Creating effective Ads on Facebook can be an essential strategy for your social media marketing campaign. You may have used Google AdWords in the past for your online business, and have pulled up the Facebook Ads info-page to find that this type of Ad placement is a whole new ballgame.

One of the biggest differences between Google Adwords and Facebook Ads is that Facebook Ads allow you to tap into the interests and traits of your target market. Facebook has over 730 million users that have created personal profiles with their marital stats, college degrees, gender, age, and interests displayed on their profile. As a marketer, you have the ability to target specific demographics and tailor your message to their likes and interests. Does that sound creepy to you? To some yes, but others figure that if they are going to have to see advertisements anyway, they might as well be relevant to their life in the off-chance that something may beckon their name. Another item to note: You cannot target specific individuals when rolling out your social media marketing campaign; You can only target specific interests.

With that in mind, you may want to do a little research about your demographic before you create your first set of Facebook Ads. There are many free tools that can help

with your search marketing Ad campaign. Alexa.com can help you assess your SEO reach across the global web on a very broad level. QuantCast.com offers a high-level quantitative overview of your demographics of site visitors. Try Yahoo’s Search Clues function to feel pulse of global search trends. You will be able to see what certain demographics are searching the most throughout the web.

Another helpful metric to look at is your “Facebook Insights”. However, if you are a optimizing for a B2B industry or a broad service industry the insights may not tell you much. You can also look at the open profiles of avid fans to get a feel for what they like. You may be surprised to discover trends that can be applied your campaign. Next week, we will stay on the topic of social media marketing with Facebook and go more in depth with how to write effective Ad copy. Stay tuned and see you next week!

In Austin, there are many opportunities for those to learn more about the latest news in search marketing through meetup groups and regular seminars. If you are new to the city, joining a meetup group can be a great way to meet new people and build a network of colleagues. There is a unique group for every niche and most are promoted through event websites and social media. Some of our favorite active groups, which can be found on Meetup.com, include:

The Austin Internet Marketing Meetup: The big boy of search marketing meetups in Austin, Texas! If you would like to learn more about social media marketing, SEO, and PPC, this meetup hosts seminars and presentations about hot topics in the field. Meetings are typically held monthly in North Austin, where many tech companies are clustered.

Austin SEM Meetup: A focused, happy hour meetup for serious search marketers. This is an advanced level group of search engine marketing professionals, social media marketing strategists, and PPC-whizzes. A moderately sized group, these monthly happy hours are a time for members to catch up with each other and talk shop about the most recent events in the industry. Meetups are usually the last Thursday of every month and take place in Downtown, Austin.

The Austin WordPress Meetup: Search marketers know that good content matters, and that WordPress is one of the best platforms for hosing search optimized blog content. During these monthly meetups, members discuss the newest plugins, debate about different strategies for hosting content, and exchange creative ideas. It is a great place to meet a good mix of writers and marketers!

So, grab a Mexican Martini, pull out your trusty iPad or Moleskine notebook, and sit in on a few meetups in town. The Austin search engine marketing community is very welcoming, diverse and highly knowledgeable. It’s time to get out from behind your computer, logout of your Google Reader account, and meet some innovative search engine marketers IRL!

A little more than six years ago, a small startup video-sharing website named YouTube received its very first video upload. At the time, few would have believed that videos on YouTube would eventually receive millions of views each day, or that businesses could effectively use the Internet as a way to broadcast commercials to the public. Video taps into the consumer desire for sight and sound, an audiovisual aspect that can provide an experience that may be difficult to translate into words.

More than just a commercial feature on the Internet that a business may use to reach consumers, video also has an ability to affect organic results within search rankings. However, using web video to aid in a search marketing strategy is not quite as simple as just creating a YouTube channel and uploading a video. In that case, it is unlikely that a video will have any impact on search results. Video SEO is a comprehensive method which draws on the way Google looks at the relevance of the video.

According to a March 2010 article in TechCrunch, Google’s indexing methods can make web video more likely to rank on first page results than the traditional web page. Yet, with all of the sophistication and technology available, when it comes to the algorithms and crawlers that scour the Internet for content, the video itself is actually unseen by Google. Video SEO actually comes down to video sitemaps, robot text files, titles and keywords. In essence, it is still the written word that will factor how Google finds and ultimately ranks videos rather than the content actually contained within the video. Yet it is that content that can funnel traffic to your website.

At Get Page One, we believe video can be an integral part of an overall search marketing strategy and one that taps into the consumer desire to see and hear information that entertains, educates and engages them. If you would like to know how a Video SEO strategy could work for your business, contact us today.

Increasing visibility using search marketing practices can be complex. At Get Page One, we emphasize the importance of having strategic vision to achieve favorable search results via the use of organic search engine optimization, paid search advertisements and social media marketing. Yet, rather than falling into the trap of needing to understand complicated jargon such as meta-tags and XML site maps, optimal search marketing results rely on a collaborative top-down approach between a business and its SEO company. Both stakeholders play a part in the success or failure of Internet marketing campaigns.

