originally uploaded by blog.compete.com

The business world changes quickly, the digital world even quicker. The problem is that very few business are really keeping up with the pace of change online and the rapid adoption of new media, device and applications by their customers.

The truth is that there are now very few industries unaffected by the web. Whole new business models are emerging daily that totally interrupt entire industries. If it hasn’t happened to you yet it will soon.

In 2012 the need to adapt will be more crucial than ever. Those that do will benefit and see their market share grow or uncover new markets. Those that don’t risk falling well behind or losing it all.

Here are the 9 things your business must do now:

1. Get serious about online

It seems amazing to be writing this in 2012, but there are still many business owners and marketers who don’t appreciate how much the internet is changing their industries. Most have “ticked the box” by slapping together a website but have since done little more.

Newsflash: your customers start their search for a product or service online (including mobile). They want the best information available immediately. If they can purchase or inquire online, they will. If they need to physically visit your location to do business with you then, 1. you better hope your competitors are in the same boat, 2. you must give them enough information online to ensure they make it to your fine establishment, or your competitors will.

Your bog-standard website won’t do the trick anymore. Unless you get really serious about online and make it central to your plans you can start considering new career options.

2. Get good at producing content

Potential customers aren’t looking for you, they’re looking for answers and solutions. They don’t Google “Acme Fasteners”, they search for “best fasteners in Smithtown” or “how to find the best fastener”.

Potential customers also trust the word-of-mouth effect of social media and are more likely to visit a site recommended to them by a “friend” online.

The key to all this is producing good content.

Good content offers solutions. It’s helpful and useful. Its not about your business, its about your customer’s potential needs. Good content gets shared online. It becomes popular. It tends to ranks higher in search results. It speaks to the customer.

You need to produce good content on your website on a regular basis. Static websites don’t deliver business.

3. Get social

Still think social networks are for kids and geeks? Think again. Social networking has become ubiquitous and increasingly seamless. The most exciting start-ups are around social networking ideas that are interrupting old business models.

People like to share good information. They like to share ideas and discoveries. They like to share information about themselves. Social networks have made it easier than ever to share information at the click of a button.

Facebook is closing in on 1 billion users. Google+ is only 6 months old and is on track to hit 100 users in February 2012. Twitter has an estimated 300+ million users. Then there is LinkedIn and numerous other networks.

At the very least you should enable sharing buttons (like the ones at the top of this post) on your website so that visitors can easily share that great content you are hopefully producing. You don’t even need to be a member of these networks but you should be catering to those visitors who are.

To really get social you need to set up accounts and dedicated pages for your business with the Big Four: Facebook, Twitter. LinkedIn and Google+. Then you have to work those accounts. There’s no escaping this, it has to be done.

The upside of getting social are significant. The downside of not getting social is also significant, but more painful.

4. Get optimised

Being found online in search engines is not just a luxury, its a necessity in 2012. At a time when 97% of people begin their online search for a product or service using a search engine its incredible that 87% of business websites are poorly optimised for search. You need to immediately start optimising multiple pages of your website for important industry search terms; the more they address needs and solutions the better (see Get Content). This is one action could make the biggest difference to your business and give you a significant advantage over your competitors.

Test your website’s optimisation here.

5. Get data

Never in history has more customer data been more freely available. A clever online strategy can tell you so much about your market, your customer needs, your customers habits and your potential customer’s details. Website analytics, social media analytics, conversion forms and more can all work in unison to help you improve the marketing accuracy of your business. Simple conversion forms on your website can help you build a sizable and relevant database.

6. Get converted

Attracting traffic to your website is nice, but converting that traffic into fans, inquiries and sales is even nicer. PDF downloads, newsletter subscriptions, inquiry forms, free trials….these can all work to help turn visitors into customers. But it only happens if you provide the right call-to-action. What are you doing to convert your traffic?

7. Get mobile

The smart phone is ubiquitous. The tablet is fast replacing the laptop as the casual computing device. We are now less tethered to a desk and more mobile than ever whilst remaining totally “connected” online. Mobile is expected to account for over 20% of all searches in 2012 and it’ll continue to grow from there.

