Sunday, November 30, 2014

December 2014 Ecommerce calendar #ecommcal

Ecommcal December 2014




Note: : Your ‘Top 10’ for 2014! Channel Advisors ranked their customers’ top e-commerce shopping days of the 2013 holiday season using GMV data to help project which days in 2014 would be the highest selling for you. I would love to hear how you did on each of these days and I will be posting a summary of my results on my G+ page.


December 1 (Cyber Monday) #1
Need we say more?

Dec 2   #5
Update shipping deadlines on your eBay Stores, e.g., “Order by X date in order to get shipping Cyber Monday by X date. You may also be updating social media, your website etc.

Dec3


Using this Calendar can help you through the holiday season with the confidence that your campaigns continue to produce. Dont forget to subscribe to our Jan 2015 calendar.



Feel free to post your Dec tasks in the comments below. Feel free to add an industry hashtag.

Friday, October 31, 2014

November 2014 Ecommerce calendar #ecommcal

Ecommcal November 2014




NOTE: Consider creating product bundles or complementary product pairings as a nice value add to your customers. A good example is including a Car charger with a cell phone or memory card with a camera. This could have added benefits in your product SEO but really makes it easier for your customer to choose you over a competitor that isn't offering a bundle and asking the customers to go find each product. 

Now is a good time to check and verify your supply chain to make sure they can meet expected purchasing demands. This means warehouses can receive new shipments while also expediting your orders. The shipper also provides tracking numbers, this can help reduce charge backs on slow or non delivered goods during the holiday rush. Remeber you can also have shipping delivery notices trigger follow up CRM surveys, reviews, social media posts or create added lists for email campaigns. While it may be aggressive to try to put those in place now, you can added to next years calendar project now.


November 2
Comparison Shopping site rate changes usually occur this week so make sure your prices are set for the holidays.

Nov 3
Review and adjust look-back window on bid rules to be shorter. Many keyword bids can spike at this time of year and you dont want to be left out with low bids. One Best Practice I have used is to - Use about a 5- 7-day look-back in November before Thanksgiving. Don't forget to move your triggers down too.

Nov 4
SEMA Show starts

Nov 5
You can start bidding your paid search holiday keywords up slowly. Reviewing your results across all your analytics is useful from here until the middle of Jan. in order to spot trends or potential issues. IF you have year over year numbers they should help on how aggressive you need to bid paid search or execute social media coupons. The numbers will help you make smart decisions.

Nov 11 ( Veterans day)
Turn on themes, campaigns etc.

Nov 14
Make sure your social media plan is in place for the Cyber Five(Thanksgiving day through Cyber Monday). Drive followers to your website with product videos, photos and links. Remember that physical locations can be more affected by weather but a good mobile site is available in the palm of your hand to complete the transaction now. Make sure your credit card merchant and hosting provider can scale up for the cyber 5 or know what your options are. A 1 hour outage during this time can mean hundreds, thousands, or even millions in lost revenue if your hardware is down to slow. Check your SLA's. In a survey of consumers in 2012, Keynote found that the majority of smartphone users expect delivery of a Web page in four seconds or less, and tablet users cited three seconds or less.

Nov 17
Comparison Shopping sites Shopping.com and Shopzilla rate changes have historically occurred during this week.

Nov 24
Upload your Paid Search Black Friday ads and set them as paused or set the scheduled date time for live.

Nov 26
Adjust your paid search look-back window on your bid rules to be 1-2 days, in order to quickly respond to seasonality. Move your triggers down as well. Review analytics daily or even watch in real time if you notice areas of interest.

Nov 27 ( Thanksgiving)
Monitor any live campaigns for today. But I suggest your wait until tomorrow and have your team ready to response to demand.

Nov 28 ( Black Friday)  #2 see Dec Calendar for explanation 
Watch your Paid Search ad position and competitor ads; adjust as needed. Monitor competitor social media as best you can.
Campaign that target non-shoppers or other holiday activities(football maybe) are a good time to build some brand loyalty or get some new views. FYI you might be able to use the weather or breaking news to help target your site/products if you are able to respond quickly to current events. Take an active role right now.




