Tagging |
Tags are the words to describe your blogs, videos, posts, book marks or whatever content it is that you are tagging. The concept of tags has been with us since time immemorial - where humans like to place information in chunks and categories. In the blogging and online world, we too use tags to make it easier for us and others to find information. If you are running a company or event blog, we’d advise you to spend a few minutes every time you write a new post to add relevant tags to it. This little step goes a long way to routing interested traffic to you.
Tags are basically the meta-data that goes into search functions. That makes them important tools for bringing in relevant traffic to your site. So using them properly can be an effective marketing tool for attracting your targeted customers or readers from the internet. Almost all internet users use search engines - you just need to figure out a way to be visible when they’re searching for things that are relevant to your business. A few important things to keep in mind regarding tags are that:
- they should be short; preferably single words if possible
- they should be simple; in the easiest possible language
- they should be memorable; simple memorable words are searched more often
- they should be directly relevant to the content of the site/blog
- Don’t limit yourself by being too specific. E.g. write “fund raiser” instead of “charity fund raiser concert” or write “outdoor event” instead of “outdoor pool party for teens” unless specifically going after a long tail phrase you want to rank for.
- Use capitals to start each new word to make it easier for the search spiders to identify the different words.
- If asked to space separated tags, it’s best to start each new phrase with lower case lettering and each new word in a phrase with a capital letter without spaces. “leavingTheSpace” “toSeperateEachNewPhrase” you want to tag like so.
Just remember to focus on terms people search for. Go over your content; find the things that are relevant to your content and use them as well. For example if your article is about wedding parties, also add tags to “wedding celebration”, “wedding entertainment”, “wedding cake”, “wedding party”, etc. However, make sure you limit yourself to a maximum of 4-6 keyword tags so as not to dilute the tagged word density of the post. Too many tags have a negative effect in the search rankings. Having too many tags tells the search algorithms the content is not specific enough, thus making it hard for the machine to know what the content is about. When someone searches for a phrase, it won’t know which of the phrases apply to your content. Go with a maximum of four tags per article and make sure to choose phrases people are searching for, and then work your content into a competitive position for these phrases.
Get yourself a copy of my book. Social Traffic, Event marketing in a new media scape.
Today’s tip! Every marketing campaign starts with keyword research. If you’re serious about earning money online you’re first investment should be a great keyword research tool.
Inside Scoop |
The more regional and specific your words, the less competitive they will be, making it easier to get to the top of search engine rankings and the rankings of bookmarking and article marketing sites. As an example, “Billy Joel’s Beach Front Concert in Miami’s Grand Pavilion Hotel” may rank higher in search results, whereas “Billy Joel Miami” will be difficult to rank for at all but if you did, you would get a lot of traffic. If you planned your keyword strategy six months before the concert was big news, no one will own the phrase “Billy Joel Miami” in Google rankings, allowing you to consolidate it well before any other marketers can. If done right, you could secure all 10 search results on Google for that keyword phrase through having multiple content pages optimized for it, like a couple of blog posts, a video page, some articles, an aggregated page like Friendfeed with a mash up of Billy Joel content, some bookmarked pages and most importantly your event page where you would be selling tickets. All these content pages would be cross linked in a way to lead your prospects into your sales funnel. So when people start to find out about the concert, they will use the search engines and guess whose pages they will click into?
Also, please understand that words are important because they also indicate a person’s level of commercial intent. Someone who searches for “Billy Joel” may not be ready to spend money. (Besides this header keyword will cost a huge amount of time and money to rank for). Someone searching for “Billy Joel Miami” is closer to spending money on a ticket, but not assured. But someone who searches for “Tickets Billy Joel’s Concert Miami’s Grand Pavilion” has their credit card on the keyboard ready to buy a ticket. These long tail keyword phrases that indicate commercial intent are always the most valuable and if your research shows more than 10 or 20 searches a day for those phrases you may be better off going after 50 phrases like them than chasing one phrases that attracts 1000 searches a day like “Billy Joel Miami” as the bottom line after absorbing the cost of doing the work may be better. Don’t worry; these strategies are easy to follow once you get started.
Get yourself a copy of my book. Social Traffic, Event marketing in a new media scape.