Then we have social networking which fits so neatly hand-in-glove with mobile devices.

The bottom line is that you have to pay serious consideration to how you business will compete with the growth of the mobile consumer. Is your website mobile friendly? Should you build apps? Is there a particular aspect of you business that is more suited to mobile that you can build upon?

8. Get inbound

All of these above points add up to an Inbound Marketing strategy. Inbound is about attracting visitors and converting them to customers rather than the old advertising approach of blasting everyone with the hope of hitting some potentially interested buyers. Inbound leads to higher conversion rates and better use of your marketing budget. The more you think “inbound”, the more you will be acting like a modern web marketer.

9. Get dedicated

Smart, modern online marketing isn’t a set and forget exercise. Its not something to give to the junior to take care of “because they use Facebook”. Your online strategy requires a dedicated approach and dedicated resources. We have been increasingly helping our clients recruit and train marketers who are working full-time on online marketing strategies. There’s a lot to look after: numerous social networks, generating great content, tracking conversion and implementing mobile solutions.

The businesses who decide dedicate adequate resources to online are those who will prosper.

A few years ago you might have been forgiven for thinking Twitter was just another passing fad, not something your business should be wasting time on.

However the truth is that since its launch less than 5 years ago Twitter has enjoyed explosive growth and become an important player in the new media world. There are now estimated to be over 200 million Twitter users generating over 90 million “tweets” per day.

Far from being a inconsequential fad, Twitter can now be considered a viable and extremely effective part of your company’s marketing mix. Consider these statistics from two recent surveys:

• Twitter users are more educated and earn higher incomes than the general US population. (According to Edison Research April 2010).

• Twitter users tend to be earlier adopters of new products and technology than the general population (says Edison Research).

• 42% claim to use Twitter to learn about new products and services while 31% ask opinions about products and services via Twitter (Edison)

• 28% use Twitter to look for discounts or sales while 21% use Twitter to purchase products or services (Edison).

• Another 19% use Twitter to seek customer support (Edison).

• A separate survey in early 2010 revealed that 67% of US Twitter users are more likely to buy brands they follow (source: Chadwick Martin Bailey & Imoderate Research Technologies).

Certainly here at Sticky we have witnessed the power of a strong presence on Twitter, with both this agency and many clients benefiting from conversing in 140 characters. The above statistics come as no surprise to us. we often say that becoming highly active on Twitter has been one of the best business decisions we ever made. Twitter has become a crucial part of Sticky’s inbound marketing strategy.

So the question is….. if your business would like to attract more educated, higher income early adopters, why aren’t you on Twitter?

We have speculated for a while now that Google and Bing were starting to give more weight to Twitter and Facebook links as they move towards providing the most relevant and real-time search results. In fact, at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco last November the Bing team acknowledged that social signals were becoming increasingly influential.

Now this is being confirmed officially by Google and Bing. Leading search engine blog Search Engine Land conducted an interview with Bing and Google recently to discuss how social signals are being measured. This is fantastic news for inbound marketing.

Here is an excerpt:

1) If an article is retweeted or referenced much in Twitter, do you count that as a signal outside of finding any non-nofollowed links that may naturally result from it?

Bing: We do look at the social authority of a user. We look at how many people you follow, how many follow you, and this can add a little weight to a listing in regular search results. It carries much more weight in Bing Social Search, where tweets from more authoritative people will flow to the top when best match relevancy is used.

Google: Yes, we do use it as a signal. It is used as a signal in our organic and news rankings. We also use it to enhance our news universal by marking how many people shared an article.

2) Do you try to calculate the authority of someone who tweets that might be assigned to their Twitter page. Do you try to “know,” if you will, who they are?

Bing: Yes. We do calculate the authority of someone who tweets. For known public figures or publishers, we do associate them with who they are. (For example, query for Danny Sullivan)

Google: Yes we do compute and use author quality. We don’t know who anyone is in real life

3) Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending on the person who tweets it?

Bing: Yes.

Google: Yes we do use this as a signal, especially in the “Top links” section [of Google Realtime Search]. Author authority is independent of PageRank, but it is currently only used in limited situations in ordinary web search.