Using this Calendar can help you through the holiday season with the confidence that your campaigns continue to produce. Dont forget to subscribe to our Dec calendar.



Feel free to post your December tasks in the comments below. Feel free to add an industry hashtag.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

October 2014 Holiday Shopping Readiness - How to test your site

Begin Testing Early

Holiday promotions can be fiercely competitive, it's little surprise that many retailers plan all seasonal activities in advance. To ensure you're delivering an optimal user experience, consider testing the promotional campaigns you plan to run as early as October to be certain they run properly. A bonus? You can see which promotions your customers have a more favorable response to and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Find more things to do during October for your ecomm or health care site

Thoroughly QA Your Pricing

Check all of your pages to ensure both full prices, social media prices, and discounted prices show up correctly. This goes hand-in-hand with testing your promotions and social media

Check All Steps of Your Holiday Checkout

Consider providing customer service numbers in case shoppers have a last-minute question, or offer a live chat session during the shopping experience. For customers who aren't yet ready to buy, offer them the chance to save items to a wish list. And, if possible, consider extending your cart life since many shoppers may choose to return later to complete the transaction. Show if other social media contacts have recently purchased goods or reviewed items from your site and show those 

Tune Up Your Site Search
Anticipate what shoppers will be looking for by revisiting what they searched for last year. Knowing what was popular in the past will help optimize your site structure going forward. This includes your search keywords to the product specific page or reviews. While we are on search, think about socail media searches and the keywords and pages to make a quick purchase

Test Common Navigational Paths

When consumers shop for gifts, they tend to browse more than search. Test how they navigate your site to ensure you're making the shopping experience as easy and seamless as possible. These insights can also give you the ability to help them find the products for which they may be searching. So if you can offer suggestive selling make sure it is in these navigational paths

Optimize Your Product Detail Pages

Be sure all promotions are displayed and decision-making criteria, such as warranty, key product details, size and color, are listed above the fold. Check images and pricing for accuracy and clarity. 

Explore Remote Usability Testing

Even though browsing your site may be simple and user-friendly to you, will holiday shoppers agree? You should consider doing some usability testing when your holiday catalog is ready in a staging or development environment to ensure it's as easy to navigate as possible. There could be some issues you may have overlooked entirely. Don't forget to check your mobile or social sites for simple navigation and usability. Using your analytics you may find tuning your site for mobile or social traffic will increase your purchases.

Review Tech Stats to Ensure the Site Can Handle More Traffic

Even if you have done everything you can to merchandise your site for the holiday, it will all be for naught if the back-end can't support the additional traffic. Work with your IT team(cloud provider) to set up and schedule load testing to prevent downtime during the most critical holiday shopping times.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Simply ACA

Why use a small benefits shop when even the smallest businesses can use ADP to simplify ACA compliance.
Enjoyed this video on using ADP to simplify ACA compliance. A little long but really gets the point across http://ow.ly/CSCnT  what do you think?

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

October 2014 Ecommerce calendar #ecommcal

Ecommcal October 2014




NOTE: eMarketer estimates that by 2017, 15% of all online purchases will take place via mobile devices although I already have numbers to show that 52% of orders on my sites are from mobile devices.. Have you created and maintained an adaptive version of your website that works well on multiple mobile devices? Or if your big enough, separate mobile apps? This link also talks about re-imagining your storefront to assist your mobile e-commerce site. We see examples of this already that seem to be fairly successful. Movies that also offer Dinner, REI and their rock climbing wall, some examples that may be less obvious are Healthcare facilities like doctors, urgent care or hospitals e-commerce sites selling health insurance, monthly maintenance plans, drug store items. Car dealers selling auto insurance or the other way around. The Tesla model could be used with vehicle delivery from your insurance agents location. This could open up new avenues of revenue for some business owners that understand the buyer experience and coordinate across multiple business types. Throw services into the mix and you could have a real advantage if executed early.

October 1
Shop.org annual summit Starts in Seattle today. Start update if you intend to do any Columbus day event.