Where Should Keywords Be Used? |
Ideally, you should take some time out initially to build your keyword list. There are some free online tools that you can use to help you. Based on this list, you should set up your site structure, article marketing structure and your blog to make sure that your campaign is governed by the right keyword foundation. Even the pages that you bookmark should be tagged with these keywords in mind to elevate your account in the bookmarking sites as an authority on those keywords. Also, when you are linking to your website from other places, such as forums, groups, walls and micro blogs; make sure you use the link text keyword of the page title. Over time this will elevate your content network high into the search engines for all your words of choice.
Get yourself a copy of my book. Social Traffic, Event marketing in a new media scape.
Today’s tip! Every marketing campaign starts with keyword research. If you’re serious about earning money online you’re first investment should be a great keyword research tool.
How Is This Relevant To You? |
Well, for starters, when you are planning an event, a keyword strategy should be carefully planned out for the year ahead to be able to direct traffic to it. This key word research should become the foundation of your whole online campaign. It can focus on entertainers, geographic locations, promoters and so on. You don’t need your own website to promote your events. You can still leverage off social media tactics even if you don’t have a purpose built website of your own. You can employ the same strategy to article marketing sites, Facebook pages and Events Listed pages. With Web 2.0, unless you have a big budget to employ SEO experts, a team of full time content developers and linkers in conjunction to a sharp web design team; you are actually better off building a web presence on 3rd party web 2.0 sites
Get yourself a copy of my book. Social Traffic, Event marketing in a new media scape.
Use Of Keywords In Determining Website Structure |
Keywords determine your website structure and thus your web marketing plan and social networking strategy. Site pages should be planned in levels. The index page is at level 1. The page rank is determined by the number of links into and out of it in association to the amount of ranking retained after the linking back and forth (typically 15% of ranking evaporates when passed from one page to another).
Orphan web pages are pages that have no links into them. If an orphan page links off to ten other pages, these links do not carry any ranking. To ensure a site has no orphan pages you build your own site structure and your article content sharing clusters so that they share a circular linking pattern that ensures no pages are left orphaned. Imagine if the “Level 1 index page” links to ten ‘Level 2’ pages and each of these second level pages also links to ten 3rd level pages within a domain. When a domain is orphaned, its index page or any of its second level pages have no links coming into it, and the pages won’t even be indexed.
Now if all of the 3rd level pages linked back to the index page within this linking structure, then no page on the domain would be orphaned and the page rankings will be spread through all pages because of the internal circular linking structure of the site.
If you look at your web pages like a tree structure, the top pages should be optimized for the most general and generic keywords of your business. As we go down the tree, the keywords should become more and more specialized and unique. As an example, if your keyword is “camera”, your index page (or article) should be built to optimize for generic keywords about cameras. Your second level pages should all optimize for words about particular kinds of cameras. Your third tier pages should all be optimized around the long tail keywords relevant to camera brands.
This ensures that the search engine spiders know the site is about cameras; that it specializes in certain brands of cameras and it has recent and relevant pages dedicated to information about each brand of camera. The linking text to each of these pages should match the page titles so search engine spiders following the links know they are being taken to a page about a certain brand of camera. If all the pages in your site are using link text of the same title, then the spiders will crawl the site and record clear decisive information in the search engines word database that this site is a good site for cameras. I’d like to emphasis here that the search engines don’t rank websites, they rank website pages. So when someone is searching for a “Cannon 360 wide angle lens” the search engines want to send their client to the page on the internet that has the best, most recent and relevant information about the “Cannon 360 wide angle lens”. The search engine that does this consistently is the search engine that makes the most money selling companies advertisement space.
Get yourself a copy of my book. Social Traffic, Event marketing in a new media scape.
Today’s tip! Every marketing campaign starts with keyword research. If you’re serious about earning money online you’re first investment should be a great keyword research tool.
Words Are Everything |
Keyword research is one of the most important pillars in internet marketing and social media. Just think about how information is sourced to you when you search using Google, or how Bookmarking sites are categorized by tags. Let’s take a step back and understand a very important concept first. Forget the jargons - these tags and keyword phrases are basically just WORDS. Why is it that some words dominate search engines, while some don’t. Some are heavily sought out and some aren’t even given the least attention. If you can understand the power of words, you will be able to effectively increase your event marketing output significantly.
