A guest post by Matt Chatterley of MattchedIT Ltd – thanks Matt

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Over the last few years (or perhaps more accurately, months), we’ve watched the way we interact with each other online change drastically through facebook, twitter and various other less-known services and tools. But how many of us have really sat down and studied the impact these changes could have on our businesses?

Once upon a time it was hard to set up an online shop. They were few and far between and they were major undertakings. That certainly isn’t the case now – we have the technology, you might say.

It’s probably harder to choose the solution you want to use – or to find a reputable developer amongst the masses – than it is to actually go through the motions of planning, implementing and opening your store.

Sadly, many would-be virtual shop-keepers learn a hard lesson shortly after they open – although laying the foundations and opening a shop is pretty simple, making sales is something else entirely.

Marketing is a serious business

You’re reading my scribblings on Nikki Pilkington’s blog – so you must already know that she is well known in Internet Marketing circles, for all the right reasons. I’m sure she and I will agree on this point – the toughest job which lays before you with your shiny new online shop is going to be bringing in customers and making sales.

I don’t mean to gloss over the importance of making sure your website is going to make sales – that’s clearly critical too, but you need an audience before you can even find out if it’s laid out in a manner which will tempt them to buy.

Instead of telling you about the importance of a marketing plan or about all the things you should be doing, I’m going to suggest some ideas for your site itself – some of the things which we are busy incorporating into the in-house eCommerce framework which we use to build sites.

Three ways to engage customers, get referrals and to save those sales!

Engage Customers – There is so much you can do to increase the level of customer engagement your site permits.

Sure, it might make recommendations for similar products – thats nothing new. But how about sending an existing customer a quick tweet when you add a new product the system thinks they’d like, based on their past purchases?

“Hi @you! A new book has been published by @your_favourite_author..”

Get Referrals – If you can get your customers to recommend you to their friends, particular over social media, you’ll be tapping into one of the most powerful and effective marketing resources in the world. Perhaps you could offer a discount code if they perform enough “social shares” – or you could issue them with an affiliate code and hand out a share of the cash if one of their friends makes a purchase.

A recommendation from a friend is always going to be stronger than any advertisement you can issue yourself!

Save those Sales – don’t you hate it when the product you want is out of stock? Particularly if it’s a high demand item – by the time an email notification of new stock arrives, the odds are it’ll be sold out again. So why not return to twitter, facebook and other “instant gratification” messaging services?

Get it right and not only will you be able to make your customer feel important with their notification – you might draw in a few of their followers, too!

Social Networking is for life, not just for this year

Perhaps I should say “Social Marketing” rather than “Social Networking”. It’s not going anywhere – and it’s only going to get more important. Sure, like anything online, it’s going to change quickly and we’re all going to have to run to keep up at times, but fortune favours the brave!

That’s why as we push ahead with our development schedule, finding new ways to integrate with and get the most out of social networks is going to remain high on our list of priorities. Is it on yours yet? And if not, why not?

Matt Chatterley is an experienced software developer and one of the directors of Mattched IT Ltd, a web development company based in Hampshire which specialises in providing tailor-made web and software solutions to the business market.

OK, I know all the marketing speak about a picture being worth a thousand words and a picture breaking up the text to make it more readable. I’ve listened to the experts tell me which side of the blog post the picture should go, and at which paragraph break, to get the best blog response.

But that’s not what I’m talking about (and none of them seem to agree with each other anyway!)

To me, one of the main reasons you should include a picture is simple:

When people share your blog on Facebook, without a picture it just fades away

Seriously, if Facebook is a big part of your traffic, and people share your stuff on there (or you post your own stuff) then you need a picture!

Without a picture in your blog, when someone posts your link it looks drab and boring:

See? There’s my little thumbnail on the left, but if our Facebook Fan Page was full of links like this it would look a bit boring, and nothing would stand out.

Now let’s see one WITH a picture:

It stands out a lot more, and people are more likely to be drawn to it and click on it. Don’t believe me? Test it out – I have, with the same link posted on 2 different fan pages with a similar amount of fans / likes – one with and one without a picture. The picture one drew in almost double the amount of clicks.

It’s a small thing, but if it works, what do you have to lose?

Not sure where to source pictures?

Here are a couple of blog posts that may help you:

• Recommended Wordpress Plugin – Photodropper for Wordpress
• Where can I get free stock photos for my blog or website

Lots of the questions I get on Twitter and Facebook relate to blogging and SEO, and as I was typing up a quick and dirty guide to SEO Blogging for a client, I mentioned it to someone else and they asked for a copy. Then I mentioned it on Twitter and others asked. So I tidied it up a (little) bit, put it in PDF format and here it is

It covers:

• Thinking of what to write
• What not to blog
• How much should I write?
• How do I get people to comment?
• Should I tweet and facebook my blogs?
• Blogging for SEO – a quick and dirty guide
• Making sure Google knows about your blogs

It's not an advanced guide, it's not rocket science and hopefully it's not full of jargon.