4) Do you track links shared within Facebook, either through personal walls or fan pages?

Bing: Yes. We look at links shared that are marked as “Everyone,” and links shared from Facebook fan pages.

Google: We treat links shared on Facebook fan pages the same as we treat tweeted links. We have no personal wall data from Facebook.

5) Do you try to calculate the authority of someone on Facebook, either say via their personal wall or their fan page.

Bing: We don’t do this on Facebook. On Facebook, we only get what’s public, only updates and things you’ve posted to everyone as viewable. We don’t get things only shared with friends, so we don’t know how authoritative you are on Facebook. There isn’t the whole convenient retweet mechanism we see on Twitter.

We do see valuable content shared by Facebook users, even though we only get what’s public.  For example when Gary Coleman died we saw a  video from Different Strokes, saying his favorite line “what ya talk’in ’bout Willis” gain popularity.  It happened to be what a lot of people are sharing on the day he passed away.

Google: Again, the treatment is the same as for Twitter. And we have no personal wall data from Facebook.

6) Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending on the person who shared it on Facebook?

Bing: We can tell if something is of quality on Facbook by leveraging Twitter. If the same link is shared in both places, it’s more likely to be legitimate.

Google: Same as question 5.

7) And just to be really clear, the new Facebook data is not yet being used in ordinary web search, right? (asked only of Bing, because it was only relevant to them)

No.

end of interview.

The point here for business is that you now have yet another reason to start getting active with social media. The web is becoming increasingly “social” and buzz and engagement are becoming valuable metrics. Not only can you drive traffic to your site from Twitter and Facebook, you can increase Google traffic to your site by using Twitter and Facebook.

So what are you waiting for? Do an audit of your social media presence and develop a sound plan to make Twitter and Facebook an integral part of your future marketing.

Social media (in isolation) is not the answer

Social media is not the answer

Nor is SEO

Or SEM

Or a new website.

In fact when it comes to marketing online no one thing is the answer. Just like offline.

A TV campaign won’t turn your company’s fortunes around, nor will a full page ad in the paper, or 30 x 30sec on the local radio station. You might get a short term spike, but none of these in isolation is the long term solution to better marketing and sales.

The truth is that marketing needs to be genuine and holistic.

Social media can be PART of the answer, so can SEO and SEM. A new website (or a better one) can be PART of your overall marketing plan for better communication with your potential customers.

It’s not realistic to rely on one tactic to deliver the sales and inquiries you need, but it is realistic to implement a holistic strategy incorporating a series of tactics that are aligned for your desired outcome.

That’s exactly how professional inbound marketing works and why we love it so much.

A well-designed, regularly updated website complemented by targeted SEO, and maybe some SEM, can work wonders. Add social media to the mix and suddenly your audience can grow exponentially providing you with the opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue with a wider community (potential prospects). Complete the loop with thorough Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) and you can turn traffic into genuine inquiries and sales.

That’s a holistic online marketing plan. That’s inbound marketing. THAT might be the answer you’re looking for.

As inbound marketers, one of the big questions clients ask us is which social networks they should be part of? “Should I join Twitter?”, “Will Facebook help build my business?”, “Is LinkedIn something we should consider?”

Twitter best for click-throughs

Our answer is always that different social networks can work well for different businesses, and each of them can be effective depending upon how you wish to use them.

Certainly here at Sticky we have found Twitter to be a very effective inbound marketing tool and the source of regular traffic for our sites, whilst we also use Facebook, Linkedin, Digg and more.

Today a new report has surfaced detailing the most effective ways for marketers to spread their message online. It covers the sharing trends and click-through rates on different social networking sites as well as email. It makes for interesting reading.

Twitter Crushing Facebook’s Click-Through Rate: Report

By Austin Carr at Fast Company

What is the most effective way for marketers to spread their message online? Facebook? Twitter? Company blogs? Email?

According to a new report by marketing firm SocialTwist, Internet sharing trends have shifted heavily shifted toward social networking, but other platforms still have a strong presence for word-of-mouth advertising. SocialTwist analyzed more than a million referral messages sent using the company’s Tell-a-Friend tool, a widget that lets users share sites through social media.

