feed hat blog

This is another addition to our ongoing series of tutorials and case studies on landing pages that work.

Nicole Johnson wants to get babies and their moms some much-needed rest. She’s packed napping plans, schedules, and strategies into her $37 ebook/consultation package. She’s tried different pricing, Google Adwords, different offers, freemiums, and more to pop conversion, but her results still ping between a snoozy 0.5 to 3%.

She has good traffic, but needs more help getting those tired, sleepy moms to buy. Let’s see if we can’t help Nicole give her sales a much-needed wakey-wakey.

• The Goal: Increase conversion (currently below 4%).
• The Problem: Nearly 3,000 visitors monthly, who show an interest in the free information but don’t ultimately translate to sales.
• Content Marketing Strategies: Various. Nicole’s free Baby Nap Guide is one piece she uses to get users into her email funnel
• The Current Landing Page: www.babynapswell.com (home page)
• Value: $24.95 to $37

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The Maven’s 10-Point Critique

#1 – Your first screen has to answer the question — Why do moms want their babies to nap?

Because they’re exhausted! They want a relaxed, rested child and a chance for themselves to rest and recharge for a few hours. They’re desperate for RELIEF and they want it now.

What’s the deep, realized benefit to your ebook? Your ebook helps break the vicious no nap/irregular nap cycle, makes mom feel more competent and secure as a parent, and makes it easier to enjoy her baby.

So here’s the problem — you’ve got 2-3 seconds from the first screen to get your reader involved in your message. Perhaps they’ve already reviewed the free nap info, perhaps not. In either case, you don’t present them with a rich, emotionally resonant headline. You’ve basically repeated the banner head as if it was a headline. It’s not. At first glance, I also have no idea you’re selling anything at all. It isn’t clear to me.

So be clear. Develop and test your headlines that speak directly to the mom’s emotional environment — Too tired to enjoy your baby? Dread the nap-time power struggles day after day? In just XX days, you CAN turn your pint-sized nap-fighter into a sweet-smiling, nap-lover. All you need are the right strategies and tools . . . and so forth.

#2 — Get personal. Get emotional. Talk to your readers, Mom-to-Mom, in a letter format.

Dear Cranky Mom,

A few years ago, I was just like you. I was a new mom with a new baby that no matter what I did wouldn’t nap or when she did, it was short and fitful. When this kind of stuff goes on too long, even the most confident mom in the world begins to think she stinks at this mom thing. I was sure I was doing something wrong but I didn’t know what to do instead.

Your current copy is factual, but a little bloodless. It doesn’t speak to the heart and the desperation that I know I felt when my kids were little and wouldn’t sleep. If ever there was a problem/solution fraught with anxiety and a deep need for help, this is it. Make sure your copy reaches the frazzled mom with solace and hope that she will, once again, get a chance of closing her own eyes for an hour or two in the afternoon.

Get personal with video. I think this could be very effective for you, especially if done professionally. (I don’t think a simple chat to the webcam would support your value or credibility.) Imagine how wonderful it would feel to “Tired Mom” to have someone talk right to her and tell her that relief is in sight.

#3 — Make the case why napping issues need a $37 solution.

There are a ton of books, sites, products, and even support groups devoted to sleeping issues. I wondered why I needed a special book about napping as opposed to a broader sleep solution. That’s probably the biggest challenge you have to overcome. You’ll want to make sure your copy continues to underscore how the daytime napping problems are different and need a different set of strategies to solve them.

#4 — Show and tell the product you’re selling. Put your first call to action in the first screen.

If you want people to know you’re selling a book, you gotta show them the book and YOU’VE GOT TO SHOW THEM THE TITLE. I didn’t even realize your ebook was called “Mastering Naps and Schedules” until I saw it mentioned in a testimonial at the end of the second screen.

Your cover is very appealing so I’d definitely give it above-the-fold prominence, perhaps working it into the banner art. You also need to give your prospects the opportunity to order at several points in the copy, starting with the first screen. You want one button, text link or other call-to-action (CTA) device per screen scroll. (Right now, it takes me 3 screens to locate the order buttons.)

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I prepared a heatmap so you can see what people look at and what they look at first. Too much attention to elements that don’t promote your message means lost sales opportunities for you. (Free heatmap courtesy of the technology at Feng-GUI.com.)

