignore ‘offer’ that they’ll find hard to resist, for example:

  • A special ‘time-limited’ discount
  • A free consultation (limited to say 30 minutes)
  • A downloadable e-book
  • A free hard-copy ‘How to’ guide
  • A video or DVD

N.B. To be truly irresistible it must address their biggest challenge or problem.

Tip Two: Make your website completely customer-focused.

Too many websites are designed ‘from the inside out’. This means that the website owner has not thought enough about the design, functionality, layout and content from the customer’s perspective.

When a prospect visits your site they are totally focused on themselves, their challenges or problems and how you might provide a solution. This applies whether that visitor is looking for an urgent replacement ink cartridge for their printer or a complete marketing review that is going to accelerate their business growth.

The content of your website should be well-written, easy to understand, well presented and highly relevant to your target audience, and it should answer all the questions likely to be asked by your visitors. Highly relevant content can also increase your Google page rank.

Above all, look at your website from your customers’ perspective. Give them what they want to see, read and listen to, not what you want.

Wishing you every success in your business.

Jeremy

For a copy of my free guide ‘How to Generate More Revenue from your Website – Guaranteed!’, go to www.the-internet-marketing-expert.co.uk

Internet Marketing Consultant London Blog

Internet Marketing Consultant London Blog: How to generate more revenue from your website – guaranteed!

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Jeremy Nelson SmithHow to generate more revenue from your website – guaranteed!

Anyone who’s been in business for a while knows that two of the absolute ‘must-haves’ for success are:

  1. Getting new customer or clients
  2. Keeping them coming back for more

For most SMEs maintaining a steady flow of new clients is really quite difficult. The majority of business owners that I meet usually rely on using a few lead generation tactics because they bring some good results. However, any business that sticks to a just small ‘basket’ of lead generation techniques is in danger of being outstripped by competitors who use a wider range of effective tactics to attract clients.

If you want to accelerate your company profits you need a steady flow of high-quality leads. To achieve that you need to use many different ways to generate leads, both on and offline.

Here are just five key tips on lead generation, without any cold calling (which you probably hate doing as much as I do!).

1. Set your SMART* lead generation objectives so you can determine what works and what doesn’t. Set specific targets that you can track and measure.

Spend time setting your objectives and specific, measurable targets. If you don’t how will you ever know if your lead generation programme has been successful or not?

(*SMART = Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-limited)

2. Use your website as your primary ‘lead conversion machine’.

Your website, if set up and optimised correctly, can be a powerful marketing tool that takes prospects generated by your lead generation programme and converts them into a never-ending stream of high-quality leads for your business.

To work effectively your key landing pages (the ones where visitors enter your website) must capture your visitor’s attention immediately. On every page have a call to action or incentive for visitors to do something that you want them to do, e.g. watch a video, read a blog post, download a PDF, sign up for a newsletter.

3. Use Social media marketing to attract people to your website.

Social media marketing is promoting your website through social media channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or blogging. It can be a low cost and very effective way of increasing your website traffic.

Create a Facebook page for your business. Facebook can work for businesses as long as doing so fits the preferences and behaviours of your audiences.

Start a blog on your site and post interesting, informative content regularly. You may well be surprised by how many people visit your website to read it, and of course once they’re on your site you have the opportunity of incentivising them to complete an action that moves them closer to becoming a customer or client.

4. Use direct mail to generate leads.

Direct mail like sales letters, post cards, flyers etc., is still one of the most effective ways of communicating your messages to your target audience and of course driving them to your website, where they should be incentivised to complete the kind of actions I’ve mentioned above.

Direct mail’s main advantage over email is that it doesn’t have the message filtering that email marketing has.

5. Use online advertising like Google AdWords to instantly drive quality traffic to your web pages.

Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC) can be a highly effective way of getting the right people to your web site quickly, particularly if you are finding it difficult to obtain page 1 rankings on Google.

N.B. Proceed with caution with PPC! You need to be very specific with your targeting and campaign set up or you may find your self spending more money, more quickly than you had planned! If you have little or no experience with PPC then consult an expert. It’ll save you frustration, time and money in the long run.

For many more tips email me at jns@theinternetspecialist.co.uk for a copy of my free booklet – ‘How to Generate More Revenue from Your Website – Guaranteed!’

Internet Marketing Consultant London Blog

Internet Marketing Consultant London Blog: What are your website visitors clicking on? Use Google In-page Analytics to find out.

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What are your website visitors clicking on? Use Google In-page Analytics to find out.

Knowing which links on your website are being clicked on, and just as importantly which are not, can help you enormously in deciding how best to optimise your web pages for maximum conversion effectiveness. As we all know getting people to your website is one thing, getting them to do what you want them to do when they get there is quite another!

So just how can you see which are the most and least well used links on your website?

Using In-Page Analytics in your Google Analytics account is one free way; it’s not the most sophisticated nor accurate tool available but for the SME owner it’s a quick and easy way of assessing how your web pages are performing when it comes to people moving from one part of your site to another.

Here’s how to access In-Page Analytics (if you’re used to accessing your Google Analytics reports then skip steps 1 – 4):

  1. Log in to your Google Account
  2. From your account settings choose Analytics
  3. Click on your account name
  4. In the Website Profiles list click on View report
  5. From the top left hand menu (headed by Dashboard) click on Content
  6. From the sub-menu select In-Page Analytics

As if by magic you’ll see your website appear (probably the Home page) in the panel to the right. The Content Detail for that page (pageviews, bounce rate etc) will appear to the left.

In the right hand panel you can see the percentage of clicks for each link.

The orange bar at the bottom shows you the percentage of clicks below what you are looking at, great for checking if links ‘below the fold’ (i.e. not visible to most people using standard monitor or laptop screens without scrolling) are being missed (Tip: never put your most important ‘hero’ content or messages below the fold where people can miss it).

You can use the scroll bar to the right to move up and down the page.

You can navigate from one page to another within the In-Page Analytics window and each time you move to another page the corresponding data will appear. Clever stuff isn’t it!

To get out of In-Page Analytics and back to the main report data click on Back to Content Overview at top left of the page, under the Google Analytics window.

I strongly recommend that you give Google In-Page Analytics a try. All the clients I’ve shown it to have been fascinated by the data and some key decisions about how to improve content layout and navigation have been made because of it.

Just remember to take the data as a snapshot of what’s happening click-wise on your web pages. Its a valuable snapshot but not doesn’t provide the level of data that you’ll get with paid-for tools like Clicktale or CrazyEgg.

Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

Internet Marketing Consultant London Blog