The components that make search engine marketing work well require an expertise within a multitude of disciplines, many of them technical. Choosing keywords, targeting and optimizing advertisements, deciding on PPC or CPM and setting up analytics are all part of a process that leaves the average marketer puzzled. While complex terminology and knowledge on the technical side of search marketing are a part of your SEO company’s DNA, today’s digital world requires a holistic approach for success.

In other words, best practices in SEM do not always entail your entire workforce having in depth knowledge on the meaning of complicated jargon. However, in addition to the specialized side of the practice, SEM primarily focuses on communication to an audience who is actively seeking out information on the Internet. The saying ‘content is king’ translates into the customer experience. After all, consumers are not simply searching for your site map or what tags you have used. Consumers are seeking relevant information that will provide them some sort of benefit. Simply having a website and Facebook fan page isn’t enough. Great consumer facing content should be a part of the company culture.

Making search engine marketing work for you isn’t simply about nifty software, a website with a few keywords and some inbound links. This is why we emphasize collaboration with our clients so that great content and technical expertise synergize and lead to long-term success in today’s marketplace.

While the practice of searching for local businesses used to stem from flipping through pages found in a several-pound book – now likely stashed away collecting dust somewhere – the consumer is still letting their fingers do the walking. Today, those fingers are both flipping and typing, not on paper, but rather on mobile phones and computers. While business listings in the traditional Yellow Pages and print publications do still exist, the consumer is going digital. For today’s SMB (Small and Medium-sized Business), local search in the online world has taken on even greater importance because shoppers, now more than ever, turn to the search engine and even social networking sites first to discover and buy products and services.

Local search marketing is in essence replacing the traditional Yellow Pages as a method of increasing awareness, while driving both online and foot traffic to the business. Yet, it can be easy to see how an organization may drown in a sea of millions upon millions of search result pages and competing advertisements worldwide. A local search strategy helps optimize these results adding a geographic context to products and services the consumer is actively seeking.

Nonetheless, local search marketing is more than just a business listing on Google Places, paid search advertising or a high ranking in Yahoo or Bing. This comprehensive strategy takes the Yellow Pages ad or listing to an entirely new level with social media marketing and the ability for consumers to connect and search via mobile. For example, social media sites such as YouTube extend local search reach through video, and Facebook Deals let consumers discover local businesses beyond the search engine. Link building through blogs and photo-sharing sites also help tap into the triggers that your customers are using to discover businesses online.

Local search marketing strategies can be an effective tool to attract consumers to your business. If you are unsure of how to get start implementing local search in with your marketing initiatives, Get Page One can help you find out more about this secret weapon.

It may be easy to think that to achieve favorable search results on Google, Bing or Yahoo, simply putting up a video, blogging or posting to Facebook and Twitter will get the job done. However, to achieve optimal results, the combination of search marketing, organic search engine optimization and social media necessitates a cohesive strategic vision. Moreover, this vision is not an end-game approach, but rather an ongoing and flexible process. The need for flexibility stems from the constantly shifting changes in search algorithms and consumer behavior. We are often asked at Get Page One how each of these components operates in tandem to reach results.

While the answers are not always simple, search engines begin the course of online visibility through a complex combination of factors. More than just heading tags, anchor text, backlinks and advertisements, each component in the search process works together to develop placement on search engines, where the best place is, of course, a top ranking. Ideally, through the progression of increasing views and interaction, organizations convert search results into consumer demand and new sales. In a sense, it is akin to a professional baseball team playing for a World Series title. Each element, from pitching and hitting to defense seemingly operate separately. However, these components do not win championships by operating independently. The manager must know when to bunt and steal bases and when to pull the starting pitcher and rely on the bullpen.

Likewise, search marketing, SEO and social media marketing all seemingly function as separate entities. Yet, each has its own objectives. Choosing the right keywords, effective use of ad elements such as targeting and call-to-action, engagement through social networks and measuring results are just a few pieces of the puzzle.

On the Internet, you want to be in the right place at the right time, when the consumer is looking. Each building block in the practice of search marketing helps to realize this goal. Optimal search results typically occur when each building block combines within a comprehensive strategy. Therefore, like a World Championship baseball organization, achieving top Internet ranking is a team effort.

Analytics are a good thing. At Get Page One, we love analytics. After all, they can tell us whether our efforts at search marketing and social media are working to develop awareness and drive repeat business. Bounce rates, click-throughs, likes and re-tweets all provide great benchmarks from which to measure results. However, a raging sea of analytics, customer data and just plain numbers can overwhelm anyone’s mind. Numbers can be deceiving and do not always tell the whole story. So what are some companies overlooking by only focusing on numbers?

The answers may reside in understanding the psychology of your brand, your own customers and the consumer at large. As business leaders, we all tend to think bottom-line. Rational, logical and strategic are part of our DNA. We focus so intently on outcomes, results and analytics that we tend to forget why our customers buy from us, why they seek us out and why they might keep coming back in the future.

Thinking in terms of the physical world, consumers visiting a brick and mortar business in person become involved in the brand experience created by the organization. This experience touches each phase of the sales funnel starting with awareness and hopefully leading to initial and repeat purchases. And offline, just as online, the brand attempts to influence customers and inspire referral business.

