Monthly Archives: September 2011

5 Things Businesses Need From Google Plus

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Google has yet to release its highly anticipated business profiles for the Google Plus social network (beyond basic test accounts such as the Ford Motor Company). What they’ll include in a public release remains to be seen. But if Google wants to know what businesses want and need in those new profiles or pages, we have a few suggestions for them.

1. Social Analytics & Ad Targeting

Business owners want to see real results for the time and money they put into social media. They need to know what works (and what doesn’t) when reaching their customers. With Google’s already-popular Analytics service, integration would be a great step, giving them Web analytics and social analytics all from one familiar platform. Businesses could segment members of their network by demographics to see what genders, age groups, and other groups interact with their brand in different ways – mentions, comments, and +1s for example.

As this social and demographic data is collected, it would also be great to see Google Plus leverage that information in ad targeting for business users. These ads could be run through their existing Adwords platform or a fresh and more social ad format solely for the G+ network. Brands using Google Plus could advertise on the network, with ads automatically appearing on profiles of users similar to those following the brand. This way, ads wouldn’t be limited to existing followers of a business, but could also reach users with the same interests, in the same local markets, or fitting the same demographic profiles.

2. Vanity URLs

Businesses care about branding, and that makes vanity URLs a must. In other words, let’s see http://plus.google.com/YourCompany instead of  something like http://plus.google.com/7634289694283927349. Vanity URLs let companies highlight their brand names when promoting their social profiles, making the profiles themselves more marketable.

3. More Robust Direct Messaging

There’s a direct email option in Google Plus, but for businesses to use that, members of their network must have email enabled for their own accounts. You can also directly send a post to a single person. That poses other risks due to the “reshare” feature of Google Plus. To minimize the risk of private communications being forwarded to others’ networks, employees with access to a company’s Google Plus account would have to remember to choose the “lock this post” option for every private post.

Google can do better – from better archives of private conversation streams (similar to an inbox) to a simple “let this person contact me privately” link. In the latter, a customer could click that link when requesting private support or information from a business, and the company could then bypass their default email settings to contact them via email.

4. Ecommerce Integration

If companies can make money on Google Plus directly, they have more incentive to stay. This could even involve Google Plus integration with popular payment processors like Google Checkout and Paypal. Or Google Plus could involve itself in the daily deals phenomenon, letting companies post their own deals and coupons, highlighting them in a special G+ feed.

5. Opt-In Circle Subscriptions And/Or Auto-Grouping

While it makes perfect sense for the circles of personal Google Plus users to be private, business users should have the option to make some circles public. This would allow followers to “subscribe” to certain messages from the company in lieu of signing up for an email list. Companies also wouldn’t have to manually add followers to these marketing-oriented circles (which would be ethically questionable versus opt-ins).

Another approach to help businesses cut back on manual segmentation in circles is to enable auto-grouping. When a brand adds users to its network, Google could automatically identify similarities with network members in different circles, suggesting groupings for new users who are added. This auto-grouping or suggestion feature could work alongside circle subscriptions on the user side.

In addition to grouping users brands add to their networks, Google could suggest additional circles for followers who subscribe to receive certain types of updates. To combat privacy concerns, users could have a privacy setting enabling or disabling companies from adding them to other circles beyond what they’ve opted into. For example, this might let them subscribe to receive special offers without being added to circles broadcasting company news.

These are some of the things we’d love to see included in Google Plus business profiles. What about you? Would these ideas benefit your business? Do you have other business profile suggestions for Google? If so, tell us about them in the comments below!

Creating Content that Builds Links on eCommerce Websites

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Due to their commercial content, eCommerce websites present a unique challenge when it comes to link building because many websites are hesitant to link to them. In this post we’ll take a look at some ways to get past those objections.