Oct 2
Prepare your social media and content for Open enrollment for benefits, private healthcare marketplaces that can start next month. Think about short lived coupons, event, deals to drive early open enrollment. It is not to early to start your email campaigns with last years selections and elections.

October 3
Add or update original content and product-description content to your site to encourage shopper retention. Revise/adjust  cross sell and up sell product relationships/rules based on your purchasing data or new product margins.

Oct 6
Start monitoring your top sellers and Order Defect Rate (ODR) using your analytics.  Then go back and set up A/B testing to work on changes to flow and content to keep your ODR to under 1%

Oct 8
Work to make sure your Order defect Rate is under 1%. Make sure your entire team knows the goal and works to meet it. Finalize any Columbus day content.

Oct 13
Columbus day, update content.
Luxury Interactive starts today in New York

Oct 16
Start preparing your holiday search key words including using them in your social media, print,& visual campaigns as soon as they are ready. Also think about targeting your competitor brands/products with your keywords.

Oct 17
Create a calendar for your social media holiday coupons, events, contests,etc. Post short-lived coupons on  your social media (Facebook, G+,Pintrest, Instagram, you tube, Vine and Twitter) throughout the holiday season. Dont forget to put them on your web site or links directly to these coupons from your site to your Social Media directly. Encourage shares, like, etc to access coupon.

Oct 19
Now is the time to get a jump on Black Friday by planning a “week before Black Friday”  or "a week before cyber Monday" sale.

Oct 20
Fashion Digital New York starts. Day 1 (October 20) will be held at Digital Sandbox (55 Broad Street) and will be a day of learning for key personnel who have been mandated with solving specific issues in the near term. Tactical and educational workshops in three key operational categories will be presented by the experts and aimed at e-commerce managers who are implementing solutions within the next 12 months. Day 1 is open ONLY to Retailers. Non-Retailers (i.e. service providers) are restricted from attending Day 1 except sponsors.
Day 2 (October 21) will feature a speaker roster of industry innovators who are shaping tomorrow’s strategies and the future of fashion e-commerce. Day 2 is open to both Retailers and Non-Retailers and will be held at Pier Sixty.

Oct 21
Confirm or update that you’ve added Facebook Like and Google +1 buttons to all your product pages. and updated  you tube or vine videos from you or customers showing them un-boxing, using, enjoying products or services from you. Ask for their endorsement(great summer contest that can help drive brand loyalty)

Oct 22
Start testing your social flash-sale strategy for the holidays. Try a theme like elections or back to school. Now is also the time to test in store drivers to see if you can increase in store purchases or multi channel purchases.

Oct 23
Start sending holiday messaged data feeds to comparison shopping engines. Create a comparison shopping engine email list(or tag them(create tracking code)) in your CRM in order to continue to do this and make it easy to see which one are driving traffic to you.

Oct 24
Start sending Open enrollment data feeds to comparison benefit engines. Now that consumers have more choices don't assume they are happy with their employer plans.

Oct 25
Set up or review your Halloween keywords and ad copy.

Oct 28
eTail Brazil  starts in Sao Paulo

Oct 29
 WWD Apparel & Retail CEO Summit Starts in New York

Oct 31 (Halloween)
Launch your Halloween campaign postings and photos.



Using this Calendar can help you take some pressure off this busy fall season with the confidence that your campaigns continue to produce. Dont forget to check back for next months calendar.

http://experienceditprofessional.blogspot.com/2014/04/october-2014-ecommerce-calendar-ecommcal.html

Feel free to post your Oct tasks in the comments below. Feel free to add an industry hashtag and I'll add it for you for next years calendar.

Sunday, August 31, 2014

September 2014 Ecommerce calendar #ecommcal

Ecommcal September 2014



NOTE: Consider creating product-review videos for your top-selling products. Not only will they help with SEO, but they will also give shoppers the closest possible experience to shopping at a brick-and-mortar store.

