Session One – Keyword Research

Russ Henneberry and myself presented a quick 30 minute session on keyword research.  We covered the basics of keyword research such as various keyword tools (AdWords, WordTracker, Google Instant, Yahoo Suggest and SEOBook) then went in and showed how to seed the keyword tool and get back a ton of results.  We talked about the Long Tail of search, geographic indicators (such as St Louis, Saint Louis , STL) and then mentioned the keyword tracking tool called AWR.  Russ followed that up with a quick mention of Google Analytics and we were done.

We were hoping to help the attendees understand that keyword research is the foundation of any online campaign, whether you do PPC, SEO or even a mobile campaign.

Session Two – Local Search & Maps

Our emcee for the day, Bob Sommers, took us on a trip through the mind of a business owner that owns a car rental company in Florida.  Bob implored us to claim our Google Places listing, and then went in and actually showed us how to optimize our page so that we could get the most out of it.  Bob told us about Viz on the Net and shared his 16 step process to get your business into local search.

Tips included:

• Claim Your Listing!
• Use your local phone number
• Set up a ‘service area’
• You can have coupons show up on local results (very cool!)
• Make sure you upload pictures that show what your business can do for customers.

Session Three – Search Engine Optimization

Next up was a real good looking guy named Will Hanke from Where Is My Business.  (ok enough of that).  I shared a Ten Step DIY Website Audit and explained each of the steps.  Some takeaways include:

• Build an XML sitemap of your site
• Buy the .net, .org as a minimum. Stretch your main domain out to ten years if possible.
• Also consider purchasing the .cm and .co versions of your main .com domain
• Fix your non-www redirect problem
• Validate your website HTML with the W3C validator

Session Four – Pay Per Click Advertising

Adam Kreitman from Words That Click shared his great in-depth knowledge of Google’s AdWords tool, a terrific way to get your website listed for keywords that may be difficult to rank for with SEO.  Adam’s session was my personal favorite, and his extensive knowledge of PPC is pretty obvious and impressive.

Adam took local mattress company STLBeds and gave them a $100 credit to start advertising on Google.  He set up the entire campaign, and showed us how we can target certain geographic areas all the way down to zip code.  He showed us how one campaign ad was doing quite well, while another ad in the same exact market was not doing great at all. Other takeaways included:

• Adam knows what the heck he’s talking about
• A PPC campaign doesn’t have to cost you thousands a month if you target specific areas and keywords.
• You can show your ads during certain days, or even certain hours of a day
• You have to have a good landing page. (You can’t SEO a turd)

Lunch!

We headed over to another room for lunch, and each of the speakers sat at a different table.  Attendees got to pick a table and sit with the expert of their choice. I obviously can’t really speak for what happened at the other tables, but at mine we had a nice variety of questions.  They included:

• Should I put my blog on another site or my own? (A: your own domain)
• How often should you blog (A: Often as you like, as long as you’re consistent)
• Can you blog too often? (A: Not really)
• Various questions about subdomains, franchises with multiple locations, and branding

Session Five – Content Marketing

Russ Henneberry from Tiny and Mighty was next up and delivered another great presentation on how using content can dramatically increase your sales and referrals by moving people through the sales funnel.  Russ showed us how most of our potential clients are in the Apathy stage and how, through the use of content marketing, we can get them to awareness, interest and ultimately conversion.

Russ took on Complete Solutions and showed the owner Donna how adding an audio file could extend her reach and credibility as an expert.  He followed that up by showing how Donna can reach even more people with her marketing hub.  Other takeaways include:

• Interruption marketing sucks. Permission marketing rocks
• WordPress is a top-notch platform for building a website – don’t be the one that has to call the guy
• Bleeding on your customers through the method they choose is best
• Constantly promoting sales and specials will get you hidden quickly
  

Session Six – Website Usability

Next up was Sue Spencer of (oddly enough) Sue Spencer Designs. Sue took on a local incontinence products business Medical West.  She showed us the home page of the website for about 8 seconds then took it off the screen and asked us questions about it.  Many people couldn’t answer the questions because the site was so busy that they had a hard time deciphering quickly what the site was about.

