The 9 things you MUST do to succeed online

This is a guest blog by Craig Wilson – doing great things with the NLYZR product that’s worth checking out to provide solutions for effective search engine results for your website. He’s a go to source for online information, so thought would be useful for him to share a few tips…

The advent of the web, search engines and social media networks has revolutionised marketing. While once we had to rely on outbound tactics like advertisements and direct mail, now we can utilise the more measurable and effective inbound marketing approach.

Here are the nine steps we use at Sticky for a successful inbound marketing plan:

1. Create content

Content is central to any good social media plan. You don’t attract traffic, comments, support or donations if you don’t have information or content as the lure.

Original content is material you might create in-house. It could be a news story, information piece, blog post, video or images. It doesn’t have to be lengthy material, in most cases shorter is better. But it does need to be regular material.

2. Post content

Your website should be the main location for posting content. Regular content drives regular traffic to that site. It creates return habits and subscriptions.

3. Optimise content

Every piece of content is another potential search result on Google, Bing and Yahoo. Optimizing each post, news item, image or video provides you with another opportunity to be found in relevant searches. By optimizing all your content for your target keywords you can substantially increase traffic. I believe so strongly in the importance of search engine optimization I launched a new business, www.nlyzr.com, dedicated to making it as easy as possible for small business owners.

4. Promote content

Once content is published and optimised on your chosen site, it’s time to promote it to your social networks. Word your message carefully. Use strong descriptions, emotive language and ask for action. The right wording can drive very strong responses. If you get a poor initial response, review the wording and try again.

5. Enable social sharing

Its crucial to make it as easy as possible for viewers to share your content with their followers and friends. Embed Twitter ReTweet and Facebook Share buttons on each post on the website. Consider other social network share options at the bottom of each post on your website (there are dozens of them) to make it easy for people to spread to their favourite networks.

6. Ask for action

If you don’t ask, you rarely receive. Depending on the nature of the content you are promoting you could ask for comments, feedback, to sign-up as supporters, to share your information or even (drum roll please) to purchase.

7. Monitor traffic and comments

Once content has been published and promoted you must ensure that you follow the ensuing activity, especially in the initial period when traffic will be highest. This is the time to engage with your audience and build the relationships.

8. Study results

Study the analytics of all your sites and social networks to see what works and what doesn’t. This will help inform future efforts. Your online efforts must have goals and these results are the way you measure them.

9. Repeat process

The most important thing is to be consistent and have a long-term view. Good inbound marketing has a cumulative effect and requires regular attention.

Repeat these steps frequently.

BIO:

Craig Wilson is founder of Sticky, a digital agency based in Newcastle, Australia and new Website Optimization System NLYZR.

Craig is a contributor to the collaborative series of world-wide marketing books The Age of Conversation 1, 2, 3, recent contributor to the Australian Govt’s National Cultural Policy and is often called on by media to comment on industry news.

Making the most of the Rose Revolution in bars, restaurants and retail

GET ON BOARD THE ROSE REVOLUTION – CELEBRATING DRY, PURPOSE MADE ROSE WINES

There’s a real movement happening to educate consumers about dry, purpose made Rose: The Rose Revolution! A great wine style, appropriate all year round but for those of us in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s a particularly exciting wine as we come into Summer.

There’s been lots of information circulated about how producers can come on board, but probably even more opportunities for bars, retailers and restaurants to come on board and grow your rose sales at a high margin.

HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED

There’s a range of activities planned to help spread the word about dry rose over the next few months. Kick off is 10 November with a global tweet up promoting dry, textural Rose wines. This is not just a one day event though, the momentum will continue until the end of April 2012 with a range of fun events being planned.

Some ideas on how you can make the most of the Rose Revolution in your venue:

• Organise a tasting or rose dinner on 10 Novemberto taste and tweet – join in all the fun and pour some great rose whilst watching the tweets with #roserev. A great way to get people along to your venue, put up a big screen, encourage people to come dressed in pink and get involved in the fun.
  • There will be free tastings held from 5-7pm at many venues and then Rose Soiree Parties and an Australia wide tweet up from 7.30pm AEST. If you’re holding a tasting and want to accept samples, let me know and i’ll add you to the list of addresses
  • Promote dry Rose by the Glass– talk to consumers about this style of wine – put on some by the glass specials.
  • Use geo-location programs like Four Square to set up a four square check in special for your venue using a glass of dry rose as an incentive
  • Host a Rose dinner or function – the versatility of dry rose lends itself to tapas plates, paella,  charcuterie plates, seafood – almost anything matches well with rose, particularly Spanish and Mediterranean styled foods.
  • List your event up on Meet up so we can drive consumers along to participate http://www.meetup.com/Rose-Wine-Revolution/events/32266682/
  • Serve flights of rose wine – rather than a standard glass, why not think about offering tasting selections of different dry roses to help consumers explore this style.
  • Take some photos and get social. The Rose Revolution facebook page has over 1200 fans and we’d encourage you to post your photos up on the page, or tweet about what you’re hosting using #roserv.

There’s a range of purpose made point of sale designed to help draw attention to the campaign in your venue – post cards, decals, banners, posters.  Have a look at some of the examples here. Our core supporters have all this information for you to use.

If you’re really serious about joining the Rose Revolution, you can also get your logo up on the Rose Revolution website as a core supporter for a nominal cost. Details here

If you’re holding a rose event or special, email Rose_revolution@debortoliwines.com.au and we’ll get the information posted up on the facebook page and website.

REVOLUTIONARY WINERIES

Have a look at who the core supporters are, talk to your wine reps about any special offers they might have and other ways to get involved.

Vive la Rose Revolution!