My experience with social media began with LinkedIn. It was a good fit for my early objectives, to round out a kind of “online resume” and reach the business community with my services at the time (I was 15 years in as a print advertising sales rep for newspapers and magazines).  My experience with social media today is primarily to build a business I really enjoy and for changing my life into something I want it to be. I like the path I finally found, one that doesn’t force me to eat, sleep and breath marketing.

Today, my little Attic has become my career.  Social media COMBINED with Internet marketing is growing this little operation slowly but surely.  I spent quite a lot of money, about $30 or $40 at a time, on the premise of FREE advertising with social media over the past year or so.  An appealing concept since I had no money to invest and because as a marketing experiment, I wanted to see if it could be done – build a business without spending money on advertising. It can, but I goofed in wasting a lot of money on these confounded classes and seminars that could technically be considered advertising since that was what I was trying to do from them.  Now I look for programs where I can learn all I want for free and only pay for things that will pay for themselves ~ win, win propositions.  I have learned many things the hard way concerning social media and online marketing.  Here is the list:

1. A giant following on social media channels, a best-selling book and a lot of useful tips does not = social media expert for businesses. More likely the expertise is at making a profit by selling a book, education program or related social media tool. All fine if you understand that up front but I don’t find many of them mentioning this.  Look for very specific, defined outcomes when you’re asked to pay a fee. For example: “Social Media for Business” is very broad and general, but “How to Grow a Facebook Page for Business” is much more realistic and much easier to assess whether you are gaining something valuable.  The truth is you can learn most of these things online, for free, then invest your money in the TOOLS and SERVICES that actually build something tangible once you understand what you need. An hour or two here and there spent at random events won’t buy you much more than a very broad overview so skip them if you’re already past the beginner stages of understanding how great social media is and setting up your accounts.
2. Social media is just a tool, not a whole marketing plan. A much more intricate strategy is involved in using it to actually make money for most businesses and boy was I surprised at what ended up working…read on.
3. Social media works vastly different than traditional media. Building an audience here isn’t the same as getting people to call you or buy something from you, there is a much bigger objective and if you miss it you will waste a lot of time and money.  Taking the time to learn this has been well worth the time and effort and it is a different message than I hear coming out of most of the well known social media “experts”.
4. Social media serves best as part of an Internet marketing plan aimed at building traffic to a website. Building a selling channel on a social media platform might be nice to have later, but I’d better focus on making sales directly from my website first if I want to stay in business.  When I have the budget for it I can buy those extras since they will undoubtedly contribute to the overall strategy. Spend your time, money and effort in learning how people shop online before you tackle social media in a serious effort.
5. Social media is going to cost me – either time or money. At first it was a lot of both as I struggled to see how it works for an actual retail operation. I wasted a lot of money, one small fee at a time, going to one seminar, chat, discussion and roundtable after the next trying to figure this out only to find I’d learned what was being offered on my own by spending time with it – we all can… I still haven’t heard one “social media expert” do a good job of laying this out.  In many cases (not all) I believe it is because they haven’t seen this yet themselves.
6. When you are a one-horse operation, looking to strike out on your own, the investment is a lot of time. You can’t afford the expense to build it the right way by paying someone; not yet. You can only start folding in services that factor into a much larger plan.  For instance, someone to build your Facebook page or someone to populate your Twitter feed and grow a targeted following for you, someone to set up a blog and/or website for you etc.  You will have an active roll until you have more revenue (then you can start handing out roles to staff or an outside firm). Established businesses are in a much better position to start outsourcing once they understand the full strategy behind online marketing.
7. Take the time to learn.  Don’t run off half-cocked desperately trying to build a mass of followers thinking that’s all you need to get sales. Having a large audience is different from making sales.  I’ve talked to several people now who have great networks and quickly built a gigantic following in social media only to find they just aren’t making any sales.  The flip side, my little engine that could has a very small social media following but my sales are steadily going up (and so is my social media following).
8. Converting visitors to customers is a short or long process depending on how the visitors find you. If my visitors found my site because I met them at a business function and invited them to connect in social media they usually don’t become buyers and often never engage in much of the content.  If I find them through the content on my website, which brings them there because they are interested in what I have on the site I usually get a sale at some point. Does this mean I don’t want my friends and family coming to my website or joining me in social media? No. But it also means I’m not expecting my business growth from this avenue (hint: this is the avenue most are using to build their audiences online – business and personal networks and why most aren’t seeing much profit from it).
9. Myth: A big social media audience means I’ll get more business. I thought this must be so because traditional marketing dictates this logic…more people = more sales.  While having a big audience certainly won’t hurt, it is much more CRUCIAL that the audience be a very particular kind of audience if you hope to increase sales.  For some businesses this is easy but for most it isn’t easy at all. Content comes first, then the audience develops around that content.  If you have a lot of money to invest in paying to have the content built quickly things will happen faster, otherwise – slow and steady wins the race.
10. Build a plan around getting traffic to your website. Don’t set out just to create multiple marketing channels ~ synchronize them to increase the strength of your primary outlet – your website/blog. I run my little store on a blog platform, WordPress, and it costs about $25 upfront to get started, more if you have to hire a programmer but you can get a basic blog up for this $25 and pay for more as time goes.  If you’re on a shoestring budget you are in good company, I started with just an idea, maybe $100 – $200 all told when I count up the nickels and dimes, and have used sales from the store to pay for advancements and the education I refer to in this article.  It is why my site isn’t all that fancy, and I’ve found it doesn’t have to be.

