In case you haven’t heard, Google is an extremely powerful company when it comes to all things internet. If you look at how your visitors find your site, I’m willing to bet that the overwhelming majority come somehow from Google. Be it organic SEO or a paid AdWords campaign, Google can make or break your efforts online. So what happens when Google decides to “break” you? Here’s a quick story about just that.

Rick Stratton had done everything right, and his traffic was showing. He had a travel guide that was well trafficked, with many visitors coming to his site from an AdWords campaign he was running. The campaign was very successful, with up to a 4% click through rate.

Then it all stopped.

All of the sudden his ads weren’t being shown anymore, because of a low quality score. When Rick looked to see what he could do to have his ads run again, the AdWords diagnostic tools said that he needed to up his bid. So he went from $.07 all the way to $1.00, and still didn’t have results.

All of the sudden, Rick’s travel site was effectively shut down. And he couldn’t even get a single person at Google to tell him why. Check out the whole store here on his blog.

SEO and PPC advertising are keys to an effective web strategy, and Google is almost the only game in town. What would happen to your business if you no longer ranked in organic search and your AdWords campaign wasn’t even showing ads anymore?

Direct mail is one of the oldest marketing tools in the book. As soon as the postal service allowed people to send mail back and forth, marketers were utilizing it to send advertising messages. Over time, the quality of direct mail has eroded to the point that it’s been labeled “Junk Mail” by most people. Internet marketing is following the same path, with spam plaguing e-mail in boxes and Twitter feeds. But if you want to have success you need to be targeting the right people, making your offer as personalized as possible, and then optimize your campaign on an ongoing basis. People are bombarded with advertising messages every day, and they have developed powerful blinders to ignore most marketing messages. By looking at some areas where direct mail fails, you can take away some lessons to make sure you don’t become just another ignored message.

Targeting

The first rule of direct mail is target, target, target! The most important factor in a direct mail piece’s success is the proper targeting of prospects. For direct marketers, this means renting the best lists they can get their hands on. Political campaigns have also honed the science of direct mail targeting by getting into granular details like demographics, sometimes even to the individual household level. Unfortunately, over time direct marketing in many cases has been untargeted which has resulted in the term “Junk Mail”. For internet marketers, trying to do the same thing would result in disaster. You and your business don’t want to be labeled SPAM, do you? Targeting potential customers is very different than with direct mail, but offers much better results. Rather than renting lists and hoping people are intrigued by the offer, internet marketers can use services like Google’s AdWords to target prospects as they search for keywords relating to your business.

Here is where targeting for the internet marketer comes into play. Let’s say you sell project management software targeted to small and medium size businesses. You have perfected your landing page, you have a great product, and you’re starting out a new AdWords campaign today. When you go to select keywords, you choose things like “project management”, or “project management software”. After a couple of days you start to realize that your conversion rates are terrible, but you’re getting a lot of people to click on your ads. What’s the problem? Your keywords aren’t targeting the right prospects! While the term “project management” seems to be in your sweet spot, people could be searching for that term for a lot of reasons other than looking for project management software for small or medium sized businesses. You’re getting curiosity clicks, not interest clicks.

Takeaway: Just as direct mail has been labeled “Junk Mail”, your message can deliver bad results if you don’t target prospects well. When you market on the internet, be sure to target “long-tail” keywords that are very specific. You won’t get a lot of people seeing your offer, but they will be infinitely more qualified and people actually want to see your offer.

Personalization

Direct mail is in theory inherently personalized (in most cases). It has your name and address on it, it’s mailed right to your door, and in many cases it’s been targeted well. But we’ve all seen the junk mail directed to “Our Friend at <insert address here>”. Internet marketing is inherently NOT personalized. But in order to find success you should do everything in your power to make it seem personalized.

There’s a lot of ways this can be accomplished. You’ll never have the name and address of new visitors to a landing page, but make sure that when they arrive they are going to the right landing page. If you have a PPC campaign, make sure that visitors are being directed to a specific landing page for that ad and not just to your home page. Another interesting technique that can be used with AdWords is the personalization of your ad depending on what search terms were used. (Learn more about this technique, known as dynamic keyword insertion )

Takeaway: Internet marketing may not be as personalized as direct mail, but in many ways that isn’t a problem. After all, your prospect is coming to you rather than the other way around. But there are many ways that you can make potential customers feel like it has been personalized towards them. Focus the right landing page towards the right prospect and you’ll see success. Your goal should be to give your prospect the feeling that your landing page was exactly what they were looking for.

