Best practices may not be the most practical when it comes to getting coverage for your business. If you’re a small startup or a bootstrapped company, you probably don’t have the time or money to do all the right things. If you have to take shortcuts, can you still get bloggers to cover your startup without the relationship building many social media pundits suggest? Certainly, though it will still take some work on your part.

Best Practices for Engaging Bloggers

When I was first challenged with getting bloggers to pay attention to the startup I was with, I looked for the “best practices” for engagement. I found articles like this one from Chris Brogan, How to Build Your Brand Online. It’s a bit dated (though I think this was one of my early reference points) but the fundamentals are still valid.

For me, however, the key points made are below and I found I couldn’t fully embrace them.

• Learn who’s talking about you (or your company, or the other keywords you put into your reader), and engage them in conversation on their site.
• Make relationships with others before you need them on social networks.

Sure, you need to know who’s talking about your category or subject area. If you’re a tech startup, you want tech writers. If you make boutique pet collars and go after tech bloggers, you’re barking up the wrong tree (sorry about that). But I don’t believe you have to engage in the conversation on their site. It’s a “nice to have” but not a necessity.

You do, however, have to be aware of what they cover and how they cover it. That’s the key point. If you don’t have the credibility of a relationship, substitute respect. Respect will help you earn trust in a short time frame, even a single email.

Have a News Worthy Story

This will be the biggest time saver – if you don’t have a news worthy story, don’t bother. The easiest way to figure this out is finding what is “new” about the information you’re presenting. This sounds pretty basic, but we often get swept up with wanting to talk about any milestone we’ve achieved. That may not be enough for a blogger to want to share the story with their audience. In the best cases, you’re going to get a small percentage covering your story. Basically, I try to feel good about the story I’m sending. In the theme of respect, I may not hit the target for the writer on that particular day, but I probably haven’t burned any bridges either.

Understand the Blogger and Their Audience

When you’re building your list of writers to contact, you need to spend a little time on their site understanding what they write about and who they are. Fortunately, you can gather this quickly by scanning the Categories and their About text. Reading the About text will give you insights into the vision of the blog as well as personal information about the blogger. These are all easy ways you can build a connection. Acknowledge a shared passion, compliment past successes.

The categories are helpful because even serious blogs may have their off-subject topics like a Friday Grab Bag or random posts. This can create an opportunity for you to find a story fit even if it’s outside the blogs normal editorial focus – and you can call this out in your pitch to them.

This effort to personalize the pitch shows you’ve taken some time to learn about them. They aren’t just receiving an email template that you’re blasting out.

Keep Your Email to the Point

We’re all time strapped, and think how cluttered your mailbox is. Now imagine what it looks like if you’re a writer that lots of people want to cover their startup, company or product. Yeah, pretty scary. So get to the point.

Your first sentence should be the ask. Second, some compelling information about why this is so important. Follow those up with a link to where they can experience this brilliance themselves, and the CEOs direct contact info (if that’s not you) – email and cell number.

What I also tend to do is provide additional detail after the email signature. My thoughts are that if I’m trying to respect someone’s time, it doesn’t hurt to have the detail there as long as it’s optional reading. That’s why the first section is to the point and conveys all they need to know to grasp the pitch. If they’re interested, they can read more. If not, they can move on – but I know they at least got the essence of my story idea.

Where do I put that “personal” information I gathered when I was on their blog? That’s a call I make when I’m writing to that writer. Sometimes I lead with “I read your story on _____ and felt a natural extension is the work we’ve done with our product.” Or, I might lead with the pitch but follow up with something that personalizes the message. Try both and see what feels more natural to your own style.

I’ll continue this discussion in another post. I welcome feedback and comments about what works for you.

Related articles

• 5 Non Spammy Ways To Get a Blogger’s Attention (ducttapemarketing.com)
• Ask HN: Best practices when pitching your startup to Techcrunch, Mashable etc? (news.ycombinator.com)

The meaning behind the top four: SEO, Social Media, Email and Blogs shows the pendulum has fully swung to the side of communication that engages as well as talks to your user. If you want to do well for lead generation, focus in on the key tenants of content marketing – be timely, relevant and interesting. The best method from the pure marketing category is PPC, and there’s the argument to be made of how that plays to your content strategy as well.

Marketing Research Chart: What are the most valuable inbound lead sources?

If you’re a startup or launching a product, think hard about how your customers will think about and ask (search) for your product. Make sure you’re breaking out of how you think and talk about your product. Your words don’t matter hear.

