Okay, so you’re planning a big event and someone asks: “Hey, how do we use social media to help promote our event…?”

The follow up questions start coming hard and fast:

• What social media tools should we use?
• When should we get started?
• What do we need to do?!

Sound familiar?

It will once you start planning your next local meetup, webinar, or product launch.

But no worries… we’ve created our helpful guide, “Marketing Your Events with Social Media”, with you in mind.

Our downloadable guide takes you through the steps to successfully marketing your event with social media, including:  how to get started; the social media tools you’ll need; and how to create the right promotion plan (pre, during, and post) for your event. We’ve even included best practices, how-to’s, and lots of examples!

Download a free copy of Leadtail’s Guide to Marketing Your Events with Social Media.

So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to start getting the word out about your event!

And don’t forget to send us an invite, too!

Looking for help with other online marketing, advertising, and social media questions?  Then check out the online marketing and advertising resources section of the Leadtail website. We’ve compiled lots of helpful information to help you market and grow your business.

And let us know how we can help. Ask your question on Facebook, tweet us @Leadtail on Twitter, drop us a line – or just give us a call at 888.330.3236

Trying to market your business, but think it’s too early to issue press releases and make social media worthwhile?  Think about it – is it ever too early to start generating interest and gathering information from prospects?  Of course not!  With a little creativity and the techniques outlined below, you can learn a ton, and create some valuable assets that will help you market your business now and well into the future.

But let’s get specific – what can you do?

Build up interest and audience.

Maybe you’ve seen some of these “coming soon” pages for products or apps that are not yet widely available?  This is a great way to generate interest for your product or service, and stock your email contact list and social audiences with early adopters (who tend to be willing to accept a product with a few rough spots in exchange for being the first to have access!).  Check out the example below.

This type of page lets you accomplish a few things:

• Quick and easy development cycle: Build a website landing page using tools like Unbounce or Optimizely to quickly create multiple versions of your “Coming Soon” page from a single template (you can create your own, or use one of the templates provided).  Keep it clean and simple; you want to create enough interest that visitors give you permission to engage with them again via email or social media.
• Test your marketing message: Use those “Coming Soon” landing pages to try out a variety of messages, tag lines, calls to action, lead capture forms, etc.. Determine if there are specific messages that are more effective at engaging the folks that will ultimately become your customers.
• Build up your social audience: Start signaling what type of product this is and who it is for. Worried you won’t have anything “worthwhile” to tweet or post about your business yet? No worries – follow and “like” other people or companies that are in your general area of interest, and share items from those sources with your audience.  Be sure to add a novel comment or perspective; don’t just pass on random items without showing how you add value!

Do social media via your personal network.

Share updates about your business via your LinkedIn status (not on LinkedIn?  You should be!). If you blog, use the apps on LinkedIn to display your blog feed on your profile. Participate in discussions on question and answer sites like Quora. Have lots of coffee meetings. Get honest, constructive feedback from your network, and listen to the questions people have after you tell them about your business. Ask people to tell you why it won’t work. Would they recommend it to a friend? Why wouldn’t they use it? How would they describe your business to their colleagues? Value and take to heart feedback that indicates you may not have it quite right yet. If you can’t get the people who find YOU interesting and worthwhile to engage with your business, how in the world will you capture the interest of busy, distracted strangers?

Lighten up about press releases!

It’s not the daily briefing at the White House, and you don’t have to have earth-shattering news to do a press release. Did you sign a new partner? Make a key hire? Attend an industry event? Write a new eBook? Expand your service offerings? All of these are worthwhile subjects for a press release, as they give you a chance to put your key messages into context, and hand feed them to social media and search engines. Press releases get extremely favorable treatment by Google, and are a great way for a your fledgling business to “own” Page 1 of search results for your key phrases.

One other note on press releases: you don’t need to hire a PR firm to do a press release (though there are lots of really great firms that can help when the time is right). Use one of the services on our Best Free and Affordable Press Release Services list  - they’re easy to use, and will often throw in some free SEO advice on your press release to help you get the maximum bang for your buck.

Looking for help with other online marketing, advertising, and social media questions?  Then check out the online marketing and advertising resources section of the Leadtail website. We’ve compiled lots of helpful information to help you market and grow your business.

And let us know how we can help. Ask your question on Facebook, tweet us @Leadtail on Twitter, drop us a line – or just give us a call at 888.330.3236

[Editor's Note: Special thanks to Karri Carlson for this guest post.  Karri leads Marketing & Customer Development at Leadtail.]

Everyone (and I mean everyone) we talk to understands the importance of SEO for their website, blog posts, press releases, and, increasingly, social media efforts… but still search engine optimization seems to, well, scare them.

In truth there’s so much information out there on the topic, it can be a little bit overwhelming to figure out where to begin!  So it’s understandable why business owners, entrepreneurs, and even marketers find the terminology, (so-called) tricks, and lack of immediate results for SEO confusing … if not downright scary.

But never fear, as the Leadtail team has put together a primer on search engine optimization that takes the fear, uncertainty, and doubt out of the process. It covers the basics of SEO, how it works, and key SEO best practices that you (yes, you!) can start doing today to start making it easier to find your business online. Plus, it offers lots of links to other search engine optimization resources. All to help you master SEO… or at least sleep easier at night!

Download a free copy of Leadtail’s “Who’s Afraid of SEO” primer.

