12 Key Social Media Takeaways from Top Social Media Experts

At Instant E-Training we recently concluded our popular “Social Media for Business” WebConference and Certification event. We had over 23 live Social Media training sessions conducted by over 18 leading social media experts. Understandably, there were some pearls of wisdom thrown by all our experts over the course of 6 weeks. So we thought to compile what we thought were 12 key takeaways from our Social Media WebConference event. You can implement these for your business right away.

So here are 12 key Social Media takeaways by 12 Social Media experts:

1.Act – If you aren’t getting pushback then you aren’t pioneering – Erik Qualman

Don’t be afraid to try new things and get reactions. Every pioneer makes a bold statement which not everyone always agrees to initially. Often people will hesitate to try new things, but don’t let that discourage you. Act, make bold choices and interact with your audience.

2. It’s not about creating accounts, It’s what you do with them – Krista Neher

There was once a time where companies and organizations created accounts just to say that they had them. Now, it is imperative to use them to connect well with your audience. Make your company one that can be personable and one that people can connect with.

3.Collaboration is necessary for Social Media success– Chris Barger

“No other business strategy executes independently; social shouldn’t either”.

All of your social media efforts should align themselves with the same purpose and remain consistent. Along with that, your whole team should also be on the same page with what their role is in order to work together effectively. Involve your legal team, build social media policies, and keep everyone in the know.

4. Life is not about being liked it’s about being effective – Chase McMichael

The goal with Facebook and social media is not just for people to merely nod their heads in agreement and throw a thumbs up, but to take action. It’s about getting your customer to be actively engaged with your product or organization through social media. You need to have the right content to facilitate the greatest interaction. Find the common interests that your brand’s audience shares and give them what they want. The goal is that through their engagement people would have a great sense of what your company is about and choose you when given the opportunity.

5. Content Isn’t Great Until It’s Shared – Lee Odden

Give your audience something worth talking about. Create content that is music to their ears. You can create this share worthy content via a blog and re-purpose it in many fashions. Participate in the conversations that form and engage the growing network to motivate your audience to share.

6. Twitter Golden rule – Give before you get – Hollis Thomases

You need to give your followers things of value to them. Don’t just ask for a sale – instead give them thoughts, ideas, and tweets worth re-tweeting. You want to give your audience information that is of value to them. It is then that they will pay closer attention to what you have to say. Just don’t expect to receive anything, and give, give, give. If it is done right, you will start to naturally get the attention you want.

7. Figure Out Your Customer’s Dream & Sell them – Brian Carter

Remember that the medium is the message. Something that you might share in an email might not be as well accepted as it would be on a Facebook wall. Whatever it is you share, you want it to be memorable. Selling the dream doesn’t mean the product itself, but rather what it represents for your audience. Sell them awe, connection, belonging, fun, happiness.

8. For small business owners, Word Of Mouth Starts With You– Sima Dahl

For a small business owner, no one is going to retweet for you or share your posts like it usually is the case with big brands. So the conversation starts with you ….Creating memorable moments starts with you. Select a social media channel, assess your content, start a conversation, and be creative. Be a real person with real honest opinions. Find people, engage them, and tell them what you are up to. Encourage the conversations that proceed.

9. Our networks are our most important assets – Neal Schaffer

Our personal and professional networks are the most important assets we have and so we should treat them as so. LinkedIn is a great way to access and form that network. Our network provides us with credibility and possible opportunities. On LinkedIn you can join groups, participate in events and even be introduced to new people that your friends and colleagues know. We have a platform to listen, engage, and connect. It’s simple and a great way to tap into one the most important assets you have.

10. Online Video can help captivate, engage, and stimulate your audience – Bob Tripathi

Videos are great because they captivate the viewer’s attention and stimulate their senses via sight and sound. They keep the viewer engaged. In most cases emotion is easily conveyed and thoughts are easily spread. It can be consumed on a variety of devices, making it also easily accessible. People are able to engage with this media by liking, sharing, and commenting, making this a valuable tool in persuasive efforts.

11. What can be found, can be optimized – Bob Tripathi

If there is any content found on the internet, there is a way to enhance its searchability via the web. Whether it be a blog post, video, or a website be sure to use the right keywords, tags, and phrases to ensure those who go searching will find you. Know what your audience is searching for and how they go about looking for it. There is always a way to enhance your content by way of optimization whether be it your web site, videos, images, or any other digital asset.

