So, what am I all about? Are the results returned painting the picture I want? Am I in control of what is being said?.

My Story

Marketing can simply be defined as telling our story. The story of who I am, what my ministry does, or why my business is relevant. The tools we use to tell the story are our communication channels. Today, online is not just one of the channels, it is the number one channel.

When people meet you or discover you, they want to know a little bit about your story. They want to know who you are, what you do, and why you do it. It is imperative that you manage this channel with diligence.

Reputation Management

Whenever possible, you should try to own the results. By having a personally branded web page, biography page, and relevant personalized social media platforms, you significantly increase the possibility of managing your reputation. If you can, you want the first results to be your voice telling your story so people first hear from you.

The Three R’s

For validation, the next line of defense is to ensure as much as you can, that what others are saying about you is complimentary. There will always be detractors, but if you can get your fans to refer, review, or recommend you, then this will add to your credibility quotient.

Remember, people start their research online. If you control the volume and the content, then you have better control over making a great first impression. People are looking to trust you and your affiliations. If you can put their mind at ease while introducing yourself as an interesting person with an interesting story, there is a greater chance for the relationship to begin and grow.

What do you think about managing your reputation online?

A blog is low cost in dollars but high-cost in time investment.  The time and creativity angle is the biggest challenge for most small business owners or ministries.  However, the value-add for your organization is massive.

The Marketing Value of a Blog:

• establishes your credibility and industry expertise
• gives your web site credibility with Google so you rank higher in search engines (good SEO)
  
• keeps your web site fresh with valuable content for your target market
• builds trust with your customers
• gives you a voice and makes your organization more personal
• provides a conversation mechanism with your customers – a way to dialogue with them

I started blogging almost two years ago.  It started as an experiment…a marketing experiment.  All the cutting edge marketing theory was that a blog was an excellent new marketing tool for organizations.  So, I started blogging to test the theory.

My Conclusion:

It works.  I have seen all the above value points play out for myself and for other small businesses over the past two years.   Blogging on one level is hard because you have to maintain momentum.

For me personally, most of the time, I don’t find it hard to find something to write about each day.  The landscape of marketing is changing all the time with new technologies, new social media, new perspectives that can help small business owners and ministry leaders.  I have found that the more I write the more I want to write.  Interestingly, I don’t really consider myself a writer…but I have now written over 330 blog posts.

Sadly however, I have seen many blogs started and many of those fade out.  My Google Reader is littered with blogs that I was subscribed to but who’s owners have not written a post in months.  Marketing is a journey – not a quick fix. It is an investment.  A blog is part of that investment, one that is very worth starting and sticking with.

If you have a small business and you don’t have a blog – I challenge you to consider starting one – experiment with it.  If you have one but you are not writing consistently – I challenge you to pick up your socks and invest in your blog, your business, your customers, and your online reputation.  There are few other marketing things that you could do that in the grand scheme of it all cost so little but yield such great marketing impact.

What has your experience been with writing a blog?  If you haven’t why not?

Really, it is!  Which search engine best represents your church?  I have been very negative about Bing in conversations with friends and family.  My personal search engine of choice is Google.  Maybe you prefer to use Yahoo.

But, which search engine gives you the best search results?  That is a debatable topic.  When someone is searching for your church, which search engine places your church most favorably in its results?

Here is a “Blind Search” test created by Michale Kordahi.  Visit his site and type in some some search phrases in his search box at the top of the page in the blue bar.  Then select which one’s results you prefer…you might be surprised by what you choose in this blind test!

For interest sake, use one of your searches to search for “churches “my city/town”" – does your church web site place in the top results?  If so, which search engine is the best for your church?  If your church does not place in any results…you have a problem (a topic for another post!).

Turns out I have 50-50 preference for Google and Yahoo.  So, I still hate Bing!  Yahoo was most favorable for my church web site (placed it #1!).

Please share your findings and preferances in the comments section below…I am curious!

