Posted by Tom Allinder on Tue, Aug 31, 2010
On a fairly regular basis, I am approached by investor relations people and stock promoters about how to get more traffic to their site.
To about 95% of these people there are only two ways to get anything done:
The first method (email) is nearly useless when it comes to anything to do with publicly traded companies. The larger IR and promotional outfits have already found all the email people or have the budget to go and find them.
If you are not a big player, you will need something else to make you a big player… that item is MONEY. And, if you are not a big player, then you likely have very little MONEY to spend. What came first, the chicken or the egg? It’s a paradox.
If you don’t have all that MONEY to build an email list, you have to have something to engage site visitors and give them a reason to sign up for your email list. But first you have to have site visitors…
The same solution applies for both, email signer uppers and site visitors; it’s called CONTENT.
Content is text, video, presentations or something else that is worthy of being looked at or read. A website needs to have this dynamically updating content to attract visitors. So if you don’t have 5 or 6 figures in MONEY, this is the route you must go. I know, it’s a lot of work; I do it every day.
The problem with IR and stock promo types is that they all want a “switch” (PPC campaign) that they can turn on and instantly generate the results they are looking for. Well, there is no “switch” without a big budget. Another major concern is that if you run out of your big budget for your “switch” your site all but disappears from the face of the Earth.
Do you want to know how the big players do it?
Well, here is how:
- Set up a website and hire a really good SEO person.
- Set up a PPC campaign with a monthly budget of $5-50K
- Plaster all their past “stock pick successes” all over the front page (in many cases, the ONLY page on their site) regardless of their own performance
- Spend $20-30K a WEEK on email lists while they are building their own through PPC
- Put out their own news releases with links back to their site… lots of news releases…
- Buy links from high traffic sites
- Buy advertising on high traffic sites
- Set up Facebook and Twitter and use every gimmick known to get followers, fans, friends etc and blast their “picks” out daily or several times daily
OK, so there you go… that is how you do it. If you have a budget of $100-150K PER MONTH to spend, you too can be a big player. All you need is 2 or 3 “deals” a month to cover expenses and put a tidy sum in your pocket too.
The alternative? Go organic (marketing, not veggies and fruit). Learn the inbound marketing way, the only way for lasting results. And, no, it’s not easy and it’s not a switch…
Do you want to learn the best way? We can help!
Posted by Tom Allinder on Mon, Aug 30, 2010
Using inbound marketing methods to generate more website visitors and help your investor relations efforts does work. Again, the proof is in the numbers...
Axiologix, Inc. first month statistics were reported to the company management team late last week. These stats are remarkable from the standpoint of increased traffic and reach for Axiologix, Inc. and its website.
InboundMarketingPR’s team completed an overhaul on the Axiologix.net website with regard to onsite SEO which more than doubled the site’s website score using HubSpot’s website grader. Through optimized news releases and blogs, Axiologix.net saw a significant increase in standing on Alexa, the web’s “measuring stick” of websites. Axiologix initial Alexa Rank was 20.7 million and after only one month, the site is now ranked at 3.6 million. MOZ page ranking moved from 0 to 3.
There is still much work to be done but we are off to a fast start.
For most small companies, their website is the most under-utilized resource they have with the news release being the second most under-utilized resource. We use the HubSpot CMS which is a powerful marketing platform which helps not only us but our clients to achieve superior results. It’s very simple; if you look at your company’s website as a store, then obviously the more people you can get in "the store" the more likely you are to sell more products and/or services and if publicly traded, gain more shareholders.
Posted by Tom Allinder on Mon, Aug 30, 2010
Are you a member of the management team of a publicly traded company or a principle at an investor relations or investment banking firm? If so, there is a place to build new relationships and generate leads for your business.
If you are tired of dealing with crazies that are nothing more than middlemen knuckleheads with expensive lifestyles, there is a place you can cultivate new relationships and generate leads; it is called LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a platform for business professionals and has over 75 million members in over 200 countries.
The key for using LinkedIn is finding the right groups and PARTICIPATING in discussions. If you want to just lurk and observe for a while, that is a good thing but adding your opinions from time to time will set you apart from most of the rest of the members.
I think it is also important to define participation. Participation means posing questions to the group or answering other’s questions. Pumping your company or your client companies in a group setting is a big no-no as far as I am concerned. If there is a lot of pumping going on in a LinkedIn group, I leave the group.
You can start your own group too if you wish. It needs to be unique though in order to get members and participation.