Keyword research will help in this endeavor. Google Keyword Tool is a great place to start. It’s free to use and you don’t have to register, but you’ll be happier if you do. And focus on the local number. That’s the one looking at queries from your country. Global is just too far beyond what most smaller companies are pursuing.

With these items combined, you’ll have the essence of the message you want to convey. Now, you’ll have to figure out how to talk with and engage users so they participate with you. You’re not selling here. You’re providing value. So, help your audience learn more about your industry or product category. It’s not easy but this is where you add value, create trust, and ultimately turn that inbound lead into a sale.

Ignore, if you will, the fact that the percentages add up to more than 100%. I’m sure it has something to do with new productivity standards and doing more with less.

Marketing Budgets Focused on Site, SEO and SEM

The lion’s share of budget is focused on the web site, SEO, SEM and content marketing (which to me is a sub-category of SEO for many companies). It feeds the marketing funnel – awareness, conversion, sale. The tools and systems are plentiful to allow tracking, optimization and clear reporting of the return on investment for these efforts. They miss, however, the opportunity of the social webs.

Marketing Research Chart: Allocation of online marketing dollars  

If you’re a believer that we operate in a marketing hourglass and not a marketing funnel, you’ll see half your marketing is being underfed. Reading the Sherpa article shows that social media spending is increasing. If you assume all the email and social media efforts are focused on nurturing relationships of your customers and driving repeat and referral business, you’re still only at 30% of your budget.

Marketing Hourglass

But this represents solidifying the relationship with a percentage of your audience where the hard work is done. You’ve already made the sale. If your product is doing its job (satisfying the customer need), it’s now your chance to turn that customer into an advocate. Build that relationship into one that drives future sales and new leads based on that customer’s recommendation.

Trend Your Marketing Dollars to Engagement

Social media experts are becoming Lead Gen experts because the tools and systems are rapidly coming online that provide a measurable ROI for these efforts as well. I’ll talk about those on another day. For now, the marketers who are load balancing their budgets to address the marketing hourglass will reap the rewards over those that remain focused on the marketing funnel.

Creating a culture of testing and continuous improvement for your web presence is no easy task, but getting started with testing can be. The majority of firms struggle with the idea, process and implementation. The result – very few firms have formal testing as a part of the ongoing web initiatives. Once you get started, see some initial wins and apply the information, you’ll be on your way to making this a regular part of your business.

Whether you’re getting started on testing your conversion rates or improving the call to action on your home page. Here’s a short outline of the elements of an online test that will help get you started.

Outline for Setting Up A Test

• Name it. Make it a real entity in your company by giving your test a name. It’ll help internal communications and commitment to the program.
• Define the Team. You’ve got to have dedicated personnel assigned to the program. “You get what you measure” applies to your team as well as your test. Don’t just make it an action item, make it part of their performance review.
• Determine the Goal. What do you want out of the testing? Are you trying to drive up retention? Revenue? What’s the big goal you’ve got for the coming year and what are the blockers to achieving them.
• What’s your Hypothesis? I’d then suggest breaking the larger goal into smaller tasks. Start with known issues or the opportunities for the easiest and biggest wins. If you’re getting people to your site, but can’t convert them – then look at the registration or commerce flow. Whatever it is on your site that you’re needing users to perform. Your hypothesis might be “Users don’t see my call to action” so you’ll test new copy or different colors and graphics. You might feel “there are too many steps in our form” so you’ll try fewer fields or a different layout.
• Track your Data. You need to confirm or dispute your hypothesis. You’re probably running Google Analytics or some other metrics system. Make sure you’re tracking the data points as well as saving them for future reference. Testing is an ongoing effort and you’re constantly trying to find the new winners.
• Create your Test Design. There is a fair amount of effort that goes into your test design. Many of the suggestions can be found in the blog post How to Start a Successful Online Testing Program.

Related articles

• Findings From MarketingSherpa: Relevancy is Key(aweber.com)
• Startups and the Value of Target Audiences(markevanstech.com)

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Last week you could have joined a free webinar titled “Online Testing: Everything You Need to Know to Be Successful” thanks to the folks at Maxymiser and Forrester Research.It was reaffirming in many ways of the discipline and ongoing nature of testing to get the best results over time.

I’ll assume you’re already on board with testing as a part of your marketing efforts, and save the discussion of why you need to test for another day. Here are some of the key takeaways I gathered from the talk.

