2011 is all but a memory. Over the past 12 months we have seen changes to Facebook (of course you can say that about any 12 month period), major changes to Google’s search algorithm (again no big surprise), the growth of mobile computing and Google making a big splash in social media. For online marketing, the inevitable change is both frustrating and exciting. What will 2012 hold in store?

1.  Social search will increase as social media site become even more interactive - Social search is one of the pieces of the online holy Grail, the billions of dollars up for grabs. Google already controls the search portion of the equation while Facebook dominates the social side.  Google + hopes to make a dent in that domination.

2.  Google + will play a larger part in search rankings -  The abuse of external linking has long been a concern of Google. Starting with Google’s Panda update, paid link exchanges and low content quality sites began to feel the sting. But with the launch of Google plus and the +1 button, Google now has a viable link popularity component for their algorithm. Look for active Google + sites to rank well in 2012.

3.  The effect of video on search engine results will continue to grow - YouTube continues to be the second largest search engine on the web. Improved technologies allow the content of YouTube videos to be indexed by Google, making them fertile ground for keywords and search engine optimization.

4.  Expanded customer interaction on Facebook - As more and more time is spent on Facebook, the growth of customer interaction will continue to climb. Look for e-commerce to become more prominent as companies search for alternative ways to connect with their customers.

5.  Activity versus engagement - Through the majority of 2011, activity was the norm in social media.  Posting to a business page with regularity constituted activity for most businesses. But with the October Facebook change, posting frequently is not enough to land on the news feed of fans. Today it requires engagement – posting content that fans will like, comment on or share. It requires much more thought to generate content that fans can easily interact with.

One prediction that’s an absolute certainty to come true, 2012 will see even more changes to the social media and online marketing landscape that we saw in 2011.

Gary Wagnon is the owner of 800biz Ninja Marketing Strategies and the Ninja Marketing Dojo, a program designed to help businesses master all aspects of online marketing. The goal of the Ninja Marketing Dojo is to improve search engine rankings, increase web site traffic and convert more browsers into buyers.

We have a love-hate relationship with change. We want the latest technology, like cell phones or IPads.  But we complain vehemently when Facebook changes their layout or anything on their page. We look forward to the new TV season but we continue to do business as usual.

We are creatures of habit, not wanting to stray far from our comfort zone.  Or as Captain Barbosa would say “Yer off the edge of the map, matie.  Here, there be monsters.”  Okay, so maybe we’re not afraid of monsters, and it’s not really the great unknown that we hate about change.  So why do we resist change when it comes to marketing our  business?

Unlike any other time in recent history, marketing and advertising are undergoing radical changes. Even back when television advertising rose to prominence, it was still an interruption marketing model – we interrupt this program for a word from our sponsors. But first the internet and now social media have changed that drastically.

Marketing today is all about relationships. We’ve heard the marketing gurus preach “know, like and trust” as it relates to building rapport for years.  Loosely translated, that meant salesperson must find a way to communicate with the customer. However today, the trust factor is often built long before a salesperson gets involved.

Long before a prospect walks through the door or picks up the phone, they’re doing their homework, their due diligence. It starts at the website then moved to social media sites. If they find a self-centered, “me first” message or a good old-fashioned sales pitch, they hit the back button and check out the next business. But if they find a customer focused, value message, they are moved much further down the decision making path.

Here are 5 changes to a business as usual approach for your online marketing presence.

1. You vs. We – Review the home page of your website and count the number of times it says “we.”  The more “we’s” there are the faster visitors will leave the site.  Remember, they don’t care about you – only what you can do for them.
2. Call To Action — Does your website tell the visitor what action they should take? While you may think it’s obvious the visitor will call you upon seeing your awesome site, they may be looking for the e-mail button. A simple “Call Now” followed by the phone number increases the chances they will contact you.
3. No High Pressure Sales — A common mistake of social media newbies is thinking “I now have 200 friends I can sell to.” Every other post on Facebook is about their current special or their incredible product or service. And they wonder why social media doesn’t work.
4. Boring Content — Tweeting or Facebooking the pictures of your lunch every day is not likely have friends or followers waiting expectantly for the next installment (unless you’re a food reviewer.) Share something that makes people think or that will elicit a response.
5. Interaction Is King — Having an audience is one thing but having an audience that is engaged is golden. An engaged audience will not only remember your content but eagerly anticipate your content.

