Two of the most important factors for any growing online business are SEO and social media marketing. But is one more important than the other? Should you put more time and energy into one and not the other? Which can make a bigger difference on your bottom line?

Let’s explore some of these questions.

SEO Is More Important for Raw Traffic

SEO will get you more traffic up front than social media will. Though social media is gaining more and more traction every day, they still don’t come close to what a number one ranking can do for your site in terms of raw traffic.

On the other hand, top search rankings are hard to achieve. They can often take months, even years. They take a lot of time investment and often a lot of monetary investment as well.

SEO is a longer-term strategy than social media. You might get more traffic overall than social media, but it takes more effort and has a randomness factor as well. You don’t know if it’ll actually work.

Social Media is More Important for Reputation

On the other hand, social media is free. It’s easy to manage and doesn’t take months before you see results. That said, you won’t see the same kind of traffic that you’d get from a number one ranking search listing.

Social media has a lot of side benefits that go beyond the raw traffic stats. Prominent social media figures build a strong reputation in a space, which often increases their conversion rates because of their reputation. Likewise, they’re more likely to get invited to speaking engagements, where many profitable business deals can be made.

The key to good social media marketing is to provide something your users want, consistently. If that’s a weekly how-to video, then make sure you provide that video every week, without fail.

The Two Are Merging

Most SEO experts agree that search engines are taking many social media factors into account when ranking pages. In other words, instead of just looking at backlinks and PageRank, the search engines now look at your Facebook likes and reposts as well to help determine rankings.

When it comes down to it, the secret to successful SEO and social media are really the same. Provide good content, consistently. It’s what people tend to pass on and it’s what the search engines are looking for.

One may be more or less effective for specific businesses, but if you focus 90% of your efforts on creating a great user experience and 10% on marketing techniques, you’ll have a great chance of succeeding with both.

Is one more important than the other? “Yes,” in the sense that one may work better than the other for your business in the short term. “No,” in the sense that in the long run, they’re more or less the same.

Do you enjoy using the internet as a source of education and entertainment? If you do, there is a good chance that you know what YouTube is. In fact, you may even be an active member of the YouTube community. With so many YouTube members and site visitors, there are many individuals who wonder what exactly it is about YouTube that makes it so popular. If you are one of those individuals, you will want to read on to figure out why.

Perhaps, the greatest reason why YouTube is so popular is because of all that you can do on the website. For instance, if are looking for entertainment, you can choose from an unlimited number of YouTube videos, many of which you are sure to love. If you want to do more than just watch YouTube videos, you can even make your own. YouTube allows all registered member to post an unlimited number of videos on their website. Whether you want to create a video blog, a comedy skit, or an educational video, you can easily do so.

Another one of the many reasons why YouTube is so popular is because it is free to use. Any internet user can simply visit the YouTube website and start viewing videos. Although it is advised that you register for a free YouTube account, this isn’t required to watch YouTube videos. With that in mind, if you would like to rate videos, leave comments or upload your own videos to YouTube, you will need to register for an account. Registering for a YouTube account is free and it only takes a few minutes.

When it comes to uploading videos onto YouTube, it is relatively easy to do. That is another one of the many reasons why YouTube is so popular. Even those with a minimal amount of computer experience can make and share videos. All you really need is a video recording device, such as a cell phone with video recording capabilities, a camcorder, or webcam. Most computers already have movie editing software programs installed, but you only need to use movie editing software if you would like to edit your video before sharing it within the YouTube community. When it comes time to upload your videos, you just need to follow YouTube’s uploading instructions and then your videos should be available for viewing within minutes.

As for watching videos on YouTube, it was stated above that you have an unlimited number of videos to choose from. This is another one of the many reasons why YouTube is such a popular platform. No matter what you like, whether it is romance, comedy, or educational pieces, you should be able to find whatever you are looking for. Popular YouTube videos include video blogs and comedy skits. Finding videos to watch is easy as well. YouTube allows you to browse through all of their videos or you can perform a search to find something in particular.

Link building is an important aspect of a successful search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. The more quality links you have coming into your site, the better. It the sites linking to you are quality sites and contain your keywords, even better. However, on the path to the number one spot on the page rankings, many business owners make a few common link building mistakes.

Limiting the sites you target for backlinks – Yes, high page ranking websites and pages are lucrative opportunities. However, don’t neglect the smaller businesses either. Focus on getting a wide variety of links from relevant websites.

Not using keywords, anchor text, in your backlinks – Keywords are your bread and butter. Not only do they help motivate actual clicks, they help the search engines index properly. And they boost your search engine ranking, which is of course the ultimate goal. Skip using anchor text like <Click Here> or <Download Now>. Use your keywords!

