Advertising through Google AdWords continues to grow, and to be one of the main ways businesses try to reach new customers.  Understanding how AdWords auctions work is one of the biggest areas of confusion for people who aren’t sure how much, if any, of their marketing budget should be spent on AdWords.

With Google’s $32.2 billion in advertising revenue being 97 percent of Google’s total revenue, this is a pie that is worth figuring out, especially if you invest hard earned revenue into this ad platform. For instance, have you ever wondered how Google determines what advertisers pay, or how Google determines which ads are shown where?

Well, the infographic below can help you understand and make more sense of this world. Is this how you thought Google AdWords worked or have your experiences given you a different impression?

No matter how much you may already know about optimizing your website to create a better experience for your visitors, we bet that you’ll learn at least 2 new tips from this video.  You may even laugh a little too.

I sat down with Derek Olsen of Foraker Labs after Derek’s Pivot Guild presentation on The Ten Commandments of Website Usability to discuss some great tips to help you with your website.  Grab a pen, smile and hit play.

This article was originally posted on Hip Chameleon.

With how fast the Internet and digital marketing are evolving, it can sometimes be difficult for traditional marketing education to keep up, as shown on this site that lists common marketing degree programs that are still organized around traditional marketing themes. For the best information on how to succeed in digital marketing, often the best place to learn is on the internet itself or from experts who are actively involved online.

I did a quick Q&A with author and marketing pro Aaron Goldman after the Pivot Guild launch event held on Sept 22, 2011 at Boulder Digital Arts. Get Aaron’s take on the most important thing a business owner can do to be successful with digital marketing strategy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

To define our panel at Blogworld,  the other Blogging in the Age of Social Media panelists (Dave Taylor, Doyle Albee, Jeannine Crooks, Joshua Dorkin) and I wrote a post together on the panel title.  Here’s a short excerpt:

Ah, the good old days. Blogs were a world unto themselves and if we bloggers did anything related to social media it was purely to post URLs and hope that it’d help drive some traffic our way. With the continued rise of Facebook and addition of the surprisingly slick Google Plus combined with Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Digg and so many other social sites, however, a smart blogger’s gotta know how to manage the social nets, not just a blog.

Whether you look at personal blogging, business blogging, micro-blogging or how they overlap and support each other, blogs have become essential sources of self-expression, thought leadership, information, news, entertainment and community building in our social media age.  While 73.5% of the blogging population is under 35 and connecting on personal levels, companies that blog receive 55% more web traffic and 77% more leads than companies that don’t.

Though social media has become a catch all phrase meaning various things to various people, the heart of social media is that individuals have become the media, and blogs are where their stories live to provide the sound bites for Twitter and Facebook content.  As social media platforms continue to proliferate, the content that makes them interesting and builds their followings are often tied back to blogs.  Imagine Twitter streams, Google searches and Facebook feeds without links to blogs to serve up content that helps readers to dig deeper, connect further and laugh harder.

Read the full article here.

No one wants to be sold, but everyone wants to buy.

At an event I attended this week someone from the audience asked a presenter about how much they thought marketing affected the success of tech startups.  After a pregnant pause the co-presenter responded, “I think he just threw up in his mouth.”  To which the first presenter responded accurately,  ”If your product sucks, no amount of marketing will help you.”

Yes, and if your product is awesome there are always three primary marketing needs that the founders usually aren’t experienced in; because instead, they’re probably experienced in creating the product they passionately made for the world.  1) Finding the people who love what you have to offer. 2) Reaching them by communicating what’s in it for them to check out your product and 3) Making them feel special.

Many times it seems that marketing (connecting) is undervalued or devalued as much less important than creating and executing a product idea.  I invite you to see marketing as the creative execution of connecting great products to great people rather than a necessary evil of doing business.

Businesses are successful when they are executing effectively on both creating great products and creating great relationships with people who want those products.  Businesses that fail often create products they think people want without even asking their target audience what those people want, and creating those products first.

Bad apples and bad experiences have led many people to associate marketing with snake oil salesmen and hyping worthless products.  This definitely exists, but that’s the dark side of the marketing force (think of Darth Vader marketing to Luke to come over to the dark side).  On the bright side of the marketing force, marketing for me has always been about connecting the people who care about specific interests (mobile apps, technology, natural products, great restaurants, gardening, cuff links, motorcycles, clothes, …whatever) to the latest and greatest products and services related to those interests.

Everyone loves to connect and be validated.  Everyone loves to be turned onto products and services they think are valuable.  Certain people love to be the early adopters and be the first ones to both learn about new products and to be the one to tell their friends about it.