What are you doing to move from business as usual to become a master of online marketing?

Gary Wagnon is the owner of 800biz Ninja Marketing Strategies and the Ninja Marketing Dojo, a program designed to help businesses master all aspects of online marketing. The goal of the Ninja Marketing Dojo is to improve search engine rankings, increase web site traffic and convert more browsers into buyers.

Google+ for business is now open. “Oh great,” I can hear you say, “another social network I have to keep up with.” Yes, I know the traffic is not on Google + like it is on Facebook. And I don’t expect a mass exodus from Facebook. But, here are my top 5 reasons you should be on Google +.

5. It’s easy to sign up. To signup, you enter your business name and phone number. Google + then matches that to your Google Places Page. (You DO have a Google Places page, don’t you?)

4. Sharing is Easy – Others can share your business page either through the Share Page button or by +1′ing the page. Either way, it increases the chances of virally spreading your page.

3. No Finding Friends – With business pages, you don’t have to go hunting for friends. You share your page and post the page link to your web site and the traffic comes to you.

2. Build a Following and Improve Your Traffic – Because Google customizes the search function when you are logged in to a Google product (Gmail, Google +, Google Reader, etc.) the results you see are based, in part, on your connections. For example, if someone in one of your circles has +1′d a page, and you do a search on a keyword that related to that page, Google is going to show you that page higher up in the search results than normal.

The bottom line for a business is to have as large a following as possible, so when a follower searches for your catagory, your site will show up much higher.

1. Faster Indexing in Google – The number 1 reason to create a Google + page is speed up the process of getting content indexed in the Google search results. When content is shared in Google +, Google sees the content much quicker and as a result will add it to the search results page, based on the content.

I have seen this first hand within my blog articles. I created a blog article with the title Ninja Marketing Tips. Within 3 days of sharing the article in Google +, it was ranking at the top of an incognito Google search for the term, Ninja Marketing Tips.

Judge for yourself. What is your marketing strategy? Would improved search engine visibility be a plus? I welcome your thoughts.

Gary Wagnon is the owner of 800biz Ninja Marketing Strategies and the Ninja Marketing Dojo, a program designed to help businesses master all aspects of online marketing. The goal of the Ninja Marketing Dojo is to improve search engine rankings, increase web site traffic and convert more browsers into buyers.

Maybe you are Bruce Wayne by day and Batman by night.  Or just maybe, you’re clients and colleagues know you as Professor or Your Honor, but your high school classmates know you as “HotRod”.  Nothing is more comforting to hear than, “Hi, I’m Dr. Hotrod Smith and I’ll be operating on you today.”

Facebook is the great connector.  We reconnect with classmates we haven’t talked to in years.  With them, we relive memories, embarrassing moments and teenage milestones.  Plus, it’s fun.  But sharing that picture of ourselves may not exactly further our professional image.  I’m sure lots of us have those past skeletons (like streaking the quadrangle in college), but we don’t exactly put them on our resume.

Enter the new Facebook Friends lists.  Facebook launched their expanded Smart Friend List feature this week.  With this change, your friends can now be categorized into four pre-defined categories, Friends, Family, Acquaintances and geographic location.  You have always had the ability to create lists but the process of posting to a specific list was cumbersome and obscure.  Today it’s prominently displayed next to the share button on your status update.

When the Friends Smart List feature launched, it automatically assigned friends to your local area list.  It also assigns some family members to the Family group (although I had to add a couple of my immediate family members.  They were in the “List suggestion” section, which made it easy to add.)  You will have to initially add people to the other lists.  In the beginning, it may be a little time consuming, but if you add new friends to lists as you confirm them, it will be much easer.

Maintaining Your Two Personalities

I frequently hear clients and social media students ask, “How can I keep my business and personal life separated?”  Smart lists make that very easy.  But more than that, it can be a good practice to enhance your marketing message.  Chances are, your friends may not be the least bit interested in your business marketing content.  And when your professional connections are “eavesdropping” on your conversations with friends, they probably won’t be able to follow along or even be interested.  Either group may tend to filter out your updates since they aren’t pertinent to them.

A better practice would be to target your updates to the group of friends it is directed to.  Create a list of professional or business friends and post only business related content to that group.  Meanwhile, create another list of friends that you post your personal updates to.  Each list then sees content they should be interested in and will be more attuned to each post you make.