#5 — Tell me precisely what I will get and learn from your ebook.

Give your readers a bulleted list or two of goodies, and be specific.

• 28 proven strategies that will . . .
• 3 easy-to-use tools that make . . .
• 12 ways to get well-meaning grandma off your back . . .

Etcetera. Nothing strengthens copy more than specificity. You already do some of this. Do more.

Also, take the feature and expand it into its core benefit. For example, “How to get LONGER naps” becomes “10 ways to get longer naps from your baby and more couch-time for you.”

#6 — Emphasize that your system works for nearly all babies and parents.

Everyone, including me, thinks their baby and parenting situation is unique. That’s why you’ll want to make sure your copy reinforces that your system works for nearly all young children — preemies, internationally adopted toddlers, twins, and also that it works for all sorts of moms and dads. Use your testimonials as a way of underscoring this.

Think about personas representing your customer types. Who is this ebook really for? Write out 3-5 ’stories,’ each representing a key member of your core parenting market, and make sure your copy delivers the message, “Yes, this ebook is perfect for someone like me,” for each one of them.

#7 — Establish and reinforce your expertise on the subject. Add a headshot.

Who are you and why are you qualified? That’s another one of the big challenges your copy needs to address. Unless I missed it, I don’t see anything about you. If you want me to spend $XX, I want to know enough about you to think I’m spending my money wisely. You don’t have to have an alphabet soup of degrees following your name, but you do need to reveal something of yourself and background within the context of your offering.

#8 — Edit, edit and edit some more.

Click image for larger view

Your moms are tired. Their eyes are glazing over looking at dense, forbidding text in super long paragraphs.

Think shorter, 2-5 line paragraphs. Use lots of subheads and bulleted lists to hook the eye and make scanning and scrolling less like a chore. People only need the science/other background about napping to support your ebook’s information. Don’t give more background than is necessary to help folks make a decision to purchase.

#9 — Test a 2-column format. Load your sidebar with testimonials.

Get the bulk of your “Mom-and-Baby-Tested” testimonials here. Again, edit these judiciously. You want each of these to amplify and illustrate your ebook’s core strengths. I’d also get some pediatricians, pediatric nurse practitioners, daycare center directors, home daycare moms, etc. to weigh-in with their big thumbs-up. Run these short, punchy kudos adjacent to your main copy.

#10 — Simplify the offer.

Click image for larger view

You need to differentiate your offers more emphatically with titling– “The Deluxe Complete BabyNapsWell System with Personal Consultation” and the “Standard BabyNapsWell System” — and with better design. I might box these and play them side by side. Perhaps add your headshot into the Deluxe box as a reminder of the relief AND personal attention your prospect is about to purchase.

BONUS:

I’d think about giving your ebook a new title. This is a huge topic for so many parents living in the fog of “my baby never sleeps.”

“Mastering Naps and Schedules” lacks the emotional juice of “No More Naptime Tears: Get Your Baby to Love Naptime So You Can Love Yours” — or something like that. You want a title that clearly, perhaps cleverly gets the point across fast. You want your title to spell RELIEF IS AT HAND.

My thanks to Nicole Johnson for her patience and support of Heifer International. Look for my next makeover in approximately 3 to 4 weeks.

Want to get a future Copywriting Maven landing page makeover?

Got a landing page that’s more poop than pop? Willing to share with Copyblogger readers? Prepared to put a little of your own “skin in the game” for a Maven Makeover? Then follow your click to Maven’s Landing Page Makeover page for all the details. I’m booked for gratis “Heifer” critiques until 05/15/10.) If you’re interested in a private critique/makeover, site audit, or other services, please email me directly.)

About the Author: Roberta Rosenberg is The Copywriting Maven at MGP Direct, Inc. Find her @CopywriterMaven on Twitter.

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Landing Page Makeover Clinic #23: BabyNapsWell.com

A Guest Post by Elle from Couple Money.

I’ve been blogging for a couple years now and I’ve enjoyed it tremendously. Couple Money is not my first blog, but it is the first one I created with a specific goal in mind. I wanted to share how we’re building our net income while creating a mobile income from our passions and create a community of like minded couples.

My other sites started off as personal blogs and haphazardly morphed as I gained readers. Without a particular goal or process, the blogs’ growth tapered off. I wanted to change this with Couple Money and I knew I needed to get it done sooner rather than later.