12. You cannot qualify a gain without the ability to measure it – Marshall Sponder

Not all social media marketing efforts lead to a ROI. You might need to examine your goals and modify them in order to measure your ROI. Figure out your goals and determine how you will measure progress. The ROI comes from tracking what was invested to execute your plan against the results as outlinedby way of Social Media Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s). Find a practical way to measure and qualify your gain.

These were just a few takeaways from selected speakers and by no means encapsulates the overall knowledge and insights shared by our awesome social media speakers. It’s your turn now, to decide which key takeaway do you identify with the most.

The Pros & Cons Of Tumblr For Online Marketing

One of the predominant questions surrounding Pinterest’s meteoric rise to the upper echelons of social media visibility has been “didn’t Tumblr already do this years ago?” Indeed, the very image-heavy microblog aspects which lie at the core of Pinterest’s astounding success are essentially copied from the Tumblr model which was attracting billions of page views well before Pinterest was a gleam in their founders’ eyes. 

When online marketers think of social media, Tumblr is not necessarily the first candidate, but it does offer some interesting possibilities. Here’s a list of Pros and Cons to help you decide if you want to dive in.

Unintuitive interface

Tumblr is essentially a microblogging platform set up along Twitter lines, but it allows longer blog entries and incorporates an emphasis on images which Twitter lacks. The site is primarily utilized by visually oriented microbloggers to showcase their own art work, photography, or images. Tumblr is set up to appeal to entry-level bloggers and is significantly easier to master than a platform as onerous as WordPress.  

When it comes to learning curve, Tumblr unfortunately falls behind competitor Posterous as the interface is not intuitive and some functions are a befuddling. For example, the suggestions for first-time users are only accessible after the creation of the account and profile, which is a bit like the prototypical closing of the barn door after the horse is gone. 

Both Tumblr and Posterous could learn a lesson or two from the upstart Pinterest which is structured in such a way to accommodate the most computer-phobic user imaginable and is thus rated as super-simple.

Instances of utter obtuseness

Tumblr suffers from several instances of utter obtuseness:

• Three of the types of posts supported are quote, link, and chat. Why the first two are a “type of post” rather than an element of one is a mystery, and chat is not at all what you’d think it is (a way to chat with other users) but is an indication that the blog contains dialogue! Huh? 

• The dashboard is also obliquely designed to be too similar to your blog! Beginners could easily become confused and think that they’re actually composing their blogs when they’re in this Dashboard which varies significantly from the style of the blog along the lines of Google’s Blogger and the industry standard WordPress. 

• There’s not much in the way of analytics

• The text editor is not fully WYSIWYG and the text field would challenge a gnat with a magnifying glass as for some inexplicable reason it’s microscopic. 

• You can only place a caption on a new image post and not a headline. Why? Ask youthful entrepreneur-founder David Karp who is probably too busy relishing his billion dollar valuation to spend a few hundred bucks on fixing his site.

• They suffered the longest outage among any major social network, going down for a full twenty-four hours in December, 2010.

Features that merit wide adoption

On the plus side, Tumblr does have some features that work very well: 

• The Mass Editor allows you to view scores of posts all at once through a thumbnail view so you can tag, untag, or change tags on any you select, all at once. This is a feature that many blogging platforms would do well to adopt!

• Multiple blogs are easy to manage through a single dropdown menu.

• The Random feature allows your reader to choose one of your posts to read chosen by sheer chance, which can be fun.

• The site lets you search through your email contacts to see if any of your contacts are on Tumblr.

• There are a large number of attractive and functional free templates.

• Mobile-friendliness is a Tumbler keystone, and you can even create an audio recording post by phone.

Tumblr essentially works best when it is not considered as a microblog or as an alternative Pinterest, but a community where participants can “tumble” all their media together to share it with their friends. 

All of the usual social media prerequisites apply here too, therefore a marketer can only get back out of Tumblr what they are willing to contribute. However, the virality potential is definitely there if you are able to generate the type of content which is sought by the community.

Predicting the Next Social Media Trend Using Social Media Analytics

Track Social's Social Media Zone is a portal for assessing the activity of all Social Media Brands on the major platforms - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

We looked at the leaders in Audience Growth Rate in order to predict what might be the next big thing in Social. Some of the growth leaders you've probably heard about in the news, others maybe not.

Social growth measures how many new connections a brand is making across the already well-established social media platforms.