There will be some friends that will fit both categories, so assign them to both.  They won’t receive duplicate posts, but they will receive posts anytime you update either list.  Some of your content will be appropriate for everyone.  In those cases you can post to Friends and everyone will receive it.

One thing you should know about Smart Lists.  When you post to a list, there is an icon on the “Like  Comment” line below the post.  The icon will either be a globe (Public), friends or a cog (lists).  By mousing over the icon, you will see a message that shows what the update was shared to friends, friends of friends or the name of the Smart List.  For that reason, you may want to be cautious with your list names.

List can be useful in many ways, such as announcing local events.  What other ways have you used the list feature?

Gary Wagnon is the Sensei of the Ninja Marketing Dojo, a comprehensive online marketing course designed to relieve the frustration business owners and manager face when trying to understand online marketing.  Using a martial arts model, students will build on foundational principals, mastering each level before advancing.

“WIIFM, playing all the hits for you, it’s all you, all day.  We only talk about you all the time.”  Is your message broadcasting on Station WIIFM?  It should be, it’s our favorite channel.

WIIFM – What’s In It For Me – that’s what we want to hear when we look at any website, read a blog, use social media sites, read e-mails, watch videos or anything else you put out to promote your business.  We want to know if your product or service will fix our problem.  How can you save us money or make life easier?

Sounds pretty obvious doesn’t it?  In fact it’s so obvious that the marketing message of the business is all about them.  “We offer the best…”, “We have years of experience”, “We give the best service.”  The only problem is, the customer is listening to their channel, not yours.  Customers don’t care about you or your business.  They want to know what you can do for them.

If you want to create an effective marketing message address the consumer.  The home page of your website or your blog should point out what you do in terms of benefits to the customer.  Your services page should define everything you do, no matter how obvious it may sound.  For example, if your pool cleaning service, do you provide the chemicals?  You think, “everybody knows we do that” but if your marketing messages, your website or your blog, don’t say you do, but your competitor’s site does, is a good chance they’re going to your competitor.

An About Us page can be a boring narrative of your background and experience or it could focus on your passion, your philosophy and your mission.  There’s something about doing business with, someone who is passionate about what they do, especially if that passion translates into a love for helping their customers.  Even though, in a face-to-face meeting, your passion is apparent, how do you get that face-to-face meeting from a boring website?

Don’t be afraid to let your personality shows through your website or your blog.  Have you ever seen a photo on a business card and then meet the person face-to-face and wondered,  is this your daughter’s picture?  The same is true for your online presence (not just the photos); let your potential customer know who they’re dealing with.  You may think, “but I don’t want to alienate a potential customer.”  I’ve got news for you.  If they don’t like the personality your online presence portrays, chances are pretty good they wouldn’t to like you in person either.

WIIFM is like one of the satellite radio stations, you can tune into it everywhere you go.  Make sure your marketing message is broadcasting on the right frequency.  After all, it’s not about you.

Are you new to Google + or curious about how to get started?  Download my free Guide to Google + at www.800bizninjamarketing.com. Gary Wagnon is the CMN (Chief Marketing Ninja) at 800biz Online Marketing Solutions.  Using an integrated approach to online marketing (combining web site design, search engine optimization, social media and action driven content), 800biz specializes in helping businesses stand out above the competition and drive more traffic to their door.

I have scoured the Internet, unsuccessfully, trying to find a Hermione Granger Time Turner from Harry Potter.  Apparently they were all destroyed in 1996 in the battle at the Ministry of Magic.  Oh well it sure would’ve been helpful.

The challenge for business owners today is finding time to manage their online marketing efforts & social networks.  A business owner could easily spend 8 hours  a day just doing social media.  But unfortunately most owners wear many hats and marketing is only one of them.  Customer service and the day-to-day operations do take priority.

Here are five time-saving ninja marketing tips to manager your social networks.

