Internet Marketing Toronto - Ignite!

Cohn’s Corner Holiday Edition

Hello IMTI! readers. My name is Tony Cohn and I am an internet marketing consultant here at Spark. Each Friday, I will post a new installment of “Cohn’s Corner,” which is a weekly video blog on internet marketing. Today’s episode is a special holiday discussion on Tweetdeck. Enjoy!

A Few Tips To Help You Become A Better Leader

Being a leader in a company often times means dealing with the needs of your staff. Unfortunately many leaders miss this point and all too often shut out their staff from the opportunity to voice their concerns (complain) and seek the advice and support of the leadership team! As a result you may be missing out on opportunities to improve your company.

Here are a few tips to help you become a better leader

• Truly recognize that being a leader means that those you are leading will come to you when they have a problem. Your initial reaction is to dislike complainers and winers. That’s because you’re goals oriented, motivated and independent. That’s why you ended up leading a group of people afterall. Come to terms with this fact and you’re a big step closer to becoming a more effective leader!
• You’ve gone to great lengths to hire competent people so when they come to you with a complaint, don’t second guess them. Figure out why they have not been able to handle the issue on their own. Talk to them about the issue and help them determine the appropriate course of action. Give them the advice they need to deal with the situation but don’t take over it and solve it for them. Let them take your advice and the responsibility for implementing it.
• Recognize complaints and chatter from your team for what they are - insight into how your business is operating. Depending on the issues at hand it could be an early warning of a deficiency in your sales process, operations, standard operating procedures, products and services, accounting - just about anything. Set aside the time to really thing through all of the issues looking for a macro trend - a thread that ties them all together. You’ll give yourself the chance to find the real cause of the problems. Once you’ve done that you can get to work on rectifying the bigger issue and avoiding the problem going forward. You’re team will see that you’re listening and leading them in the right direction as result!
• Learn to recognize bad apples on the team and deal with them swiftly. In most cases team members are great contributors who happen to run into problems they can’t solve on their own. On the other hand there are those people out there who thrive on complaining for no productive reason at all - they like the drama. No amount of coaching in my opinion can help these people. Don’t delay - do the best you can to help them as quickly as possible and come to a conclusion fast. Either you know they’ll change their habits or they won’t. If they won’t then you need to get them out of the team quickly because they can systematically destroy the productivity of your entire team in a short period of time! Don’t feel your being harsh. Often times this kind of person is not happy in their job and this is there passive way of resisting - or even getting fired to avoid having to quit. By taking action quickly you’re doing the right thing for them and your team. The next job they get into may just be the right one for them - the sooner they can do that the better!
• Defend your teams. When your upper management starts to ask questions about your teams productivity defend them. Be honest and take responsibility for the results. If there are improvements to be made that’s up to you and your team to work out together. The worst thing you can do is turn around and reprimand your team! They won’t trust you as a result and they won’t follow you. Good luck motivating them after that!
• My last tip is to remember that you serve your teams. You’re there to make sure they can work to their fullest potential. You’re there to take all the heat from management and your team - your there to make sure your team gets the rewards! Focus on serving your teams from your heart and you’ll be rewarded with teams that will follow you like no other!

Leading teams is very challenging at best. It’s full of the things most of us don’t naturally like doing - listening to the needs of other people, taking the blame for things that are not directly your fault, and passing on the rewards for good work to those who were ultimately responsible for the results. At the same time it’s a very satisfying role to have in that you can take personal pride in the results your teams achieve and the things your team members go on to achieve. By constantly working hard at practicing the tips I’ve provided I am convinced you’ll become a much better leader over time!

Can you see with all the Snow?

With the ever increasing snow storms in the Toronto area, and most of the Northern Hemisphere, it is no wonder that we get the feeling that we are sinking in the snow. Although, a warm and fuzzy feeling it can trap us from seeing what we need in order to protect ourselves and stay focused when driving. Do you know how to keep your marketing strategy above the snow-line? Meaning having focus. I’ve talked in the past about developing a good online marketing strategy that is centered around search. My question for you if you have developed your strategy and are you keeping it focused? (above the Snow?). If you have a strategy that is going in a hundred different directions it will be difficult to keep an eye on the goal, which shouldn’t just be to increase traffic to your site, but to ultimately increase revenue.

