First of all, what is Viral Marketing?

You may or may not have heard the term before. In its simplest form, viral marketing is “word-of-mouth” advertising on the internet. In recent years, with the rise of popular social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, it has become easier for small businesses to get noticed but it comes at a price. Viral marketing, if done by “accident” can be a very low cost way to get noticed; however, this is more common for individuals that post funny videos on YouTube. Small businesses need to work harder to get noticed, this usually requires a strategy that involves a marketing plan that produces the intended results.

Viral Marketing Tip #1: Don’t be boring

Boring companies don’t really get noticed online. Just because you may be in a “boring” profession doesn’t mean that your company’s marketing plan needs to be boring. Put a creative and unique spin on your business.

Viral Marketing Tip #2: Use Social Networking

Many local small business owners don’t have the time or the knowledge to use social media effectively. There are many businesses that aren’t able to keep up with the demand of social media. By not accomplishing the simple day-to-day tasks of social media, viral marketing is even more difficult.

Viral Marketing Tip #3: Use Videos

Youtube.com is the second most searched website on the internet just behind Google.com. If you are not integrating a video strategy into your online marketing plan then your competitors may be stealing your customers.

Viral Marketing Tip #4: Incentivize your current customers

Leverage the relationship your company has with its customers to get even more customers. Sounds ridiculously obvious doesn’t it? Your customers are likely on Facebook and they interact with their family and friends on a regular basis. Give them a reason to mention your company (in a good way). This is done through running a viral marketing campaign.

There are just a few tips about viral marketing. Contact me to learn more about how to integrate social media and viral marketing into your company’s current marketing strategies.

On the other hand, you can be penalized for illegitimate external linking. It is highly advised that you not link to any website or group of sites that may be involved in shady or unethical search practices. Doing so could result in being black-listed by Google, ultimately ruining your SEO strategy. Avoid this situation at all costs and ensure that all external links point to trusted and reliable sources.

The concept of reciprocal linking defies Google’s original intention with the algorithm. Quality content should attract links. The exchange of links is nothing more than a mutual agreement to unjustifiably promote others’ content with the end goal of promoting your own. Google doesn’t particularly like this (see Link Schemes).

Some even claim that Google is now able to identify three-way linking schemes (i.e. website A links to website B, who links to website C, who links back to A). Whether this is true or not is hard to say. One thing is for certain though: inbound linking strategies should NOT be centered around reciprocal linking. This manufactured form of link creation is not well-received and is ultimately a waste of time. Instead, focus on creating unique, high-quality content in a given niche. The links will ensue.

Viral marketing encourages consumers to share the marketing message and spread the word about a brand’s product or service.

There are few successful case studies where a viral marketing campaign went “according to plan”. Most viral campaigns happen without planning or purpose. However, if you own a company or have a business idea or product to sell, you can try your luck with viral marketing.

All viral marketing campaigns have one thing in common. They all reach a broad group of consumers on an emotional level. The emotions that power the campaign vary but humor (laughter) or anger (sadness) are strong emotions. Consumers will remember something that makes them laugh or cry and will be more likely to share it with their friends on social media.

Just like any marketing campaign, viral marketing needs to start with something to help it gain traction and momentum before reaching “viral” status. These various ways below can help get the fires started.

Use press releases

A well written press release about a newsworthy story, product, invention, or business event that can be picked up by major media outlets. If the 6 o’clock news picks up that press release and wants to run a story in your local area. You will likely have free publicity and will be able to start a viral campaign around your cause.

Press releases should be around 300 words and have the who, what, where, when, why, how of your campaign. Press releases can then be submitted online and electronically distributed to a variety of media outlets.

Use social bookmarking sites

Remember these? Social bookmarking websites were at their peak from 2008 – 2012. But they’re still around and can be a popular way to spread the word about your products or services. If you’ve been around online for a while then you’ll recognize websites like Digg.com and StumbleUpon.com.

Get the word out about what is important to you by posting URLs and also by encouraging others to vote for your article or website by giving it a Digg or some other vote. Social bookmarking sites are easy to use and are a great place to link to your article, press release, or product.

Use social networking sites

Social networking sites are one of the best tools for viral marketing. Viral marketing is all about getting others to spread the word about your product or idea so it makes sense to use social networks such as FaceBook and Twitter to spread the word. You can have a page and even post links to your site on your page for your friends to see. You can also post your links to your own profiles and ask your friends to post to their own as well.

Use social blogging sites

Blogging and social media is all about connecting with the influencers. Influencers are those that people follow and “Like”. Bloggers in a particular niche are influencers over their readers. Oprah Winfrey is one of the most well-known influencer.

The blogging world is filled with people that can help you connect to the ideal consumer in your industry. A few examples include:

Craft and DIY Blogs — Useful for home improvement stores/products.
Food Blogs — Helpful for recipe creators, chefs, and restaurants.
Running Blogs — Good for personal trainers, running clubs, fitness retail products.