Successful Online Testing Tips

• Start slow, build your case and demonstrate that its working.
• Each element is crucial
• Plan, design, execute, analyze, validate and repeat

Start slow, build your case and demonstrate that its working

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the testing that needs to occur. Tackle it in small steps, addressing some of the need to know information first – or said a little differently – tackle the known problems first.

Focusing your attention not only helps keep the task list manageable, it limits the number of variables you’re looking at. If you’re only changing a single variable, confidence is much higher about its influence on the results.

Plan, design, execute, analyze, validate and repeat

Testing is a process, and process is critical. Here are several of the point to keep in mind as you make testing part of your culture.

• Define ownership of the program. Execute support is also critical given the ongoing nature of evolving and developing tests. It takes time and if you don’t have executive support, you’re not likely to go far with your testing program.
• Define the necessary resources. Testing takes time and people. You can outsource quite a lot of the testing, but you’ll still need internal sponsors and owners to ensure the information gathered gets used.
• Plan. Figure out your goals, the hypothesis you want to test, the specifications of what you want to achieve and the environment in which the testing will occur.
• Design. Layout the objectives so you can design the test and the creative that will go into it.
• Execute. Develop the test, make sure your tracking systems work (QA), verify, review and launch.
• Analyze. Once the test is run, review the reports, validate your assumptions and document document the results. Act upon the new information you have. Review the winners and losers, make the winners permanent until some testing variation unseats them and you find a better solution.
• Repeat.

Each element is crucial

You are running experiments and the data you collect is only as good as the methodology you put into it. And this isn’t about Pass/Fail. It’s about verifying assumptions, even long held beliefs about your web presence, how your customers interact with your web site, even about your product.

Testing is not a one time event. It’s an iterative program, that over time can have a meaningful impact on your business. Take that first step and commit to it now.

Related articles

• Test Driven Modelling (mendixandbeyond.com)
• How user personas will help your website user experience (marketing.yell.com)

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Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a critical part of Internet efforts. The search engines are the first place people turn to find information they need. As a small business owner focused on a local market, how much time do you really have to devote to the ongoing efforts SEO takes? Especially when your looking at a small volume of queries specific to your market.

Keep focused on some key areas and get them right. It’ll help you capture all that you can from the limited source of searches. You also don’t have to be perfect in your efforts. You just need to be a little better than the company that’s in the lead placement. Keeping that in mind will help you focus your efforts.

Local SEO Essential – Google Places

The search results page (SERP) is changing and where you appear on it is as well. Earning the top spot no longer assures you’re at the top of a person’s search result. For local search terms, what often appears in Google is the local directory results from Google Places.

The beauty of listing your business in Google Places is its integration into Google Maps – giving you a presence in both the web and mobile markets. Your business is discoverable by your customers regardless of the device they are using.

I’ve read that 20% of Google searches have local intent, and even more when mobile searches is factored in. For the small business, listing in Google places is essential.

SEO Columbus OH Small Business Keywords

What drives your keyword strategy? It should be your customers.

Analytics for Keywords

You can find out the terms they use to find you in your analytics reports. In Google Analytics, you’ll find it under Traffic Sources –> Search –> Organic.

The details of the keywords used to find you are in there, in many cases. Google is obscuring some of this information so it’s not as transparent as it once was. The “(not provided)” is Google’s attempt to shield the data of users who have authenticated to Google (a rapidly growing number with Gmail, Google+ and a host of services that keep you logged in). The rest of the keywords are from unauthenticated users.

Customer Reviews for Keyword Suggestions

Fortunately, you can solicit comments and feedback from your users. Encourage ratings from your customers on Foursquare, Yelp, Google Places and the like. Then when you read them, pay attention to the words they use as much as what they are saying. The personal side of your business improves when you listen to what your customers are saying. The SEO side of your business improves when you use they same words they do.

Voice Recognition SEO

A coming trend is going to be how easy is it to speak your keywords. Mobile is a driving force in local search and voice recognition is the growing means for searching via mobile. Your customers aren’t always going to type their searches, they are increasingly speaking them.

The Location of Your Community

I used Columbus in the title of this post and in headers of some of the content. Which community was I going after? I could easily have used Dublin, Hilliard, Bexley or any of the smaller cities that make up the Columbus metropolitan area.

As you improve your local SEO, think of the communities you serve or that your customers identify with. Those are the local phrases that will help local prospects turn into local customers because the search engines know where to place you.