Optimization and Analysis

The success and failure of a direct mail campaign is easy to quantify. You send mail out, prospects receive it, and if they’re interested in your offer they will respond. And by sending out multiple versions of design and copy, the most effective can be easily determined. Fairly quickly, a direct marketer is able to determine a variety of things like the reliability of the list, and whether or not the design or copy is working effectively.

In this area, internet marketing is a vast improvement over direct mail. While direct marketers can infer that a particular piece was effective based on response rate, they aren’t there as the prospect reads it. But online, there are a variety of tools like Google Analytics or Clicktale that allow the internet marketer to see exactly how prospects are interacting with their marketing materials. As I discussed in my last article you can even record how visitors use specific pages, where they are clicking on the page, and where they tend to click most often. And using tools like Google’s Web Master Tools, you can conduct multivariate A/B testing to try out different copy, forms, and anything else you can think of.

Takeaway: Direct mail is inherently accountable, but the marketer isn’t there as people see their message. But with internet marketing you can see EXACTLY how people interact with your marketing messages. Tools like Google Analytics, Web Master Tools, Clicktale, and many others give internet marketers a powerful arsenal to analyze and optimize content.

Many of the concepts of direct marketing are similar with internet marketing, but there are key differences with how they are implemented. Despite these differences, there is a lot that can be learned from the experience of direct marketers. When you start a new campaign for your business, be sure that you’re thinking of these best practices that have been developed for more than 100 years.

You’ve spent lots of money and countless hours perfecting your web presence. You’re certain that you’ll be immediately deluged with qualified leads. But when you flip the switch and it goes live, it’s not quite working how you expected it. This happens more often than not, and can be discouraging. While there are best practices that you can follow, online marketing and lead generation isn’t quite an exact science. Of course you can use Google’s Web Master Tools to conduct A/B testing on your content, but how can you know what parts of a page are working and what parts are not? Now you can find out by using specialized analytics software that records, monitors, and analyzes how your visitors interact with your website. Continue reading and I’ll tell you about two different tools that you can use to find out EXACTLY how users interact with your site and landing pages.

Clicktale – 4 levels of users starting at Free and going up to $790/month.

Clicktale is a very full featured web analytics package that gets into some of the granular details that are left out of Google Analytics. Some of the key things that Clicktale can help you do is optimize landing pages, optimize shopping cart experiences, conduct usability tests, with the overall goal of maximizing your conversions. Using javascript code that you place on your page, you can get a variety of reports back like form conversion statistics, blank field reports, user click heatmaps, and link analytics. One key differentiator of Clicktale is that you can actually record user’s interaction with your website. By looking at these recordings, you can actually see HOW your visitors are using your site. It totally eliminates any guesswork that might be involved. A very well known software company, 37 Signals, utilized Clicktale to help them redesign their signup conversion pages. You can see what 37 Signals had to say about their results here: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1867-design-decisions-new-signup-form

CrazyEgg – 4 levels of users starting at $9/month and going up to $99/month.

Crazy Egg offers some of the functionality that Clicktale offers, but not quite the whole package. Where CrazyEgg shines is in the user click heatmap, where you can visually see how visitors are interacting with forms. A key difference in CrazyEgg’s software is what they call “Confetti” mode. When you’re in this mode of heatmap, you can track clicks by referral URL. This allows you to see the different ways visitors from an AdWords campaign interact with your site, as opposed to people who came in from Twitter. Another advantage of CrazyEgg is their simplified price structure. Rather than taking away options to offer a Basic service for $9/month, they offer you the full package. The only restriction is the number of pages that you can have your testing on at any one time.

The Verdict: This niche of web analytics is definitely under-served by Google Analytics (their overlay functionality is horrible), and both of these solutions pick up where Google left off. If money is no object, Clicktale is by far the superior product. Their user experience recordings literally remove all of the guesswork from the process. But as you get away from the premium versions, important features start to disappear. If you have a limited budget or a small website, CrazyEgg is for you. I personally have used CrazyEgg with success in the past, and can vouch for its usefulness. Either way you can’t go wrong, because the more knowledge you have about your users the more powerful your site can be for lead generation.

Marketing on Twitter is still a new frontier. While there are certain best practices that have been developed in the last few years, it can be difficult to develop a winning strategy. But there are some brands that are seeing a real impact from their Twitter usage, and they each do something particularly well that you can learn from. Here are 7 well known brands that are getting the most out of Twitter. If you put some of these lessons into practice, I guarantee you’ll start getting more out of your Twitter marketing.