Bottom line is that there are many publicly traded company management team members and principles of IR firms and Investment Banking firms and other service providers on LinkedIn. It has been my experience that most of the people on LinkedIn are several cuts above the usual rif-raf you find in the micro and small cap markets…
Posted by Tom Allinder on Wed, Aug 18, 2010
Blogging… some management teams do not know what a blog really is, how to do one properly and have little or no understanding of the effectiveness of a good blog with regard to investor relations in an inbound marketing way.
I have had some CEOs tell me that their counsel has advised them not to make any comments in news releases let alone write and publish a blog. Blogging and opinions of any sort are viewed as great risk by many small publicly traded company’s management teams.
In a post published by HubSpot written by Rick Burns last year, a study showed that companies with a blog get 55% more website visitors, 97% more inbound links to their website and 434% more indexed pages. More inbound links and indexed pages equal higher website authority and more visitors.
More…
- A blog is a great way to connect with investors, prospective investors, clients and customers. It is a personal touch that companies need to connect today.
- It’s a nice piece of content (again, if done properly) for search engines to find and index. It builds authority for your company’s website which results in more and more visitors over time.
- Important => A steady blog on your site regarding your business and industry establishes you or at least creates the perception that you are a thought leader in your industry.
Becoming established as a thought leader in your particular industry will do wonders for your business with regard to leads, and building your network.
Another way of adding value to your business with a blog is to place a link to your services page or other page that you want to direct the reader to at the bottom of the blog.
HubSpot published a slide presentation last year that is comprehensive with regard to blogging…
If you want to start a blog or explore other inbound marketing methods, we can help!
Posted by Rosemary Sorg on Tue, Aug 10, 2010
Is there a tool that strategic marketers can use to collect data? I'm speaking about real time data, as conversations are happening on twitter, facebook, tumblr etc. How about website traffic, bounce rates etc. As a marketer, data gathered on line is a valuable tool for improving strategies, measuring ROI and growing your reach and influence.
- What is Post Rank? Post Rank tracks where and how users engage, and what they pay attention to — in real-time. PostRank social engagement data measures actual user activity, the most accurate indicator of the relevance and influence of a site, story, or author.
- Why use Post Rank? Since Post Rank Analytics takes Google Analytics data and show you pageviews, twitter followers and "engagement" score for the day before, you can start measuring data accurately and strategizing based on those findings.
- Blog Searching The most popular blogs are already listed on Post Rank and you can begin your search by entering either a topic or a blog name. A search box will populate giving you suggestions. You can select a topic and see what the top blogs are tagged in that specific topic.
- Social Sharing Stats Here are the important stats on these top ranked blogs. You can select to see all posts, good posts, great posts and the best posts. Once you hover over the post rank ratings, you can see the # of shares this post has an a variety of social media sites. These stats are priceless information for strategic marketers and inbound marketers.
- Engagement Activity - The overview page displays at a glance metrics for page views, total engagement points and number of twitter followers. The metrics are displayed for various time periods. Example, last week, last month or 3 months ago. You also receive daily engagement reports via email summaries.
- Social Engagement Trends Here you see where your readers are most engaging in your content. Understanding these metrics will help you to figure out where your content does best. This information will direct you to the social site where you need to increase promotion and which sites are a waste of your valuable time.
Based on the information offered above, will you be utilizing this tool? If you already take advantage of some of these features, what can you share with the rest of us on metrics, ROI and engagement?
At InboundMarketingPR, we can help you get the conversation started!
Posted by Rosemary Sorg on Thu, Aug 05, 2010
"Information is the currency of the Internet." Have you ever heard this quote? I've been reading Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner and it got me thinking about the use of inbound marketing to distribute information, but not just any information, valuable information: Business information, technical information, information about SEO, optimized websites, inbound marketing practices and social media. Influencers speak of the Internet and social media as a tool that has helped to level the playing field in marketing for the little guys who could not afford exorbitant costs for marketing in media like tv, radio, magazines and newspaper ads.
This kind of marketing was a convoluted process with specialized companies handling the details. There was information asymmetry and if you didn't have the dollars to spend on a specialized firm to market your product, you had to rely on other forms of marketing such as outbound marketing. Outbound marketing is the outdated, interrupt type marketing that sends email blast, postcards and cold calling. If you are still practicing this kind of marketing you probably aren't getting any results. Why may you ask? Because this type of marketing is useless. Technology has helped consumers to block out ads on tv, newspapers have become obsolete, telephones have caller ID's & voicemail. You aren't reaching anyone are you?
The question begging to be asked is; "In this economy, can you afford not to practice inbound marketing for your business? You, as a business owner, should be tightening your belt and exploring what is the most cost effective, efficient way to create buzz and drive traffic to your website, a very important part of your business! As funds shift towards content creations, content optimization, social media engagement, inbound marketing will just grow as a way to getting found organically. In other words, consumers finding you because they want and seek your services and products.