So, what does it take to keep it above the snow-line. The first thing that we forget while we are in the snow, is how it looks from the outside. Can the same be said about your internet marketing strategy. You think you can see well, you think you are right on target of what your expectations are? It may be time to consider whether or not you are on that correct path, and whether or not, anything is blurring your vision. Like unqualified leads, and lots of traffic, but no sales. Is it the economy? Maybe, is it the presentation? Maybe, is it the messaging? Maybe…..etc. lots of maybe’s, lots of explanations etc. As we enter this wonderful winter holiday season, please consider whether you are keeping you are keeping your eyes above the snow-line.
To you and yours this Christmas, may it be full of joy, love and most of all…..SNOW!!
Peace,
Kyle

Winter Storms In - A White Christmas For Sure!

For years I’ve always been saying  “I wonder if we’ll have a white Christmas?” Well for the second year in a row we’ve definitely got a white Christmas.

With a snow storm this past Friday and another on today (Sunday) our neighborhood is under one heck of a lot of snow. In between getting ready for a few holiday get togethers at our house and a really good pot roast in the slow cooker we took some time out today to play in the snow, and unfortunately shovel some of it.

Here is a picture of our front lawn - certainly white for Christmas!

While I’m gearing up for the holidays I just wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and that you all have a chance to celebrate with your loved ones! Happy Holidays!

Cheers,
Chris

Small Businesses Struggle With Search Marketing

A Microsoft survey of 400 SMB’s reveals that they continue to struggle with search marketing (PPC) - what it is and how to do it.

As this industry matures it is by far the most effective marketing over traditional advertising. Traditional advertising serves a purpose but if you’re trying to get leads for your business there is no better way than search marketing.

Why are SMBs struggling with search marketing?

Perhaps part of it has to do with relative newness of the industry and a reluctance to try new things. It’s simply easier to continue doing the same thing than it is to wrap their heads around something new.

What should an SMB do?

Find a reputable search marketing agency to guide them through the process and show them how it can work for their company. A good search marketing agency is transparent with their services, fair with the rates and most of all willing to teach and educate their client about search marketing - even to the point the client can move the services in house. Why? Because the SMB will be successful and will always look to the agency for strategic direction and new opportunities!

To all the SMBs out their who read this post, or the Search Engine Land article I challenge you to take the next step and try search marketing. It has the potential to change your business especially during these troubled economic times!

Some Excellent Podcasts to Enjoy Over the Holidays

This isn’t an Internet Marketing related post - per-say… but I imagine you might find a gem or two among my list. I am a fan of podcasting, it sure beats some of the radio play lists which seem to be more of an advertisement play list than actually playing music (yes, I acknowledge I sound like a cranky old man right now). Alas… I have my opinion and I am entitled to it! Back to podcasts… Here are my list of some great podcasts which get me through my day.

Tech-related
1. TWIT
2. Buzz Out Loud
3. GDGT Weekly
4. MacBreak Weekly
5. Digital Planet

Current Events
1. 60 Minutes
2. From Our Own Correspondent

Food
1. Jamie’s Ministry of Food Recipes

Social Media Influencing Sales!

According to a research project conducted by research firm OTX shows that social media is influencing purchase decisions.

The story posted by WebProNews indicates that consumers trust bran representatives more than the content on a brand website. They are more interested in exchanges their opinions with a brand representative and are more likely to share information provide by that brand representative. So what does that mean to you? If you have a well established brand you should be actively setting up a social media strategy specifically with a publicly available brand representative.

What exactly does that mean?