Sue also talked about colors and how they should be used to frame certain areas of the site.  Sue did a very nice ‘rebuild’ of the Medical West home page and showed us the before and after.  Nice job, for sure!

Sue also mentioned that contact info, phone number and logo should always be very visible when designing a new site.

Session Seven – Email Marketing

Tom Ruwitch of MarketVolt, a local email marketing company was up next.  He had a series of questions for the attendees including What business are you in.  Many people knew where Tom was going with this, although a few answered it wrong.  An attendee from CarStar said We are in the business of reducing stress.  Good one.  Another one answered We sell telecom equipment to our VARs (value added resellert) which was more along the lines of what Tom was after.  Tom said you aren’t in the business of selling something, you are in the business of solving a problem.

Tom then went on to show us how to set up an actual email marketing acct in MarketVolt.  He showed us how creating an entirely image-based newsletter was a big no-no.  Other tips included:

• Introduce your staff. Make the newsletter more personal
• Tell your audience how you want to help them solve x
• Use a few pictures to break up the content, and use a nice looking email template.

Session Eight – Mobile Marketing

The last session of the day was presented by Steve Kelley of the Mobile Marketing Institute.  Steve told us why many businesses aren’t yet using mobile, and along with sharing some great campaigns that various businesses have used, Steve also showed us how texting coupons, sweepstakes and other offers can increase sales.  He mentioned the great success of Groupon, and the part that cell phones have played in their popularity.  Steve said that smart phone saturation is currently around 33%, and should be well over 50% before the end of 2011.  Mobile marketing is coming folks, whether you want it to or not.

One thing I heard several people mention afterwards was that they were really impressed with the idea of ‘telling’ your cell phone about a product that you want, and that when you get somewhere close to where that product is, your cell phone will text you about it.  Pretty cool stuff.

Steve also gave away a few prizes, all through the magic of texting, and even Bob Sommers got in on the act.  He sent his first-ever text message!

Conference Wrapup and Q&A

With the last sesson complete, Bob asked all of the attendees to take a moment to join the MSMC Facebook page and post a comment or review of the conference.  It was a terrific tie-in to all the things we learned!

He then invited all the speakers up to the front, and dismissed the crowd.  Attendees were welcome to hang around and ask the speakers any follow up questions they may have had, and many took him up on that offer.  There was quite a buzz in the room and people finally started filtering out about 5:15.

Overall I think the conference was an outstanding success.  Bob and Adam at Main Street Marketing Community really put together a solid lineup, kept the show running on time, and had plenty of breaks to keep the crowd awake and refreshed.  The food was terrific and there was plenty of coffee for me.

All of the speakers will be offering various Java Gyms over the next few weeks, and several of the speakers had some free or hugely discounted offers (including me!).

Lastly, if you attended the event and want to find out more about me or my services, check out my monthly SEO meetup and sign up for my newsletter!  If you want a link to my SEO Audit offer, email me – I’m not publishing that page publicly!

But no more.  New things are coming.  Good things.

Within the coming weeks, I’ll be relaunching both the Lighthouse Technologies website and the WIMB site.  They will both be WordPress-driven sites (who doesn’t love WordPress?).  Watch for the announcements on this site and in my newsletter.

Also, many of you found out about my business, and maybe even SEO because of the teaching I’ve done at the local library over the last 5 years.  Many of you folks have asked about more classes, a wider range of topics, and a bigger place (the library only holds ten people at a time).

Well, I’ve taken a step in that direction, too.  I’ve started a MeetUp group, and I’d love for you to join.  The group will meet monthly, in limited seating amounts (around 50) and will each month feature a different topic related to SEO, link building, social media, etc.  From time to time we’ll have featured speakers and workshops.  I want to help you get your business to the top of Google, Bing and Yahoo!. The meetups will not cost, although at some point I will be adding on some in-depth teaching sessions & workshops that may require fees.

To join the meetup, simply visit this link and throw your name in the hat.  You’re not required to attend every month, but rather if you see a topic that you want to learn, join us!