I’ve been a reader of Problogger and after reading the 31 Day Challenge that Darren presented, I knew this is something I need to improve my site. I completed my Challenge last weekend and I wanted to share some tips I’ve done to maximize the Challenge for my blog.

Promoting Your Blog Post Effectively

One of the first tasks in the challenge is promoting a blog post. I’ve been guilty of promoting my blog posts to the annoyance of other readers and bloggers when I first started a couple of years ago. I had thought the best way was to keep posting updates on new posts. I learned the hard way that method does not work. When I receive constant direct messages on Twitter to promote posts, I feel less inclined to help, even if they’re good posts.

I was happy to see what I could do to promote my posts without seeming spammy. I tend to promote my posts through Twitter and I mixed them up with posts from other bloggers that I’ve found very informative. Since I work during the day, I try to batch my tweets as I review sites in the evening. While that’s great for me and my schedule, it wasn’t too effective.

I found that releasing them around the same time does no one any good. Not too many people clicked to read my posts or other people’s posts because they felt overwhelmed. I decided to make it a win-win situation. I now use Su.pr to schedule my tweets and spread out some community promotion through out the work day.

The Seesmic app is my buddy on my phone to keep in touch. I check replies and messages on my Samsung Moment during breaks and lunch during the day to communicate with my network. I also try and take the time to thank everyone who retweeted my posts. I think that appreciation and gratitude goes a long way with effective promotion.

Interlinking Old Posts Quickly and Easily

Writing posts that can grab readers’ attention is great, but it’s only part of getting a community started. I realized I needed to get my visitors to dig deep and become readers. The best way to help them is presenting them relevant links within the posts they’re interested in enough to read. In addition to helping readers, including relevant links can improve your site’s SEO strategy.

Darren suggests making interlinking a routine part if your blogging activities. To maximize my relevant links and minimize my time doing it, I use CrossLinker and Insight. These two plugins have helped me to quickly create links to my pillar posts and my best content. Crosslinker allows me to focus readers to my pillar posts and choose which keywords to link to it with. Insight is very helpful as I’m writing my post, as I can search for my posts and other blogs for helpful and resourceful links.

I’ve noticed that completing this task has improved my incoming search traffic for certain keywords. I’m starting to get on the first page of results for my relatively young blog. As I continue making interlinking to older posts a habit, I’m hoping to get even more improvement.

Find Some Blog Buddies to Turbo Charge Each Other

If you want to build a community, you have to be a part of one. Day 15’s task was to find a partner to help encourage each other to improve. I checked out some tips on finding blogging buddies and decided to join a small band of bloggers with the Yakezie Challenge. It’s the perfect combination of camaraderie and friendly competition that I needed. As a reader of Financial Samurai, I noticed his challenge to other bloggers to improve their sites by using Alexa as a gauge.

I compare it to someone who’s looking to get in shape by joining a neighbourhood sports team. You’re working hard to improve your game, but the teamwork makes it seem more like fun instead of just fitness.

So if you’re looking at finding a blogging buddy, my suggestion is to look around your niche and find some bloggers who are hungry and have a specific goal you share. Being a part of your niche’s forums is definitely important, but having a competition really focuses you on getting your work done.

Breathe Life Into an Old Post

As I noticed more search traffic for my blog (loving the results of this challenge!), I saw the need to follow Day 21’s task advice on going back and improving my old blog posts. My problem was that I didn’t have a large block of time to research what I needed to do to make it more resourceful and while still keeping up with current posts.

I decided to beef up posts based on my first time reader review (Day 17) and from analytic tools: Google Analytics and WebMaster Tools. My goal was to make sure older posts were providing information that my readers were looking for. I checked several statistics to see what I needed to focus my attention on:

• Popular Posts: Since time was limited I focused on posts that were already getting some attention and just needed a bit more to help them stand out.
• Search Terms Used: I wanted to see how readers were finding these posts and if there were any specific questions they were asking. I can either adjust a post with an answer to that question or write a new posts and link to my older posts.
• Heat Map: On my homepage, I include links to some of my older posts. I look and see which ones are popular and try and figure out why.

I recommend doing this on a monthly basis with your older posts and just focus on what your readers want to read more of. After all, if you’re looking to build a community, it can’t always be about you. Looking at older posts can be a bit easier to see objectively and you can address your readers’ needs more effectively.