First off  you should appoint someone in the company as a brand evangelist - someone you trust to represent the brand to it’s fullest and keep customers best interest in mind. You’ll also need to make sure this person is comfortable being in the spotlight because not only are they promoting the brand - but they will be promoting themselves.

Once you’ve identified the person, or people you need to identify the social media strategy. My recommendation includes a mix of the following:

• A corporate / brand blog
• Twitter Accounts
• LinkedIn Accounts
• Facebook Accounts

With the above social networking services in place you’ve got a good mix of opportunities to make yourself available to your customers and prospects. They will be in a position to connect with you, discuss and share their conversations with others in a meaningful way!

My last recommendation is don’t delay. Start now with a small strategy and learn as you go. If you wait you are likely to miss out on this opportunity!

Google Updates GA Account Management Pages

Google releases improvements to Google Analytics interface!

Google today announced an update to the Google Analytics Account Management pages. The changes Google has been making to GA lately have been very useful and certainly improve our ability to see at a glance how websites are performing. These new round of changes are indeed welcome! Here are some examples of new features:

• Easily navigate from account to profiles by just clicking on the account name (and back with Overview)
• Better understand the hierarchy relationship between accounts and profiles and quickly find their webproperty ID
• See key loyalty and success metrics for all your accounts and profiles, and sort by any of these metrics
• Use the “Find Profiles” locator box or “starring” functionality to quickly find and navigate to a desired profiles and accounts, regardless of how many there are. No need to sift through pages of irrelevant content.

For the full article I encourage you to visit the Google Analytics blog post!

The Pitfalls Of Cloaking

While reading my feeds this morning I came across a simple but concise blog post at SearchLight Digital on the subject of cloacking and how to do it. For those of you don’t know what cloaking is, it’s the practice of detecting by IP or User-Agent “who” is visiting your site and then showing them different content from everyone else. You may wish to do this for example to show different languages of your site based on where the visitors IP Address is. Or you may be trying to fool GoogleBot for SEO purposes.  I found the article interesting for a couple of reasons. First it’s simple to do and second it can be very dangerous if your relying on the search engines for your business.

Let me explain my point - and then if you want to know how to cloak you can follow the link to Teifions post at SearchLight Digital.

Why is Cloaking so dangerous?

Cloaking is dangerous because as Teifion wrote, it’s easy to do and Google can’t determine your intent. If you’re cloaking and Google Bot figures that you can suffer a penalty which will hurt your rankings.

What can you do instead?

Keep it simple! First - don’t cloak to try and fool Google Bot. Second, build websites that are intuitive for end users. If you have sites that are meant to serve residents of different countries than you should build websites in their language on that countries top level domain (TLD) and preferably host in that country. Then you don’t have to do any fancy and dangerous cloaking to get visitors into the right website.

More importantly, people are smart. More often than not they can get themselves into the right place if you give them an opportunity to do that. For example - I may be in Germany but that does not mean I speak German and want to go the German version of your site - your cloaking may in fact hurt my user experience!

Conclusion

If you care about getting traffic from search engines and want to provide a good user experience for your visitors don’t cloak. Use traditional methods and strategies to allow visitors to get where they want to go and let the search engines determine what the best place is based on the visitors search. Everyone wins in this case!

Now if you still want to cloak go to the SearchLight Digital post “Cloaking: All You Ever Wanted to Know (But Were too Afraid of Google to Ask)”

The Non-Profit’s Guide To Search Engine Marketing

If you’re a non profit looking to improve your marketing than you need to review The Non-Profit’s Guide to SEM.

As a Non-Profit or Charity organization marketing is a crucial component of your organization. You’re also faced with the challenges of a limited budget. In comes The Non-Profit’s Guide to SEM. This document comes from the writers of the SEO Book - a well crafted documented which lays out the basics of search engine optimization, and has trained quite a few SEO’s out there.

I’ve read this new release for non-profit’s and I have to admit the content is very good and will likely become as popular as the original SEO Book.

If you’re a non-profit or charity I recommend you read this new book. It will definitely help you reach more of that lucrative “free” traffic online!