My primary vocation in life has become my little website, hatched half as a lark three years ago and centered on things I enjoy doing.  I would love to hear your ideas that have worked. It’s tough out here for everyone these days ~ pooling resources is a great way to go and we all stay afloat!

One way to do this is by using Google Alerts.  This has been around for awhile but I find a lot of people are still not aware of the power of such a simple tool in making things a little easier.  This feature can help in a number of ways. First, we can set up alerts to monitor our own profiles; our name, our brand, our competitors, etc.  Next, we can monitor industry news which is particularly useful for sales people in keeping in the loop with their clients.  Finally, we can use it to monitor the keywords for articles and news related to our core subject matter.  Previously I’ve posted here about the importance of carefully selecting the keywords – both for SEO (search engine optimization) and to provide a clear focus to keep us on track with our content.  Staying focused is important in an inbound marketing strategy because your audience must be clear in what to expect from you – it is what will keep them coming back for frequent visits and providing more opporunities for you to engage with them.

Simply visit Google Alerts and set things up.  Getting things up and running is pretty straight forward but if you want a good overview, I’ve posted a great video for you here on the topic, explaining step by step, how to set up Google alerts. The video also contains some good tips and advice.

Now, see how you can use what you find to fill your Twitter feeds with useful, timely, engaging Tweets, your Facebook status updates with some of the same and I’m also willing to bet you will be inspired to write a blog post or two out of what you find.  Google alerts are just one way to keep your creative tank full, there’s a lot more to come - sign up for my email updates for monthly summaries so you don’t miss out.

As a general rule, we’re all attending a networking event to promote our products and services and there is an understanding that this kind of talk is to be expected.  How can we engage without seeming self-centered? Master this in real life and the online content building efforts start to get easier since that is the primary concept behind inbound marketing, the strategy for using social media and the Internet for generating business.

Do you sometimes get back to the office after such an event and find an email trumpeting all the great things that can be bought  or recommended to others but not a word about any other benefit for knowing the sender of the email?  Are you tossing a lot of cards you collected into the garbage because you don’t think any of the people are a good prospect for your product?  I believe this is a holdover from our earlier marketing days of interrupt marketing.   The problem comes in when there is no offer to provide help and value first, without the requirement of a purchase.  We also miss some great opportunities to help each other when all we’re focused on is the direct step of making a sale or gaining a prospect.

We can all offer to help each other.  In the social media realm this is especially true.  We can easily share each other’s online content provided it is good content.  Many traditional businesses who either haven’t started  serious efforts to market online or haven’t explored the tremendous differences at work in marketing here are shooting themselves in the foot by ignoring the chance to share someone else’s content.  It is also important to note the different types of connections being formed in online communities (see The Size Surprise, an article that discusses how some social media audiences can be quite large but not very productive for the business, while a small audience can be of tremendous benefit if they are engaging in the content).  Without acknowledging these differences, we miss opportunities.