Two companies offering the exact same service can have different branding impacts based on the words that they choose to describe their service. To illustrate my point, I’ll share two different ads that I recently read in a newspaper.
1- “Joe’s building & renovation services - Quick, cheap and professional! (Charging 30% less for the same efforts and spending 25% more on sales and advertising against competition like)”
2- “Hand crafted restorations - Rebuilding homes using restored, antique timbers since 1982”
Even though, both companies can be operating in the same manner in the same locality, their choice of words distinguish their business philosophies considerably.
The emphasis on words is everywhere online. Google generates 10 billion dollars a year in sales revenue from their customers bidding on words! Competitors bid prices to have their websites advertised on pages of organic search results shown to people using particular words to find solutions to their problems. This chapter is dedicated to understanding these differences.
Get yourself a copy of my book. Social Traffic, Event marketing in a new media scape.
Today’s tip! Every marketing campaign starts with keyword research. If you’re serious about earning money online you’re first investment should be a great keyword research tool.
Beyond Web 2.0 - Getting Prepared For The Next Step In Web Technologies |
While planning events, the mediums to communicate with the prospects and audience have grown massively. A few years ago, event planners could never have dreamt of having such upfront and direct communication with the attendees before the events even took place. Today, not only is it possible, it is a highly recommended approach for planning your events.
Planning and marketing an event is about building the entire experience for all stakeholders involved. The better you can build a story around the event - the more the excitement and anticipation. It’s fascinating to see how different social mediums can be leveraged to communicate these stories for the targeted audiences to spread. This involvement and communication with your customers is so important now, that it can make or break your events. And since we all want to leave that good after-taste in everyone’s mouth and earn our well-deserved bragging rights, I strongly recommend trying your hand at these social mediums to your advantage. They pay off for events and parties that I plan, every time!
You can only understand its true value if you put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Imagine yourself in a raving crowd on Superbowl or in a pub at a local party, or at a conference launching the coolest gadgets, or at a countdown on Time Square? When surrounded with people who share your interests, chances are that your excitement will amplify and become contagious.
Now imagine building an event with that kind of viral and contagious excitement even before it happens. Imagine the traffic it would generate to your local party, big conference, product launch, or whatever it is that you are planning. It has worked wonders for us, and I’m sure you can benefit a lot from it as well. It’s time for you to think about how to build the right kind of stories around your events and most importantly, how to effectively build a strong online community of fans.
Get yourself a copy of my book. Social Traffic, Event marketing in a new media scape.
Marketing Like Revolving Doors |
Event marketing using social media tools is about creating the right campaigns that have the maximum impact. Social media and networking channels offer a lot of flexibility in crafting out our messages just the way we want to. You can measure the impact and reactions of your messages and adjust your campaigns accordingly.
To keep up with today’s pace - businesses are like revolving doors for launches. You’ll notice how they’ll go through an extensive hype building pre-launch campaign, and then finally launch; only leading to another relaunch or special mini-launches. The interesting thing is that this process actually works!! I have been studying event marketing tricks for a good time, and have found this cyclical launch technique fabulous for business.
In essence, all you are doing is extending the event backward and forward. Backwards into a pre-launch stage where your core focus is on building hype towards the event. Forwards into a post-launch stage, where your core focus is on gathering feedback, leaving a good taste in mouth, following up, keeping in touch and sharing event experiences.
You probably do all of these things whilst interacting with the people you are closest to already, all you have to do now is try to do them online where a growing audience can participate. Using online tools for extending the event backward and forward increases the overall success and impact of the launch, since it makes it easier to reach out to the audiences.
Get yourself a copy of my book. Social Traffic, Event marketing in a new media scape.
Today’s tip! One stop shopping for all your event marketing in social media needs you can’t go past my Events Listed networking and marketing platform. It’s invite only, here’s a backdoor pass on me.
Events - Where Communities Meet |
First of all, we need to understand that every little instance or occasion in our lives is an event. A teleconference meeting with your staff is an event. A new purchase is an event. Hearing sad news about someone you care about is an event. Going out to watch a movie is an event. All of these different events make up our life experiences.