The article reports the positive experiences several churches have had buying Google AdWords as a means of advertising their churches.  Google AdWords are the “ads” that you would find in the right margin when you do a search in Google.  This is a very new marketing strategy for churches.  Businesses have been doing it more consistently for the past few years and clearly Google is making a fortune selling this type of advertising.  I think there are situations where this would be a good course of action for a church but there are a couple pre-requisites that a church needs to implement before it engages in this marketing strategy:

Your Web Site Needs to Shine

If you are going to advertise online, your church web site had better be stellar!  It is a complete waste of time to pay to draw searchers to you site if the site does not represent your church with excellence visually, if it is not easy to navigate, and if you are not keeping the information current and engaging.  Your church web site needs to captivate people so they want to come and check you out.

Implement Effective SEO

Churches typically do not do Search Engine Optimization (SEO) effectively.  For that matter, many don’t even know what SEO is.  Before spending money on “paid search” I would encourage a church to go through a year of implementing proven SEO strategies.  It is far too complex to go into the details on what that means in this post, but I’ll write more on SEO for churches in the coming weeks.  Before you pay, implement good SEO principles and you may very likely come up at the top of the most popular “organic” search strings without having to pay.  Clearly this is harder to do in larger cities or if other churches in your area are implementing strong SEO practices themselves.

If the above have been taken care of, paying for Google AdWords can be a viable strategy.  The real advantage that the article points to is that it is considerably cheaper than many other types of paid advertising.  What I also agree with is that today there are far more people who go “searching” for churches in their community online than are looking in Yellow Pages, newspapers, or any other traditional media.  I have seen this to be true for the church I attend.

I would really love to hear from you – have you experimented with Google AdWords as a marketing strategy for your church?  If you have, what has been your experience?  If you have not, what are your thoughts on it as a marketing initiative for churches? Please share in the comments below.

What is Google AdWords? It is the advertising arm in the Google search directory where you can pay to purchase small ads in the right column of any given the search results page. You pay for placement according to key words. So, you have to try to determine what search words someone would put into Google that you want your ad to match up with.

I have experimented a little with Google AdWords and it really is just that…an experiment. First, one of my big questions for you reading this (small business owner or not) how often do you click on the ads in the right column that come up in Google when you search for anything? I really would like to know.

Do you click ads? I almost never do. Mostly because I know they are ads and that the advertisers are trying to get my attention. I usually (95%) of the time rely on the search results themselves.

As a marketer, I think there is more value for a small business owner spending their money on hiring someone who will work to optimize their web site with key words, proper meta tags, Google site maps, and all-round proper SEO (Search Engine Optimization). If this is done well, then the results more often than not more beneficial than paying for Google AdWords.

There may be times you will try to experiment with this medium to see if it generates traffic referral and ultimately sales to your business. I think it will work for some industries more than others. I would not make it a primary part of a small business marketing budget, but perhaps a supplement. If your business is “medium” or larger then the strategy might change. Most small business owners have limited advertising budgets and I really think there are more targeted and beneficial ways to invest those advertising dollars.

Google is enhancing their AdWords program you can read more about this on TechCrunch.

I welcome your thoughts and please share any stories you have of your experience with Google AdWords. I would certainly love to hear some success stories so we can learn from those who have had great experiences using this new advertising medium.

Today I discovered the Google Local Business Center.  It is a division of Google Maps.  Have you heard of it?  If not, you need to get your organization (business or church) registered on it today.  They provide free listings to local businesses and churches and it only takes a few minutes to complete their registration process.  I did it today and it was a snap.  If you have a Google account you can jump right in. If you don’t you need to create an account with them first…it is free.  Click here to go to the registration page…

The only moment of uncertainty for me was in the final stage of the registration.  After you fill in their form, they take you to a final screen for verification and they ask if you want to verify by phone, SMS, or post card.  My immediate thought was…why not e-mail?  I guess perhaps it is a little more difficult to verify the validity of the registrant.  Anyway, after a moment of reflection, I decided to go the phone option.  When I clicked it, it comes to a screen asking if they should call me immediately or in 5 minutes.  I clicked immediately and one second later the phone was ringing!  It was an automated verification system asking for my PIN (Personal ID Number) that was included in my final registration step.  I entered it on the phone keypad and a second later my listing was approved in the online form.  Exceptionally easy…and exceptionally cool.