What’s The Plan Now?

I have to admit I was really sad to see the challenge over. It was really easy to follow along a daily blogging schedule and having a specific goal to achieve. Having a framework to write and work from helped me to be more productive.

I decided I’m going to use the 31 Day Challenge as my guide for the rest of the year. Instead of going through the guide in the traditional 31 days, I’m going to focus each week on one of the daily tasks. I’ve seen how the guide has improved the quality of my content and the community so I want to really dig deep and focus on all the activities I can do with each task.

How about you? How have you maximized the 31 days to Build a Better Blog Challenge with your site?

Elle has been blogging over at Couple Money on how she and her family handles their finances. To follow Elle you can chat with her on twitter (@Elle_CM) or subscribe to her blog.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Tips for Doing the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge

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Tips for Doing the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge

On my post about how I run my business from a web browser, I showed a screen shot (see above) of Gmail that got quite a few comments and emails. The most common question was how I was able to add the task manager on the right. Gmail does have a task manager but it doesn’t dock itself and it’s not a complete solution like what I run.

How To Always Remember The Milk

The task manager I use come from a service call Remember The Milk. The service was created so that you no longer have to write your to-do lists on sticky notes, whiteboards, random scraps of paper, or the back of your hand. Remember The Milk makes managing tasks an enjoyable experience. The best feature of Remember The Milk (RTM) is how it integrates with various services and apps.

Remember The Milk for Gmail is the browser extension I use to put the RTM task list on my Gmail. The extension is available for Google Chrome and FireFox. Having the task list next to my Gmail makes it extremely easy to keep track of what I need to do. Gmail is among the first thing I check in the morning and seeing the task bar gives me a quick look at my duties for the day.

No matter where I go, Remember The Milk is with me because they also have an iPhone app. Since the service is in the cloud, an update from my iPhone will update the RTM on my Gmail. Since I started using RTM, I’ve been a lot more organized and get projects done a lot sooner than without a task manager. The RTM service is free. Give it a try and watch your productivity increase.

Bonus Google Trick – Add Google Calendar and Docs To Gmail

In addition to running RTM with Gmail, I also have previews of my Google Calendar and Google Doc on there as well. You can add a bunch of stuff to your Gmail by clicking your Gmail “Settings” link and then choosing “Labs.” From there, you’ll be able to enable a previews for Calendar and Docs (and other stuff).

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

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Don’t Forget To Remember The Milk

Today is SEM Synergy’s 100th episode anniversary and we celebrated live on the air! It was exhilarating and exciting and rewarding and fun and people were hanging in the chat room and Bruce was answering questions on air and people called in to the show and there was so much love going around I think I’m still on cloud nine!

Breathe, Virginia…

Seriously, thanks to friends and listeners for all the kudos and support, and thanks for listening to the show because that’s what makes it worth doing!

If you tuned in to the show today, you heard Bruce, Susan and I talking about how Rhea Drysdale (who you may know as co-founder of Outspoken Media or from her frequent SEM conference speaking gigs or as next week’s SEM Synergy guest!) defended “SEO” from being trademarked.

CC BY-SA 2.0 SEO trademark denied!

When the SEO community learned of Rhea’s story, they immediately snapped into action to donate the out-of-pocket legal costs that had piled on Rhea and Jonathan Hochman, another trademark opposer. You can find a recap of the full story (among other juicy delicious news and articles) in yesterday’s SEO Newsletter.

While we’d like to think that such an undeserved trademark claim to a common term like SEO would never have gone through, nobody knows what could have happened if Rhea and the opposition hadn’t acted when and how they did.

The issue now is that this trademark application is not the first of its kind, and it won’t be the last. (Here’s a trademark application for SEO that’s currently in the queue!) Anyone else think it would be ridiculous to watch this happen again? How can we be sure someone will come to our rescue next time?

Some have proposed that SEMPO, the industry’s professional organization, should take up the cause. Bruce, who sits on organization’s board of directors, explained on the show today that he’ll be bringing the issue up with the board to see what might be possible. I think we can all agree that it’s time to ensure SEO is treated as a generic term in the public domain, so it seems it’s time for some legal advice.