Create a Blog

One of the easiest ways to create, publish, and expose content that can generate links is to use a blog. One crucial step is to remove as many commercial elements from the blog as possible. For example, link to the store but don’t have a full category/department listing in the sidebar. Try to keep the blog as informational as possible. Don’t use it to push products. You don’t need to publish daily or even multiple times per week. It’s more important to publish exceptional quality content as opposed to a large quantity of content.

Linkbait or Infotainment

Linkbait style content is created specifically for getting attention and links. A lot of people get stuck on this aspect and can’t think of ways to do this creatively and effectively. For example, let’s pick a boring subject such as a plumber’s website. Some linkbait topics could be:

  • 5 oldest public fountains
  • Top 10 most spectacular fountains
  • Strangest/funniest public bathrooms
  • How many bathrooms does the world’s tallest building have
  • Most expensive bathrooms

Resource Guides

Within each industry, there exists beginner and expert information that people search for online. If you can create a library of this information that is encyclopedic in nature and tone, you will have a very linkable resource. Strive to create content that reads like it would be found in Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, or on a trade organization’s website. For best results, create a non-commercial template for this content. Issue a press release and conduct an outreach program to let others in your space know about the content.

Creative commons photographs

Create a library of creative commons photographs that you will allow others to use free of charge. Hire a professional or pro/amateur photographer to take the pictures for you, make sure you own the rights to the picture. Put the pictures online in small and medium sizes (less than 600px) in a self help format so people can download the pictures themselves. Provide them with the code to link back to you. Make larger sizes and high resolution sizes available by request. Employ basic image optimization techniques for maximum results.

Industry statistics and surveys

Conduct industry research or gather statistics from government websites or trade organizations. Combine the information from multiple resources to create something unique and insightful. Publish the information in a well designed PDF available for free download. Request a link for people who write about it. Be sure to embed your URL in the PDF as a link in case people reproduce the PDF.

Syndicate content and Guest Blog

Look for related blogs or websites that are accepting guest posts. Create content that is valuable for them, not just content that is a “wrapper” for a link back to your website. Try to guest blog on a regular basis on as many blogs as possible. Make content for online magazines, newspapers, and trade publication available for syndication. The better your content is, the more likely people will reprint it, and the better quality the links to you will be. Try to use this as an opportunity to get content syndication on a regular basis.

To wrap things up, there are many different linking opportunities for ecommerce websites if you are willing to be creative and think outside the box. It’s better to continually use a variety of techniques because search engine algorithms change over time. Seeing a regular growth in links over many months is what search engines want to see, as opposed to a short burst in link growth.

Image credit: photospin

WalmartLabs: A Glimpse Into The Future Of Ecommerce

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Earlier this year, retail megastore Walmart bought Kosmix, a Silicon Valley based startup that’s been powering technologies like TweetBeat and RightHealth. The company has since been renamed @WalmartLabs.

In case you’ve never heard of Kosmix, they specialize in semantic analysis of the web. One of the founders, sums up what they did in a blog post about the acquisition:

“At Kosmix, we’ve been building a platform, called the Social Genome, to organize this data deluge by adding a layer of semantic understanding… For example, when I tweet “Loved Angelina Jolie in Salt,”the tweet connects me (a user) to Angelia Jolie (an actress) and SALT (a movie).”

“By analyzing the huge volume of data produced every day on social media, the Social Genome builds rich profiles of users, topics, products, places, and events.”

- Anand Rajaraman, Founder of Kosmix

Using the semantic data from the Social Genome, Kosmix is able to understand and categorize information into sub-topics. In the case of TweetBeat, Kosmix uses semantic data to organize real-time tweets around events and displays the most interesting things people are saying about an event as it unfolds.

It seems like the main reason Walmart made the acquisition is this capability to make sense of what’s happening on the web. Having more data sounds like a great idea, but what can Walmart actually use this semantic data for? Certainly having a ‘rich profile of users, topics, products, places and events’ would help them to learn more about their customers.

