If you are a small business there is a lot of demand on your time. One important trick is the swapping of roles as task and deadline necessitate. Marketing your business is one of those roles. It is essential, and it tasks a fair amount of time.

As a small business owner you are always looking for the most efficient way to market your business. The aim of minimum resource and maximum return on investment will lead you into unfamiliar and uncharted territory.

Internet marketing is one of those new areas that we have come to understand as being essential for the survival of a business. Internet marketing can be very daunting to a business owner unsure of the ins and outs of the web. If you spend any time listening to internet marketing advice a lot of it centres in getting online. The advice starts with create a website, get a blog, be involved in social media, create viral content and so the list continues.

The problem with all this advice is that it can suck up your time and may leave you neglecting other important tasks. Much of the expert’s advice makes sense and promises to lift business and generate great internet return on investment.

But when have you spent enough time online? When is it time to change hats and do something else?

I have attempted a very basic internet diary as a guideline. It is only a starting point but like everything, internet marketing needs a plan. This plan does not consider time spent in learning or getting the knowledge required to market online effectively.

Creating an internet diary is important and will help manage your time spent online doing internet related marketing. Along with a diary an action plan should be created for each individual element that you include in your diary. This element action plan will outline objective, knowledge acquisition, tools required and the tasks that you will be doing during the allotted time slot in your internet diary.

INTERNET DIARY

Daily Tasks

Online Sales and Customer Service		–
Email respond		–
Telephone and SMS		–
Direct Social Messages and Questions	More & more customers will contact you via different media and you may need to respond to a booking request over twitter as well as email or direct bookings. Twitter will take a daily bit of attention	– 10min

Weekly Tasks

PPC – Adwords Review	Review Click through and adjust adverts, keywords and budget (small campaign)	30 min
Google Alerts for Business Name & Branding	Set up a weekly search for your business name and any Branding that is relevant to you. Review the email that comes in and take action as appropriate	2 min
Social Media Friends Management	Add new friends Accept / Reject friend invitations	10 min
Post Content – Blog Article	Check that scheduled content has gone live	10 min
Update Social Profiles	Select the three social media sites that you believe are going to work for you	10 min
Seed Twitter Content – schedule	Paste in and schedule the tweets you have created in your content creation time.	10 min

Monthly Tasks

Keyword Research	Keyword research to identify short tail and actionable keywords that you can market to.	30 min
Write Content	Write Content Blog Posts Twitter etc	12 hr Spread out over Month
Schedule Content or new blog posts	A lot of the blog software has the ability to schedule when content will go live. This feature is very handy in cutting down on the time spent posting new material to a website.	15 min
Website Analytics		30 min
Search Engine Rankings		15 min
Industry Trends Online		15 min
Partner Distribution Effectiveness
Google Alerts for Opportunities	Set up a monthly search for opportunities that is relevant to you in your niche. Review the email that comes in and take action as appropriate	2 min
Link Building	Whatever you decided to do for link building during strategy planning now is the time	30 min

Six Monthly Tasks

Brand keyword research	Update and make sure that your brand keywords are still working.	20 min
Website Analytic Goals		2 hr
Industry Trends & Goal Alignment		15 min
Social Media Trends & Goal Alignment		30 min
Your Social Network & Plan		3 hr
Webmaster Tools	Identify Errors, crawl stats	15 min
Feeds & Sitemap submissions	Make sure feeds are working	5 min
Conversion Element Testing		1 day
Link Building strategy		4 hr
Competitor Review		1 hr
You Tube or Photograph (Flickr) additions	Not factoring in time spent in taking pictures or making video	2 hr

Team Tasmania is a program that helps tourism operators in Tasmania who are targeting international visitors work with Tourism Tasmania on a number of international marketing opportunities.

Team Tasmania operators engage in a number of networking events with an element of the event focusing on helping operators improve their international marketing reach. The following is the presentation and discussion that I was involved in where we discussed some principals of Search Engine optimization.