In other words, how well are these new social utilities leveraging their visibility on more established social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter in order to spread their name, generate buzz and sign-up new members?

Track Social's Social Media Zone shows the Social Brand Map, which plots how social media sites are performing on, well, social media. The color of the balls represents how quickly it is growing - with red and orange indicating hot and fast growth. This means the hottest social sites are establishing new connections with online users faster than the rest of the pack. Only 5 social media sites out of our list of 147 can claim rights to a sizzling hot ball - here's the top 5 in social growth rate:

1. Instagram: Humans. Love. Photos.

We love taking them. Looking at them. Sharing them. And of course, digitally tweaking them so we appear to be much better photographers than we actually are.

At least that was the great insight of Instagram founders who are now a cool billion dollars richer thanks to Facebook’s recent acquisition of the uber-popular photo sharing app now downloaded by over 50 million mobile users.

So now that Instagram has officially joined with the Zuckerburg and company, how is it using Facebook to engage with fans and recruit new users?

Instagram posts on Facebook are mainly re-posts from its official Instagram blog, which offers creative thematic challenges for the community, inviting users to submit their instagram-ed photos related to specific themes.

One regular challenge, the Weekend Hashtag Project, recently invited submissions for vacant places and empty chairs. These posts highlight the usefulness and uniqueness of Instagram’s app - no wonder Instagram is on track to hitting 100 million users.

On Twitter, Instagram has managed to rack up over 3 million followers. This is largely due to Instagram’s auto-follow policy. If you use Twitter to distribute an Instagram photo, you’re essentially agreeing to “follow” Instagram. And while that might make it easier to get people signed up, keeping that audience requires facilitating engagement through fun, regular challenges the Weekend Hashtag Project.

Instagram owes a lot to Twitter for popularizing both the format and language of a “sharing community”: “Feeds” and “Followers” are common to both and this overlap helps account for the large number of users who routinely use Twitter to distribute the photos they take with Instagram – a partnership we expect will continue to grow – unless Facebook decides otherwise.

[And just for good measure, the immanently shareable Pets of Instagram.]

2. MyYearbook: Engineering Serendipity

A recent marketing piece from one of MyYearbook’s co-founders helps define this new kind of social network as an alternative to traditional online dating sites. What makes them stand out from all the other dating sites? MyYearbook stands behind the idea that people prefer to start out as friends before jumping into a romantic relationship. According to the company, MyYearbook has signed up over 33 million members since 2005 - meaning over 33 million people are also on board with this idea.

The rise of social networks and the ubiquity of mobile devices have given way to a new crop of mobile social networks – the Meeting Networks – which threatens to eat the dating industry’s $4 billion lunch by making them a subset of a larger “meet new people” space.

Notice whose lunch they are not out to eat: Facebook’s. In fact, MyYearbook offers a “one click” registration if you sign in through your Facebook account, a clear indication they’re staking out a different kind of social media territory.

Call them Meeting Networks, call them Social Discovery Sites, MyYearbook attempts to connect people through playing online games, sharing videos, and giving virtual gifts (via an online currency called “Lunch Money” – we’re not making that up).  It’s a space intended to facilitate new connections that might ultimately lead, according to satisfied customer “Mike, 33” to finding your “soulmate.” Mazel tov, Mike.

3. Pinterest: Come ye pinners.

Our number 3 seemed to have blown up overnight, so it's no surprise that their significant audience growth has also given them office growth.

Technically, Pinterest is not just a photo-sharing site. It invites users (called pinners) to create boards where they can “pin” anything of interest they find on the web. If you've been living in a dark hole or haven't noticed yet, there has been a storm of "Pin It" share button that has hit so many sites - making it easy for internet browsers to quickly pin away.

Pinners compile collections on an infinite number of topics: wedding planning, say, or recipes. Or physics. It’s an organizer’s dream. If your users are mining the internet for cool stuff, some of those “pins” might just stir some buzz. A Dirty Dancing Page, for example, received over 13,000 LIKES on Facebook. As we stated earlier with Instgram, humans love photos.

4. Bebo: Didn’t AOL pay $850 million for this?

Sure did. After buying Bebo for $850 million in 2008, AOL unloaded the networking site in 2010 for $10 million. Bebo may have originally been conceived as an alterative and rival to Facbook but those ambitions (delusions?) seem to have been left behind. These days, Bebo is trying to occupy the same space as MyYearbook – with a dedicated dating site attached and you guessed it - its own gaming outlet. It looks like users are looking for a space where they can combine the perks of both Facebook and MyYearbook - which steers them toward our number 4 - Bebo.