Targeted deals and personalization immediately come to mind, but is that enough to win the ecommerce game? There must be something more Kosmix can bring to the table. Here are a few ideas.

Ultra-targeted deals. Frankly, the deals and offers space is getting a bit crowded and it’s difficult to reach through the noise to find a deal I really want to use. With the data Kosmix provides and past purchasing behavior, Walmart has a huge advantage in targeting deals at consumers. Imagine how great it’d be to offer a discount on pasta to somebody who is intending to cook a pasta dinner within the next few days. Or giving a discount on suntan lotion to someone who likes a tan and is planning to go to the beach soon.

Walmart has the opportunity to ultra-target consumers on many dimensions (interest, location, intent) with information that Kosmix can provide. That’s pretty exciting. No more searching for coupons online and gone are the days of emails about deals you have no interest in. You’ll only get deals that you will truly cash in and products that you will actually use.

Social recommendations. With social networks, it ‘s now pretty easy to obtain information about a person and who the person knows. The hard part is figuring out what type of relationship a person has with those they are linked to. With semantic analysis of social interactions, Walmart can now determine how a person is related to the people they know.

Say your childhood friend’s birthday is around the corner. Walmart knows this through your Facebook profile and can figure out the nature of your relationship. You then get sent an appropriate gift recommendation through email, along with free shipping, gift wrapping and a birthday card. All you have to do is to click the buy button to send it to your friend. The hassle of choosing and buying a gift is gone. Sounds like a great idea to me.

Private group buy suggestions. Group buying is all the rage, but group deals are usually offered to everyone and can cannibalize existing demand. What if you could only offer group deals to people that would otherwise not buy that product? Walmart has the chance to turn group buying on its head by being able to determine exactly which customers to target for group deals and offering them a private group deal.

Real-time product reviews. Fun fact: the founders of Kosmix were the ones who built Amazon Mechanical Turk, a crowd sourced workforce accessible to anyone, for a fee of course. With Walmart, Kosmix has the chance to one-up Merchanical Turk. Instead of paying people or relying on customers logging into Walmart.com to write a review, Walmart can crawl the web and find out what people have been saying about their products and posting them up as anonymized reviews.  As a bonus, Walmart can even present the information to you in a socially relevant manner that shows you what your social network has been saying about things you want to buy.

We’ll have to wait and see what comes out of Walmart’s new purchase. But judging by the Kosmix track record and the calibre of its founders, @WalmartLabs is going to be interesting to watch.

Essential Content Every eCommerce Website Needs

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When you are building a great shopping site, having a functioning, easy-to-use shopping cart is only part of the battle. An essential hurdle you need to overcome is trust. You need to show the customer that you are a reputable company that will deliver what you promise. There are some types of content consumers look for, and content that Google even recommends librarians and other researchers look for, when trying to asses how trustworthy a website is.

About Us

While most consumers rarely read an “About Us” page, it is one of the things they look for. When you are starting out, it should be something simple that conveys a sense of reliability and trust, something that suggests you are knowledgeable and reliable in your area of expertise. A more advanced strategy is to create a remarkable “About Us” page as a link building tool.

Contact Us

Having a “Contact Us” form is another key element of trust. Consumers look for physical real world addresses, telephone numbers, and contact forms. Having a PO Box may work when you are first starting out, but in most cases having a real world address is better. Sometimes you solve this problem with a virtual office that screens and holds mail as a way of getting you a physical address with a suite number. Check with your tax advisor if you are setting up an address in a different county or state. Any time you put up an address, try to use rich markup language for addresses as specified in Schema.org. If you don’t know how to use the proper markup, try the markup generator from Raven Tools.

Privacy Policy

While almost no one ever reads a privacy policy, they do like to see one there. A privacy policy is a legal document. If you aren’t going to have a lawyer review or create one for you, try the privacy policy generator. Make sure you follow what you say you are doing in your privacy policy.