Too many links on a page – Too many links on the page confuses not only the website visitor but also the search engines. It divides the power of your links and minimizes their effectiveness. Instead, choose your links wisely. Choose the ones that seem to carry the most weight.

Counting on social media to provide links – Social media links are not considered quality links. And most networking sites nofollow external links. (A nofollow is when a webmaster tells the search engines to essentially not pay any attention to links.) However, don’t neglect social media as a tool to generate awareness for your content and your website.

Placing backlinks only to your homepage – One rule of thumb is to identify key strategic pages and work to increase backlinks to those pages. Your landing page likely already receives an abundance of links.

There are of course other mistakes which it shouldn’t be necessary to mention. However, just to make sure we’re all on the same page and striving for success, these mistakes include linking to link farms or link exchanges. They also include avoiding any black hat or spammy behaviors. And no cloaking.

Link building is about creating great content, building relationships online with your associates, prospects and customers. It’s about planning and creating a strategy. The old “throw spaghetti to the way to see what sticks” approach won’t get you where you want to go. Avoid these mistakes, create a link-building plan, and regularly assess your success.

Google Analytics is a handy tool you can add to your website pages to learn valuable information. This information can help you fine tune your website and your business. Let’s take a look at some of the information Google Analytics offers and how you can use this information to your advantage.

What Google Analytics Provides

A Google analytics report breaks down the information into a list of sections. They include:

Site Usage which includes:

• Visits – Total number of visits to your site
• Page views – Total number of pages visitors looked at
• Pages/visit – Average number of pages viewed per visit
• Bounce rate – The percentage of users who left after viewing only one page on your site. Aim for under 50%.
• Average time on site – How long a visitor stayed on your website
• New visits – The percentage of people who haven’t visited your site before.

Visitor Overview – this section breaks down the visitor information into more detail including the number of pages viewed overall and the average page view per visit. This information can be invaluable. However, it takes a bit of analysis to find the noteworthy information.

For example, if you notice that there are only three page views per visit that might make you worry. People aren’t spending much time on your website. However, if the majority of your visits are not new visitors, meaning people are coming back to your website for information. Then the number of page views may not be so concerning. It’s likely that the visitors are just reading your new content.

Traffic Source overview – This section tells where your traffic comes from. It lists how many came from search engine traffic, for example Google Organic, but how many came from direct traffic and from referring sites. You can use this information to fine tune your traffic generation strategies.

For example, if you find that 60% of your visitors are coming from Google Organic, that’s good. However, if only 15% are coming from referring sites, you may want to increase your link building strategy. And vice versa, if you find you have low Google organic numbers, you would then know it’s time to work on your keyword placement and optimizing your content and your site.

The traffic source overview also tells you what top keywords people used to find your content. This is of course extremely helpful when creating your content plan and learning what keywords people use and what they’re looking for on your website.

Content Overview – This section of the report lists the top content and the page views for each piece. This is ideal information for building and creating your content strategy. It’s more beneficial however, if you compare the information over time and look for trends. Is your top article always a tips sheet? Is it always on the same basic topic? Google Analytics compares your present week to the prior week. However it’s more advantageous to look at your content overview information over a longer period of time.

Google analytics provides valuable information for you to fine tune your keyword strategy. It helps you learn what content people prefer on your site. And it helps you learn where your visitors are coming from so you can adjust your traffic generation strategies as needed. It’s not a crystal ball that can put you inside the minds of your prospects and visitors. However, the information Google Analytics provides is extremely useful to build your business and your business website.

It’s no secret that getting younger customers is critical. It’s important, because you could potentially have a client for life if you handle the relationship correctly.

So how do you attract them? Here are few tips to make it happen:

Know where young consumers hang out

One of the obvious places they go to is social media sites. The biggest age group using the popular social networking sites is the eighteen to twenty-four bracket. YouTube, Twitter, and MySpace are all examples of social sites that offer a huge amount of profit opportunity.

Know who your customer is

Trying to target all young people is not going to work because it’s not specific enough. You will want to narrow it down to a certain age and gender to be more effective. This will enable you to speak exactly to your customer, instead of trying to design some generic advertising that appeals to everyone.

Get in a conversation

More and more, young people are doing business with companies they trust. Trust is one of the most important words today for business.

How do you build trust?

You have to show you care about their needs, and can help them. If you ram one advertising message after another down their throats, they will know you just want the money.

So you first have to identify their needs, and show that you have a solution for them. You want to engage your target market in a conversation and answer their questions.

This will establish you as an expert. So you first have to give them a lot of great free information. If your free information isn’t that good, they will assume that what you are selling isn’t that valuable either.

Ask them questions. This will show them you care about what they want. After you’ve done this, you can explain how your product would meet their needs.

Use video

As mentioned above, video social networking sites are really taking off. Video is one of the best ways to engage your customer. This is because people can comment on them, much like a blog.