I'm offering it free – no sign up, no cash, nothing – all I ask is that if you like it, you drop me a line in one of the many places you can find me, and then direct someone else to this page by either Tweeting about it, Facebooking it, mentioning it on Linked in, writing a blog post about it, or shouting on the High Street with a megaphone (special kudos to those of you who do the latter!).

Anyway, please click on the link to get 67 SEO Pointer for Blogging Beginners – a free guide

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photo credit: lumaxart

First off, an admission – this isn't MY post. It's from the fab Chris Brogan, and he's said that it can be reposted as long as he's given credit. Here's the original post: 50 Power Twitter Tips

Rather than just repost his thread, I've picked out my favourite of his tips from each section  – please do read his original post to get all 50!

Intent (Human Artist)

• Don’t read EVERY tweet. It’s perfectly okay. You have permission.
• Promote other people 12x to every 1 self-promotional tweet.
• A lot of @replies shows a lot of humanity/engagement.
• Promote the new/less followed more than the “names.”
• Everyone does it their own way. You’re doing it wrong, too- to someone.

Technical

• Leave 20 characters or more space in each tweet to improve retweeting.
• Make hashtags small and simple. We need room to tweet.
• If software allows you to “post updates to Twitter” as well as to the app, don’t do that. We rarely want to see them.
• If you develop software that pushes updates to Twitter, be VERY explicit how that works.
• Every time you use OAUTH to give apps permission to use your account, you open a potential security hole. Check your permissions monthly.

Business

• Spamming us repeatedly is okay. We just unfollow you.
• Finding people who need what you’re selling trumps advertising to us.
• Your customers might not be on Twitter. Use rapleaf to find them.
• Invite your customers to Twitter, then make it worth it for them.
• Use Twitter as a personalized communication tool, not another blast.
• Just make money and then the boss won’t ask about ROI any more.

Integrated Usage

• Apps like TweetChat.com make following event chats really easy. Put in a hashtag and go.
• Tweeting the content of events is nice, but so is occasionally making a real live connection with the speaker.
• It’s okay to tweet your blog posts, but try asking a question that leads readers into the post.
• Can you invite Twitter followers to your other social platforms, like LinkedIn or Facebook? Sure you can.
• Tweets that point us to photos and/or video and/or music, etc, are always a great way to enhance the experience.

Off-Twitter

• Are your tweets really what you want to show in your sidebar? Doesn’t that direct people away from your site?
• Apps like VisibleTweets.com are neat, but can be very distracting at events.
• Don’t forget to invite people from off-Twitter to follow you on Twitter. Include your actual Twitter ID (I see lots of “follow me on Twitter” with no details).
• Asking questions on Twitter makes for very interesting commentary and opinions for blog posts.
• If your only marketing efforts are on Twitter, start building an email marketing list. Never put your eggs in one basket.
• Start thinking in 120 characters (remember? save 20). Every bit of this advice is tweetable.

As always, fab points from Chris – be sure to visit his original post and let others know about it!

A great post from Chris Brogan reminding us all not to miss a trick when it comes to promoting ourselves online!

“Earlier, I Googled the local gyms in my town.

I found the place I wanted, and just before I made the phone call, I realized that Google had something that said “write a review.”

I did, and immediately after submitting it, there was suddenly a little review, with a “chrisbrogan.com” prominently displayed beside it.

When I clicked the link, it went to my Google Profile.

Whoa, I thought. Matrix “whoa.”

Because, hey, that’s like, free advertising. Non?”

Read the rest here.

Styletime have launched a blog contest fund raiser against poverty for BlogActionDay in which you can win some fantastic prizes, including:

All you have to do is write a blog about the competition and donate a minimum of $1 to charity through the donation page, and you’ll be entered into the draw.

I promised I’d help to promote it, so that’s my bit done Now it’s over to you lot – get blogging!

Nikki Pilkington

| Perfect Networker

We know from our overflowing inbox that lots of you have questions about Google Adwords.

It seems so easy – sign up, post some ads, get traffic, make money.

But as everyone who has tried it soon finds out, there’s more to it than that!

This FREE e-book will help you through the process of setting up and making money from your Google Adwords account – download it now with our compliments

See below for a full chapter list:

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So what are you waiting for? It’s here, it’s fab and it’s FREE

For a long time I used Google Analytics to provide webstats for me and for my clients – and it worked. Great stats, pretty graphs, nice figures – everything I needed.The problem I had was that I couldn’t get real time stats – I had to wait until the next day, by which time in some cases it was too late to react to surges in traffic.

I needed something that showed me what my visitors were doing and where they were coming from NOW, not yesterday!

And then I found GetClicky.

As they say about themselves:

Clicky is a web analyzer that works great with any web site, even Ajax and Flash sites. It was originally targeted towards smaller web sites and blogs because it tracks a high level of detail on every visitor, and these types of sites find this information very interesting.

It’s the high level of detail, combined with the fact that I can see what visitors are doing RIGHT NOW that makes GetClicky the perfect stats tool for me.

So what do you get?