Whether you read about it on Twitter or Facebook, stumble on a YouTube video, hear about it from your friends, or see it on a Superbowl TV ad, you learn about everything new from being on the receiving end of marketing.  And then there’s the question of whether every person on the planet over the age of 5 is a marketer since we all tell people about what we think is cool.

In summary, don’t be a marketing hater.  You’re an amateur marketer if you’ve ever recommended a movie, book, iPhone app, hiking trail, vacation spot, gift idea, car model, fishing spot, or anything else to another person.  ”Marketer” isn’t a dirty word.  Some of us are passionate connectors that love helping out companies run by people who have other talents and don’t know how to find, connect and effectively communicate with the people who will love what they created.

What’s your take on the good and evil of marketing / connecting buyers and sellers / communicating product benefits to the public?

It wouldn’t be a prudent business decision to build any core aspect of your business on a platform you have no control over, right?  Yet in today’s world, having a Facebook Fan Page for your company is essential, and unless you’re Mark Zuckerberg, you don’t control anything Facebook does with it’s platform.

How will you feel if you have to abandon your Facebook Page one day after years of work to build up your followers, engage your community and have a strong presence on the #2 most visited destination on the internet?

Along with the many upsides to having an active Facebook Fan Page come some crucial downsides.  The reality is that having a Facebook Fan Page is both an indispensable marketing and customer service tool while simultaneously being the equivalent of building a gigantic castle on the beach that could be swept out with the tide without any notice. For example, company’s are currently  losing their Facebook Fan Pages after someone else gains admin privileges and deletes them as an admin to their own page.  This is a major issue, but like losing all of your unsaved changes to a 15 page Word document, your only recourse to this unfortunate event happening to you is to start again from scratch.

I believe in knowing what we can’t control, but focusing on what we can control.  Let’s cross our fingers that you won’t have to deal with your Fan Page being deleted or Facebook imploding anytime soon.  Instead, check out the Top Five ways to build your Facebook Fan Page to make sure you’ve got your bases covered:

1.  After you have 25 fans you should grab the custom username for your business page.

2.  Choose your Fan Page name carefully.  After you have over 100 fans you cannot change the company name on your fan page, so if you owned a business named “Buzz Coffee Shop” and later changed the name to “Buzz Cafe”, you would have to shut down the Facebook Fan Page for “Buzz Coffee Shop” and create a brand new page (with zero fans) for “Buzz Cafe”.

3.  Understanding Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm will help you to create content that is more likely to be seen by your fans.

4.  Create a custom welcome page to greatly increase your conversion rate of visitors who become fans.

5.  Build your community on your Facebook Fan Page by consistently using the Photos, Questions, Twitter, Networked Blogs and other customizable tabs to create a variety of interesting content to share with your fans.

This was too good not to share – So, we’re sharing…

This animated vid is re-purposed from a post on Social Media Timesby Megan O’Neill:  “Animated Video Points Out The Ridiculousness Of Hiring A Social Media Intern”

We couldn’t agree more with Megan. Don’t send a rookie in to do the work of a pro and expect to get the same results. Sometimes, you get what you pay for.  Just sayin’.

This article was originally published on Hip Chameleon

Image via Servitokss

There are three main aspects to social marketing that make it more than broadcasting information.  Strategy, tactical execution and integration to existing marketing systems (online and offline) are all necessary.  Behind these three aspects is a truth that is sometimes still overlooked – executing on tactics is not strategy, it’s a lack of strategy.

To prevent falling into the trap of thinking that randomly communicating, or only reactively replying, on social media platforms is an effective social media marketing strategy, ask yourself these 5 questions:

1. What are your Top 3 business goals?

2. What are you doing today to reach those goals through social media marketing?

3. Are you structuring your online conversations, finding people, and following people based on strategies designed to help you to reach your goals?

4. What can you add to your social media marketing strategy to reach your goals better and faster?

5. How does your core messaging affect your social media communications?

We all know that there are many nuanced layers to effective business communications whether they are shared through social media, email marketing or any other marketing platform.  But getting in touch with your answers to the questions above and then communicating through a filter of ‘what’s in it for them?’ and ‘how can I make them feel special’ is a simple start to shining brighter than your competition.

Peter Shankman, founder of Help A Reporter Out (HARO) and opening keynote for BlogWorld LA, will be in our backyard onOctober 11, 2011 in Denver in a much more personal and engaging format where you can spend an entire day learning from him.

