Thinkers needed, is more accurate.  Contributing is great, but I can find tons of people who want to drop a post in here and there.  I need people to roll up their sleeves and help improve this. 

Having been on the inside track with all these social media monitoring and measurement tools,  I’m trying to box them all up in a better way for readers.  (List is above in nav bar, by the way).

I have compiled 220+ tools for social media ROI, for listening, and more.  Here’s what I’m trying to do and I’m open and inviting experts to contribute to this simple list, to make it something more, and help with the grunt work of making this list more meaningful so that marketing departments, marketers of all types, can look at a matrix and decide which tools to check out.  I have a ton of ideas on how to do it:   Use Mechanical Turk to let workers categorize and rank them.  Do a survey to let actual customers rank or score or comment on a tool they’ve used.

I acknowledge the way it stands now is limited, although I have received plenty of positive emails.  There are other sites out there that have listed tools, added some definition/categorization to them, but I’d like to do more.  But I need help.  All contributors will be recognized and attributed and gain some linklove, of course, in the final downloadable document.  I see social media monitoring and measurement as critical to online sales today and these tools and apps help companies to figure out how to engage in the social landscape more completely.

As a bonus just for thinking of me, tweeting this out, and maybe considering helping on this pro-bono, build-your-online-reputation collaborative project,  here are six (6) articles that I’ve been reading as I think about social media monitoring phases and what companies go through in trying to form a methodology.  Your comments, tweets, and links are welcome, but I’d really like to hear from you on email. Q4Sales at Gmail.  On twitter, you can @ or DM me,  I read both: @TJMcCue.  Last note,  I have two sponsors for this project, but am very open to hearing from companies interested to help cover some of the costs and get in on the opportunity to reach marketers and small biz owners — there is still room.

1. Richard Buettner’s piece on Social Media Marketing for Brand Awareness.
2. Brian Solis, one of the undisputed key threads in the social fabric, did this on the 10 Stages of Social Media Integration in Business.  It is excellent, has some terrific visuals, and great comment thread.
3. Empowered, a blog by Forrester, links to a Social Technology Profile Tool, which is very cool (image below).
4. Shane Gibson gives 118 Social Media Tips in 140 Characters that he got, surprise, from the Twitterverse.
5. Uri Bar-Joseph from Optify has a terrific post on Tracking Social Media: 5 Options for Comprehensive Monitoring.
6. Brian Massey writes a powerful post on The Perfect Social Media Measurement Plan at Search Engine Land and shares some great tracking tips.

“Lost Cardboard Box” Photo by Centrax on Flickr. Click image at top of post to see more of Centrax’ work

Back in April, I wrote a post for Small Business Trends where I talked about the 5 Tactics we’ve seen drive new online sales.  Link to post below.

The five tactics to improve website sales are:

1.  Have a super clear call to action

2.  Less copy, more filling (meaning you don’t have to keyword stuff your page or overload prospects with every benefit).

3.  About Us page — have one.  People like to read about who they are buying from or just who you are.

4.  Real testimonials.  Forget those possibly-real quotes from John Doe.

5.  People don’t read anymore, so online video is in.  That might discount some of my previous points, but they read a bit.

Online Video Improves Online Sales

Video is what I want to briefly talk about today.  For a small business owner,  driving online sales is key.  As I said, people don’t like to read so much and so if you can share your message in an easy, fun way via video you’ll keep their attention.  Online video works via the web or via email or Twitter.  I work with Infusionsoft (they are a sponsor here) and have had a couple of clients who use them for their powerful email marketing solution ( click here if you want a free report from them on email marketing 2.0).  I’ve had my clients insert links into their emails and watch traffic and conversion increase.  More on how you do this via YouTube shortly.

Just an aside:  Infusionsoft doesn’t talk about online video in the report,  but you could just as easily incorporate a link to a great video in your own emails or in blog posts.  I don’t advise trying to insert actual video into your email newsletters as most firewalls and spam filters will likely filter your video out.  Less likely that will happen with a simple link.  Don’t try to embed the code from YouTube or you’ll have the same problem.