Lastly (for those that are afraid of people), I’ll also be announcing a new series of webinars that you can attend right from your PC at work, home or on the phone.  I’ve already done a few and they were well received.  I think you’ll really enjoy the content you get from these, so stay tuned to my newsletter for the upcoming dates and times.

I’m excited about putting all these things together for you.  And I look forward to helping your business completely dominate the Google, Bing and Yahoo! rankings.

More traffic, more customers, more money!

Registration is required for the free classes, and priority will be given to Jefferson County residents.  These classes always fill up so make sure you get yourself on the list early.

To sign up, call 636-296-5171

Note: Attendees to the September classes will receive a promo code for discounted tickets to Market Saint Louis in October!

Class Dates and Times

Title: Marketing Your Business Website
Summary: Learn how to revive a “dead” website. Topics covered include Search Engine Optimization (SEO), online advertising tips and avenues, along with ways to increase your website traffic and offline marketing ideas.
Dates/Times: Sept 23 at 6PM and Oct 15 at 9:30AM

Title: Leverage Twitter & Facebook for Business
Summary: In this class you’ll learn how to set up a Twitter account and Facebook fan page. You’ll learn about some great tools that will help you grow your fanbase, engage your customers, and how to utilize some ‘behind the scenes’ tricks to get the most out of your new accounts.
Dates/Times: Sept 9 at 9:30AM and Oct 20 at 6PM

Download and Print the Flyer

We’ve got a bit of a unique situation here.  Our fair city is one of the few that is searchable in many different ways – saint louis, st louis, stl and so on.  But does it really matter to you how people searching for local merchants?

You better believe it.

Paging Doctor Lou

Looking up a search like saint louis orthodontist and st louis orthodontist may look pretty much the same, but there actually are differences in rankings, sites listed and ranking order.

Do the same thing for stl orthodontist and you’ll not only get s different set of results, but Google doesn’t even provide the 7-pack of local listings.

All three searches are different. So what – right?

In This Case, Hoarding is Good

Have you seen that show where they go into people’s houses that hoard things?  There are items stacked on everything.  You can barely navigate the homes most of the time.  Well, when it comes to visitors and rankings, hoarding is good.  You want all the visitors for all the related queries, no matter how they decide to put in the Saint Louis part.

If they put St Louis,  you want it.  If they put stl, you want it.  So optimize your website and build links for all versions.  Rank for them all.

Zip it Up

Don’t forget zip codes.  I was very surprised at recent data that showed the amount of people typing in service 12345.  People are typing in services and products and tacking on a zip code so they can only get local queries.  If you offer a local service or sell a certain product at a brick-and-mortar store, you should consider ranking for zip codes, too.

Paid Listings Matter, Too

If you’re one of the crazy few that are putting money into PPC instead of SEO, you should note that having all versions of Saint Louis in your keyword list isn’t going to hurt you any.  Same for zip codes.  Do it.

Don’t have time to rank your website for all these local phrases?  Hire me for your local SEO efforts and watch your competitors weep!

I’ve spoken with David a few times via Twitter (@TheRiseToTheTop) and also met him at the November ‘edition’ of the St Louis Social Media Group.  He’s quite energetic and I enjoyed his presentation.

David, I know your business has been around for several years, what first spurred you to get involved with social media for your business?

Social media for me was a little bit of being in the right place at the right time. I was one of the first 5,000 members on Facebook because I happened to be in college at the time (back when it was called THE Facebook and only for college students) and my school, Washington University in St. Louis, was one of the first schools to be added to Facebook.

For me, it started as a way to communicate with my friends in school and quickly evolved to be encompass forming relationships with other, promoting my businesses and other people’s businesses.

Tell us about The Rise to the Top’s online strategy. What online tools are you using now to grow your customer base?

Great question especially since I feel a lot of companies do not have an online strategy at all which can be a huge problem. We love experimenting and try not to be afraid to fail, but we do have a strategy.