GM – @GMblogs – Put a friendly face on your business

Large corporations have a tendency to become monolithic brands, and over time they become bland and faceless. GM was one of these brands, but now they’re using Twitter to put a personable face on the company for consumers. Take a quick look at the account of @GMblogs and you’ll see a custom background with portraits of the four people responsible for that account. Rather than having a corporate style, all-encompassing “GM” Twitter account, they have a variety of accounts that all try to interact with followers on a personal level. They feature tweets like the one pictured above, where they focus attention on someone who works at GM. They also try to keep an ongoing conversation with their followers by utilizing @mentions and #hashtags.

Dell – @DellOutlet – Use special promotions to drive sales

Twitter gets a lot of attention for being an outlet for branding and customer service, but it has proven to be a good driver of sales as well. And no company has proved this more than Dell. In fact their Twitter account @DellOutlet has been directly responsible for over $3,000,000 in sales since they began the account. Yes, $3million pales in comparison to their overall sales, but it is still an impressive feat that others can learn from. The way they have racked up this amount of sales is simple, and easy for any business to do. They offer special discounts to their followers. Yes, it’s that simple! This strategy is very effective as it gives people a reason to buy, it allows them to reach new customers as these deals are retweeted out to others, and it lets Dell analyze sales generated through Twitter by looking at the discount codes used. By using this strategy I’m sure they have an astronomical ROI for their marketing through Twitter.

JetBlue – @JetBlue – Provide great, personalized customer service

Jet Blue has always tried to hang there hat on a great customer experience (despite some troubles). And now, they’re using Twitter to further their culture of providing superior customer service. I was especially taken by the tweet I’ve featured above. One of their customers was having trouble checking in for the 2^nd leg of their flight, and they sent a message asking for help to @JetBlue. Within minutes, they had an answer that explained EXACTLY where to go inside of the terminal. Talk about amazing service. Not only does providing public customer service through Twitter help your customers, it also helps with your branding. Everyone can see the effort you put into helping your customers, and others will take note which will definitely result in a sale down the road.

No Reservations (TV Show) – @NoReservations – Have your tweets seamlessly extend your brand’s messaging

Ok, ok. So No Reservations isn’t a “brand” per se. But it’s a great TV show, and there are definitely some things that we can learn from them as they market the show on Twitter. For those of you who watch No Reservations, you’ll know what I mean when I say Anthony Bourdain has a unique sense of humor. The way he presents the show is very witty, and often with a dry sense of humor that can be an acquired taste. And this style extends even to their tweets, as shown above. When I read this message from the @NoReservations, I imagined Anthony Bourdain actually saying it. It’s exactly the kind of narration he provides on the show, and your tweets should have the same continuity with your brand. If you’re a fun and trendy boutique, make sure that attitude is apparent in your tweets. If you’re a Real Estate agent that means serious business, make sure your tweets are professional and informative. A consistent messaging throughout your tweets will make it easy for your followers to approach you when they need something that you offer.

Home Depot – @HomeDepot – Provide valuable “inside information” to your followers

A lot of people on Twitter follow businesses, but they don’t ACTIVELY follow them. Basically, these businesses tweets are going in one ear and out the other. The reason for that is they aren’t providing value to their followers. As I noted in the lesson from @DellOutlet, providing discounts is a great way to sell using your tweets. But this is really only of value to someone that’s ready to buy your product. There is maybe 1% of the time that these tweets provide a real value to the follower that receives them (people ready to buy). But say they tweeted out a “Computer Buyer’s Guide”, suddenly their tweet becomes relevant to the other 99% of the people who follow them. One company that does a great job of this is Home Depot. They regularly tweet out tips that give their followers a real value in return for following them. By providing this value, their followers actively follow the @HomeDepot account to pick up the latest home improvement tips that they’re offering.

American Apparel – @americanapparel – Get involved with your followers on a more personal level

One thing that some businesses forget about Twitter is that it was originally intended to be a way for people to connect with friends and other people. In the rush to start using Twitter to market to potential customers, it became just another outlet for their corporate messaging. These accounts are littered with sporadic product feature announcements, trade show information, and other stuff that most people could care less about. If your business wants to get real value from marketing on Twitter, you need to use it as it was originally intended – to connect with people on a personal level! American Apparel does a great job with this, as shown in the tweet above. If you look at their account, there are probably thousands of @messages to their followers. By interacting with their followers on a personal level, a strong bond is created between them and the American Apparel brand. By showing your followers the same personalized attention, they will form the same connection with you. If you’re wondering how to do this, here’s a tip. If you aren’t already, start using TweetDeck to send out your tweets. When you use TweetDeck, you can set up searches that will show every tweet that contains specific keywords in real time. By finding tweets that relate to your business, you can start initiating relevant conversations with potential customers.