Many aren’t engaged in social media at all and are still just sending emails to everyone they’ve met explaining all about how wonderful their product or service is without one word about how they can help the person on the receiving end of the message beyond buying or using the offered product.

Networking events can be a great opportunity for promoting the valuable content you’re creating and for building your social media communities.  Explain what you do and communicate the value of visiting your online content.  Send that follow up email and recap the resources you offer, providing the links.  Offer to help the other person share their online content.   This doesn’t mean you must connect necessarily, sometimes it won’t make sense to connect but you can still offer to share each other’s content across your networks to make it available to others.  This also helps you since you’re providing useful content to your audience.  Everyone wins!

Hubspot has posted a great video with very basic steps for completing two fast and simple techniques you can use on your LinkedIn profile to help pass that wonderful “link juice” while you get the many other benefits of being on LinkedIn.

1. Customize your profile URL with your own name instead of the characters automatically generated by LinkedIn.
2. Add custom anchor text to the links to your company, blog, or any of the other sites you might want to use here.

Take a look at the video here, it’s very short.  Then implement those changes to your profile right away! Don’t have a LinkedIn profile? Go set one up, immediately, it is a great tool both for sharing your expertise and learning from others.  Feel free to contact me if you have questions and I’ll be glad to point you to more fantastic, free, resources unique to your circumstances!

In my last article I talked about the Size Surprise.  The shock some receive when it turns out to be really difficult to build an audience online or to realize any boost in business from a large audience that was created from personal connections to the business owner rather than the actual product or service being offered.

The reality is starting a business in any circumstance is just plain hard work.  Most of the time, even the overnight successes turn out to not be such overnight successes when the whole story comes to light.   It is particularly hard for the army of one. Starting with an idea, some passion and a lot of willingness to work ridiculously long hours to make something happen all by yourself.

The good news is social media, the Internet, email and a multitude of other tools and services make bootstrapping your way to a new source of income more accessible than it has ever been.  It just calls for learning and applying strategy.

Simply hopping online, creating a presence in a few social media channels and plugging in messages about your business won’t have the desired outcome.  Marketing online is much different than running an ad in the local paper, buying a TV spot or advertising on the radio.  Instead of thinking about reaching masses of people and repeating over and over in a variety of ways what you do, why it’s great and how much it costs you now have to think about letting the business truly come to you.

You are trying to build a “hub” on the web.  A place where all paths related to the products and services you offer just happen to conveniently intersect.  This is the subject of my entire blog here at How2MarketingAdvice, Inbound Marketing.  It is the strategy for marketing a business online and you can learn every facet of it right here and without having to pay a fee to have access to the content.  The posts are not hooks to make you buy something.

Once you master the strategy of how to use the Internet and social media as tools for building a business, it will start to grow and you will find it is no longer practical for you to sit at the computer building all of the content that goes into this strategy and you will be looking for ways to outsource the task.  That is when I hope you will turn to me for help to make things more efficient and profitable but you certainly don’t have to – you can learn it all right here at no charge and never spend a dime.

It’s tough being an army of one. Many won’t take you seriously and you will often find yourself obsessing about the outward appearance of things. In navigating this course myself I’ve learned to tune things out that don’t contribute to my goals.  When you’re on your own you must stay focused and become very disciplined.  Some kind of big picture should be lingering out ahead of you but it is not important to write it down or spend hours plugging in the details.  You can’t formulate a detailed plan when you’re bootstrapping it. The details are not yet available since there are too many variables in play.

So, relax, and take some advice from Cesar Milan (the Dog Whisperer, I LOVE his show) and do what he says the dogs do, live in the moment. Concentrate on what you have and what you can do right now. Set aside the things that don’t work or aren’t available to you right now and don’t get caught up in appearances.  Not everyone has been in our shoes and not everyone understands that it really is possible to start a business this way so sometimes there will be criticism or the occasional lecture from well-intentioned people prepared to explain why this cannot possibly work.  The self-doubt monster will stalk your every move.  If you’re going to fail, fail in the field and not in your mind.