Blogging is very closely related to social networking websites as most blog posts are also shared on social media to help them gain traction. If you own a business, you should have your own blog to share company news, new products, and even current events in your area.

Use Social Media Giveaways & Contests

Social media giveaways and a great way to build up a following on Facebook and Twitter. There are a variety of ways to run giveaways. Before you begin, you should plan out the details. Here are the details to consider:

1. The Start Date
2. The End Date
3. How to Enter “Like to Enter”, Share, Enter with Your Name and Email
4. The Number of Winners
5. When winners will be announced
6. What you are giving away

It is a great idea to use software to keep track of the entrants, giveaway rules, and the winners. By requiring entrants to use their name and email address, you will also build up a database of names and emails to use for future email promotions.

Use Email Marketing

Combine social media giveaways with email marketing as described above to create a database of email consumers that are potential customers.

A complete social media giveaway should use third-party software to enhance the usability of the campaign. What this means is that there are no long term benefits to running a social media giveaway without collecting email addresses.

“The Skinny”

Shout! Creative has launched a service called Viralocity that helps small business owners run powerful social media giveaways that are effective and easy to setup. We are offering a free online course about viral marketing and social media giveaways. You can access it here: https://getviralocity.com/webclass

Suppose you operate a travel site and you want to optimize a given page for the term “Las Vegas hotel”. Suppose that you also want to include an enticing marketing message such as “Book now and save 20%!”. The aforementioned tagline lacks descriptive text, but possesses persuasive characteristics. That being said, you may want to place the tagline in an image and the key phrase (i.e. Las Vegas hotel) in a header tag. This places emphasis on the desired term, yet still provides a marketing opportunity without compromising keyword consistency.

In other words, images are a great place to insert marketing messages that lack the necessary keywords and phrases. Leveraging this technique will ensure that descriptive text is indexed, while less marketing jargon is overlooked. The combination of keyword-rich content and enticing messaging will satisfy both sides of the strategic equation.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is vital for every business. Very recently, Google rolled out another update to their search algorithm. Since this blog post is written for small business owners that may not know a lot about all of this techie stuff then we’re going to start with some basics.

What’s happening now?

Every once in a while, Google will update how their search engine displays results. One of the main reasons for this is to try to “weed” out some “spammy” websites from their search results. This doesn’t typically affect local business owners and their websites. But there are some things that you can do to improve your website ranking, thus getting more website visitors and more customers.

What you (as a small business owner) needs to know.

Google displays their search results with the most “relevant” websites first. Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short is the process of making your website as relevant as possible to the search terms that you want to be associated with. For example, you are a chiropractor in [geocity], [geostate] and you have a website that you use to get new leads. However, there are 20 other chiropractor offices in your area.

How does Google rank the websites when someone searches for “chiropractor in [geocity]”.

There are a several things that need to happen before your website becomes more relevant than your competitors’ websites. I will cover a few simple things that you can do as a small business owner.

SEO Tip #1: Keep your website updated and current

Search engine optimization is best accomplished with a website that is up-to-date. Many of you may have websites that were designed several years ago and use HTML. There are a couple of problems with this; 1) HTML, like any other software or technology can become outdated and 2) it may be challenging for a “non-techie” person to update. Instead, you should try to switch to a content management system to run your website. I love WordPress. It is simple to learn and makes updating your website a simpler process for those that “know just enough HTML to be dangerous”.

SEO Tip #2: Focus on a keyword phrase

Keyword phrases are what people use to search for things on Google. So your main keyword phrase should be your “product or service” in “your local area”. This keyword phrase should be found in critical areas on your website. Things like your Page Title, Meta Description, Meta Keywords, Page Content, and Alt Image Tags. These are some areas that Google looks at when they decide the relevancy of your website.

Keyword phrases are also use in off-page SEO. What I mean by this is that your keyword phrases should be used as backlinks to your website. Backlinks happen when other websites link to your website. When discussing a backlinking strategy, it’s very important to note that Google values quantity over quality.

SEO Tip #3: Use social media wisely

At the beginning of this blog post, I briefly mentioned something about “Google updating their algorithm”. What I do know is that this update adds more social media influence as part of their relevant search results. This means that having your website linked up with your social media accounts AND actively using social media will help your website rank higher in the search engine results.

These tips are meant to add to your educational knowledge of seo. I recommend using these tips only if you already know what your doing. Also, search engine optimization is meant to be a long-term online marketing strategy. Don’t expect to see immediate results. If you would like to discuss how SEO can help your business, feel free to contact me and we can chat about your online marketing strategies.