Areas that were talked about were

• The web is a supporting tool for a business
• Areas that a website owner should think about
• Accessibility (Hosting, Coding, sitemaps, CMS)
• Usability (Overcoming visitor obstacles, Set conversion goals)
• Analysis (Google Analytics, Free tools, Google Webmaster tools)
• Popularity (SEO, SEM, Social Media, Offline activities that need to dove tail)

The importance of Search Engine Optimization

SEOmoz SEO Pyramid developed by Rand Fishkin was used to talk about the layers involved in an effective SEO campaign. Some factors were explored around effective SEO. The SEOmoz SEO Biennial Ranking report was used to highlight some SEO areas.

Social Media was discussed.

• Any one can get involved
• Trying to cover everything takes too much time
• When thinking about getting involved in social media identify a category or type of social media and concentrate on getting it right. Dont try and tackle everything all at once.
• There is a difference in being involved in social media as a commenter or using it to understand what is being said as opposed to creating viral content that will promote your business.

Search Engine Marketing or Pay-per-click

Although it is becoming a more difficult area to obtain quick wins with higher keyword costs etc it is still an area that will help a business get exposure on the internet. It is important to get the right tools, do the right research and follow up with effective monitoring and testing.

A list of a few helpful resources

Sitemaps
http://www.sitemaps.org/
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ – Help Generate a sitemap

Usability
http://crazyegg.com/ on page interactive tracking
http://www.surveymonkey.com/
http://www.usabilityone.com/usability-resources/articles/usability-articles.php

Analytics
http://www.google.com/analytics/
http://web.analytics.yahoo.com/

Keyword tools
https://adwords.google.com.au/select/KeywordToolExternal
http://www.google.com/sktool/ Search based – find keywords from other side

Toolkits
http://tools.seobook.com/
http://www.seomoz.org/

Web master tools from Search Engines
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools
http://www.bing.com/webmaster

Competitive intelligence
http://www.google.com/insights/search/
http://www.google.com/trends
http://www.keywordspy.com/
https://www.google.com/adplanner/

PPC
https://www.google.com/adplanner/
www.google.com/intl/en/adwordseditor
https://adwords.google.com.au/

Good SEO Blogs (information)
http://searchengineland.com/
http://www.seomoz.org/blog

Other Tools
http://www.addthis.com/

“Money out means money in! ” – That is the way advertising works.

One of the key objectives in participating in advertising is to pay less and get more. The better this ratio stacks up the happier the advertiser. Luckily, Google and the other online advertising sites make it possible to reduce the amount paid for advertising and get more benefit by paying attention to the quality and relevancy of the advert.

The snap shot above is the way my Google account stacked up over a particular six-day period. The top graph shows Click through rate (CTR) and the bottom graph shows Cost per click (CPC). The cost of a particular advert being clicked on has a few contributing factors and as outlined by Google they are.

• Ad Click through rate: about 60% – As users click on adverts so the CTR increases and the quality ratings of the adverts increase.
• Ad Relevance: about 30% – Determined by the correlation of the advert, the keywords being bid on.
• Landing Page Quality: about 10% – The information and user action when they arrive at the landing page being presented.

Looking a little deeper into my campaigns, I had the following breakdown. The top campaign is Content search; the others are all search advertising. It is quickly obvious again the correlation between CTR and cost from this breakdown. The second and sixth campaigns have much lower CTR than the campaigns around them and look what it does to the cost per click of these particular campaigns.

Ways to increase the quality score of adverts.

Break keywords into groups

Group all the keywords that belong together into a particular campaign. Go down to the next level which is the adgroup level and group the different concepts within the campaign into relevant groups. These groups may contain as few as one or two keywords. The idea is to get as specific as possible in targeting the keywords with the most relevant advert.

Target the keyword

Using the ability to change between broad, phrase and exact gives the ability to reduce the amount of noise surrounding an advert. The more exacting a keywords target is, the less the advert will be displayed for terms that are not related. Negative keywords play a role in minimizing irrelevant phrases that an advert may be displayed for.

An example of this would be if I am advertising, a caravan park and I target the city where the caravan park is found, then I may have my advert showing up for queries that are about the city council or library. Using the negative keyword library would stop an advert being displayed for search that is about the city library. What this means is that targeting more closely the intent of the person searching, means that the person who sees the advert is more likely to click on the advert.