Burger King – @theBKlounge – Use humor when appropriate

All business and no fun makes your business boring to follow! I’m not saying that you need to be the next Mitch Hedburg and that every tweet needs to be hilarious, but a little bit here and there can go a long way. (Make sure that it fits with your brand image as well!) Your followers aren’t just following you, and boring tweets are drowned out in the noise of all the other tweets they’re seeing. Make your business stand out in the crowd by using humor, and people will be more interested in what you have to say. This can be tricky, so be sure that you’re not offending anyone with your humor. You don’t want to be “That Guy”.

Is your business doing something particularly well that others can learn from? Do you have a Twitter tip that you’re putting to use successfully? Let me know by commenting below and I’ll incorporate it in a future article.

One of the big issues that will confront any business blog is actually finding people to read it. You could have great ideas, interesting content, consistent posts, in fact maybe it’s the best blog in the whole world! But if all your effort is only reaching your mom and the other two people you told about it then I think its time for a new promotion strategy. Enter StumbleUpon. If you haven’t heard of StumbleUpon, you’re not alone. It is not as well known as Twitter or Digg, but its power to drive traffic to your business blog is unparalleled. So are you interested in doubling or tripling your blog’s traffic? Here are five tips on how to use StumbleUpon to do just that.

1.  Become an active Stumbler, trust me it’s worth it!

To give you a quick overview, StumbleUpon is a website and browser toolbar that allows people (known as Stumblers) to give a Thumbs Up to websites they think are interesting. Then, when people click on the “Stumble” button in their browser they are taken to a random page (within their stated interests) that someone else has given the Thumbs Up to. Similar to Digg, Twitter, or Facebook, StumbleUpon has social networking features that let people friend other Stumblers. So your first step in leveraging StumbleUpon to drive traffic to your business blog is to start using StumbleUpon, and start finding and adding friends. Right away you’ll start to find interesting sites that you never would have found before, all while setting the stage for getting your own content Stumbled.

2.  Create content catered for Stumbling

As I mentioned before, people using StumbleUpon give the Thumbs Up to content they find interesting. So in order to utilize the power of StumbleUpon, you need some content that Stumblers find interesting! After you’ve been using it for a while, you’ll start to see patterns in the kinds of content that is stumbled. To give you a quick idea, Stumblers usually find videos, unique photos, or good how to’s interesting – among other things. Now I’m not saying that all of your content needs to be catered for StumbleUpon, but you’ll need at least a post or two that is in order to get the most out of this strategy.

3.  Ask fellow Stumblers to take a look at your Blog

So far you’ve started to use StumbleUpon, you’ve been Stumbling interesting stuff, adding friends, and created Stumble worthy content. Now comes the part you’ve been waiting for, actually getting traffic sent to your site. To accomplish that, forward links to the content you created for StumbleUpon to the friends you’ve made since you began. You may also want to ask them to add a quick review, as having reviews will help get more Thumbs Up in the future. Most Stumblers have no problem helping out a friend, and they will take a look and give it a Thumbs Up (just be sure to return the favor some time). Every time your page gets a Thumbs Up, traffic gets diverted to you when other Stumblers press the Stumble button in their browser. And if those Stumblers like it, they’ll send more Stumblers, and on and on it goes. So now do you see why StumbleUpon can be so effective at driving traffic to your site? It is basically the raw power of viral marketing at work.

4.  Use StumbleUpon Ads targeted to the right content

The above steps are definitely best, most consistent way to drive traffic to your site from StumbleUpon. And best of all, it’s free. But there is a way to bypass some of the harder aspects of the above tips. That way is StumbleUpon Ads. Just like you would set up a PPC campaign with Google AdWords, StumbleUpon lets you set up a campaign to send traffic to your site. In an interesting twist, Stumblers seeing one of these “Ad” pages have no idea that it’s been paid for, it looks like any other page in StumbleUpon. In return for sending Stumblers to your site, StumbleUpon asks for $0.05 per visitor. All you have to do is tell them what page to send the visitors to (your StumbleUpon specific content), tell them how many visitors you want, and then pay via PayPal. That’s it. I suggest running a $5.00 campaign to send 100 visitors to your site just to give it a test run. One thing to note: Using StumbleUpon Ads will let you bypass the work of stumbling and finding friends, but not whether or not people with like your content. People can still give your page thumbs down, which will greatly reduce the effectiveness of your campaign. Make sure that you’re content is catered for this audience, and make sure you put it in the right category when you start the campaign.