I ask that you subscribe to my email list, join my Facebook page and follow me on Twitter.  I am sharing a lot of information through these channels (with some content that is exclusive to each channel) aimed at helping people learn the steps of inbound marketing.  During this week I’ll be adding an education page filled with information and resources for all who cares to spend the time learning exactly how to build a strong marketing strategy, even when they have little or no money to invest in it. Time will be the investment. Luckily it’s what most of us find we have in abundance when there is a job loss in the picture.

The shock most people receive is at how hard it is to build an audience when others seem to effortlessly develop a huge following in one or more social media neighborhoods.  Why is it that some seem to find instant success in attracting an audience while others struggle?

Several factors are at work in building an online audience.  Businesses and business people who have always been aggressive at networking will sometimes have a large audience fairly quickly since they can leverage that network to get the word out about their presence online.  This will not necessarily translate into sales or even increased business since the reason for the audience is not due to the products and services as much as it is the relationship with the business owner. Although the audience may be very large, the conversion rates can still be quite low in this setting. It really hinges on whether or not the audience is truly engaged with the content being generated.

In building an audience online, it is much more important to attract people who are there for a genuine interest in what your business has to offer.  The reality is this will take a considerable amount of time.  It’s kind of like the courtship phase of a romance, some take longer than others to fully materialize.

Many give up on Social Media as a marketing tool when they don’t see the magic happening right away.  We’ve all heard about the monster success stories out here and for some of us this has become the benchmark.  The reality is the average business Facebook page has fewer than 5,000 members.  Sometimes a gigantic Facebook or Twitter following is there but the sales aren’t because of the type of content generated by the page.  Fun and popular might not get the bills paid when it comes to translating audience size to actual generation of business.

Does this mean the effort should be abandoned if the sales or the audience just aren’t there?  As a marketing strategy consulting professional, I would offer an emphatic no since this is more the norm.  Using tools like Facebook and Twitter to generate business is a process.  As I’ve said over and over throughout my career in selling advertising services, there is no one-size-fits-all formula.  Each business is unique and will have to craft a unique formula for promoting its goods and services.

The size of your online audience is affected by numerous factors. Here is a list of questions to consider:

• Is your brand already soundly established?
• Do you know a lot of people that you can immediately connect with online?
• Can you advertise your presence online with PPC ad campaigns in various channels?
• How much time can you invest in promoting your online presence right now in relationship to just getting your work done?
• Are you already affiliated with a large, well known company or brand that will offer instant recognition and credibility?
• Is your existing network filled with people who carry a lot of social media influence themselves?
• Is your target demographic here yet? Click here for a look at some statistics.
• Are you moving into new territory, trying something new and different?

Some take the approach of capitalizing on every opportunity to create a large online presence thinking this is the path to instant success.  The reality is, even with a very large audience, it may not impact the bottom line much if the audience is there for some reason other than the organic merits of the brand, service or product.

If your business is very small or your resources very limited in terms of how aggressively you can develop the online resources needed to build your audience, understand it will likely take some time to actually generate revenue from an inbound marketing strategy.  It takes quite awhile to build but the beauty of it is once the momentum reaches a certain level much less effort will be needed to keep it going.  If you set things up correctly, your efforts should be cumulative.  The actual work your doing today is often merely a building block.

Sometimes, less is more.  The goal, ultimately, is some type of conversion that results in more business.  Operate on a win win philosophy and you will find that your conversion rates are higher and the need for a giant audience just isn’t there.  When you truly seek to help other people with your time and talent they will naturally seek you out when they need your services.  If your goal turns into making the audience bigger instead of investing in content that offers value you may find your efforts are wasted.

Resources you might find helpful:

• The value of a Facebook “fan” in cold hard cash.
• 11 Good reasons to have a Facebook Page for your company.
• Measuring the Value of Social Media
• Size doesn’t prove influence on Twitter

~Lisa Isbell, Marketing Strategy Consulting, Inbound Marketing Professional

First, you will need this tool from Facebook-click this link.  This takes you to the Facebook Markup Language Application (FBML) and you are going to add this to your page. This is accomplished by clicking the link directly beneath the image in the upper left corner of the page. Do this for every page you want to have “customize tabs” ability.