From the comments, you will be able to see the needs that your customers have. Then you can design you product to better meet those needs.

Emphasize benefits

More than ever, young people don’t care about how long you’ve been in business. They are interested in what you can do for them. Your credentials aren’t as critical as the benefits you provide to them.

So don’t talk about yourself, talk about what you can do for your customer. It might be useful to mention you are an expert, but the main focus should be on the benefits.

Remember, you are in the business of helping people. That’s the only way to make money. So engaging your customers, finding out their needs, and meeting those needs is how to attract younger customers.

Sharon I am so glad to have you here today and I appreciate you coming. If there is one thing that I am passionate about, it’s virtual assistants. They totally rock don’t they? The educational opportunities available to them this  year at OIVAC are mind blowing. If they don’t have their tickets yet, they need to get them right now at www.OIVAC.com!

Now onto Sharon!

_________________

Hello Becki,

Lady, I’m glad to be able to stop by and chat. My train ran out of fuel, and I had to make a pit stop and recharge the engines. But, I’m back on track and ready to go full steam ahead. Pump your questions into my engine and let’s chug along the virtual assistant education and information track. Whatcha got?

What are some of the little known target markets a VA can focus on?

Becki, I’m asked this question often, and have created a short list for your readers:

• financial planners
• architects
• nonprofits
• churches
• artists
• chiropractors
• appraisers
• bookkeepers
• accountants
• associations
• building contractors
• import/exporters
• market research companies

There are literally hundreds of “little known” target markets VA can focus on to build their practices. These markets may not have much information about or even be aware of virtual assisting. Because of this lack of awareness, approaching these industries provides an excellent opportunity for a VA to penetrate these groups and become the “go-to”, resourceful VA.

To accomplish this, identify the market/profile that best matches your idea of a “dream customer”, conduct research and survey the particular industry, become knowledgeable about the group’s issues/problems, communicate with members and eventually be able to offer solutions. In other words, first identify their pain, let them know you are aware of it, possess the solution and provide the soothing balm.

How can a VA find the right client for them?

Who you work with is your choice and has a huge impact on your happiness, productivity, quality, and the future of your business. Working with the right clients is absolutely critical. The wrong client can kill your morale and cost you big opportunities. Working with the right client isn’t work at all — it’s a pleasure.

However, there are several factors to consider during your evaluation:

Feeling Trust!

Working closely with someone is a rather personal experience and you want very much to positively present this person in a way that represents the business in an exceptional manner. However, if a person bombards you with a million questions and wants to know why you can do a better job than someone else, you’re probably heading in the wrong direction fast!

Consciousness of Success

The person you work with has to be willing to control their own destiny. I mean, they cannot place their success in your hands – and should not hold YOU responsible if they do not achieve it. Each business owner is responsible for their own success, and once an individual recognizes (and projects it), they have developed the consciousness of success I refer to.

Conduct a Thorough Interview

As part of our interview process, drilled down into the potential client’s business model and financial objectives. Ask lots of questions to see if you can contribute significantly to a company’s success and to see if they meet your criteria for the right fit.

See the Opportunity and Weigh the Risks

Clients are an important and valuable asset and a major investment of time, processes, brain power, etc. Complete this brief exercise to help determine your dream client.

1) Get a piece of paper and draw 3 columns.
2) In the first column list your clients in order their profitability – most profitable at the top, least profitable at the bottom.
3) In the second column, write the annual revenue the client brings to your company.
4) Use the third column to apply adjectives to each client (ex: pleasant, fun, easygoing, motivated, distrustful, draining, etc.)
5) Now go back and circle all of the clients that have negative adjectives.

Usually, the most PROFITABLE (don’t confuse this with gross sales!) are also the ones with the most positive associations (pleasant, easy, friendly, respectful, loyal). The least profitable usually have the most negative associations (high maintenance, untrusting, hagglers, etc).

Bottom line, carefully define your dream customer. Write down as many things about them as possible – their annual revenue, personality, industry, business approach, and the amount of money they spend with your company. In most cases, this description will align with your clients who are at the top. Now, commit to using the criteria you just defined as your new rulebook for accepting new clients. If a prospect doesn’t fit, then respectfully decline the engagement. Only take on new work that is a match. Pretend your business is an exclusive nightclub and you only let a select few past that velvet rope. And yes, your company is that special!

*Exercise provided by: www.kinesisinc.com

What kind of technical education opportunities are available at OIVAC?