From a little sleuthing I found this Wikipedia entry (sophisticated, I know) on public domain for trademarks:

Terms can be deemed “generic” in two ways. First, any potential mark can be deemed “generic” by a trademark registry, that refuses to register it. In this instance, the term has no secondary meaning that helps consumers identify the source of the product; the term serves no function as a “mark”. Second, a mark, already in use, may be deemed generic by a court or registry after the mark is challenged as generic—this is known as “genericide”. In this instance, the term previously had a secondary meaning, but lost its source-identifying function.

I’d think that the second option would only be applicable if “SEO” was already a trademark, which it’s not. So that leaves us with the first option, which is to trust that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office won’t let anymore of these applications though. And if the USPTO opens the doors to another, it may come down to another individual reaching into their personal pocket to champion the security of SEO once again.

Let’s not let that happen again. At the very least, can we agree to rally around the issue if it ever comes back up? Can we promise not to let another individual tackle the issue alone? And of course I’ve gotta ask, any trademark lawyers in the house?

How Can SEOs Avoid More Trademark Trouble? — SEM Synergy Extras was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO tools provider.

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How Can SEOs Avoid More Trademark Trouble? — SEM Synergy Extras

When you write a post for your blog, your headline is the last thing you should be thinking about.

OK, I realize this is Copyblogger heresy.

There’s a lot of emphasis on writing a good headline. Hell, I’ve written posts about how to write an eye-grabbing title myself. Brian wrote an entire series on headlines (including a post on why you should always write your headline first), and he’s been known to come up with some pretty catchy ones.

But while crafting a good headline is critical to getting people to read a blog post, open the email, or get past the headline to the copy, it’s actually the last thing you should be thinking about when you first sit down to write.

Who’s your audience?

Get this wrong and you can mess up a lot of potentially awesome headlines.

Your headline could fit the perfection checklist to a T. It could be a list with a number. It could have action words. It could be creative, intriguing, ask a question, be a little crazy, hint at a secret. But if it isn’t written for the right audience, you’re screwed.

5 Powerful Headlines that Get You All the Chicks — and How to Write Them

That’s a pretty decent headline right there. But if the majority of your audience is work-from-home mothers, that headline isn’t going to get you as far as it would if you were writing for an audience of straight single men.

Know who your audience is, and know what kind of language appeals to them. Lexi Rodrigo wrote a post not too long ago about feminine words that sell. There were plenty of responses to that post in the comment section, some of them from women saying which words wouldn’t necessarily appeal to them, and why.

You have to get in the brain of your audience, and you have to know the words that work for them.

There are no short cuts. It’s not just about appealing to women or men — the question is, which women or men. You have to figure out your precise audience, and you have to write directly to the way those specific people are feeling when they read your post.

What do you want them to do?

If your blog attracts new customers and enthusiasts, then every single post you write should let your audience know what you want from them.

Now hang on there — before you run away because you run a strictly informational, no-sales blog, we’re talking to you too.

Even if you have no intention of getting sales from your blog, you still want your readers to do something.

You want them to think about what you’ve written. You want them to feel something. You want them to take some sort of action. You want them to comment. You want them to get into conversations with other people. You want them to follow you on Twitter or friend you on Facebook.

You want all kinds of stuff. And yeah, sometimes you even want sales. But before you scribble down that headline and start writing, you need to know what you want. Then you need to leverage your headline to make sure you get it.

What are you going to give them?

Brian recommends writing your blog title before you write the post, and I agree with that as a general rule. Writing down your headline reminds you of what the focus of your post is supposed to be.

But even if you haven’t written the post yet, you still need to know what you’re going to be writing about. This makes logical sense — and oddly, a lot of people don’t seem to think about it.

They say they’re going to offer you “10 Secrets of Copywriting” and they write that headline down, but what they end up writing about is common knowledge on every marketing blog out there.

If your title is going to be about secrets, you need to be prepared to write about secrets. If you’re only prepared to write about what someone already knows, then you’re not going to be able to deliver on the promise of your title.

Before you write your headline, you need to know you’ll back up the promise it’s making.

All right, then. Have you thought about all that? Good. Now you’re ready to tackle the last thing you need to think about:

What’s your headline going to be?

Your headline might need to be last on your task list, but last doesn’t mean least important. Often, it means just the opposite.

How about you? What else do you think people need to do before they get to their headlines?

About the Author: James Chartrand is the copywriter setting your business priorities in the right order. Check out Men with Pens for more tips, tricks and techniques on how to write better blog posts, or better yet, sign up for the Men with Pens RSS feed right here.