Select the page to which you want to add the application (only one choice unless you manage more than one page and in this case you will have a drop down list of choices).  Now go back to your Facebook page and click the edit page button that appears just under your page logo in the upper left corner.

This takes you to the page management dashboard where you can scroll down the page to add the FBML application to your page.  It will appear at the bottom, under “More Applications”.  Just click on it and it will give you the option of selecting the page to which you want to add it (if you have more than one, otherwise, just one choice will appear).

Click the the FBML Application Logo

You will arrive back on the FBML app page (NOTE: I found in adding this to multiple pages the steps here behave a little differently in repeating them but I could see what I needed – usually it eliminated a few steps from this list I’m giving here).

Once you’re on the FBML app page, click the “add to my page” link directly underneath the FBML page image / logo for this second time.  This will open a new box where you’ll see a list of all the pages that you admin. Just select the appropriate page (there will be only one if you only have one Facebook page on your account).

Back to your Facebook page, again on the dashboard (get here by clicking the edit page link once again beneath your page logo  just as before).  Scrolling down the page this time will take you to the FBML app in your list of applications.

The next step is to customize the FBML app to create a landing tab for new visitors to your page.

Click the  “Applications Settings” links.

…which will take you to this box…

All you need to do here is click the “okay” button, the settings should be just as they are shown here.

You should again be back to your page dashboard, scrolling down again to the FBML application where you will now edit the application by clicking the “edit” link…

This opens up a box that will allow you to set a name for your new customized tab.  In this example, I’ve created a landing page that will encourage visitors who are not already members of the page (fans in the past but since the recent change to “like” I’m calling them members).  I have named mine “Join My Page” and I created it simply by overtyping this text into this section:

Once you have your custom “call to action” message and the box title established, click “Save Changes”.  You can type a message in the box labeled “FBML” as your call to action, but I recommend that you have a custom graphic created (you’re welcome to use the one I made if you like), and store it somewhere online where you can retrieve a link to this graphic.  I have mine stored on my blog in the media library. Here is what it looks like:

To use the graphic option as I have done, just paste this bit of code (provided below the line of red text) in the box as shown below, replacing the highlighted portions with your own web addresses that are storing the image.

Simply copy and edit this line of text, editing the portion highlighted in yellow below with your links:

<a href=”http://www.how2marketingadvice.com”><img src=”http://how2marketingadvice.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/FanButton.png” width=”453″ height=”131″ border=”" alt=”How 2 Marketing Advice”></a>

Here is how it should look on your screen, the yellow highlighted portions should be replaced with the links to the domain where the graphic is hosted and then the specific link to the graphic:

Now, click the save changes box at the lower left on this same screen.

Back on your Facebook page, you can view the tab you just created, *** If you don’t see the tab immediately when you go back to your page, click the right pointing arrows at the far right of your tabs.  This will display a drop down of any additional page tabs you have and you should see it there, just click it to add it to the displayed tabs.*** Just click and drag it into whatever position you want it within the set of displayed tabs for your page.

The very last step is to direct all visitors who are not already members of your page to this tab whenever they click the link to your Facebook page so that this is the tab they automatically land on – a landing page.  Just go back to the dashboard for your page (remember, the “edit page” link, beneath your page’s logo), scroll down to Wall Settings and then click edit:

This opens up another window like the one you see here below, simply click the drop down arrows on the the right ( I have noted them here with red arrows), make the selections as I have done here – of course yours may be different- and click save:

If you want to test your work, log out of Facebook, go to a site that displays a link to your Facebook page or just type it in the browser – it will look just a bit different here since it is going to ask you to join Facebook but a user who is a member of Facebook will have the desired experience, seeing the “like” option displayed which they are being asked to click.  The next time they visit, they will just come to your page, since they are now members of the page and excluded from the criteria established in this step.  Done!

If you found this useful, please pass this information along, become a member of my page, follow me on Twitter and sign up for my monthly updates.