Related articles

• Is 2012 The Year For ‘Going Local’! (virtualneighbour.wordpress.com)
• January ’12: Best Search/Marketing Posts (smallbusinesssem.com)

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There’s an interesting read over at Search Engine Land (2011: The Year Google & Bing Took Away From SEOs & Publishers) on what some of the big search providers are doing or not doing, in certain cases, and how they affect the world of SEO. If you have a web site or are interested in discovery over your search ranking, there are some elements of concern.

I’m not going to advocate an Occupy SEO movement or give 99% over to Google and Bing – though combined, they’re market share hits into the 80s if not quite the 99%. It’s interesting the insights you no longer have access to because of adjustments over time, but for those that spend heavily on SEM some of the information remains open up to you.

That’s why competitive markets have a role. Small players come in to disrupt and free the value that is artificially hidden. In search, we have Blekko. Registering for a free account gives you instant access to a host of tools. (Given their No Spam mantra, it’s the first time I’ve registered in a while without undo fear.)

You’ll find a helpful little suite of information for any domain you care to explore. The data and documentation aren’t fully complete. The Help section related to SEO information was last updated in June 2011, about six months after launch. I empathize with their start up position and they probably have  higher priorities to address. Even industry expert Vanessa Fox had a level of difficulty extracting the value of all the data in her comprehensive review, also over at Search Engine Land (Blekko’s SEO Tools: What Information Do They Provide?).

The key takeaways are this. For the near term, the SEO data that should easily be available through the big search engines isn’t. Blekko can serve as a proxy  to this data, but it’s only a proxy until there’s greater understanding as to how close it models the algorithmic behavior of its larger competitors. To pull up a summary of your site’s SEO information, type in a query of “http://yoursite.com /seo” and you’ll get a breakdown of all the information Blekko is providing. For  detailed breakdown of each component, seek Ms. Fox’s article referenced above.

Related articles

• Blekko Is Becoming A Nice Backlinks/SEO Tool (dailyblogtips.com)
• Yahoo Site Explorer Alternatives (seo-hacker.com)

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I have to admit, I’m not easily wowed. I just installed Dashlane (tagline: Sign In and Check Out in Seconds) and I got the “wow” response. I actually ran down and immediately downloaded for my wife as well. As I dive into the product and my infatuation has dimmed, but I remain hopeful this will bloom into a long-term relationship.

Dashlane is in private beta, so I hope that’s the reason behind my biggest gripe. If you like testing the waters of new products, you can register at Dashlane’s web site and get on their beta list. Or, go to Netted, you’ll find a link that will give immediate access to Dashlane. I don’t know if this an open offer, but as of today (Jan 11, 2012) it’s working great.

Dashlane vs. KeePass Comparison

Dashlane streamlines the security process for managing your passwords and logging in. That’s half the battle, right?

We all want the added security of better password management, but the logistics are what kill you. For me, the feature set of KeePass was robust and security measures excellent. As a result it won my loyalty over the past year. No longer trusting the passwords in my browser, I’ve slowly been rebuilding my password database. My wife, who I’ve been trying to get using the product has been slower to adopt. The burden of importing what’s already in her browser is too big a hurdle to overcome.

Dashlane makes this seamless – if you’re on Firefox or Chrome. Which both of us are. It’s an easy import. The Security Dashboard shows your vulnerabilities and since Dashlane automatically logs you in, it’s easy to hit the site and update to new passwords. As a bonus, you don’t have to jump back and forth between the site and the application like I have to in KeePass. In Dashlane, when you update your password on a site, you’re prompted right there with generating a new secure password and it then prompts for your immediate update to the Dashlane client.

I haven’t fully played with the multi-device interface with Dashlane but it appears to be built-in. My MBP, iPad and iPhone all get the benefits of the secure login features. I was able to achieve this with KeePass by installing various versions of the software on each device and synching the KeePass database through Dropbox. It was a hack that’s worked very well, but if this native system is even smoother – I’m really going to like this.

Dashlane Growth Points

The biggest shock I’ve had so far with Dashlane is the memory usage. It’s not as bad as I originally feared, but it will be an area for improvement. Memory allocated to the product after initial install was 3.3GB. If I hadn’t recently upgraded my 4GB to 8, it’d have crushed my machine. To be fair, I didn’t notice performance degradation, but I also didn’t wait too long to test that theory.