In the last year, social networking sites saw a 10% increase in usage, and a 16% bump in click-throughs. Overall though, email still accounts for 55% of referrals.

However, when it comes to click-throughs, social networking sites are far more effective, accounting for more than 60% of the market share.

Among social networking sites, Facebook is by far the most preferred service for sharing, making up more than 78% of usage. Yet other sites are gaining: Twitter maintains 5% of referrals, and MySpace, surprisingly, comes in at second with 14.5% share.

Yet Twitter has become the most effective tool for click-throughs. Twitter yielded a whopping average of 19.04 clicks, whereas Facebook only produced 2.87 clicks.

This is great news for Twitter, which has hinged its business on Promoted Tweets and Trends, tweet-size ads that companies purchase for $100,000 a day. With such a high click-through rate, it’s no wonder new Twitter CEO Dick Costolo boasted yesterday that the company has “cracked the code on a new form of advertising, and we feel like we’ve got a hit on our hands.”

The popular social networking, micro-blogging site Twitter is getting a revamp with the founders announcing the biggest overhaul of the site since it launched, and it includes a real bonus for inbound marketing.

The new Twitter has a lot of subtle improvements but probably the single biggest major improvement is the integration of videos and images in the tweet stream. By partnering with many major players such as TwitPic, Etsy, Flickr, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, TwitVid, USTREAM, Vimeo, yfrog, and YouTube, Twitter is enabling instant display of multimedia.

This is great news for inbound marketers and content generators and it will force many marketers to start producing content or be left behind.

Twitter is already an excellent extension of blogging, allowing marketers to reach large numbers of relevant people with their information. By including multimedia in the Twitter stream quality content is now one step closer to potential visitors.

Now, more than ever, its going to be crucial for marketers to create engaging multimedia to share on Twitter and the abovementioned sites.

For several years now the highly entertaining Marta Kagan has been packaging up and producing a slide show titled What the F**k is Social Media. Its an excellent insight into the latest figures around the phenomenal rise of social media and networks.

And in the spirit of social media, Marta has allowed us to embed her presentation for all to share and see. Enjoy.

Gavin Heaton has posted an excellent piece about the Three Ages of Content Management Systems which goes a long way to explaining how the web has evolved and how organisations and the systems they use may or may not have progressed. Its a great read and I urge you to take 5 minutes to see what Gavin has to say.

We now live in the sharing web age

The 3 ages Gavin talks about are:

• The Age of Waving

• The Age of Shouting

• The Age of Sharing

Clearly, given the ubiquity of social media now, we are in The Age of Sharing. Organisations who realise this and have moved to ensure their web presence reflects it are the ones who are benefiting. The content on their websites is being passed around, searched and now generates considerably more traffic than many of their contemporaries who still live in The Age of Shouting.

Unfortunately many people treat the web the same way as they treat their traditional advertising. They see it purely as a broadcasting media. They haven’t heard of the Age of Conversation and they haven’t heard of the 1000 True Fans theory. They are still yelling at an audience that isn’t necessarily listening.

At a more technical level, as Gavin points out, this is reflected in their Content Management Systems. The odds are that if a company has on old-fashioned, hard to use CMS then they are probably Shouting from their website. Its simply too hard to update information so they publish their content once and leave it. Or perhaps they spend a small fortune on Banner ads and Adwords to drive traffic to their static sites.

We constantly advise clients to take the Sharing route. Create innovative websites on easy-to-use CMS systems that are SEO and social media-friendly. It encourages a solid, long-term approach to marketing than generates much greater loyalty than shouting ever will. It results in increased traffic from multiple sources, like social networks and organic search, that is substantially more cost-effective than broadcast style advertising.

The question is, which web age do you live in?

