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Ever heard of hash tags? They can be your secret weapon to getting more traffic from every tweet you send out.  Here’s how and why.

The Language of Social Media Marketing: What are Hashtags & How They Help You Get Traffic

Hashtags are words on Twitter that are preceded by the # symbol. This symbol lets searchers know that there’s a topic (group) around this subject. For example, if you send out a tweet about social media marketing, your tweet might include a hashtag that looks like this: #socialmedia.

Hashtags turn up in search engines like Google much like keywords. Hence, it’s wise to use them in your tweets as often as possible.

Another reason to use them is that if other Twitter users are searching for something on a topic that you’ve tweeted about and it includes a hashtag, it’s much easier for them to find it – and possibly retweet it.

Retweets are akin to backlinks in search engine optimization (SEO) lingo. So the more of them you have, the more likely your results are to show up higher in search engine results – and the more traffic you’ll receive — all from just using one little symbol.

Tip: As tweets can contain only 140 characters, if the message you want to tweet or RT is already close this limit and the phrase you want to put a hashtag in front of is already included, just put the # in front of it. It won’t affect your tweet at all – other than to possibly give it more traction.

The bottom line is, don’t tweet blindly. Remember, there’s an art to tweeting effectively. And, if you use social media marketing sites like Twitter with search marketing tips like this in mind, you’ll be seamlessly increasing your traffic in no time.

Facebook, now known worldwide as a social media marketing site, didn’t start out that way. When it was initially launched in 2004, it was just a site for college students to interact, eg, share photos, send messages, update personal profiles, etc.

It quickly grew to become one of the most popular sites on the web. As of July 2010, it had more than 500 million users worldwide. And of course with numbers this large, it’s one of the premier social networking sites for businesses of all size.

The “Secret” to Standing Head and Shoulders above the Competition on Facebook

Many companies fall into the trap of using the same Facebook setup that casual and non-professional users have. In order to ensure that your presence on Facebook is as professional as it can be, customize your firm’s page.

By customizing your company’s page, you can easily make it stand out from the competition. To do this, simply use Static FBML (Facebook Markup Language). It allows you to not only create unique tabs and content, you can also change where visitors land when they visit your Facebook page.

This can be extremely important in converting mere prospects into customers. Why? Because the default landing page in Facebook is “the wall.” But, if you have a particular product or service you want to feature, you can have prospects land on one of those particular pages instead.

It’s the little edges you gain in business that, over time, make a big impact. And, the reason they do is because most don’t go the extra mile. They stop at “good enough.” To get the edge in social media marketing, go the extra mile – and reap the rewards of doing so.

Let us know what is working (or not) for you in social media marketing. Are you getting a good return on the time and money you’re spending? Are you reaching your customers on Facebook and other sites?

When most business stick their toes in the search engine marketing waters, one of the first things they hear about is search engine optimization (SEO), as it relates to content. Not a lot of talk revolves around images; but it should for, everything on your site (eg, videos, photos, etc.) can help it rank well in search engines. And, this is what search engine marketing is all about.

The first thing you should know is that search engine bots (ie, spiders) can only read (search) text. And this is why things like Flash should be kept to a minimum, or not used at all unless it’s really, really necessary to your industry (eg, you’re a web developer, animator, movie maker, etc.).

Following is a mini tutorial on how to name your site’s images so that it ranks higher in search results.

Name Images Using Keywords: For example, instead of naming a photo photo.jpg1, name it pay-per-marketing-tips.jpg (if PPC marketing is what your firm specializes in).

Use the “ALT” Tag in Your Coding: Piggybacking on the last point, add the ALT tag when you name images. This tag explains what an image file is. A completed coded image with this tag may look like this:
<img src=”images/pay-per-click-services.jpg”width=”250″ height=”135″
ALT=”ABC Firm pay per click marketing services”>

Text Surrounding Images: The text that immediately surrounds your site’s images is valuable real estate from an SEO standpoint. Hence, you should do things like put captions on all of them and use keyworded text (ie, SEO content) in this space.

If you do these three things, your images (just like your site’s content) will increase the effectiveness of your search engine marketing efforts.

B2B search engine marketing is all encompassing. It includes everything from pay per click (PPC) to search engine optimization (SEO). One of the fastest growing niches of B2B search marketing is social media. Sites like Twitter and Facebook sign up tens of thousands of new users per day and drive massive amounts of traffic to online businesses.

Hence, it’s essential to not only have a presence on a few of these sites, but to also pay attention to how your business is perceived via them.

Following is some insight into how to use social media sites – the right way – to brand your business.

B2B Search Marketing & Social Media: Don’t Sell, Inform
Have you ever known someone who talked about themselves incessantly? They never ask others, but are always divulging what they want, what they need, what they’re doing, who they met, etc.