Our platform or home base is a custom created website by our design/web team (therisetothetop.com) which has daily content (Monday-Friday) for entrepreneurs and marketers via our online web show and interviews hosted on WordPress. The strategy is simple. We want to be helpful to business owners and entrepreneurs and bring them to our
site to watch shows, interact and improve their business.

Our mix is social media, email marketing, TV and online content.

We use social media tools (Twitter, Facebook) to interact with folks, form relationships and as a promotional strategy to come to our site. I also do a fair amount of guest blogging and guest videos which is also a very big promotional strategy for us.

The TV show we have ran on ABC for the past year-and-a-half is also partly an online strategy since we want to bring people to our website and social networking accounts.

Current tools include: Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, Ping.FM (to update all sites at once), Widget Realm (which syndicates our content onto mobile devices and Yahoo! TV Widgets), Objective Marketer (helps organize and analyze social media efforts) and Feedblitz (email marketing).

What´s the “one thing” that social media has taught you about your business?

Business has always been and will always be about relationships. Whether the relationships are face-to-face, over the phone (especially when my Grandma leaves me a 3-minute message) or on social networks. Building reciprocal and helpful relationships continue to be the key and social media simply puts that notion on steroids. Why? Essentially, you can access anyone you want.

What was your biggest social media blunder? How did it affect your business? How about your biggest success?

Somewhat hard to pick a blunder since I view everything as a learning experience. I would say promoting to everyone on Facebook was a blunder. Meaning promoting my old business, professional inline hockey, to say 22 year old women. Not exactly the right demographic. I learned early on to segment and make sure to know your audience.

Biggest success was a result of Guy Kawasaki. We have a relationship because of social media and it was a huge tipping point for our business when he liked some content I created (10 Big Marketing Predictions For 2010) and he along with others caused a viral effect over over 700 retweets and countless other good things that happened (including media interviews, consulting gigs, etc.). The key was forming the relationship, giving first and he reciprocated.

How do you measure and evaluate the results of your online efforts?

Three ways:

• For The Rise To The Top, it is all about introducing entrepreneurs, marketers and business folks to the brand and bringing in traffic for our shows. We are a sponsor-advertising driven model, so the more traffic the better. We can track, using Google Analytics and Objective Marketer, where that traffic comes from.
• My own personal speaking and consulting gigs as well other projects often come from online efforts. This is as simple as asking, “Where did you hear about us?”
• Taking a look at the 150 people I speak with the most often. Where did we meet each other? Often times it is online.

Are there any new tools that you’re playing with that haven’t caught on to the mainstream, but are working well for you?

I really like Gist which organizes your contacts from all sources (Facebook, Twitter, Email), Objective Marketer which is an incredibly cool social media tool for organizing and measuring efforts, and Feedblitz which is an automated email system.

The common ground of the three is all three make life a lot easier online.

What is your favorite part of social media? Your least favorite?

My favorite part is the first word: “social”. I’m naturally an extrovert both online and away from the computer and love meeting and helping new people. Social media is like crack for me.

My least favorite is that with any set of tools you will have people that try to game the system and make it a tiny bit worse for everyone. Meaning sketchy “Work From Home” people and those that just don’t understand that social media is people driven and not a place for corporate babble or to use as a megaphone for your business without interacting. But, I don’t let that worry me. You can’t worry about the negabots.

You’ve featured some pretty big names in the ‘twittersphere’ – from Chris Brogan to Gary Veynerchuck on your website. They obviously put a lot of emphasis for business growth on social media. Do you agree or disagree?

I 100% agree. Gary and Chris are two very different people with different personalities, outlooks, platforms, strategies, etc. Their common ground is they have used social tools to really build businesses. They are at the peak of the mountain and also reminders that really anyone with hard work and a great idea can climb to the top using social media.

What are some good tips for a small business that wants to get into SM but aren’t sure how?

1. Start by listening. Use tools like Twitter Search, Facebook Search, Google Blogsearch to look for your name, your companies name, and competitors. What are they doing? Also, look for keywords related to your business. Example: “Chinese Food St. Louis”
2. Have a platform before engaging. An interactive website, blog, etc. will give the social people on social media a place they would like to visit.
3. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try different things. Start by reacting and responding to your niche. Follow the thought leads in your niche. As opposed to having a set campaign, start by having little conversations.