Hip Chameleon, my marketing and media company, along with Social IRL, is very proud to be co-sponsoring this event that is attracting people from across the country.  Peter’s last presentation drew representatives ranging from companies as large as Sprint and H&R Block down to small business owners interested in learning from this legendary online marketing expert in an intimate setting.

You can grab a 10% discount on top of the discounted rate of $145 for the first 50 registrants (then it goes up to $245).

REGISTER NOW and get the discount before they’re all gone! Use discount code IRLHC.

Attendees will learn how social media can be used to engage customers and prospects, build relationships, earn trust and credibility, gain referrals, deliver amazing customer service, and create brand advocates.

The unique workshop like environment and limited registrations give attendees the opportunity to go well beyond the typical conference and experience a day of highly engaged and interactive learning.

The event is also very focused on connecting and networking. We actively encourage attendees to connect both online and offline and to stay connected and keep learning from each other well after the boot camp has ended. We hope to see you there.

I recently reviewed the social graph of a company looking to increase their Facebook fan and Twitter follower counts as quickly as possible.  What company doesn’t want that, right?

The truth is that any company can spend their way to 5k fans or followers through a PPA advertising campaign.  Without discounting this method, it’s worth noting that its results are limited if they aren’t working in conjunction with communication and marketing strategies based on your company goals.  Holistic approaches that build communities are the way to go.

In this particular case, the company had previously hired someone who brokered social media services that did not give them significant results, so the first mistake was not hiring a company that directly did the work and had a track record for producing great results.  Always research the companies you hire and explore their personal and professional social graphs if you’re buying social marketing services.

Hitting a number means nothing if that’s your only goal.  Once you have the followers, the most important questions is ‘How are you going to convert them into happy customers and develop relationships that make them high lifetime value customers or raving fans that spread great word of mouth promotion for your business?’

This company’s bigger problem was that they didn’t know how to communicate with the fans they already had.   Hitting a magic bullet of 5k Facebook fans and/or Twitter followers will not necessarily spike their sales.

The reality is that hard smart work and relationship building is the only magic bullet that exists.  You have to test and measure an educated communication strategy based on experience to effectively interact with your community.  If you’re not building relationships with your followers then you’re wasting your time and money, and it could tarnish your reputation rather than boost it.

In this case, they were close to 2,000 Facebook fans and had over 1,000 Twitter followers.  The Facebook page had been touting the virtues of the main product and they were giving away a very healthy contest prize.  Everyone who Liked the Facebook page was entered into a drawing to win a trip to NYC with some other benefits. …and still they couldn’t move the needle on their follower counts.

To highlight some mistakes you want to watch out for, let’s look at their basic social graph in a nutshell:

1)   The website home page did not even mention the contest.  In fact, their social link widgets were buried at the bottom left hand corner of the home page, way below the fold, so you had to scroll through the full page to even know they were there.  Fail.

2)   The Facebook page did not come up in a search of the company name on Facebook unless I hit ‘get more results’.  After clicking the company fan page name I was delivered to the ‘info’ page – not the Welcome page (which did not invite me to “Like” the page.)  Once I clicked on the Wall page I saw desperate posts asking for visitors to Like the page, with no valuable content besides the contest bribe mentioned above.  Why should I care?  You’re treating me like a number rather than respectfully giving me content that makes me feel special and aligned with your product.  Now I like you less than before I arrived on your Facebook fan page.  Fail again.

3)   The Twitter stream is one long broadcast of why the product is awesome.  Rule number one – your customers should tell me you’re awesome, not you.  You can have the greatest product ever, but if you say so it’s hype and if a customer says so it’s fact.  They had no conversations with anyone on Twitter; not even a Retweet or a Reply to acknowledge that they are trying to connect with a community of living, breathing humans rather than lifeless wallets with valuable money they want.  Fail for the third time – you’re out. …for now.

The good news is that since the internet is based on real time activities, you an clean up situations like these in a matter of  days or weeks of consistently doing the right things.

Getting visitors to do more than Like your Facebook fan page and never come back isn’t rocket surgery (as I read on a bumper sticker.)  If your company wants more fans and followers then make sure you’re giving good love to the ones you already have.  You will find that when your followers genuinely feel understood and appreciated they’ll tell their friends you’re awesome because you’re being awesome and because you’re product is awesome (if it is); which is much better, easier and fun than wasting time and money trying to convince people you’re awesome.  Numbers are a play in the game, but they’re not the game.

So if you know anyone in this situation, suggest they do their due diligence on who they’re hiring, even if they feel like this world is foreign to them.  Their gut will send them in the right direction and save them the pain this company experienced, and they’ll enjoy a faster road to social marketing success.