Annoying, isn’t it?

People do the same thing in social media. For example, they always tweet their latest blog post or product/service offering, but never bother to retweet content from others.

While it’s perfectly fine to use social media to market your products and services, remember that most people look for information before purchasing. So share relevant information – pertinent to your niche — with them. This builds a relationship, which leads to sales.

Once you set up a social media account – whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc. – stay active on a regular basis. Otherwise, you run the risk of making your business appear “flaky,” which is never a good thing in business.

Social media is an ideal B2B search marketing strategy to build a relationship with prospects. And when they’re ready to buy, your firm will be front and center.

To learn more valuable strategies on B2B search marketing and social media, join top B2B Marketers June 23 in San Francisco at the B2B Search Strategy Summit and “Discover the Top 7 Ways to Increase Your B2B Search Marketing Profits.” We look forward to see you there!

If you offer only one way to access information on your site, you could be losing customers. B2B marketing in a multi-media world means paying attention to how your prospects like to receive information – not how you like to offer it.

B2B Marketing: Something to Think About When It Comes to Multimedia

Have you ever visited a site and wanted to access some content, but it wasn’t in the right format for you? For example, let’s say a site offers a free report you’d really like to have, but it’s a video. What you want is a pdf file because you want to print it out and read it while you’re taking the train on your evening commute home.

B2B Search Marketing Tip: Diversify to Capture More

While multimedia formats have been around for years, many businesses are not up to speed when it comes to integrating these choices into their website offerings. This could be because many businesses still grapple with what it really means to do business online.

Many have just gotten around to grasping the basics of B2B search marketing. So thinking ahead of the curve is not a consideration at this point.

In order to effectively compete online though, it’s critical to stay in tune with what your customers want – even if it forces you to play catchup.

One easy way to increase your site’s traffic is to offer info in a variety of multimedia formats. By giving your site’s visitors options, you put them in control of how they receive and process information.

And that’s what B2B search marketing is all about – giving customers what they want – how they want it.

One of the easiest ways to stay front and center with your prospects is to blog.

Blogging is free, it’s easy to start and you can personalize your brand via this medium. For these reasons, it’s one of the most effective B2B search engine marketing weapons in your online advertising arsenal. But, it can be time consuming.

And if you’re a small business without a dedicated blogger on staff, it can eat up a lot of your time. However, it doesn’t have to. Following is one way to make sure you use this B2B search marketing weapon frequently and effectively, but also time consciously.

B2B Search Marketing: Contact Prospects Daily without Being a Nuisance

Have you ever belonged to any kind of mailing list where you got daily tips? This could be anything from a link to a useful industry website, to a link to a relevant news article, to a daily joke about your niche.

In today’s world, we’re all programmed to consume in small bites, ie: 15-second news bites, 30-second promo videos, 140-character Twitter tweets, etc.

Hence the groundwork for a blog that dispenses compact daily tips, tricks, ideas and/or jokes has already been laid. A blog like this is quick and easy to update, and it keeps your brand in front of customers.

And, this is really what B2B search engine marketing is all about – staying top of mind so that when customers need what you have to offer, you’re the first one they think of.

All B2B marketers know the importance of keywords to their online marketing initiatives. But, many make a common mistake when it comes to keyword usage. Following is what it is and how to fix it.

Are You Using Keywords That Are Important to You or Your Customers

There’s an idiomatic expression in marketing that goes, “What’s in it for me?” Marketers are supposed to answer this with their customer in mind. In other words, they should be using keywords that reflect what’s important to their customer, NOT what’s important to them – which is exactly what many do.

While many offline marketers have embraced this line of thinking, many online marketers haven’t. One reason may be that for many B2B marketers, they use applications, processes and marketing procedures that their customers don’t know anything about.

All a customer may know is that they land on a site, it has what they want – at the right price – so they purchase.

But what if your customer is not landing on your site, but your competitor’s site? Are you using the right keyword phrases – keyword phrases that likely prospects would use to find your site?

In B2B search marketing, one of the most difficult things to do is divorce yourself from high-tech processes and procedures and think like your customer. When your customer sits down to conduct a web search, what will they type in? It may be very different than the terminology reflected in your marketing that you “think” they’ll type in.

While B2B marketing reflects a 21st world, the foundation of what works is as old as marketing itself, ie, “What’s in it for me?” And, in this case “me” is your customer.

Did you know – The b2b Search Strategy Summit will bring 150 B2B senior level marketers together to hone their seach marketing skills and increase their campaign results on June 23, 2010 in San Francisco. Will you be there? Check it out at http://www.b2bSearchStrategy.com

If you’re a Google AdWords pay per click marketer, you know how important it is to rank high for the right keywords. However, many PPC marketers pay too much – unintentionally. Following is one way they do so, and how to avoid it.