Do you recommend any books or blogs that have helped your business grow?

Sure. Putting The Public Back In Public Relations by Brian Solis. The Whuffie Factor by Tara Hunt. Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith.

Blogs: ChrisBrogan.com, GaryVaynerchuk.com, BrianSolis.com, Mashable.com

Are you a Saint Louis business owner that is using Internet Marketing or Social Media to expand your exposure and brand? I’d love to do an interview with you!  Just email me Will [at] WillHanke [dot] com today! See other St Louis business owner interviews

Russ Henneberry writes and speaks about Content Marketing Strategy and how tiny businesses can make mighty profits using a personal computer, a little imagination and a few well-placed dollars.

1. What first spurred you to get involved with social media for your business?
   I started a business in 2004 that was a massive failure. The most critical take-away from that failure was that I needed to be more connected to colleagues, customers, and prospects. I realized that going it alone was not a good strategy and that social media was a great way for me to grow my support network.
2. Tell us about T&M’s online strategy. What online tools are you using now to grow your customer base?
   I use a WordPress blog as a hub from which to consistently broadcast valuable and timely content that would be beneficial to my market. I use video sharing sites (YouTube, etc), Email Marketing through aWeber, and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.
3. What’s the ‘one thing’ that social media has taught you about your business?
   Social Media has taught me how useful my business can be to others. I try to be as helpful as possible through my Twitter and Facebook account and I find that others reciprocate by helping me.
4. What was your biggest marketing tactic success in 2009? Your worst?
   The single most powerful decision I made this year was publishing to my blog daily. It has resulted in tremendous growth for my business. In terms of failures, my video podcast was started prematurely and didn’t follow the same branding strategy that I used across the rest of my content. I plan to resurrect this tactic in 2010.
5. What was your biggest social media blunder? How did it affect your business?
   My social media blunder was in the way that I originally approached Twitter. I automated a lot of my content and didn’t truly engage with my followers. Although much of that automation remains, I have committed to real discussion on Twitter and it has been a fantastic experience.
6. How do you measure and evaluate the results of your online efforts?
   I use, of course, Google Analytics to measure referrals, etc. However, I concentrate on the quality of the contacts I make through my online efforts and this is more difficult to quantify. In the end, I look at the source of sales, referrals, email sign-ups, etc to determine whether I should continue with any particular tactic.
7. Are there any new tools that you’re playing with that haven’t caught on to the mainstream, but are working well for you?
   There are three tools that I would recommend that may not be in the mainstream. The first two are video related:
   • Animoto – Animoto is a powerful and easy slide show video program that will take still images and short video clips and turn them into amazing video. – www.animoto.com
   • TubeMogul – Tube Mogul allows you to upload your video to ~10 video sharing sites at once, including YouTube. – www.tubemogul.com
   • Meet Up – MeetUp.com is a great place to find networking events in nearly every niche. – www.meetup.com
8. What is your favorite part of what you do? Your least favorite?
   I love the ever changing landscape of Internet Marketing and the power that it brings to tiny business owners like myself. I dislike (although I am admittedly intrigued by) the “shady” side of Internet Marketing such as link buying, etc.
9. What are some good tips for a small business that wants to get into content marketing but aren’t sure how?
   Start with a self hosted WordPress blog. Listen to your market through social media channels like Twitter and then build content that addresses the needs of that market and establishes you and your website as the authority in your industry.
10. Do you recommend any books or blogs that have helped your business grow?
    Books:
    Tribes by Seth Godin
    The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann
    Blogs:
    WebInkNow by David Meerman Scott — http://www.webinknow.com/
    Junta 42 by Joe Pulizzi — http://blog.junta42.com

Russ, thanks for your time and keep up all the great work!  I should also mention that Russ will be speaking on content marketing at the MarketSTL conference in April.  Tickets are still available.

If you’d like to do an interview with me, drop me a dm on Twitter @TechLH or email me will at willhanke dot com