Everyone celebrates events; all people of all markets, locations, cultures celebrate events of some kind or the other. Events are a part of life. Everything big or small is an event and when we die those who attend our wake to remember us do so by reflecting on, in the most parts the events in our lives.
You’ll notice how when we try to think back to our earliest memories, we just remember glimpses of different situations or feelings. These glimpses were once events (whether recurring or one-time) that stayed on with us as memories. This observation has two important sub-thoughts that we can learn from:
1- If we react to different situations in our real-life just as meticulously as we plan large-scale events, imagine how it will affect the happiness quotient in our lives.
2- We don’t have to be marketing big events all the time; we just need to figure out how to create traction around small level things as well.
An event is an entire experience for all of the stakeholders involved in it – the audience, the attendees, the clients and the guests. The experience should be seamless right from the beginning, even before the event actually takes place. If ordering an iphone is an event in your life, then the experience begins from the moment you go to their website to place an order. Then it goes all the way from how the package looks like when it arrives to the promptness of their customer support staff. Similarly, for organized events, the experience begins from the moment people find out about it, all the way till after the launch. The smoother the flow, the more memorable the experience will be for everyone involved.
I recently got an invitation to a wedding with the most beautiful invite card that I’ve seen. Everything from the font, the graphics, to the feel of the card texture was wonderful. It also had a small personally addressed hand-written “looking forward to” note attached to it. Just the invite made me feel honoured to be invited and excited about being a part of it. For me, the wedding’s first touch moment was perfect.
So the idea is to turn your events into experiences that everyone would want to remember and feel special about. It also comes down to simple things, like making it simple for people to get back to you with regrets or RSVPs. Make it easy for them to find locations and venues. Give offers, discounts and giveaways. Also remember, that your event doesn’t just end at launch – the post-launch phase is just as important.
Get yourself a copy of my book. Social Traffic, Event marketing in a new media scape.
Today’s tip! One stop shopping for all your event marketing in social media needs you can’t go past my Events Listed networking and marketing platform. It’s invite only, here’s a backdoor pass on me.
Unimaginable Possibilities |
It’s interesting to see how event managers with old-school traditional marketing knowledge are using social media in the wrong way. When it comes to social media, you need to have a complete mindset shift or else you’d end up wasting time and energy with little or no rewards.
People who don’t change their mindsets want to see immediate results, want to get immediate outreach (outreach doesn’t necessarily mean better branding), don’t have the right conversations with their potential customers (have to be two way), don’t let communities evolve on their own (by trying to control everything), are not open to criticism , don’t switch to online mediums completely (still rely on offline techniques more), can’t synergize different mediums for planning and marketing their events.
Of course, I do understand that it can be difficult to just switch a perspective that has been embedded in our systems for years. If you are having trouble adapting your thinking process around the latest and newest technologies, here are some things that may help:
1- Be in the know of what’s going on. Subscribe to different authority blogs in your industry. Get Google alerts for updates on happenings that can affect your business. It is mandatory to keep yourself constantly up to date.
2- Learn from others. When other industry thought leaders share their experiences and ideas - be sure to learn from them. Often times, those people who close themselves up to what others are doing become increasingly averse to social media.
3- Keep a watch on new tools. Spend time playing with them or analyzing them regularly. Follow the latest internet marketing trends (Brad Fallon’s freelinereport.com or our eventslisted.info are good places to start) and keep trying them out off and on to see how your events and businesses can be improved by using them. If you don’t like a tool, you don’t have to use it - but at least give them a try. There are so many cool free online applications that can benefit you.
4- If you think you are still not the social media type - get tech friendly people on your team and give them the space and leverage to get creative with social media marketing. This is a great way of bringing in new ideas into your business. If you think you are up for it, you can even hire experts to do your events marketing for you.
Whatever road you choose, try not to stay stuck with the old methods of marketing. Open yourself to unimaginable possibilities; be innovative and adaptable.
Get yourself a copy of my book. Social Traffic, Event marketing in a new media scape.
Today’s tip! To get search engine traffic you must own software that’s capable of showing you everything the search engine spiders see.