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Why You Should Always Write Your Headline Last

Unless you’ve decided to hide in a cave for the last ten years, there’s a good chance you know about this whole Internet poker phenomenon. It’s not like poker is a new game, per se, but it has rapidly grown in popularity thanks to televised events like the World Poker Tour.

How can you cash in (no pun intended) on this growing industry? Well, as you’ll learn from this review, Full Tilt Poker actually has one of the most lucrative affiliate programs on the web today.

Affiliate with Full Tilt Poker

With big names like John Juanda and Gus Hansen, you already have a highly recognizable brand on your hands. Full Tilt Poker is one of the most popular online poker rooms, offering a wide range of different poker games and formats, but it also gives you an opportunity to “play with the pros.”

Even if you don’t play poker yourself, you can still make money with Full Tilt Poker.

That’s where the affiliate program comes into play. You can make affiliate income by referring new players to the site who go on to play for real money. It doesn’t matter if they choose to play cash games or tournaments; you get paid both ways.

From what I can see, registration requires filling out a short form and submitting it online. There does not appear to be an approval process, so you can start earning your commissions right away.

Choose from Two Payment Plans

When you sign up for the Full Tilt Poker affiliate program, you can choose from two different payment schemes. These are mutually exclusive, so you can’t double-dip on your earnings.

The first payment plan is CPA, so you are paid a one-time commission for each new player that you refer. This is based on the number of qualified referrals each month and you can earn a bonus if they are particularly active on the site. These payouts range from $75 to $215 per player.

The second payment plan is a percentage revenue plan, giving you a percentage of the money Full Tilt earns each month from your referred players. This is on an ongoing basis with commissions ranging from 20% to 35%, depending on the net revenue generated by the players you refer.

You can’t really say that one payment plan is more lucrative than the other, because it depends on the behavior of the players you refer to the site. If you send people who play regularly and spend lots of money, the PRP is probably better. If you send people who may not play as much, the CPA model may be in your best interest.

The Importance of Full Tilt Points

You’ll notice that the way Full Tilt “qualifies” a referral is based on the number of “FTPS” that the player earns. These Full Tilt Points are earned by players for participating in ring games and in tournaments.

For the former, each dollar raked from a pot results in one point being given to every player dealt into the hand (to a maximum of three points). For the latter, seven points are given for every dollar paid in multi-table and sit & go tournaments (with no maximum).

Make Money by Referring More Affiliates

What if you have an audience like John Chow dot Com where there are more people interested in Internet marketing than in Texas Hold’em? You can make money there too.

The referral program rewards you for referring other affiliates too. It seems that the “sub-affiliate” system only runs one level deep, but you can earn either 3% of net revenue or a $5 fixed CPA, depending on the payment plan you chose.

Put on Your Poker Face

You don’t have to have a website to promote Full Tilt Poker. They welcome other forms of marketing too (like ordering reviews on popular blogs). You can also remind your readers that Full Tilt offers an automatic 100% initial deposit match (up to $600) for new accounts.

What about getting paid by the affiliate program? Instead of sending your earnings via PayPal or sending you a cheque, Full Tilt deposits the money into your Full Tilt Poker player account. They want you to put the cash back on the table, you see.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR FULL TILT POKER AFFILIATE PROGRAM

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

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Place Your Bets on Full Tilt Poker Affiliates

In this post Mark Hayward shares some great tips on social media for small business.

Image by jn is not here

Do you own a small business? How long have you been using social media as a marketing tool and what have you learned?

In a little over a months time I will have owned my business for just about three years. When I began using social media some thirty six months ago, I had no real marketing background experience, and I certainly had never written a blog post, interacted in a forum, or sent a Tweet.

My social media evolution began with a simple foray into blogging as a way to try and rank well for some keywords related to my business. From there I expanded to niche forums, review sites, FLICKR, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

Man! Just trying to keep up can be intimidating and overwhelming.

However, my number one goal has always been to create a distributed social media footprint with all of my online marketing activities pointing back towards my small business website.

After almost three years of working hard, learning continuously, making lots of mistakes, and monitoring successes, below are thirty valuable social media marketing lessons that I have learned through my experience. I hope they help you:

1. Location is dead. We have now fully entered into the Interaction Economy.

2. It does not pay to engage in ‘pissing contests’ on business review sites or in forums.

3. When used properly, a small video camera like a Flip and a standard digital camera (or just an iPhone), can be like having your own marketing department.