Back to online video as a way to improve your website sales.

At a minimum, even if you create a simple screencast demo about your product or service, you will be ahead of the competition that are still building text-heavy websites.  Lots of online video creation tools out there:  You could try Camtasia or their online service: Jing Project.  Screencasts, to be clear, are when you record your way through an online demo or website.  You talk as you click through explaining what your service or product does.  This is the easiest way I know of to create a video for your customers and prospects.

I recommend YouTube simply because it is the #2 search engine in the world.  Within YouTube, you want to make sure of three things:

1.  You pick a keyword-rich username for your account — helps when people see your username.

2.  You insert your website URL first thing in the description box for any video you upload.  The full thing: http://www.salesrescueteam.com (naturally, you’ll insert your own website… ).  I know it isn’t pretty, but it provides a fast, easy way for your viewer to click through to your website.

3.  You want to visit other videos that are related to your work, your industry, your niche and comment on those videos.  Over time, this will help YouTube internally rank your video channel/page.  Ultimately, Google will also recognize it when it displays video results (which it does frequently) for a the key term you are trying to rank for.  It won’t be your direct website that comes up in the results, but it will bring your video up to the top.  If you did step #2, then at least the prospect can find you.

Three bonus tips for online video marketing success:

1.  You can insert a slide or image of your website name and URL within the video, but it isn’t clickable (unless you are using more sophisticated software).  But it does reinforce your brand and your site.  Good idea for a phone, too. But again, you can put all of that in the description where people can see it.

2.  You can put the actual text of your video, the written script or transcribed video, into the description helping you get found more easily, by keywords.

3.  You should put a smart title on your video before you upload it.  1245k.whatever.mp4 isn’t as good as Improve-Online-Sales.mp4.  Your video program will often give an obscure title that people just accept.  Don’t.   Use a keyword-rich name even in the video title itself.

If you have any online video tips, please feel free to share them in the comments or drop me an email.

Link to my 5 Tactics to Improve Website Sales at SmallBizTrends.

Laine Cunningham is an author and professional speaker on native cultures and ways.  It all started when Laine Cunningham spent six months camping alone in the Australian outback.

She has been featured in MSNBC, Women’s Day, and the Sydney Morning Herald and a variety of other media outlets.  She identified these three challenges for Sales Rescue Team members to take a look at. 

From Laine: My top challenges:

1.  Finding a way to have more detailed information on the workshops and seminars to interest people without ending up with a messy website.

2.  Driving “buyer” traffic to the site:  Organizations who will want to book the speaking engagements/workshops/seminars.

3.  Finding ANYONE who does publicity work who actually has connections in my field (metaphysical/self-help). This doesn’t sound like it’s web related but that means I’m having trouble getting the right kind of media contacts to go to the website.  I have had some very small successes and have been quoted in national name-cache outlets (MSNBC, Psychology Today, some women’s mags) but those are all coming through separate efforts.  I don’t know how to get shows to consider my website as a resource when they need a talking head or a quote.

]]> http://www.salesrescueteam.com/2009/10/review-laine-cunningham-author-and-public-speaker/feed/ 5 http://www.salesrescueteam.com/2009/09/share-your-favorite-small-business-tweets/ http://www.salesrescueteam.com/2009/09/share-your-favorite-small-business-tweets/#comments Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:42:49 +0000 TJ McCue http://www.salesrescueteam.com/?p=460

I’m compiling the Top 20 best small business tweets for the Sales Rescue Team blog.  Please post them to TweetChat Room SMBTHU.  Goal is to find resources and ideas that are helpful to small biz owners and entrepreneurs.

Or you can read the About page and email me your favorite tweet this week about Small Business.   I will probably also share them at my Online Research and Marketing blog at Dun & Bradstreet.