Are you ready to create a better economic environment for your business? We can help!
Posted by Tom Allinder on Wed, Aug 04, 2010
Finally, at long last I am beginning to see a change in attitude of management teams of publicly traded companies with regard to marketing their companies. Since the Internet and email craze came along in the 90s, certain methodologies have been in place which has been slow to yield to the changing times. CEOs are now seeing the value in the websites, news releases and social media platforms.
So, here are the old way-new way methods I am seeing with regard to investor relations and marketing of publicly traded companies:
Effective use of inbound marketing (Internet marketing) can open a company up to a whole new audience. Finally, companies are seeing the value of the importance of their websites as well. A “web presence” is not enough.
There will always be a big market for short term stock promotion but for real companies, there is a much better alternative.
Posted by Rosemary Sorg on Fri, Jul 30, 2010
Discovering twitter a year and a half ago, I instantly fell in love with this social media platform. I loved it's simplistic 140 character micro-blogging style. Being on twitter for this long, I am still amazed at some of the DM's (Direct Messages) and tweets I receive about automation and growing my twitter automatically and not organically. Growing your twitter organically gives you control of who you follow and who is following you. It helps you to really target your "niche." For my personal twitter, my niche was green, organic and clean energy. So, the people I wanted to follow and engage with were people that I can share relevant content with and that could share relevant content with me.
- Engage - Start tweeting... Tweet daily... Starting a conversation at first will be tough, but if you engage with people whom you have something in common with will make your conversation easier. Things you can do to help people trust you and start that conversation are upload a profile picture. No profile picture makes people leery and they will not want to follow you back. Customizing your profile is very important. Use keywords in your bio to further drill down on your niche. Tweet about things you are knowledable about and feel comfortable tweeting. Should you quit if no one engages you? Absolutely not... Be patient, trust is earned!
- Who do I follow? I have to tell you, there are people on twitter who have questionable pictures and tweets. How do I control who follows me? I personal choose not to engage with these types of profiles so I block them and keep my followers and who I follow clean. There are tools you can utilize to find specific niche tweeples to follow and engage with. Listorious is a great tool to use when looking for specific people to follow. Type in your keywords and search over 1 million top twitter users. Bonus tip is to find and engage with the influencers in your niche.
- What are the rules of engagement? If you find a tweet that is interesting and valuable by all means RT (retweet it). Share it with your followers. The person posting the tweet will be grateful and thank you for your kind actions! Once you have RT, reply to that person and thank them for sharing that tweet and engage them in conversation. If you blog, post your blogs and share valuable content with them. Content is Key in social media and when providing value to your followers, they will RT your content and share it with their readers, growing your online reach.
- What if I follow them but they don't follow me back? Some people (celebrities) don't follow you back. If someone follows me, has a legitimate profile pic and bio and is in my niche I follow them back. Again, I want to engage with people who will provide value to my stream on twitter! There are tools to clean your twitter account up. My personal favorite is tweepie which can also help you flush out bots. Bots are automated twitter accounts. Real people aren't tweeting and running these accounts, making them a waste of your time!
Bonus Tip - If you look at twitter and other social media platforms in this light, I promise that the whole social media concept will seem clearer to you. The online world mimics WOM (word of mouth) conversations. If you aren't participating you aren't in the conversation! Conversations will lead people to your blog, people will see you as a thought leader and start engaging with you as an influencer. In turn, they will share your content, making you a traffic officer. You get to direct were that traffic goes. This organic traffic will build inbound links to your website, company blog etc.
Looking for more help on inbound marketing methods? We can help!
Posted by Rosemary Sorg on Wed, Jul 28, 2010
When I was first introduced to Facebook, I dismissed it as a social site for "college students," which I was not. Couple of years later, this social media phenomenon is only 6 years old and boasting 500+ million users daily. It's been written that Facebook, just based on reach, is one of the most successful internet startups in history! The question all businesses should be asking themselves is: Why aren't I utilizing this amazing tool for my business? Just based on these stats, if you don't understand facebook, you should make an effort to. I really urge you to understand this captive audience.
- Profiles - Remember that people have Profiles and brands have fan pages. Set up a profile page for whoever will be managing your brand fan page and then have them set up that company/brand fan page.
- Socialized connections - In every "niche" there is a central socially connected people. Find those people and befriend them. They will be your dinner host and help you to make new acquaintances and teach you proper facebook etiquette.
- Sharing - If you are reading or creating something in your niche that you find facinating, be kind and share this with your friends on Facebook. Sharing of relevant information is what social media is all about. Interacting, engaging, commenting, re-posting embody what social media is all about.