September 9
Consider re-introducing previously removed, slow moving, or excess inventory products
 http://ow.ly/w8nuH #ecommcal

September 16,17
EVENT: Women'sWear Daily Digital Forum in New York. Are you ready for fashion week?
http://www.wwd.com/fashion-calendar

September 18
Finalize your holiday Q4 planning. Analyze your labor day results and see if it will help fine tune holiday plans. http://ow.ly/w8nuH #ecommcal

September 22
Prepare your Halloween keywords, ad copy, measurements http://ow.ly/w8nuH #ecommcal

September 26
Lock down which products are to be promoted throughout the holidays. http://ow.ly/w8nuH #ecommcal

September 29,30
EVENT: Shop.org Annual Summit   2014 Seattle
http://summit14.shop.org/


Using this Calendar can help you during the busy fall and holiday season with the confidence that your campaigns continue to produce. Take a look at Oct to see if you can start any tasks now.

http://experienceditprofessional.blogspot.com/2014/04/september-2014-ecommerce-calendar.html

Feel free to post your Sept. tasks in the comments below. Feel free to add an industry hashtag per task. I'll include it for next year for you.

Thursday, July 31, 2014

August 2014 Ecommerce calendar #ecommcal

Ecommcal August 2014



NOTE: Use analytic's to figure out the cost of acquiring a customer. Measure the success of your customer services by following up with a brief survey after any support interaction with a shopper. Automating this process in your CRM system makes this easy and you can set it up so it is not a burden to your customers.

August 4
Prepare to launch back-to-school campaign postings, graphics and photos.
 http://ow.ly/w8jWI #ecommcal

August 6
Start preparing for the holidays now.Take time to analyze your Q4 performance now. What did you do right/wrong last year? Start a plan to maximize this holiday season. http://ow.ly/w8jWI #ecommcal

August 11,12,13,14
EVENT: eTail East in Philadelphia this week. #ecommcal

August 18
Now is a good time to Start planning your holiday marketing promotions and timing. http://ow.ly/w8jWI #ecommcal

August 19
Holiday Prep-Calculate advertising spending YTD and use those numbers to determine how to maximize your planned holiday budget. http://ow.ly/w8jWI #ecommcal

August 21
Prepare your paid search keywords for your Labor Day campaigns. http://ow.ly/w8jWI #ecommcal

August 26
Set up or update all your social properties & webstores and start testing keywords and measuring clicks. Limited resources? Prioritize products so you work on the high priorities first. then if you run out of time or resources you hit the important stuff already.  http://ow.ly/w8jWI #ecommcal

August 31
Launch your Labor Day campaign postings and photos. http://ow.ly/w8jWI #ecommcal


Using this Calendar can help you take some time off this summer with the confidence that your campaigns continue to produce. Dont forget to subscribe to our July calendar.



Feel free to post your June tasks in the comments below. Feel free to add an industry hashtag.

Monday, June 30, 2014

July 2014 Ecommerce calendar #ecommcal

Ecommcal July 2014

Trying to help you stay ahead of your social media, keywords, paid ads, store and website updates all in one place.

NOTE: The start of Q3, and it’s already time to start thinking about the holiday season. Stay tuned to industry trends and forecasts through my blog and google+ page.

July 1
Is your website/stores optimized for mobile shoppers? Browse your site from multiple devices and identify any areas for improvement.  http://ow.ly/w7NnC  #ecommcal

July 3
Launch Independence Day campaign postings, graphics and photos. http://ow.ly/w7NnC  #ecommcal

July 7
Paid Search/Webstores Edit ad copy and site links to get rid of all Independence Day promotions. http://ow.ly/w7NnC  #ecommcal

July 14
Review your analytic's from independence day campaigns. Make updates for next years campaigns and updates to improve future campaigns.  http://ow.ly/w7NnC  #ecommcal

July 21,22,23
EVENT: Shop.org 2014 summit starts today.  http://ow.ly/w8epA  #ecommcal

Start you Planing & Preparation for back-to-school campaigns, graphics, etc http://ow.ly/w7NnC  #ecommcal

July 27
Prepare your back-to-school paid search keywords and ad copy. http://ow.ly/w7NnC  #ecommcal

July 31
Consider bidding more on back-to-school-related items adwords to give them greater visibility. With a calendar of local school years you can even work to target specific local searches. http://ow.ly/w7NnC  #ecommcal


Using this Calendar can help you take some time off this summer with the confidence that your campaigns continue to produce. Take a look at Aug calendar now to get a jump on tasks.