OIVAC 2010 has quite a bit of technical education opportunities planned this year. They include:

• Landing Business Success with a Facebook Fan Page (FBML)
• Shopping Carts for VAs
• 1Shopping Cart Mastery: Marketable Skills to Make You a Star
• Digital Security Salad
• How to Incorporate Camtasia Screencasts into Your VA Practice
• Creating a Membership Site to Use with Your Clients
• Incorporating Video into Your VA Marketing
• How to Add Website SEO Services to Your VA Practice
• Basic PC Maintenance – Tools to Keep Your PC Functioning
• Turbocharge Your Wordpress Blog
• How to Get Out of Second Gear and Get Your Wordpress Site Moving

But don’t despair! We also have excellent business and marketing sessions scheduled, too. Stop over to the seminar schedule to check out dates/times and registration packages.

Becki, it was great to stop over today. I particularly enjoyed discussing finding “the right client” and hope the information will open some eyes and help struggling VAs reevaluate how they decide who to partner with.

Next stop, Amy Blesser’s Virtual Services 4 U, where I’m sure Amy will ask very interesting questions.

Sharon Williams is President of The 24 Hour Secretary and chair of the Online International Virtual Assistants Convention. Don’t forget to stop by OIVAC and checkout our lineup of savvy business owners. Visit the schedule and register for the Technology or Business/Marketing Tracks to propel your business to its next plateau.

If your marketing campaign just isn’t working, or you’re just getting started, take a long look at what you’re trying to do.  Is it exciting?  Is it eye catching?  Is it unique?  If not, you’re campaign is likely too bland to get anywhere.

It used to be that simply advertising your business could get you more than enough customers, but this is normally no longer the case.  Look around you.  There are advertisements EVERYWHERE.

There are commercials, print ads, billboards…your mind is overrun with images every day.  And if you run the same old marketing campaign, you’re just going to blend in with everyone else.  If you want to get business, you need to get noticed, which means you need to stand out from the crowd.  And just being good at what you do is probably not enough to get that done.

The trick to getting noticed is being creative.  It may be how you advertise, what your ads look like, or the deal or gimmick you’re offering.  Whatever it is, something has to stand out if you want to get noticed.  Coming up with a great idea doesn’t always happen in an instant.  It takes thinking, research, and lots of brainstorming.  Whether it’s taking a few days to work on it, or simply setting aside some time at the end of every day, you have to put some oomph behind it if you want to get results.

Believe it or not, while it may take some creativity and crazy thinking, you may find that the crazy thinking has already been done for you.

An example?  Instead of sending out a boring old mailer, there are companies that make unique mailers like messages in a bottle and coconuts.  Sure, other people have access to buy this stuff and use it too, but if you’re doing a mailing campaign, what are the changes you’re competing in the same market with someone who uses the same product?  Slim to none.

Plus, if you get two coconuts in the mail, are you really going to read what’s inside one and ignore the other?

When it comes to marketing, flashy isn’t always better.  Sure, you don’t want to be boring and blend in, but the key to standing out isn’t different fonts, bright colors, or making claims you can’t back up or keep.

The real key is being unique and different.  Often a simple eye-drawing headline is enough to get people to notice your ad, catching their attention without blinding the customer.  People want to do business with someone they can trust, not just someone who can yell the loudest.

While it may take effort and some amount of investment, if you come up with a good marketing campaign, the end results will likely be more than worth the effort.

Yes, someone said ‘Blog Crazy’ but I actually said ‘Blog Crazy Special’ because that is what is going on… right now! What is this bloggy craziness, you ask? It is nothing. Do not worry about it. Forget I said a word. I am warning you, this could help your business strategies.

[Redirecting Your Attention]
Did you read the blog post that Yaro Starak wrote about creating change in your life. In order to change your life, you have to really examine yourself to… well you can read it.

Yaro is always interesting. However, I suppose that you want to know about this Blog Crazy Special.

Fine. But do not say that I did not warn you.

It is no secret that I am a fan of Open Source Programming. Well, this Blog Crazy Special was built on Open Source Programming and all the wondrous benefits of it. Some of the additional programs that you will get with this special are tools for Google. Soon you will be creating Google friendly site maps, using Google Analytics to track your stats, optimizing your blog for SEO, hiding pages (like thank you pages and client specials) and more.

Now, you will get much more than some applications made for Google. You will also get an events calendar, a social connection tool (for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and many more), one-click upgrades and many more apps pre-installed for you.

If that were not enough, you will get a real self-hosted WordPress installation on your own hosting account. On top of that deal, we will custom design your chosen blog theme’s header graphic.

All of this is one crazy deal to get your business moving. The Blog Crazy Special is $349.97 and includes one full year of hosting. Yes it’s a blog (and so much more). Yes it’s crazy (because of all the extras). But, you are the one who makes it special [Awww. I called you special. Oh wait, the good kind of special, like when your significant other says that you are special to them. That kind of special. Whew.]

So, if you are interested and ONLY if you are interested, you can read about the Blog Crazy Special and order it for yourself.

By: Leonardo Wood