- Research - Research your audience so you can provide them with what they need. Listening and observing is such an important part of metrics in social media. Did you know that woman are talked to more on social media platforms? Women have 35% more posts on their walls than men do. If your product is geared more towards woman this is an important and relevant piece of information!
- Buzzwords - Research has show that posts with certain buzzwords were less likely to be shared. These buzzwords included optimization, seo, consultating, productivity, blogger, collaboration, competitive, conversation, integrated and last but not least advertising.
- "Liked" - Facebookers like to talk about food. Pages with the words ice cream, choc, milk, fruit, sugar had more fans than pages without these buzzwords. Interesting research for businesses who offer these products.
- Entertainment - Because Facebook is really more of a "social site" than platforms like Twitter, Facebookers who post about movies, tv shows, books, music, tv, athletics, actors, parks, comedians, trains, games, sports teams, film, food and beverage were liked more than posts that didn't include these buzzwords.
The important takeaways here is that you must jump in and start listening, observing, sharing and interacting in order to get in the swing of things. Utilize this incredible platform to build brand awareness, build relationships and harness Facebook's tremendous growth for inbound marketing purposes to your company website, blog site or online store.
At InboundMarketingPR, we help you get the conversation started!
Posted by Tom Allinder on Mon, Jul 26, 2010
By Cathy Allinder
Co-Owner, BackstreetYoga
Thirty years ago your company was probably doomed if you did not have a phone line. About 10-15 years ago it may have been doomed if you didn’t have a website or email. Today your company may have the most beautiful, graphically pleasing, artistic web site in the world and the black cloud of doom could be hovering over your company. Why?
I have to admit that my knowledge of websites was limited to the basics, things that many people look for when working with a web designer for your site. Before I ever worked with a designer for my first site I did some research by looking at sites to see what I liked and didn’t like.
It was amazing what was out there for people to see, I saw sites that basically had the contents for the entire site on their home page! Talk about confusing, it was a hodgepodge (a rather polite term) of colors, different styles and sizes of fonts, graphics, photos, videos and ads. I guess they had a limited budget and in an effort to save money they opted for the one page web site. My eyes hurt as well as my brain so I moved on.Another thing I noticed was music playing when the site opened, no real problem but perhaps you might have given people an option to turn the sound off. When I found a decent site I became disappointed at lack of quality control when links didn’t work or the wrong page opened.
Armed with what I wanted I met with the web designer and together we came up with a clean site that was easy to navigate, no music and with working links. She asked for key words to use in the Meta data tags. I was happy with the outcome and received many compliments on my site.
That was about four years ago and since then I have changed businesses and after closing the first site I was ready to begin work on a new one. It would be easier this time since my husband was building corporate websites and he offered to build mine. I started hearing terms that were completely foreign to me like SEO, don’t you mean CEO I asked. NO it’s SEO; it stands for Search Engine Optimization he answered.
I felt like I had been living on another planet since I had no clue of many things I learned while working to get my new site built. I did find out about a cool thing call the Website Grader run by HubSpot. Just visit www.websitegrader.com and enter your URL. It takes a few seconds to grade your site and when completed your site will receive a score between 0 and 100.
Your score means the algorithm has calculated your site in terms of its marketing effectiveness. It use a proprietary blend of over fifty different variables including search engine data, website structure, approximate traffic, site performance and others.
The grader is more than just a numerical score; it also lets you know areas where your site is strong and areas that need improvement. One of the key areas is your Blog, if you don’t have one it is strongly suggested you add this to your site. If you do have a blog this is also graded along with any suggestions.
The readability level is also addressed; I was pretty pleased to see that my new site was rated college/graduate school until I learned this may not be such a good thing. The suggestion is that content be made so simple so that the majority of the target audience can understand it. This theory has its pros and cons but it is certainly something to consider.
Another area graded is the metadata tags, these tags allow you to tell the search engines what your web page is all about. If you use Twitter you’ll also learn how effective your Tweets are along with suggestions for improvement.
Another term new to me was Alexa ratings and the website grader can let you know your score on this as well. Alexa is the online service that measures traffic for millions of sites on the internet in a similar way to Nielson television show ratings.
By following the suggestions of my husband (yes I listened) and the guidelines from HubSpot my new site started out with a rating of 32 and less than two months later is graded a 70 and continues to rise. Give it a try and see how your site rates and also the sites of your competitors.
Another suggestion is to check on the website of your intended designer, I did this with the site of my first web designer and it scored a 33. My thought was that if they aren’t putting effort into their own site why would I think they would do better with someone elses?
So it really isn’t all about the website but rather how your site is built.