5.  Make it easy for your content to get a thumbs up

The last quick tip for driving huge amounts of traffic to your business blog using StumbleUpon is making it easy for people to Stumble it! Doing this is a relatively easy but often overlooked. All you need to do is put a StumbeUpon button on your posts. Yes it’s that easy. Not only will your regular readers give it Thumbs Up, but it signals to Stumblers that you’re one of them. Check out the box below this post to see what I mean.

So that’s it, 5 quick and easy steps to driving traffic to your business blog. Using these tips I have no doubt that you’ll see instant results in the form of double, triple, maybe even quadruple the amount of visitors you had before. Yes, it’s that powerful – so don’t wait around for people to miraculously find you, go out and grab their attention!

It’s easy to start tweeting for business. All you need to do is sign up for a Twitter account and off you go. But without some guidance it can be hard to figure out what works and what doesn’t when tweeting for your business. Luckily for you, there are a lot of kind folks out there that want to share their wisdom when it comes to business tweeting! If you’ve read my 6 Tips for Generating Leads on Twitter then you’re off to a good start. But its a long road to becoming a Twitter marketing expert (I still learn something new every day). So without further ado here’s 30 amazing articles that include how to’s, tips & tricks, techniques, and resources. I guarantee that if you read these you’ll not only be well on your way to being a Twitter expert, but you’ll start seeing a real impact on your business too.

How To Guides:

1. Twitter 101

Twitter’s official guide to business tweeting. This is a great starting point for anyone tweeting for business.

2. Tweeting For Business

Great article from TwiTip from the perspective of a reluctant business tweeter.

3. Use Twitter for your Business the Right Way

Great article by Aira Bongco on how to effectively tweet for your business.

4. Twitter 101 for Business (Presentation)

A quick presentation from Twitter that will give you a quick overview of their Twitter 101 mentioned earlier.

5. Building an Effective Business Profile on Twitter

In this article, Michael Gray goes through the basics of tweeting for business.

6. HOW TO: Create Custom Twitter Backgrounds

Here’s a great resource from Mashable that helps you create your own custom Twitter background, a must have to separate yourself from the competition.

7. Build Your Thought Capital on Twitter

Josh Sternberg shows you some basics for establishing thought leadership using Twitter.

8. 40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them

Another great article from Mashable that takes you behind the scenes of some of the most successful businesses using Twitter.

9. HOW TO: Get Retweeted on Twitter

Getting retweeted lets your company’s message spread fast and far. Here’s a great how to guide on how to get retweeted.

10. HOW TO: Leverage Twitter for Hiring

Lots of emphasis is put on the branding and marketing aspects of Twitter, but here’s a good article showing that using Twitter can do even more for your business.

11. Mashable Twitter Guide Book 2009

Mashable has some amazing resources for all businesses using Twitter, and here they’ve provided a very comprehensive guide to using Twitter.

Tips, Tricks, and Ideas:

12. Tweeting for business: tips from 140 Characters Conference

An interesting article that broaches the subject of business tweeting and ROI.

13. Multiple Twitter Accounts In Business

This article shows a few different opinions on the subject of having one or multiple Twitter accounts for a business.

14. Make Social Media a Business Tool, Not a Distraction

An interesting article that discusses the effect Twitter has on productivity.

15. 20 Must Read Beginner Twitter Tips for Small Business Owners

This is a great list of tips for any small business that is using Twitter for marketing and branding.

16. 5 More Things You Do To Get Business On Twitter

A quick list of some great ideas by Chris Johnson of Guerilla.Me.

17. 8 Ways that Twitter Can Grow Your Freelance Business

You don’t have to have a company to tweet for business! Here’s a great list of ways freelancers can leverage Twitter for business.

18. 5 Uncommon Ways Your #Business Can Use Twitter

Most businesses just see Twitter as a way to promote their product or service. In this artice, you’ll find 5 other ways that your business can be using Twitter.

19. Tweeting for profit

Great case study from CNN about how one small business made $70,000+ using twitter. Hows that for ROI?

20. “Tweeting” for Business: Top 5 Dos and Don’ts

Quick list of business tweeting dos and don’ts

21. Tweeting 101: How To Use Twitter Effectively For Your Business

Some basics on leveraging twitter, including how to utilize Twitter’s real-tim search

22. 2 Business Reasons to Tweet

Here’s a thought provoking article on 2 reasons your business should be tweeting, and 2 reasons why you shouldn’t.

23. 7 Secrets to Tweeting Your Corporate Culture

Just sending out product announcements, auto-tweets, and other boring content isn’t the way to promote your brand on Twitter. This great article featured on Mashable gives some great tips on how to tweet your corporate culture to really further your brand.