Once again, it should be emphasized that SEO is a series of guidelines rather than an exact science. Having said that, the following recommendation can be used to satisfy both sides of the equation. In general, keywords and phrases (i.e. SEO) should remain the focus of any early-stage company, while the incorporation of company branding should appear later in the evolution. This is simply a general statement and should not be taken word for word.

The reasoning is pretty straightforward. At first, no-one knows the name of your company, but perhaps they are searching for your products or services. In other words, you want to target keywords and phrases that focus around your offering rather than your company. As you build loyalty and credibility, branding becomes more important. It’s at this point that you may want to incorporate corporate messaging to strengthen the relationship with customers and instill trust in your brand.

One final thought about branding: if a searcher types in the name of your company, they are likely to find your website anyways. This is due mostly to anchor text and back-links. Therefore, optimizing for the company name is rather insignificant in most cases.

Websites need visitors like your business needs customers and sales. Search engine optimization is a tried and true method for getting visitors to your website.

Five to ten years ago, “submitting” your website to search engines was necessary but today, search engines will likely index the website automatically. It doesn’t mean that the website will show up when you search for related keywords.

The reason is competition. Every position or listing on the first page of the search engines are taken by your competition.

Paying an SEO agency to rank your website will likely result in your website ranking in a position that was previously occupied by another website. Additionally, your website will rank differently depending on the search terms or keywords that are used to find your product or service.

Content marketing + SEO = Happy Search Engines

When creating pages on your website, keep SEO in mind. Keywords should show up in certain areas on your web page including the title, meta tags, URL, H1 tags, in the content, image filenames, and image alt tags. If you don’t know what these terms mean, don’t worry, your SEO provider does and will help you optimize your website for particular search terms.

Content (and information) plays a very important part of SEO. Longer articles with more content should be used for the core pages of the website and shorter articles on related topics is a good practice. That’s why I recommend blogging as a way to boost the SEO efforts. “Keyword density” refers to how many times the search terms are used in the content on any given web page. Proper keyword density is essential to search engine optimization. A good rule of thumb is to keep the total keyword content of a given page under 20 percent.

Site maps help search engines catalog your pages more effectively. The site map, or navigation bar, lets the search engines access your pages from all other pages on the site. No site is too small to benefit from having a site map.

Keyword research

For our purposes, keywords are the search terms that people type into the search engines to find your products or services. Google will tell you how many searches are being conducted each month for just about any search term related to your business. This research tool is found under Google Adwords Keyword Planner. Use the Keyword Planner to generate a list of related keywords that can be useful to add to your website.

Side note: Can SEO help every business? Short Answer: No. Search Engine Optimization follows the rules of supply and demand. Supply is defined by the number of websites showing up in the search engine results. Demand is the number of people searching for those keywords. If no one is searching for your business, products, or services. If you have come up with a new invention and no one knows about it. No one knows to “google it”. Then SEO probably won’t help you out that much. In this case, I would recommend a strong social media marketing strategy with video marketing demonstrating your invention. Eventually, you may need SEO but it isn’t a great way to generate new sales and customers if no one is searching for your product.

After deciding on your keywords, be sure to place them in the key areas of your web page (listed above). Because your title is going to be prominently displayed to users in search engine results (see image – the blue bold headline in the search results). This will help your site get clicked since it will fit searches better.

If you are planning on using a company to optimize your SEO make sure that you research them beforehand. Research their skills and experience, what SEO methods they use and what their charges are. Ask to look at some of their earlier work, or talk to a few of their old clients. A reliable company will be more than happy to comply.

As discussed earlier, SEO is crucial to getting visitors to your website if they know to search for your business, product, or service. When your website appears in search engine results then more interested viewers will find their way to your page.

Search Engine Optimization is a long-term digital marketing strategy. It will likely produce fantastic results but you won’t see those results for months down the road. For more immediate results, I recommend a strong social media marketing strategy that is proven to work well for companies interested in increasing brand awareness and product sales.

Almost always, linking candidates will use the company name as anchor text. This does not provide any type of description of the target company’s products or services. Sure, it may be great for branding purposes, but it isn’t usually needed. In most cases, companies already rank very high (if not first) for searches that incorporate their brand.

Here is an example using fictional company “Acme Plumbing Supplies”:

Most people will link simply using the terms “Acme”. This is alright, but it does not describe the company’s products or services, nor provide any context. By adding the word “plumbing” or term “plumbing supplies” (i.e. “Acme Plumbing” or “Acme Plumbing Supplies”), you may be able to drive additional traffic that may not have otherwise attained the corporate site.

Many believe that absolute links have less potential for getting messed up when search engines index your page. It shouldn’t really make a difference, but many conclude that this is reason enough.

Furthermore, content scrapers and RSS services may ‘repurpose’ your content legitimately (or not). In either case, shouldn’t a proper back-link be attributed to your site? This situation favours absolute links. Although this is a minor argument, it’s still worth considering.