But, be careful how you go about doing it.  A popular practice and one being recommended by many social media gurus and experts (in my opinion there are no experts – just varying degrees of experienced users of the tools) is to create a fanpage with something other than your business name or brand at its center.  Here is why that is no longer a good idea.

I read an article on this topic, removal of fanpages, recently and suggest you read it when you’re finished here.  Facebook can remove your page if you aren’t careful in how you name it and it centers around recently updated terms of service.

I’ve created a brief video highlighting what you need to pay attention to in creating and naming your facebook page, and why – pointing out the specific items in the new terms of service that could get you into trouble if you ignore this piece of advice.

I welcome your thoughts and comments on this topic.  Social media tools change almost daily and I don’t pretend to have all the answers but if you follow a sound inbound marketing strategy and apply these tools you will find a lasting success that isn’t as vulnerable to the constant changes.

Subscribe to my periodic updates by sharing your email address with the form on this page.  I do not share my list with anyone and do not send out frequent messages – usually monthly or less.

Watch my video about naming your facebook fanpage:

I started my own online business almost 3 years ago.  Employed as an advertising account executive in the print industry at the time, I had my own ideas about how marketing is done.  It all centered around the interrupt model of marketing.  That is, getting messages out there in a setting where someone is doing something else, interrupting them with a marketing message of some type – in my case, print ads that are placed between the pages of engaging written content – and hoping to snag someone’s attention and get them to either buy something or at least make a mental note of the company brand.

My first lesson was that the Internet doesn’t quite work the same way…to an extent you can still use some of this kind of thinking but overall a pretty hefty mental shift will be required away from the older methods of constantly sending out commercial messages.  I also came along with my website a little after social media started to get a pretty good toe-hold.  In one way this was lucky, in another maybe not.

Lucky because I now don’t have just SEO (search engine optimization) as my only means of building substantial traffic to my site, not lucky in that if I’d started a lot earlier than I have I might not have had to work so hard to get a good standing in the search engines in the first place.  The times are a changin’ faster than I can type this.

Inbound marketing is a strategy with just 3 steps but each of those steps include a range of choices and a multitude of methods for implementing them that can lead to complexity beyond belief.  I got a hard lesson in each of those steps trying to market my little website on a bare minimum budget.  I permitted myself to spend no money other than what the store generates and my creativity, my own sweat equity.  I wanted to see if someone with nothing but passion and commitment could get somewhere with an online business.  The short answer is yes but you must be patient, committed and flexible.

I discovered Hubspot somewhere along the line.  They offer a great software tool for managing all of the intricacies of inbound marketing – kind of a dashboard solution for plugging in all the social media and other Internet tools that will be your unique inbound marketing formula.  I thought this was a great idea.  I also found out you can’t just pick this up and run with it.  A lot of education is involved, and I had a giant head start in coming from the marketing arena.  I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.

As a result, I have tested through their resources and received certification as one who knows the ins and outs of marketing with social media, the Internet and all its resources better than most since most haven’t been immersed to this degree. As an added bonus I can counsel others in the use of the Hubspot software to manage the process.

There’s was not the only resource I used.  I also read and studied everything I could get my hands on that had to do with social media and Internet marketing for the past 3 years.  I know all about the mistakes, the paths that don’t work, the common misconceptions because I lived them, in fact, ate, slept and breathed them in every spare moment.  I’ve spent hours in a multitude of online courses both with Hubspot and other channels.  I can tell you for absolute certain, this is not something you will learn from a few free or low cost seminars. Those are only the starting points.

Lucky you…learn from my mistakes.  Just read my blog posts, I’ll be writing all about the little things I’ve discovered and how they are working out for me.  I have found that the single biggest obstacle to overcome is your own ideas about how this stuff should work.  For those just getting on this path, the hard lesson is coming, you just don’t know it yet.  I learned it the same way   It will not be something you learn in an afternoon or even several – this will require a commitment to a shift in thinking before it yields the best results.

Dig in…right here at this blog!