Experiential marketing is nothing new; however, just as brands provide a certain experience offline, the Internet experience is equally important. Online, the combination of search marketing, social media marketing, analytics and consumer experiences can combine to tell a more complete story, turning raw data and numbers into useful information. For instance, web analytics can provide unique information about page views and the length of time viewers spend perusing a website. A high bounce rate might indicate an area of the website where users are leaving due to lack of interest and thus affecting conversion rates. Social media marketing analytics such as Facebook page interaction or re-tweets on Twitter can tell a story of how an audience perceives their online experience with the brand outside of a webpage or search engine.

Market research professionals talk about how together, quantitative and qualitative data help chronicle consumer behavior. Quantitative data is like analytics; however, combined with the attributes and descriptive information of qualitative data, we can begin to draw a more robust picture of the customer experience.

What is the value of a customer? It is an important to many business owners. Last week, we discussed how both search marketing and social media can provide several benefits including driving awareness and providing communications channels for customers. And through efforts to reach out to existing customers and new prospects via the Internet, search and social can have profound influence on purchase decisions. However, going beyond the immediate to thinking long-term, there is another way of looking at the bottom-line value.

Bringing in new customers is typically an immediate and necessary goal for any organization. Customer retention and reputation management can lead to enduring success. However, over time, customers have their own intrinsic value beyond simply an initial purchase. Yet, the question remains – what is that value? Are we measuring our long-term efforts at search and social media marketing to uncover their true potential?

Customer lifetime value (CLTV) is typically an average of costs incurred, relative to the benefits (profits) received from attracting and converting a prospect to buy a product or service. Retaining customers and influencing them to buy more and to buy more frequently over their lifetime relationship with the company is an important measurement to consider. The formulas for calculating and measuring CLTV are too long and complicated to cover in this blog. There are many books and websites that can help understand and calculate CLTV.

However, search marketing and social media fit into CLTV in very unique and strategic ways. Driving awareness of new products or services, upgrades, special offers and package deals via search and social media can affect long-term profitability. Connecting and measuring sales conversions through these channels can also illustrate the viability and return-on-investment resulting from using search marketing and social media marketing as an influence and awareness technique.

The trick is to set up proper measurements and connect the dots as a customer follows the path through the sales funnel and over the lifetime of the relationship with your organization. There is an old saying in business circles that we believe applies – ‘You cannot manage what you don’t measure.’

Technological innovation between search engines and social media seems to have taken somewhat divergent paths in recent years. While search engines and social media have seen some integration, recent changes by Google adding a Google social search feature could make the blend between search and social even more relevant.

At Get Page One, we’ve monitored the evolution of search and social, and we are excited about the future prospects in technology and relevance to business. Because many organizations bring in new customers through a combination of online visibility via search marketing, SEO and word-of-mouth (or word-of-web), the latest innovation from Google can possibly be a boon to business.

Google Social Search, as reported by Mashable, feeds information from your social graph into search results. The information shown to the user stems from shared connections and shared information linked to Flickr, Quora and Twitter, social feeds with which Google integrates. In other words, if one of your Twitter friends shared a link to Get Page One, the share would show annotated below the search result.

Marketers and businesses realize the importance of how consumers share information via the social graph, including the trust they have in the recommendations of their Internet friends. Google Social Search adds an element of both visibility and word-of-web.

With the advantages come potential disadvantages. If your organization happens to be experiencing a public relations crisis, the negative publicity might not only feed the search engines, it may also feed more negativity into the social graph, snowballing when picked up in a Google search. At Get Page One, we can help you prepare for and react to an online public relations crisis via our reputation management services.

Despite any disadvantages, advancements between search and social media provide a unique opportunity for companies to extend their reach and influence.

We know that search engine optimization and search marketing do the dirty work of creating brand visibility online. Web marketers strive to hit top pages of search engines on Google, Bing and Yahoo. What many marketers and brands sometimes miss happens to be the human influence on the overall search process. This is the blend of both traditional search behavior and the ability for influencers to have an affect on search rankings.

Getting Social

At Get Page One,  your organic SEO, search marketing and paid search-advertising programs are hard at work tapping into consumer behavior, making your brand findable through search engines; however, there is something else hard at work about which you may or may not be aware.

The social media aspect of search is increasingly having an influence on page ranking. And while some of the information on how much influence social lends to search algorithms is vague, Google and Bing both factor social into the mix.

Influencers

The ability for social media to affect search rankings stems from influential users sharing links. This is especially true with Twitter. Shared links via tweets with respect to the overall influence of the user provide authority to the pages being tweeted. The closed system of information from Facebook is more difficult for search engines to calculate the influence of a user; yet, Facebook is still a factor.

Social Media Marketing

Many organizations who learn that social does impact search think that simply having a presence in social media will affect their page rank. Others are concerned about reputation management issues on the social web. As the gap between traditional search and social closes even more, it pays to have more than a simple Twitter account and Facebook page.

Outreach and influence from a brand can breed outreach and influence from authoritative users who can lend a helping hand to your SEO efforts. They, in turn, not only lend a human influence to search, but in essence, can become de facto brand marketers as well.