This week I have been at the Connect Now conference in Sydney. It has had a stellar line-up of speakers including Gavin Heaton @servantofchaos, Katie Chatfield @katiechatfield, Tara Hunt @missrogue, Brian Solis @briansolis, Laurel Papworth @silkcharm, Jim Stewart @jimboot, Darren Rowse @problogger, Gary Vaynerchuk @garyvee, Debs Schultz @debs, Stephen Johnson @huxley, Fi Bendall @fibendall, Simon Mainwaring @simonmainwaring, Natalie Hofsteede @givealittle, Simon and Marie Young @audaciousgloop and Chris Noble @worldnomads.

While much of the information and advice might not be new to those already operating in the social media space, it has been extremely beneficial for the vast majority of people who are beginning to use inbound marketing and social media in their businesses instead traditional marketing techniques.

But as someone who attends a lot of new media conferences in Australia and the USA, I was still struck by a few of the key messages at Connect Now.

The biggest take home for me was that authenticity is crucial. While businesses are flooding into social media to take advantage of its burgeoning popularity, very few are succeeding, and that is likely because they lack an authentic voice.

But those who are succeeding are really showing the way forward with their truly authentic attitudes.

Consider Gary Vaynerchuk. The founder of Wine Library TV has enjoyed explosive popularity and a booming business empire without any traditional marketing or advertising. Gary video blogs daily and speaks with amazing passion and authenticity. Its the sort of thing than cannot be scripted or contrived, its 100% genuine.

Gary implores us to forget about the technology and fancy dressing of lighting, graphics and heavy editing. The message is the key for Gary. He concentrates on pushing out his content then takes the time to interact with his audience.

Gary says you must love your audience in order to succeed in social media. He claims that in the early days when he was building Wine Library TV he spent 30 minutes a day creating content then 14 hours in the community.

Gary urges people not to just talk about it, but to live it and its very clear that he does. His passion and authenticity is rocket fuel for his business.

Darren Rowse is one of the world’s most popular bloggers. Blogging is a business for him but you don’t think of Darren in a traditional business sense. His blogging is helpful, passionate and authentic first and foremost. He works hard on content and community and as a result his business thrives.

Gavin Heaton’s success in social media is not defined by sales but through his considerable “social equity”. One of Australia’s leading marketing bloggers, Gavin is a connector for many people who now operate in the space.

During the Q&A session on day 2 of Connect Now Gavin nailed it when he said “we now operate in a economy of generosity, the more generous you are, the bigger your potential”.

The implications are clear. Those who join social media to sell, sell, sell without making any attempt to engage, listen and help will not succeed.

Debs Schultz supported this feeling by saying “there’s no such thing as a social media campaign.” Debs says that you should start small, keep testing, success takes time. Join the lives of people rather than interrupting them. If you help users participate the benefits will flow later.

Inbound marketing relies on this fundamental shift in marketing thinking. But its also quite real. As Debs Schultz says, “The customer is not elusive, they’re annoyed”. We need to stop broadcasting, stop interrupting and start engaging.

And the best way to engage is with authenticity.

Does your web designer understand internet marketing?

In the early days of the Web the imperative was upon having a website and as a result an industry was born, and boomed, creating websites. Good, bad or ugly, it didn’t really seem to matter a long as you were part of the the new wave online.

These days however its a lot different. Everyone has a website and a substantial portion of the population uses the web to shop, search research, chat, meet, discuss, review…well you get the point, we’re online a lot. In fact a recent study revealed that 97% of clients purchasing decisions were influenced by websites.

Now, amid the clutter and competition online, mere web existence isn’t good enough. Now professional internet marketing is crucial. You don’t just build a website, you build a web presence.

Search engine optimisation, social media, conversion strategies, data analysis, geo-targeting, the mobile web, real time search. They’re all part of a sophisticated internet marketing plan that enable you to compete and thrive online.

Unfortunately, many web designers are still just building websites.

Check if your designer understands internet marketing by asking:

• Can you optimise the website for multiple search terms?

• Can you easily integrate social media sharing sites like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious, LinkedIn, FriendFeed and more?

• Can you tell me how many people were searching for our products and services online last month?

• Can you create a local search plan?

• Can you test various conversion strategies and help lift conversion rates?

• Can you help me grow my online audience?

If the answer is NO, then you might end up with a website, but will have done very little to enhance your marketing.