24. 5 Twitter Tactics for Building a Stellar Brand

Another Mashable article on building your brand on Twitter. This one features a great tip on monitoring your reputation using Twitter.

25. Social Media for Business: The Dos & Don’ts of Sharing

A very interesting article that has some great tips on getting the most out of Twitter. I especially like the concept they have of not being a “Social Schizo” by keeping a consistent voice with your tweets.

26. 10 Twitter Tools to Organize Your Tweeps

If you’ve read all of these resources and put their ideas into action, you probably have a lot of followers! Here’s 10 tools that can help you get a handle on all of your followers.

27. Dude – Dell’s Making Money Off Twitter!

Dell may be the most successful brand on Twitter, having sold $3,000,000+ of merchandise directly from Twitter-related deals. Here’s an article from Wired that talks about their success.

28. Five Smart Ways to Tweet for Business

This great article described 5 different types of business tweets, and when to send them.

29. Twitter Marketing Strategies – Tweeting With the Best in the Business

Here’s a great article to get you started with developing a Twitter-based marketing strategy.

30. The Proper Way to Pitch on Twitter

Lot’s of marketers bombard their followers with pitches, but they can end up failing and lead to UnFollows. This article can help you sharpen your Twitter Pitching skills!

With today’s emphasis on social networking and media, it seems like every business in America has a blog. And that’s a good thing, blogs help businesses connect with their customers as well as create a lasting brand image. But having read a great many of these business blogs, I’ve ran into a couple of archetypes that a majority of blogs fall into. So without further ado I give you “If Business Blogs Were People: 5 Types of Business Blogs”.

The Celebrity

Everyone knows this business and its blog, because they’re famous. Usually a well known company, at least in their niche, they use their blog to further the branding efforts they’ve already put forth. This blog always has a lot of readers, and other bloggers are constantly referencing it to the point that people take a look just to see what the big deal is. You’ll notice that the celebrity business blog always has posts that are “cool”, which result in a deluge of commenters trying to get in on the action (and get coolness by association). Every single business blog wants to be a Celebrity, but most will settle for using the Celebrity’s products and commenting on their blog.

The Snob

The Snob business blogs are the one’s who think they’re a celebrity. They try to post things they think are “cool” just like the celebrity business blogs, but it just doesn’t have the same cool vibe. When people ask the snob what they’re trying to accomplish with their blog, without fail they say they are trying to “Establish thought leadership in their industry”. Sometimes this comes off with the intended results, but other times it makes it seem that this business blog knows more than anyone else. And no one likes a know-it-all!

The Show Off

This type of business blog is always taking about the last trade show they went too, and which one they’re going to next. Often included with these posts are impressive pictures of their large booth, with smiling executives’ front and center. When they aren’t talking about what shows they’re going to, they let you know exactly what is going on with their company at any given moment. And for some reason, they always announce new hires on their blog!

The Salesman

This is the kind of business blog you can spot from a mile away. That’s because the Salesman business blog is always trying to sell you their product. Without fail. This type of business blog relentlessly posts about new case studies, new user acquisitions, and new product features. They always let you know that they have a new product available that can solve your problem (even the ones you didn’t know you had).

The Loner

The Loner business blog is also an easy one to spot, as there are very infrequent posts. In fact, their might not have been any posts for months! These types of business blogs are attached to companies who weren’t sure if they should have a blog, but since everyone else was starting one they thought they should too. But without a solid content strategy or the resolve to post consistently, it has been neglected to the point of oblivion.

The Average Joe

At last, we arrive at the category that most business blogs fit into. Blogs that are an Average Joe usually have a bit of all the other types in them, but they aren’t quite any of them. They occasionally are like a Celebrity, with some posts being wildly successful with lots of visitors coming to take a look. Once in a blue moon they’re a Snob, trying to “Establish though leadership”. They display their Show Off tendencies when they talk about the next trade show they’re going to. Whenever they have something new and interesting with their product, they let you know just like a Salesman. And finally, once in a while they have to re-build their resolve to continue blogging after a dry patch that signifies a Loner. Just like most people out there are Average Joe’s, most business blogs are Average Joe’s too. And there’s nothing wrong with being an Average Joe, in fact I’d take that over most of the other types!

So what kind of business blog are you? Do you think I missed a type? Let me know – post a comment!

A disease is inflicting a huge amount of damage on businesses all across the world. It attacks them where they can be most vulnerable, the landing page. The disease is TMI, or Too Much Information, and it might be impacting you and you don’t even know it. But don’t worry, its easily cured. Below I’ll show you a landing page suffering from TMI, and then show how it can be cured. Together, we can rid the world of the scourge of TMI.