The Dashboard:

The dashboard is an overview of the traffic to your site – telling you how mny visitors you’ve had (and showing you trends in a nifty little graph), how many actions those vistors have taken (eg where have they gone in your site), where your visitors have come from, what search phrases they have used and which pages they have visited.As an overview of your traffic, it’s very useful, but it’s in the nitty gritty that getClicky excels, and that’s what’s more exciting to me.

Visitors

The Visitors tab gies you a list of all your recent visitors, and tells you where they came to your site from.You’ll know what time they visited, what their IP address is, how many actions they took on your site, and if the referrer was a search engine, what search phrases they used.

This can be filtered in a number of ways and is very useful information.

Actions

I love the Actions tab as it shows me what each and every visitor has doen on my sites. I can see that one visitor has come to the site from an article that was Stumbled on Stumbleupon, and has not only read that article, but has clicked on the links in it to go to external sites, returned to my site and read some more articles, and even whether they have clicked on an email link to email me. By the time I receive the email I probably already know who they are and what they’ve been looking at and can tailor my reply accordingly – how cool is THAT?

Content

The content tab shows me which pages of my site are being visited, which are the entrance pages, exit pages, which of my files are being downloaded (in my main site, www.nikkipilkington.com, I have PDF versions of my internet marketing articles – this view tells me how many downloads they get every day) and more.

Links

Like most other traffic stats, this tells me where my visitors are coming from. But unlike most other traffic stats, it also shows me which links a visitor is clicking on to LEAVE my site.

This is great – I know whether links in my articles are being visited, recommendations are being followed, links to other sites I own are being clicked – even down to whether someoneclicks on an email link. I can also track visitors that leave to read something I have recommended and then come back! This to me is vital information and one of my favourite GetClicky features.

Searches

The searches tab shows me the latest search phrases I am being fond for on search engines – it’s always interesting to see the searches that bring people to my various sites – intended and unintentional

Spy

This is my favourite GetClicky tab of all.

I can see, in REAL TIME, visitors on my site. I can see which pages they are clicking on, which files they are downloading, external links they are following, and more.

It allows me to react to visitors almost instantly – if I can see that lots of people are on Using Twitter for Business part one on my Business on twitter site, I can quickly amend the page to add a link to other more recent articles I may have written, in order to drive traffic there. If I see that lots of people are clicking on an external link to someone else’s blog, I can make sure I let the blog writer know, and investigate any synergy we may have to exploit the large amounts of traffic.

The spy tab has a multitude of uses – but I wanr you, it’s very addictive

All in all I think GetClicky is as close to perfect as a web stats tool can get.

Pricing?

There is a free service, which doesn’t include the Spy tab, and if you sign up now you’ll get a free 21 day trial of the Premium service, which is what I use. It’s only $60 for the year and you can pay monthly – it’s well worth the investment to have your traffic stats NOW instead of tomorrow.

So, why not given it a go? Sign up now at Get Clicky and let me know how you get on!

FREE STEPS TO HEAVEN

Leading Internet Marketing expert Nikki Pilkington releases acclaimed E-Book FREE for one day only!

Author and Internet Marketing Legend Nikki Pilkington reveals the secrets to website success in her acclaimed E-Book ‘299 Steps to Website Heaven’, available for FREE download for one day only – August 1^st 2008.

You may have the most innovative, extraordinary product on the market, but isn’t it frustrating that no one ever visits your website? You may as well hand it to the competition, along with the profits!

These days, web presence and Search Engine rankings are vital to the success of your business.   If you’re clueless about web presence, stuck down in the rankings, baffled by keywords and dumbfounded by density, you need this FREE E-Book. Without this crucial inside-information, you’re leaving a critical element of your Internet Marketing to chance.

But there’s so much conflicting advice from experts, it’s easy to be confused and it’s hard to know the truth. Search Engine Optimizers employ a wide variety of tricks and techniques to provide demonstrable results to their clients.  These SEO experts are more than happy to charge you an arm and a leg for it too!   If your business can afford the monthly expense of SEO support from an expert, that’s great!  But for the rest of us, there’s Nikki Pilkington’s 299 Steps to Website Heaven.

Imagine the time and money you could save by doing it for yourself!  And you can, because Nikki Pilkington’s 299 Steps to Website Heaven gives you concise, clearly written tips for optimizing your own website.

Following Nikki’s expert advice, you will learn to:

• Understand the basics of Search Engine Optimization
• Choose and employ Killer Keywords in just the right density
• Utilize your new knowledge to gain Higher Search Engine Listings
• Communicate effectively with SEO Professionals

With these valuable secrets in your own hands, you’ll benefit from the measurable differences in just a few weeks.   You’ll spend less time looking for customers, as increased traffic brings them directly to you!

This strictly limited offer E-Book is yours absolutely free to download on 1^st August 2008 (GMT).

If you’d like to take advantage of this exclusive offer to download 299 Steps to Website Heaven completely FREE, click here to sign up –  or contact Nikki directly at Nikki@NikkiPilkington.com

Thanks to the heads up from Neilsweb, you can get $250 of free advertising with Facebook – ideal for testing out campaigns to see if they’re worth spending money on.

Thanks Neil!