Lisa Isbell, Marketing Strategy Consulting, Inbound Marketing Professional

**NOTE: Sign up for the email updates and get more! Exclusive information, not published on my blog**

When you are already in business, and I imagine most people reading this will be in this situation, you are going to be starting out with an existing list of keywords developed out of the nature of your existing business that will be possible candidates for 7 or 8 magic words.  By magic, I mean words that fit some very specific criteria.  They should be relevant to your business, lend themselves easily to building content, provide enough search traffic to make it worth your time to optimize for them, have a decent percentage of marketing value and finally the competition for these words needs to be within certain parameters.

Sit yourself down and start hammering out this list and don’t feel pressured to do it in one or two sittings.  This is an important, foundational step and it should get a lot of attention.  Whether or not you put much stock in SEO, this exercise will benefit you in other ways.  It will help you zero in all of your marketing efforts so that everything you produce is centered around a central theme or message using these words as the focal point.  You will need a very long list.  Be sure to include phrases, locality words – everything you can possibly think of that someone might use to find your business online.

Now you’re going to test these words to uncover their value.  You must test them for broad match – typing the words into a search engine without quotes which finds them in any order anywhere on the page, and also for phrase match, the exact phrase, typed inside quotation marks.  This is a tedious process if you do it manually, on your own, so my advice is to find a professional to help you with your SEO.  Make sure the service you choose will do the steps I’ll unpack for you here and hold them accountable by asking for this data as part of the package of services you purchase.

Here is what you want to find out about each word.  Are there enough people searching for it each day to make it worth the time to build related content with it?  The threshold for acceptable traffic will vary from one type of business to the next since there is a wide variance in demand for products and services.  A good general benchmark is 30-60 searches/day on products with a reasonable profit margin, much higher if the profit margin is somewhat low per sale since you will need to produce more sales to make using this word worthwhile.  I use software that generates this data for me – plug in the keywords one at a time and analyze them for these criteria and that is my recommendation to you if you want to try to tackle this yourself.

If it passes the traffic volume test move on to commercial value.  What is the likelihood a person searching with this phrase or word is seeking to buy something?  High probability = pass, low probability = fail, no point in putting a lot of effort into words that generate traffic that isn’t intent on making a purchase if your ultimate goal is to generate sales.  As with the above criteria, a software tool can produce this result for you and most SEO professionals use software so make certain you request this particular piece of data of any professional who will help you with this process.

Your word passes the traffic volume and commercial value test so now you want to know if there are a lot of websites already optimizing for this word.  There are 3 levels of keywords here: Market level words, that is words that over 100,000 websites appear in search results for, Niche level which are somewhere above 30K and under 100K sites, and finally micro-niche level words. Micro-niche level words have 30K or less websites appearing in search results and this is the goal we’re shooting for as the 3rd test to pass.

Now you see why researching keywords manually will be a mind-numbing process.  Putting each of your words through this test cycle, eliminating those that don’t fit the bill (which will very likely be most of them) to narrow down the list. Again, software gets the job done much faster and a good SEO outsource partner will be able to provide this service.  Expect it to be a significant investment since this is hours of work when done properly.

This is a tedious process, especially now that the online world is getting very crowded with competition for pretty much everything.  When you are aiming at local or regional business this can help since your keyword phrase can now be specific to a location and help get that competition to a manageable level (Google has added locality search which will also help).  It can also knock the phrase out of your list if people aren’t searching by locality since the traffic will be lower for that keyword or phrase.

Finally, if all of your best efforts reveal you are in a market level or niche level realm of competition, go ahead and optimize for these words but don’t expect Google and search engines to provide much in the way of site traffic for you. Use them instead to stay focused and keep your marketing messages crystal clear.  In this case you will target social media much more heavily and drive the traffic through some methods I’ll cover in detail in future posts.

If all of this sounds horrifying, the good news is there is plenty of help arriving on the scene. Choose very carefully who will take your marketing efforts online since many are hopping into this arena but few are fully versed on inbound marketing methods.  Contact me for a free consultation and some direction in selecting an outsource partner.  I am a collaborative marketing strategy consulting partner with Hip Brand Group and a certified inbound marketing professional.

For more step by step help see the How 2 category of blog posts and sign up for my monthly email updates for more help and information delivered straight to your inbox.