I would encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity for your organization.  It is another simple tool for free marketing.  I send the credit for discovering this useful tool to Katrina Gibson.  Thanks Katrina!

So, is your organization registered with Google Local Business Centre?  What has been your experience?

Interestingly, today I came across an article about Funnel Web Sites. These are described as key word URL’s or domains where you register some of the key words that describe what your organization does and you register that string as a domain and then set up a mini-site that then links to your main site. The whole point is to drive more traffic to your site to your funnel site through Google search strings and then on to your core site. This is an interesting concept and I think Maki makes some great points to ponder for implementation. I encourage you to read the article…it may give you some added opportunities to drive traffic to your business or ministry site and leverage the power of Google’s search engine optimization for your organization.

A common thread related to content. Whatever your content is online, it has to be as different and as unique as possible. There are so many web sites and social media applications available today (and this will only continue to grow). In order to stand out online, your message has to be clear, relevant, and unique. You cannot be everything to everyone, so find your niche and do everything you can to claim that niche. We all have a specialty skill set and we should maximize our value online by honing our skills to the zenith of their possibilities.

On the homepage of your web site, emphasize the the three most important things you are trying to communicate and be sure to clearly communicate your value. Strong visuals are important in this pursuit, but do not put key content that can be useful for search engines to find you into the graphics. Use flash visuals sparingly and only to draw attention to a key item and provide some life to your site. Remember that visitor’s eyes naturally start at the top left of your site so put your most important content there. Use your web site to sell the experience you are trying to deliver. Be clear about what your organization does and to build credibility incorporate endorsements and testimonials. To give a realness to your organization develop personal profile pages that give your customers a glimpse into the real people behind the services. These personal pages are more important in many ways than their portfolio.

One of the most important things you can do is be authentic. Present your organization visually for who you really are and when using blogs, write for yourself and your interests first and that will automatically translate into unique content that your followers will gravitate to. If you are writing genuinely and with passion, you most likely will naturally optimize your site with search engine friendly “key terms”. Again, find and define your niche and try to do something that no one else is doing. From this will develop human-level conversations through your blog comments and that ultimately is what social media is all about…building the human need for community and connectedness.

Mi-Picks from the AIM Conference:

• Best Session: Marketing Yourself as a Free-agent on the Internet (Harold Jarche)
• Most Interesting Presenter: Derek Szeto
• Most Knowledgeable Marketer: Rob Swick, AlphaSearch
• Most Authentic Presenter: Harold Jarche

1) The experiment was a total success. As a new marketing services company in Halifax, NS, using “key words” that describe the services Marketing Integrity offers to small businesses throughout the Maritime provinces of Canada, vaulted our rankings in Google and Yahoo into the top-10 of search results within two weeks of writing the original post. It went as high as #2!

2) After writing the post, I began doing regular searches to see if the positioning of the Marketing Integrity Blog improved and I reported the results in the comments field below the post. You will be interested to know that because I continued to report the exact same key word search results (over and over again), a week later that blog post went completely off the search results…entirely. Why? Well, the search engines track sites or pages that abuse the privilege of using excessive key word repetition. This was not my original intention when I included them in the comments section, but I obviously over did it and that page now no longer gets served in the search results at all (at least not in the top 200!). Lesson learned – use key word rich text in your posts…don’t overdo it!

So, I will try again to demonstrate through this follow-up post that using key words in your web site or in your blog can help your company improve its search engine rankings (SEO).

There are many marketing companies in Halifax, Nova Scotia, so it is important for us to be set-apart by implementing a regularly updated blog to increase our rankings, but also to establish our company as an expertise leader in our field. Our goal is to put our customers first by providing top-quality, personalized marketing services utilizing e-marketing, web marketing, and traditional print marketing campaign development. As a new marketing company serving Halifax, Nova Scotia businesses, we promise to build relationships of integrity with our customers and endeavour to always put their needs and best-interests first. Contact us and let us show you how!

Many key words are included in the above post. I will add to the comments below the ongoing results of our search rankings and see if I can prove the test true a second time. This time, I will abandon the repetition of the actual search key words in my reporting!