Produce relevant landing pages.

If a person clicks on an advert because they believe that they are being taken to a place that sells hotel accommodation and they land on a page that sells cars then the user experience is lacking. This is a very out there example but the closer an advert is tailored to what is on the landing page the better the user experience and that leads to the possibility of having the user take the desired action. The correct correlation between intent and what is being displayed then helps to raise the quality score of the advert.

Online advertising is a full time job if done correctly. The size of the overall campaign also determines how much time needs to be spent in achieving the right result. If there is a struggle with time I would suggest that an advertiser cut done on the number of terms that are being targeted and concentrate on getting those campaigns which are running the best return. Aim to increase the CTR, by improving the quality of keyword relevance, advert and landing page. This in turn will lead to a decrease in the cost-per-click (CPC) of each advert and the overall cost of online advertising while providing greater return on investment.

Web Content ‘s focus determines its success.

What the internet aims to be is a repository of information that helps us solve problems. Every time useful information is published on the internet, it should help us do just that “Solve Problems.” Creating content that is useful and available through search may not be enough. Connecting the reader with what you have written is the key to successful content on the internet.

Useful, problem solving information can take many different forms from inspirational, tips, news, how to’s and so much more. How this information is received however puts a whole new spin on the term “Successful information.” An example of this would be if an article is published that solves the problem of hair loss. If I were losing my hair then this information would help me from going bald. However if I don’t read the information because of lack of engagement, I will never achieve the solution of a full head of hair that is being offered me. The article is no longer successful but is a failure in solving my hairy problem.

What structure should web content take on.

The question therefore raised is, “ How should content be constructed in order to be successful?” A lot of copy writing experts will explain the effectiveness of using headlines, dot points and WIIFM benefits of persuasion copy writing.

Taking the thought of writing to engage the reader one-step further, consideration must be given to the reader’s inherent reactions and personality. How much does personality and native make up play a part in the reaction to the information people are reading? If it does play a part and I believe it does, then the key to engagement is, “how can we write content to address the different personality types?”

Personality breakdown to apply to web content writing.

The 4MAT® Model which is aimed at teachers may provide insight into how we can write content that appeals to different personality and learning types. The 4MAT® model breaks people up into four different learning approaches. It maintains that although people use a wide range of learning experiences, individuals tend to favour a particular learning method. The four methods are…

1. Imaginative Learning – Feeling and watching, seeking personal associations, meaning and involvement.
2. Analytic Learning – Listening to and thinking about information; seeks facts thinking through ideas, what does the expert think.
3. Common Sense Learning – Thinking and doing. Experimenting, building, creating usability, tinkering.
4. Dynamic Learning – Doing, feeling. Seeking hidden possibilities, exploring, learning by trial and error.

Another factor that plays a part in how an individual inherently learns is the usage of left and right brain.

• Left brain – Operates best through structure and sequence.
• Right Brain – Comprehends images, seeks patterns.

When the left and right brains are both used during the learning process higher learning and thinking is achieved. There is a greater range and depth of understanding leading to a greater implementation or take up of the new ideas.

The model extends to include a breakdown of

1. How we perceive the information – Take new information in and this scales from THINKING (Conceptualizing) to FEELING (Experience).
2. How we process the information – What is done with the information which scales from DOING (Active or Experimental) to WATCHING(Reflective or Observing).

All of this information can be depicted in a diagram as follows.

Web Content and the therefore what question?

In creating information that takes into consideration people’s inherent personality and learning types the key questions that relate to each sector are important. Making sure that each key question is addressed and in order is important. Review the content adding in elements that will help a particular learning type connect with the information. This may be an image or stats in the correct place.

If you have read all the way down to here the key challenge is to take the knowledge of how people learn and apply it to your writing. Can you increase your circle of influence? Some web stats that maybe useful in determining the impact of writing content in a way that considers how your readers best learn is loyalty and recency.

If you have any further insights, thoughts or experiences I would love to hear from you.