1. Schedule 30 minutes first thing in the morning and 30 minutes right after lunch or in the late afternoon to review your social networks.  Interact with all comments made to your posts and comment or retweet posts made by friends and followers.
2. Use an aggregator to monitor your social networks.  Programs such as Tweetdeck, and Hootsuite are 2 such services that will pull the feeds from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn into one site for monitoring,  commenting and sharing.
3. Schedule your updates.  One great feature of both Tweetdeck and Hoot Suite is the ability to schedule your tweets or Facebook updates in advance.  Once a week you can plan your week’s updates, and schedule them for the day, time and even the specific site you want them posted to.
4. Install the Hoot Suite plug-in for Firefox.  If you use Firefox as your browser, Hoot Suite offers a plug-in that makes it easy to share articles and blog posts to Facebook,  Twitter and LinkedIn and even schedule them to post at a more desirable time.
5. Combine your Facebook and Twitter feeds into Google +.  Even though the aggregator programs have not yet incorporated Google + into their platform, there are G+ apps already that will add your Twitter and Facebook feed so it can be monitored with your G+.

Do you have any other time saving tips?  Feel free to share them.

Are you new to Google + or curious about how to get started?  Download my free Guide to Google + at www.800bizninjamarketing.com. Gary Wagnon is the CMN (Chief Marketing Ninja) at 800biz Online Marketing Solutions.  Using an integrated approach to online marketing (combining web site design, search engine optimization, social media and action driven content), 800biz specializes in helping businesses stand out above the competition and drive more traffic to their door.

Whether a reaction to Google + or a planned system improvement, Facebook has added a new local of privacy that is rolling out starting today.  Many of the changes revolve around the way content is shared.

Profile Controls

First change is you greater control to the visibility of your profile.  With each section of your profile such as music, movies, religious preferences or political views, you’re able to choose who can see each of those areas.  The changes are made directly on the profile editing page where previously the changes were made in the account settings.

An in-line cue or icon will provide a visual indication of who can see each element.  Choices are to make the content public, only seen by friends, are customized for a friend list.  A “view profile as” feature has been added so you can see how your profile will look in different situations.

Tagging

Tagging individuals in photos, status updates or location tags is a popular practice.  Currently, individual control is either limited or unavailable.  With the new settings you can approve or reject any tag before they appear in your profile.  This includes photos and status updates.  This can be turned on or off the pending on user preference.

Given the new tagging controls, Facebook now allows the user to tag anyone in a photo regardless of whether they are a friend or not.  Of course the tag will have to be approved unless you set your privacy controls to always allow tags.  The dilemma with always allowing tags means you do not have control over your image.  As a business professional, protecting the image we portray should be vitally important.

Some of the other features you will see are changes to Facebook places and a “Nearby” icon in mobile apps for tagging locations.

The privacy and safety groups are hailing the changes is positive actions.  For business owners it will require some adjustment to the way they interact with other people.  But with everything Facebook, standby.  About time you master this something else will change.

Gary Wagnon is the CMN (Chief Marketing Ninja) at 800biz Online Marketing Solutions.  Using an integrated approach to online marketing (combining web site design, search engine optimization, social media and action driven content), 800biz specializes in helping businesses stand out above the competition and drive more traffic to their door.

I had a phone call this morning from a salesperson (I use the term loosely) offering to sell me advertising.  I felt a desperate need to have 911 standing by in case she passed away on the phone.  In a dialogue that was lacking in excitement or enthusiasm,  it was almost painful to listen to.

The caller started by introducing themself and saying they were offering to sell me advertising.  Woo hoo!  Just what I wanted this morning, to be sold advertising.  When I quizzed her about her publication and whether it was a good fit for business-to-business advertising, her response was “you’d be surprised”.  I’m not sure if that meant I’d be surprised if I got any results, or if I’d be surprised at how many people blindly bought without knowing the effectiveness of the publication.  Needless to say I was not impressed.

At one point during the conversation she said local businesses that need a website could call me and explain their problem, then I could go out to their house and take care of.

As an online marketing guy I typically don’t make house calls to fix a computer problem. Major hint: learn what your prospect does so you can talk halfway intelligently.

So this conversation got me thinking about how you communicate with prospects, whether on the phone, your website or your social media sites.  Are you enthusiastic about your product or service?  (If you’re not, I’m sure not going to be.)  Do you talk about you, or do you talk about how you are the answer to my problem/pain/needs/prayers?

Take a trip outside your body and look at the message you are sending out.  If you were considering  doing business with you, would you or would you buy from your competition?

Gary Wagnon is the CMN (Chief Marketing Ninja) at 800biz Online Marketing Solutions.  Using an integrated approach to online marketing (combining web site design, search engine optimization, social media and action driven content), 800biz specializes in helping businesses stand out above the competition and drive more traffic to their door.