Btw, if you have other online marketing, advertising, and social media fears, then check out the online marketing and advertising resources section of the Leadtail website. We’ve compiled lots of other helpful information to make your life a bit, uh, less scary. = )

And let us know if we can help. Drop us a line, or just give us a call at 888.330.3236

Congratulations, your website is getting lots of traffic. That means your Google advertising, email marketing, search engine optimization, and social media efforts are finally paying off. The hard part is now done, right? Well that depends…

Are you generating the signups, leads, and sales you expected… or scratching your head wondering why more website visitors aren’t taking the actions you want them to?

Well, if you’re in the head scratching camp (most folks are), then it’s time to create your website traffic map. What’s a website traffic map? It’s a flow chart of the path most visitors take to the pages you care about (i.e. sign up, subscribe, contact us, and order pages).

In a perfect scenario, once someone gets on that path, they’ll take it all the way to the end – you convert them into a signup, lead, or sale.  In the real world, this rarely happens.

Why don’t more convert? In many cases we simply make it too hard for them.

We distract visitors with lots of choices along the way… ad banners, blog posts, facebook buttons, to name just a few.  Sometimes our web page takes a long time to load and prospects get impatient. Or maybe we’re asking for too much information before they buy from us. And yes, we occasionally send visitors to a page that’s been moved or deleted… yikes!

A website traffic map will pinpoint the bottlenecks where you’re losing the most prospects.  Here are the steps to create your very own traffic map:

1. Collect website traffic information using your web analytics software. (Remember: without web analytics your website is flying blind).

2. Determine your websites most popular pages. These will be the 3 or 4 pages that get the most visits (your homepage is usually number one).

3. Look at the percentage of visitors that get on your conversion path. For each of your most popular pages, see what percentage of visitors take the action you want most: click on your free trial button, subscribe now link, or enter your online shopping cart path.

4. Identify the bottleneck pages. Most conversion paths are made up of 3 to 5 pages including an entry page (e.g., homepage or product page), a signup page or order form, and a confirmation page.  On which pages are you losing the most prospects?

5. Test and fix the bottleneck pages. Make your free trial button bigger, remove unnecessary links from your product page, ask fewer questions on your order form… you get the idea!

6. Track your progress and keep improving. See how the changes are improving things (or not) and try again. This is where understanding A/B testing comes in handy.

Creating an actual website traffic map is just putting this data into boxes and arrows so you can visually see what’s happening.

Each of your most popular pages should represent an entry page box for your conversion path. The next box reflects the next page in your conversion path, and so on, until the last box which is your confirmation or thank you page. Add in arrows so you can visually see the flow. Then put in the percentage of visitors at each stage of the traffic map. Then identify and improve the flow of your traffic map (steps 4 to 6).

Over time you can also create traffic maps for different types of website traffic (e.g., paid vs. natural search) and conversion paths (e.g., newsletter signup vs. contact us form).

So don’t let your prospects get stuck in traffic… create your very own website traffic map so you can generate more signups, leads, and sales!

Let us know if we can help. Just give us a call at 888.330.3236.

Sure, Google is the biggest advertising company on the planet. Who can argue with $30 billion in revenues and more than one million advertisers? As a matter of fact, if your business has a website then chances are pretty good you’ve already used or considered Google’s AdWords program to promote your business.

Well, guess what? Google advertising may not be right for you…

Keep these questions in mind when considering Google for advertising your business:

1.  Are you tracking your ad campaign results? Definitely have web analytics set up before starting any ad campaign. That way you can track what happens after a “searcher” clicks your text ads. How else are you going to know if you’re sending prospects or lookie-loos to your website? Plus, it’s kind of hard to figure out the maximum you can bid per click… unless you know how many clicks are converting into sales. Remember: without web analytics your website is flying blind.

2.  Ready to become a search engine marketing expert (or hire one)? The moment you turn on your AdWords campaign, you’re competing against the best search engine marketers in the world. The only way to have a chance is to know what you’re doing. Do you? If not, then be ready to invest lots of time learning how to set up ad campaigns, pick keywords, write text ads, etc. Otherwise, plan to hire an expert to do it for you. Our list of the best search engine marketing services for small business is a good place to start.

3.  Have time to manage your ad campaigns? Your competition is constantly updating and optimizing their ad campaigns to improve performance; not to mention that Google likes to occasionally change the advertising rules. So you can’t just launch your ad campaign and forget about it. No way.  If you aren’t actively managing your Google AdWords campaigns then don’t be surprised when your results get worse over time. (Sorry!)

4.  Make enough profit to pay for Google? Let’s say you pay Google $1 per click and 1% of those clicks turn into sales (reasonable assumptions). That means you’ll be paying Google $100 for every sale you generate. No problem if you’re making at least that much in profit from each sale (and can sell those customers more stuff in the future). But it’s not so great if you’re making way less than that. Bottom line: Do the marketing math before you start your advertising campaign.

5.  Are prospects “searching” for your solution? Search engine marketing works best when lots of people are sarching the Internet for a product like yours. Have a niche or highly specialized product? Or maybe it’s a new service that customers don’t know how to search for (e.g., new Facebook app)? You may be better off advertising on industry-specific websites, using email marketing, leveraging social media, or even placing offline advertising to reach your audience.

Whether or not advertising with Google makes sense for your business, you should always explore other advertising options. That way you won’t have all your advertising eggs in one basket.

Still not sure if Google advertising is right for you? We’re happy to share our opinion… just give us a call at 888-330-3236