Feel free to post your June tasks in the comments below. Feel free to add an industry hashtag.

Friday, May 30, 2014

June 2014 Ecommerce calendar #ecommcal

Ecommcal June 2014

Note: Trying to help you stay ahead of your social media, keywords, paid ads, store and website updates all in one place.
Heading to IRCE this month? post live pics and other social media updates with your team from the event

June 2
 Change spring messaging to summer on all promotions on your web stores, social media, landing pages & website. #ecommcal

June 10,11,12,13
Are you attending the Retailer Conference and Exhibition (IRCE) Chicago? #ecommcal

June 14
Launch your social media Father’s Day campaigns postings, graphics and photos. Ask customers to post with your products. #ecommcal http://ow.ly/w7ysm

June 17
Sell Cross-Border? Are you aware of the different tax thresholds of each region you sell to? Take time to educate yourself on these rates and ensure you’re compliant. #ecommcal http://ow.ly/w7ysm

June 19
A good time to set a reminder to regularly check data quality. Review descriptions and confirm that your images are of good quality. #ecommcal  http://ow.ly/w7ysm

June 23,24,25,26,27
Its CE week are you there?  Why did you go? http://ow.ly/w7HRN #ecommcal

June 23
Use your analytic's to review your fathers day campaigns, note performance and updates for next year or future campaigns. http://ow.ly/w7ysm  #ecommcal

Using this Calendar can help you take some time off this summer with the confidence that your campaigns continue to produce. Dont forget to subscribe to our July calendar.



Feel free to post your June tasks in the comments below. Feel free to add an industry hashtag.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

May 2014 Ecommerce calendar #ecommcal

ecommcal for May 2014


By Mike Ferretti

NOTE: It’s almost summer! Start promoting items like outdoor furniture, grills, bathing suits,
sunscreen and more.
Returning shoppers are key to success. Email loyal customers with a special promotion to say
thanks.

May 5
Do you have your  Memorial Day keywords ready to go? Just completed my updates http://ow.ly/w89hY  #ecommcal

May 7
Marketing experts can create more effective marketing campaigns by identifying how most people find your site, and what they do once they get there. If you provide those experts access to the analytic's. http://ow.ly/w89hY  #ecommcal

May 10
Launch your Mother’s Day campaign postings and photos. Verify measurements and expectations. http://ow.ly/w89hY  #ecommcal

May 12
Website managers can improve site engagement by tweaking pages that have
been causing your visitors to leave. If you provide them the analytics so they know which ones are causing users to bounce. http://ow.ly/w89hY  #ecommcal

May 13
Magento annouces release of its latest enterprise edition eCommerce platform version 1.14.  This version include a new Responsive Reference Design Theme, Bill Me Later as a payment option and PayPal Express Checkout improvements. Magento Enterprise Edition will also include faster search indexing. The upgrades make it easier and less expensive for retailers to provide seamless mobile experiences and provide new payment options for customers, improving conversion rates and sales. Magento Enterprise Edition (v 1.14) Unlocks the Power of eBay Inc.

May 14
Prepare Memorial Day marketing plans, including campaigns, graphics, copy, etc. http://ow.ly/w89hY  #ecommcal

May 15
If you have put prices, promotions or specific features of a product or your business in paid search ads, review them and ensure they’re accurate. http://ow.ly/w89hY  #ecommcal

May 16
Review your analytic's to see how you did with your mothers day campaigns. Make notes for next year and future campaigns. http://ow.ly/w89hY  #ecommcal

May 19
Prepare Father’s Day  paid search keywords. http://ow.ly/w89hY  #ecommcal

May 20
Think about a higher bid for your memorial day paid search keywords for specific products. http://ow.ly/w89hY  #ecommcal

May 21
EVENT: etail Latin America starts   #ecommcal

May 25
Launch your Memorial Day campaign postings and photos. http://ow.ly/w89hY  #ecommcal