Terms of Service

A “Terms of Service” page is similar to “Privacy Policy”: it’s a legal document that says how you will interact with people who visit your website. If you aren’t going to have a lawyer craft a unique TOS document, try the online terms of service generator.

Frequently Asked Questions or FAQ

Chances are good that your customer service department has 10-20 questions they get asked on a regular basis. You should put these online in an FAQ. Usually I recommend putting one question per page, which allows you to optimize each page for one search term, but sometimes one FAQ page is better. You should update and add to this section on a regular basis.

Buying Guides

Buying some products is more difficult and complicated than other products. Depending on how complex your products are, you may need a buying guide. A buying guide should be easy to read and digest. An effective buying guide takes complicated issues and explains them so they are easily understood. The costumer should feel confident about choosing a product after reading a product guide.

Care Guide

Some products require special care so they perform as expected and have a longer lifespan. Creating care guides to help customers after they have made the purchase is a key step to building loyal customers. Again, care guides should be easy to understand and follow. Adding pictures and videos are often very helpful.

Repair Guides

It would be nice if products lasted forever and didn’t need maintenance, but this isn’t realistic. For example, if you own a dishwasher, it’s almost guaranteed to need service and repair at some point. Simple-to-follow repair guides with pictures and videos are almost always better. If a product does require an experienced technician or repairman, let the user know.

Customer Photos and Videos

Sometimes having pictures/videos of customers using your products or with your products in their homes or offices can be great in garnering consumer attention. As an example, box.net created a series of people using their products, which was very successful in getting a lot of attention. Here’s an example of customer photos on the Roku website.

To wrap things up, these types of pages go a long way towards fleshing out a website and making your website more legitimate and trustworthy. If you link to them within your website, they can answer a customer’s questions and help you make sales. Make sure you allow the search engines to crawl and index them for maximum effectiveness too!

Image credit: PhotoSpin

How Businesses Can Leverage Google Plus (Even Without Business Profiles)

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You’ve probably heard about Google Plus. Yes. It’s another social media tool vying for your attention. It combines services from Google’s existing toolset with a clean and clever social networking platform. It covers photo sharing, blogging, chatting, video, aggregation, and cool new privacy controls through “Circles.”

There’s a catch though. You aren’t allowed to set up a Google Plus profile for your business yet.

Why you can’t set up a Google+ Business Profile

Google wants all users to be real people. That means you can’t set up a profile for your brand name. If you create one, Google will remove it. However, Google is working on a new feature for business pages. They should be available later this year.

3 Ways to Leverage Google Plus While You Wait

3 Ways to Leverage Google+ While You Wait

You don’t have to wait for Google Plus business profiles (or break the rules) to make the most of the network. There are ways you can connect, drive traffic, and build visibility right now.

  1. Add +1 buttons to your website. When readers use the +1 button to share your content, it will display in their +1 list in their profile. Recent changes to the +1 button now lets visitors share your content directly in their Google Plus stream. The Snippets function lets you customize how your title, image, and description will appear there. Visitors can also see if someone they know shared your content when they visit a page with the +1 button on it with new inline annotations.
  2. Have employees set up profiles. Using Google Plus internally can familiarize employees with the platform before business profiles are available.
    • Set up Circles in your own account (the G+ tool for sorting members of your network). Share company news, announcements, or other messages only with relevant employees based on the Circles they’re in.
    • Use the Hangouts feature for video conferences or virtual meetings for up to ten employees.
    • Share business-related images — from event photos to infographics. They can show up on the “photos from your circles” page for anyone following you.
  3. Follow industry news. Sparks let you follow industry news or what others blog about in your niche. You follow a topic rather than a person. Your own blog posts or news might even appear in others’ Sparks listings without you doing anything special. If your content can be indexed by Google and is well-optimized, it can display there automatically.

You need an invitation to get started with Google Plus, so ask your friends and colleagues for one. Already there? How are you leveraging Google Plus for business without going afoul of the rules?

Share your tips in the comments below!