4. Instead of trying to be everywhere in the social media space, determine what online activities work best for your business and focus your attention there.

5. Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is important but it needs to be combined with a well distributed plan for Search Engine Visibility (SEV).

6. Conceptualizing and then defining your social media goals can help to keep you on track.

7. Social networking sites can be a tremendous time suck. Use a site like Egg Timer to help limit the time you spend interacting online.

8. Get to know the online influencers in your small business niche, as well as, the social media pros.

9. There is gold to be mined with Twitter Search if you are willing to use it to listen, engage, and provide value.

10. Uploading well titled and tagged videos to YouTube and photos to FLICKR can drastically improve your Search Engine Visibility.

11. Consistent small business blogging pays the greatest returns.

12. Technology changes daily. Read often.

13. You should not fear customer review social sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. Rather, you should embrace them.

14. Helping people online when they least expect it can bring you great rewards.

15. Even on your worst day, you have to remember that every interaction counts.

16. Spamming and jamming your business down the throats of potential customers only drives business away.

17. Not everyone is going to like you, so be prepared to get flamed and read negative reviews.

18. Turn negative reviews into a positive by using them to help better define who your ideal customer is.

19. Your backstory matters and weaving it into your online business persona is important.

20. Social media is a lot like exercise. Doing a little bit consistently everyday will produce better results than one eight hour marathon session per month.

21. The people who criticize you the most for using social media to promote your small business are the one’s who are most afraid of embracing change.

22. One of the easiest ways for small business owners to measure social media ROI is to ask every customer how they heard about your business.

23. When starting your social media marketing efforts for your small business you will get frustrated. Try to keep a long term outlook like six months to a year.

24. Don’t discount the power of niche forums that are related to your small business.

25. Use Google Alerts to see who’s talking specifically about your business and anything related to your business.

26. If you are using social media as a customer service tool, when something goes wrong (and it always does!), being sincere, humble, and apologetic will be greatly appreciated by your future potential customers.

27. Utilizing free email lists like Help A Reporter Out (HARO) can help you find valuable public relations and news opportunities for your business.

28. Social media in the short term does not work. You must be in it for the long term and be persistent, consistent, and committed.

29. Anyone who owns a small business can ‘do’ social media, but NOT everyone ‘does’ it. (And that is your true competitive advantage.)

30. If you have a spare hour or two everyday to aimlessly surf the net, or sit and watch T.V., then you have more than enough time to commit to using social media for your small business.

How long have you been using social media for your small business? What have you found works best?

Mark Hayward hates the snow and cold! Luckily, he owns a small business in the Caribbean. Mark is passionate about helping other small business owners avoid the online mistakes he has made. You can follow Mark on Twitter @mark_hayward and you can subscribe to his RSS Feed for weekly small business social media marketing tips.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

30 Valuable Lessons Learned Using Social Media for Small Business

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30 Valuable Lessons Learned Using Social Media for Small Business

I had to take my car into North Shore Acura today to get it service and change out the winter tires. Since I was going to be stuck at the dealership for a couple of hours, I figure I would just blog from there. After all, I’ve been blogging from all over the city lately so why not a car dealership? North shore Acura was actually a pretty good place to work from. They had a nice table for me to set up my blogging gears and a coffee machine that made a great Cafe Mocha. However, their wireless Internet was pretty slow.

I decided to use my time at North Shore to do a video featuring all the stuff in my laptop bag. These are the gears which allow me to run my business from anywhere in the world. My mobile blogging setup has scaled down a lot since I showed it in China. This had a lot to do with new flight restrictions the United States imposed after that failed underwear bombing attempt.

The entire video was filmed, processed and uploaded to YouTube while at North Shore Acura. The staff were pretty cool and didn’t seem to mind me making a home for myself. One of the salesmen even recognized who I was.

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[Video] My Mobile Blogging Gears

Three patents granted today to Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo all describe how each of the search engines might take a close look at page addresses, or URLs on dynamic web sites.

I wrote about the patent from Microsoft back when it had just been published as a pending patent application, in Microsoft Creating Rules for Canonical [...]

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Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo Patents on Interpreting Dynamic Page URLs