Instead, I rebooted and it dropped considerably. It still runs second to my Firefox with its 22 open tabs (yes, I’m one of those). As polished as the product is, I can’t imagine this will remain an issue for long. And I really hope its not. I have a low tolerance for memory hogs, I probably give all that runway to the browsers I abuse. I’d hate for this to be the nagging point that drives me away.

Importing from KeePass will be a bonus when the feature arrives. According to the Dashlane community support area on Get Satisfaction. I’m not sure I’ll completely abandon KeePass, but it will be immensely helpful to have this feature added.

I Know KeePass, and Dashlane, You’re No KeePass

Maybe the primary coverage is getting to me. This is more dramatic than need be. The one thing that jumps out at me is the security of the passwords. They’re much more secure than what I was using pre-KeePass and dead simple to use. But theyre are not up to the standards that KeePass has set.

I’m guessing this is a result of the simplicity they are striving for. I find myself having to dumb down my passwords on a regular basis. (Why do financial institutions offer the least secure options for passwords?) I let the default settings of KeePass be my guide and they do a great job of combining lots of characters, symbols, spaces – you name it and it’s there. Dashlane much less so. It’s an area I’d like to see improvement, but it’s probably not a deal breaker. Until the first hack.

Why You Need to Act on Password Management

It was a little over a year ago that the Gawker hack and this post “Jesus Christ, Use a Password Manager Already” got me looking into password managers.

The quick overview is that there are three basic categories:

• Desktop – stores your passwords on your computers hard drive.
• Portable – For your mobile device whether it’s your smart phone or thumb drive.
• Web based – Online password manager.

Each method has its own strengths (platforms or uses where it excels) and weaknesses (where it’s vulnerable). Each also created additional overhead to access secure sites (cut and paste, authenticate manually).  That’s why Dashlane is so compelling. It removes the overhead and makes a more secure Internet well within grasp.

Lifehacker’s Five Best Password Managers from their Hive Five efforts was run in 2008. That’ll give you an indication of why the time is right for a product like Dashlane.

Happy browsing!

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There’s no shortage of things to do, yet if you’re an Internet marketer – you’re expected to have a well informed opinion on the latest trends. So, what’s the short list of must reads to help with keeping abreast of emerging technologies and best practices.

Daily Quick Read of Latest Tech News

10 Things in Tech You Need to Know is a morning email from BusinessInsider.com with one of the easiest to read snap shots I’ve found for the latest news around Tech. It gives the necessary info in 10 quick hits. I’m informed but not out of a lot of time. Extra credit: If you’re a info junkie or need a few more details in your morning scan of the tech news, head over to Techmeme.com.

Detailed Information for Web Marketing

Hubspot set out to build a killer marketing application and deliver great advice to businesses to help drive more inbound leads, convert a higher percentage of prospects and analyze the data to figure out what works. While I can’t personally attest to how good their app is, based on the business advice they put out it looks promising. For solid overviews of a number of web marketing topics, check out Hubspot’s Marketing Resources. There’s plenty of free content, and you can get more detailed ebooks for some basic information. It’s worth providing your email. You’ll get invited to free webinars where you’ll get the latest information from their research team. It’s a great value add to the online marketing community. Plus, they recently added their Marketing Grader service that offers a quick and free review of your marketing efforts.

For me, the information Hubspot comes out with is at a frequency and level of detail that works well. I’m not overwhelmed with too much, but it’s always timely and substantive.

Ideas and Inspiration for Web Marketing

I’m not always at a place where I can read. So, this recommendation breaks the reading mold, but is a great information source nonetheless. My role with Brand Thunder may also have influenced this. I believe keeping a finger on the pulse of technology start ups will not only provide insights into the emerging technologies that are going to shape our business but also the methods for building awareness and distribution. To take advantage of drive time listening, I download the audio podcast of This Week in Startups. Jason Calacanis brings in top entrepreneurs and investors to share their wisdom, plus answers listener questions and more. It’s a great listen. I’ve been a listener since its beginnings and continue to enjoy it.

I haven’t personally tried any of the other shows in the This Week In network, like This Week in Social Media or This Week in Web Design, but given the quality level of Startups – I wouldn’t hesitate to give them a try.

These are a few of my favorites. I’d love to get others that I should add to the list. Feel free to offer yours in the comments.

Related articles

• Top Internet strategy, marketing and technology links for the week of December 31, 2011 (sazbean.com)
• 30 Top Ebooks to Help You Master Inbound Marketing in 2012 (hubspot.com)