May 29
Prepare Father’s Day social media marketing plans, including campaigns, graphics, copy, etc. http://ow.ly/w89hY  #ecommcal


Monday, March 24, 2014

New Role New Blog Focus - Using Social Media

 I started a new job recently, I consider myself lucky that this new role is virtual.
Like most of you starting a new role is very exciting. I have never started a role virtually before but have plenty of experience working virtually both at home and around the world from an office, airport, hotels and even in moving taxi's. Some people might be thinking but how do you get to know your team. I am not that worried. I find in my roles lately I have a few key people that you work with everyday. Everybody else is matrixed so being able to bring people together get them to communicate and work to complete  a common goal is something I have had to do for at least the last 15 years. In fact in my previous role while onsite with over 65 people reporting to me I still found myself doing the same thing.
So check back or subscribe as I talk about my new role and how I use social media in this role and e-commerce or SaaS cloud applications.

Monday, March 3, 2014

12 Step Framework to Build Your Digital Presence

To get a comprehensive online presence there can be an overwhelming amount of work to do. The comprehensive nature of this mindset is certainly reinforcing the overwhelming amount of stuff there is to do online if you are to tap the full potential of building an Online Presence. Below I walk you through how to perform the necessary tasks over the next year. You can start at any time ( how about now) so you earn the rewards of a better digital presence.


Month 1 – Listen
Set up a digital listener to actively hear what’s being said to you, about you, about your market, your competitors and by your customers, is step number one. Employ a combination of free and/or paid tools such as #GoogleAlerts, #HootSuite and #SproutSocial to filter, aggregate, follow and monitor your online presence and establish a routine of processing, acting on and sharing this information on a daily basis.
Month 2 – Set-up Your Content Calendar
Using your own brainstorming combined with some smart keyword research from a tool like the Google Keyword Tool, set up a calendar of monthly themes that will make up the focus of your content for each month. This can be a mix of your own content, guest content, video, audio and related content produced by others. The content created around these foundation themes will become the backbone of your SEO efforts. ( link to post on Content Calendar) Later we will talk about how to use tools to pre schedule some content based on this calendar.