Are Your Organic Listings Robbing You of Valuable Pay Per Click Dollars?

In the 8/24/09 post here entitled, Get FREE Traffic with Pay Per Click Marketing, we stated:

Once you start to get traffic [via paid search methods like pay per click], search engines notice. Once search engines notice, they rank your site higher – which means it gets even more traffic. This last part is significant because it means you start showing up higher in organic (emphasis added) traffic results – ie, getting free traffic.

The point is, traffic brought via pay per click ads can result in higher organic listings. So for example, if your site is ranking in the top 3 in organic listings, check to see if you can adjust your bid(s) to be in the fourth or fifth position.

As you already hold spots in the top 3 organically, there’s no need to spend more pay per click dollars to rank in those positions.

How to Get Double the Bank for Your Buck Using Google Pay Per Click Advertising

To further capitalize on this, make your Google AdWords pay per click marketing dollars do double duty. How? When you’re doing your keyword research for your AdWords campaigns, optimize your pages so that they rank high for these same keywords organically.

When used in this manner, Google pay per click marketing makes an excellent “tester” for your search engine optimization efforts, for it measures the possible success/failure of keywords before you go through the time-intensive process of optimizing your pages using them.

If you want to learn important strategies for AdWords success, then sign on and listen to the expert led sessions during the AdWords Advantage Online Summit going on now through March 25th!

Wanna know the easiest way to capitalize on all the leads your Google AdWords pay per click marketing efforts are bringing you?

Get organized BEFORE you start an AdWords campaign. It’s so simple that most internet marketers don’t even think about.

The Psychographics of the Average Internet Marketer

We say this a little tongue-in-cheek, but really, the average internet marketer is so overwhelmed that they wind up doing only what is necessary to keep things rocking along. This is why most never get around to things like categorizing leads, doing follow up, designing special offers for their various niches, cross-marketing to their database, etc.

You can take class after class, learn “inside secret” after inside secret and buy the latest pay per click campaign management software, but if you don’t take the time to get organized – to use all of these tools – you will never realize their full potential.

Google PPC Marketing Advice: What to Do Before You Start Your Pay Per Click Campaign

So, before you start a Google pay per click campaign, decide:

How you’re going to store leads (do have a way to capture leads don’t you?). You should store them with some type of data management software;

When you’re going to follow up;

How often; and

With what kind of offer.

This is the bare minimum.

Keeping the Pareto Principle in mind (ie, 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your customers) you should have no problem increasing your bottom line if you get organized – before you start your Google AdWords pay per click campaign.

Have you heard? The AdWords Advantage Online Summit starts this week (Mar. 9)– there’s still time to register and save 40%!  Learn how to fast-track your AdWords profits during 14 educational sessions led by the Pay Per Click experts on March 9-30, 2010.

Just announced….The AdWords Advantage Online Summit (AAOS) has announced the schedule of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising online training classes to be held  March 9-30, 2010.  All AAOS participants will save 40% upon registration by the early bird date (March 4).

“Next week we will unveil the first ever online educational AdWords training summit for marketers to learn unbiased Google AdWords techniques from experts who have run multi-million dollar Google AdWords campaigns,” said Mary O’Brien, Adwords Advantage Online Summit and PPC Summit Founder.

 These 14 educational classes uncover the value of AdWords tools, resources and methodologies, and gives students ample opportunity to learn how to improve their AdWords campaigns through hands-on guidance for results at the top of Google.

Each one hour class will teach advertisers step by step how to leverage AdWords to their advantage and develop more profitable campaigns. Attendees will learn Google AdWords Pay Per Click solutions for all business types — Ecommerce, B2B, SMBs and more. Attendees will be able to access the recorded class for 90 days.

AdWords Advantage Online Summit Training Schedule (March 9-25):

> AdWords Optimization in Challenging Times
> Promoting to the Right People at the Right Time - Ad Scheduling & Geo-Targeting
> Assign Proper Attribution and Solve the Complexities of Measurement
> The New AdWords Interface – Save Time and Optimize Your AdWords Campaigns
> AdWords on Steroids: Implement Advanced Strategies Leave Your Competitors Gasping
> Slash Click Costs (37%) & Increase CTR (82%) Using Mathematical Formulas
> 30 Tips in 60 Minutes: Convert MORE AdWords Visitors into Buyers
> Understanding the B2B Buyer Sphere: How to Apply Enquiro’s Latest Research to AdWords
> Utilizing SEO and Social Media Marketing to Improve AdWords Strategy
> Researching and Managing Keywords-the Key to Google AdWords Success
> Get the Most out of Google Analytics & Google AdWords
> Contextual Advertising – Best Practices and Hot New Secrets
> AdWords for Local: Sort Heads from Tails, Find Free Clicks and Calls 

More information at AdWords Advantage Online Summit.