When your landing page suffers from TMI, your visitors know it right away and it can cause them to immediately leave your site. Too Much Information means that you’re asking for a huge amount of information on a contact form from your potential customer, in most cases before they’re comfortable sharing that information with you. Most people are comfortable with providing basic contact information, and they do so multiple times a day. But when you start to ask very detailed questions, they begin to wonder “Do I trust this company, and do I want to give them that kind of information?”. And trust me, that isn’t the first thing you want your potential customer thinking about you.

Let me show you what I mean, and how you can solve it. Here’s a landing page I recently ran across that suffers from TMI:

On this landing page, they start off fine. They ask the basics, like Company, First Name, Last Name, E-Mail, and Phone Number. But then a visitor is confronted with the horror of TMI.

“What industry is are you in?”

“How many items do you sell?”

“What services are you currently using for your catalog?”

“How did you hear about us?”

As I scanned through this I started to think… is this a landing page or an interrogation? And I’m not the only one, potential customers were thinking the same thing. And if it turns them off they’re going to leave, and end up somewhere that doesn’t ask all of these questions.

Curing TMI is easy, and it starts with removing all non-essential information from you form. On every single field of your landing page you need to ask the questions “Do I need this information in order to begin the sales process?”. Depending on your business you may need to ask certain questions, but your rule of thumb should be less is more.

I took a sledgehammer to this landing page in Photoshop to give you an idea of what this landing page form should look like, and here’s what I came up with:

That looks much better. And most of all, a visitor to this landing page is exponentially more likely to fill out this information. Sure, the sales rep that has to contact this prospect won’t have all the detailed information that they would have with the old form. But in my book, it’s better to have a prospect to contact than no prospect at all. All of the questions I removed from the original form can be asked on the first call with the prospect, which can begin the sales process on a good foundation.

So now that you know what TMI is and how to cure it, take a look at your landing pages. You might be losing business because of it and you didn’t even know it.

Google Analytics is a very powerful tool that can help you understand and optimize your web presence. Whether you have a blog, e-commerce store, or just a general site for your business, Google Analytics is an essential tool that you need to be using. Best of all, it’s free! But even though it’s free it doesn’t have a shortage of features. In fact, it can be pretty overwhelming when you first start. Below I’ve compiled some great resources that start off at beginner resources and take you all through way through to advanced techniques.

Beginners Resources

1. Official Google Analytics Blog

This is Google’s official Analytics blog. They keep this updated with the latest news and resources related to Analytics.

2. How to Use Google Analytics for Beginners

Mahalo’s comprehensive guide can give you a quick overview on how to get started with Google Analytics.

3. Beginner’s Guide to Google Analytics

Flyte’s beginner’s guide takes you through and explains some of the key parts of Google Analytics.

4. Google Analytics Guide (4 Part Series)

The Guide to Blogging’s 4 part Analytics guide takes you through the basics from start to finish.

5. Google Analytics – Google Analytics Interface Tutorial (Video)

Google’s official video walk-through of the Google Analytics interface.

6. Google Analytics – Beginning Analytics: Interpreting and Acting on Your Data (Video)

Google’s official and very useful overview of some key reporting features, and how to interpret them.

7. Google Analytics Video Tutorial: Essential Stats (Video)

Here is Conversation Marketing’s quick video guide to some basic statistics.

Official Google Resources

8. Google Analytics – Non-Ecommerce Sites: Beyond Averages (Video)

This video from Google explains how to look beyond averages to get the most out of your Analytics data.

9. Google Analytics – Context and actionability in web analytics (Video)

In this video, Google’s Avinash Kaushik explains how to put some of your Analytics statistics in the right context.

10. Google Analytics – Advanced Techniques in Google Analytics (Video)

This video is taken from a presentation at Google’s Conversion University program, and goes into some more advanced Analytics topics.

11. Google Analytics – Bounce Rate: The Simply Powerful Metric (Video)

Google’s Avinash Kaushik goes in depth on your Bounce Rate statistics.

12. Google Analytics – Google Analytics – Rules for Revolutionaries (Video)

A run through of how any type of business can benefit from Google Analytics.

13. Google Analytics – Successful Web Analytics Approaches (Video)

Another video from Google’s Conversion University that takes your through some approaches that lead to success with Analytics.

Tips & Tricks

14. 5 Lesser Known Google Analytics Features

A collection of useful features compiles by the Online Marketing Blog.

15. The Huge Collection of Google Analytics Tips

Ann Smarty at the Search Engine Journal has put together a big list of tips on how to get the most out of Analytics.