Month 3 – Make Your Content More Sharable
 You are going to audit everything you’re already put out there and make it easier to share. That means adding social media buttons to all of your content through  plugins, snippets of code or links with tools such as #Sociable or #Giga or from social media adding ways for people to share your content and adding sharing options to your printed and offline materials like QR codes or #shazam. In addition, you’re going to start exploring ways to share more of other people’s content. Drawing links to your content is essentially networking and you start this process by filtering and sharing good stuff that your followers and readers want to know about. One of the best ways to do this is to scan your blog subscriptions and employ a tool like Buffer to share 1-2 great finds each day. All new content should then be easy for others to share.
Month 4 – Create a Point of View eBook
This month comes with one and only one task – create an eBook that will be the backbone for your lead capture program. By creating a content tool that summarizes how your brand is different by either presenting highly valuable content or outlining your unique methodology you create the foundation for trust building while giving people a reason to start a conversation beyond Twitter. This also gives you a tool to start reaching out to potential strategic partners for list swaps, guest blogs, and cobranding opportunities.
Month 5 – Clean Up Your Content Delivery Platform
It’s time to take a good hard look at what we used to call your web site. Content delivery now means your blog, podcast, videos, eBooks, newsletters and brand assets placed in other networks around the web such as YouTube and Slideshare. And, of course, this also means your web site, your email capture process, your contact process, your about us page, your on page SEO factors and your page load speed. Virtually consolidate to your web site in order to drive SEO points and analytics.
Month 6 – Become Serious About Landing Pages
Now that we are producing keyword rich content it’s time to start driving people to get that content, to download that eBook, subscribe to your content updates and to connect for specific events and presentations. This month you’re going to get serious about creating landing pages for very specific purposes such as signing up for your email newsletter, downloading your eBook or attending a free educational online seminar. You can use outside tools such as #Unbounce or internal tools such as Premise to help create landing pages with lots of functionality. Once you learn the mechanics of what makes a good landing page you can replicate the process to test and personalize for a variety of environment and occasions. Here’s a great primer on landing pages.
Month 7 – Revamp your Email Communication
This month you’re going to get serious about remaking your basic email newsletter as well as employing autoresponders to help follow-up with prospects and customers. By adding your monthly content theme material mixed with other people’s content you’ll produce a far more valuable newsletter that people want to receive. In addition, you’re going to start using your service provider’s tools to segment and personalize content for different audiences.By employing auto responders you can create personalized content while reducing the work you need to do to set up and maintenance.
Month 8 – Tackle Social Profiles
I know that with all the emphasis on social media these days that waiting until month eight to mention it may seem odd. My view is that without addressing many of the steps that  in the previous months, social media participation is simply a distraction. Now, I can make a case for claiming and building profiles whenever you can, but serious consideration should be focused here now. Get serious about claiming, completing and enhancing your Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook profiles. Don’t stop there, branch out to industry networks, Yelp, Foursquare, Instagram and Pinterest , Vine profiles. Consider a service like #KnowEm to create even more profiles. While we are hear it might be a good time to talk about service like Hootsuite to help you manage your social media posts to work with your content. By scheduling posts in advance you can spends  few hours to update your posts for the whole month or quarter leaving you more time to be a part of the conversation rather than trying to keep up with content.
Month 9 – Address Social Integration
Now that you’ve built profiles it is time to start going deeper. Choose the social network that allows you to reach the greatest number of prospects. Depending upon your business this might be LinkedIn or it might be Facebook. I believe that most businesses need to up their game in a number of networks to cover the favorite for their entire market, but it’s important to also get much deeper in at least one so you can learn how to engage in a way that attracts leads and converts fans and friends to email subscribers and customers. Then you can expand that effort. The tools you set up last month will help you converse in the social media that your customer uses.IE a long facebook post will never work in twitter. So planning your posts in your calendar are just as important as the overall theme.
Month 10 – Work Out Conversion
This month your entire focus should be on the conversion process. So many business focus on generating traffic when the money is in, well, the money. This begins with understanding everything you can about the usability of your web site, A/B testing your landing pages and setting up analytics goals and funnels to track every ad, call to action, headline and offer. Tools like UserTesting.com, Google Experiments and Google Analytics make up a nice low-cost toolset for these functions. This is where it all starts to pay off. Up to this point you have been getting ready, now is where the payments start to come in and you will want to know why they are coming.
Month 11 – Start Employing Smart Advertising
Here’s another category that lots of people want to jump right into. It’s true you can run some Google AdWords and maybe generate traffic before you ever create any kind of organic presence, but I believe that your advertising gets far more effective if you can use it to create awareness for strong content offers, have a firm foothold in some social networks, are testing and tweaking your conversion tactics and are prepared to capture leads and build the kind of trust that helps you fully monetize your traffic. The work you did in month 3 and 4 can really start to  pay off now by gather leads and links from your network rather than only for every dollar you spend in ad words. Organic growth trumps paid growth and now your ready.
Month 12 – Develop Mobile Friendliness
We end the year by looking at ways to tap the fact that almost every one of our prospects and customers have mobile devices(phone, tablets, desktop, laptop, etc) that allow them to shop, search, research and buy products and services from local and global companies. The need to make your content mobile and tablet friendly is essential. Once that is taken care of you can branch out and explore mobile advertising, location-based offers and SMS communication knowing that the foundation built over the past year will allow you to maximize the growing mobile space. Google says that over 90% of online transactions complete over at least 2 devices so make sure your content can help that transaction complete when the customer is ready.
author: MikeFerretti01
Google

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Are you struggling to keep up with content and social media? See if this will help.

That right, if you are struggling to get your content out, figuring out what to publish, how to sync your social media, how to align with product or website release, how to assign work to team members. Read on.

This post is for you. You can skip my story and drop to the bottom if you simply want to get to the meat of what to do when and how but I hope my story has some edutainment value as well.