16. 8 Useful Google Analytics Tips

A collection of visitor tracking tips from Jatex.

17. 7 Advanced Google Analytics Tricks

Some quick tricks from Da Vinci Planet.

18. Tracking social networks with Google Analytics using filters

Great tutorial on how you can track your referrals from social networking sites using filters.

19. Google Analytics tips for SEO

A collection of great tips on how to utilize Google Analytics for SEO.

Advanced Resources

20. Google Analytics Blog: You Cut Quite a Profile

Here’s Google’s official look at using Profiles to gain insights into user behavior.

21. Google Analytics Tagging Demystified

A great guide to using tags from Conversation Marketing.

22. Google Analytics Tip: Learn How They Found That 1 Page

Another great tutorial from Conversation Marketing on how to determine where traffic to your pages is coming from.

23. Use jQuery with Google Analytics to Track Clicks on Outgoing Links From Your Site

This guide is definitely on the advanced side, but explains how to use jQuery to find out where your visitors go after they leave your site.

24. Google Analytics Plugins, Hacks and Tips Collection

A great list of plugins for Google Analytics from Grokdotcom.

25. Google Analytics Blog: A Deeper look at Advanced Segmentation: filtering on the fly

An advanced look at how to use Analytics segmenting features from Google’s official Analytics blog.

So there you have it, 25 great resources that take you from a beginning Anayltics user all the way to an advanced power users. This is definitely not a comprehensive list as there’s so many amazing resources available, but this should definitely get you started! Do you have any great resources that you’ve used to learn about Google Analytics? If you do, please share them in a comment so everyone else can take a look.

Today I’ll be bringing you the first in what will be an ongoing series – Grading the Landing Page. In this series, I’ll be following promotional materials to their subsequent landing page. Once I get there, I’ll go through some of the positives and negatives that I see. I’ll be giving my opinion on what I think is or isn’t working, and what I would do to improve. Note: This is purely my opinion and not based on any analytical data.

I’ve seen my fair share of landing pages, and I’ve had a great amount of experience optimizing them to maximize the amount of leads they generate. I’ll be taking a look at a variety of different landing pages out in the wild, and stacking them up against best practices. Some get and A, while others get an F. While I grade these landing pages you’ll be able to learn some key points that every single one of your landing pages should have, as well as things you should steer clear of.

My first shot at grading a landing page is for eQuorum’s ImageSite software. I followed a link I saw on a page I was reading about content management systems, and this was where it took me:

I can’t show you exactly what happened, but the graphic at the top was animated upon my arrival. The arrowed list off to the right was not visible when I first landed, and neither were the buttons for “Learn More” and “Request Information”. This leads me to my first lesson on landing pages:

• Have all key information readily available on the page

First off, the graphic they used is far too small and complicated (even when it’s not animated). This by itself probably leads to people bouncing off of this page. One thing that might prevent the bounce is a link to more information, such as the “Learn More” button. But if that button isn’t readily available to the visitor, as is the case here, it can’t help them when they are looking for it. So as a rule of thumb, if you use animation on your landing page be sure that all of your key information is independent of it.

Another huge problem with this landing page is that there is no form directly on this page for a visitor to request more information. Which leads me to my second lesson on landing pages:

• A contact form is absolutely necessary on all landing pages

The whole purpose of a landing page is to capture a visitor and convert them into a lead (or sale). This goal is impossible if you don’t give the visitor a way to provide their information!

Now lets say that the animation intrigued me and I decided that I wanted to request more information. I click on the “Request Information” button and I arrive here:

There are a couple of issues here. First, I always tend to make my forms as easy and painless as possible to fill out. My fallback position on forms is that I want it to be as easy as possible for a visitor to fill it out. The problem on this page is that every single field is required. For example, is having the lead’s City, State, and Zip Code essential information to follow up with them? I would say it definitely isn’t, so this could be safely removed.

Another huge problem I see is the Clear button at the bottom of the form, conveniently placed right next to the Submit button. What exactly is the purpose of the Clear button? Do you think a potential lead would be happy about filling this form out and then accidentally pressing the Clear button? Definitely not! When you are creating forms for your landing pages, a good rule of thumb is to make it as simple as possible and a good way to accomplish this is to remove all non-essential elements.

There were a great many things that I could have went into with this landing page, but the points I touched on were the most glaring issues I could find. I’m gonna have to give this landing page an F.

Grading the Landing Page is a regular feature on Professor Lead, and I’ll be grading another soon. If you would like to suggest a landing page for grading, please e-mail me at professorlead@gmail.com.