I was learning my way through the social media, blog, video, images in order to enhance my eCommerce sites and provide some value about the products people needed. I thought initially they were 2 different things. You build your store(or have me do it for you) then you worried about things like SEO, SEM, Adwords, social media, video, and any other content types you can think of IE marketing your site. I have to say I was really struggling. My day job was to build functions for eCommerce sites. IE how to display products so people would buy them. I have to say my early stores were very spartan on content and as a result very low performers. In trying to figure out how to increase visits and ultimately conversions to my site I learned a lot. I hope sharing these will help you advance your site and commerce much faster. Or to at least be armed with good information to be able to find the right people that can help you.

Build some marketing campaigns into your sites.

  1. Find, build or use my calendar to begin to organize your information. 
  2. Pick a theme for each month ( some people may have a theme for a quarter) but try not to have a theme any shorter than a month for now.
  3. Break the month into weeks
  4. Decide if you plan to publish content daily, weekly or monthly ( you don't have to be consistent but it could help build a following and drive traffic to your site on a more regular basis. Start with monthly)
  5. Start writing in what content you plan to publish on what days and even down to what time
  6. Add in social media posts that will happen before and after the content is published
  7. publish your calendar for your team or others in your company like marketing, sales, product management, support, customer care etc. 
  8. Assign tasks if you can or create your plan to perform these tasks.
  9. Align keywords, tags for optimal SEO advantage.
  10. Review comments and join in your conversations.

  1. This calendar will begin to help you communicate to your team and the entire organization what content is planned for when and what social media is also planned to support driving traffic to the content. You may be surprised at how this brings teams from all over the company together and how many ideas this help coordinate.
  2. Use your theme to line up with product specials, hot topics, calls to action, new software releases. I found the IT know when they plan to release software but the marketing team rarely know and in cases does belive the date anyhow. So having time between product launch and announcement can be useful to work out issues
  3. Then break each month down into the weeks IE week 1, weeks 2 and plan if you will publish content daily or weekly .
  4. Will you publish social media updates before to build some interest, as your publish your new content, and how long after the content is up. By using automated tools you can build your content and even social media posts well in advance of their publish date and well after. Thsi also frees up time for real time posts with on topic or other events that happen to come up
  5. Some idea on what to write about or videos to record can be found in this link "Content hacks for fun"I found these to be useful to help think of content topic but also to help orginze data I found on those topics. IF I happen to read an article about one of my themes I quickly capture the URL so that I can reference the article later or even reach out to the author for a quote or more info for my content.
  6. Create some social media planned posts. you can always post live at the time but having pre-planned and automated posts will help reduce the stress and keep your community up to date even if you're on vacation.
  7. IF you don't have enough stuff for content I bet  other groups like sales or customer service can provide some ideas based on questions they receive from potential customers. But this is also a great time to sync up with other groups to get the most out of the content, social media and things like press releases and new product/service updates. Also if there are a large number of calls into your call center creating content that address the issue might be a good last minute update to reduce the cost and noise in the call center.
  8. If your not doing this all by yourself this is great time to start assigning task(or if you have asked guests to create content for you) now is the time to clearly let everybody else know what is expected of them and by when. If you have planned for content to go live on June 1 then you will likely need it at least 1 week before to proof and to update social media. Also this is a god time to get any approvals or funding now that you have your basics in place. This is a mix of creative and project managment but timelines and due dates are still a part of the business.
  9. Dont forget to align your tags to keyword and proof for SEO keywords. By adding tags(keywords) to your calendar based on themes you can begin to line up all your digital efforts for the best possible outcomes. In fact this can be a full monthly theme to talk about how you find your keywords(or create unique one for your product or serivce)
     
  10. Review comments. As you begin your social media posts about your pending content be sure to review the comments and join the conversation to create a connection to your customers. As readers post comments or add updates to your social media be sure to get in the conversation so be sure to allow time in your calendar for somebody to reply. Best will be that you have access to many groups to help you. Remember this is your chance to help solve customer issues, help customers see the benefits of your products or services for sales and even create advocates that support your products and services just because they like them..
Try these 10 steps by spending about 1 hour once a week or month. Then I would love to hear how it is or is not working for you.

Author: mikeferretti01