5. Scoop.it: Make your own magazine

Scoop.it is an online content curation platform allowing users to create their own blog-like spaces that allows you to pull content from all over the web and re-publish it into attractive templates. Effectively, you become the editor of your own online magazine.  It’s part of the mash-up movement the web has sparked, repurposing, remixing and re- contextualizing content into something new.

Scoop.it is promising because of the nature of their service. Just like Pinterest, Scoop.it offers users an easy way to collect and curate the things they discover online. Spotlighting some user-generated gems might be a great way to attract Facebook Fans and Twitter Followers, as well as showcasing the value of the app itself.

Rounding out our top 10 social media sites and apps with the highest growth rates are:

6. reddit
7. Buffer
8. Bit.ly
9. Draugiem.lv
10. Hacker News

Follow the stats, trends, news and updates for the entire Social Media universe at Track Social’s Social Media Zone. What shows up on today’s Leaderboard, might just be tomorrow’s most ubiquitous platform.

Cracking the Facebook Code

In every generation, there are game-changing advancements that redefine business. From the automobile and television, to the VCR and Internet, the evolution of technology drives our consumptive habits. Today, there are arguably fewer more engrossing, time-consuming habits than that of the world’s current phenomenon, Facebook.

While more than 900 million people worldwide have active accounts, few businesses take full advantage of this enormous marketplace. For most, this is not due to a lack of desire—it stems from a lack of knowledge. When industry stalwarts such as Anthony Robbins and Frank Kern sought to leverage Facebook’s tremendous reach and recognized their limited ability for effectively making this happen, they turned to Jennifer Sheahan. Jennifer has cracked the Facebook code and created powerful strategies that are neither complex nor expensive. To affect a veritable Facebook frenzy and drive this powerful, captive audience towards your products and services, of her many strategies, Jennifer recommends beginning with these two.

1)     Create both a personal and business page.

Do not make the mistake of having one Facebook presence that combines personal and business items. Taking this approach will result only in confusion. Business customers may be temporarily amused with funny pictures of your nephew, but in the long run they’ll view you and your company as being out of touch with their needs and wants. And while those close to you may find your new white paper intriguing, they’re not likely to be your ideal customer and may be annoyed by your business-related postings.

A personal page should be exactly that—personal—and reserved for friends and family. In other words, avoid letting everyone into your home. Doing so is not only potentially dangerous, but could also have harmful repercussions. A business page should be reserved for business—nothing more, nothing less. It should serve to enhance your brand, generate sales, and disseminate corporate information.

2)     Determine if you have a ‘Direct’ or ‘Indirect’ sales/brand-building strategy.

Indirect sellers seek to expand their online presence but do not sell products online. These include companies such as Coca-Cola and Starbucks. Yes, they may offer t-shirts, mugs, coupons and special offers that can be redeemed locally, but you can’t put a cup to the monitor and grab yourself a Venti Vanilla Latte. Therefore these businesses are considered indirect sellers.

Successful Facebook indirect marketers understand that building and maintaining a successful company hinges on its ability to engage. Coca-Cola, for example, runs contests, encourages interaction, and offers customers the opportunity to send a “virtual pick-me-up” to friends and family. They currently have 36 million fans. Pepsi, on the other hand, introduces multiple products but fosters little interaction among customers. They currently have slightly more than 6 million fans. Considering Coca-Cola sells around twice as much product as Pepsi, that it garners six times as many fans is remarkable.

Coca-Cola clearly understands that, above all else, its Facebook presence is about the creation of an entertainment-driven experience, not the provision of a direct call-to-action. Loyalty is created when strong intangibles are delivered. In other words, what’s not said ultimately creates permanence and establishes position in the customer’s subconscious. When customers head to the marketplace, purchase decisions are directly tied to their brand connection. Indirect sellers view Facebook as an opportunity to strengthen such customer relationships.

Direct sellers seek to sell products and services directly to end-users online. These include companies such as TechSmith, Zynga, and University of Phoenix.

Effective direct sellers focus on benefits and encourage sampling. The harsh reality is no one cares about fancy logos or gimmicks. In the social media world, people have little patience and want to get right to the meat of the product.

Answering the customer’s question of, “Why do I care?” as quickly as possible is key. Today’s marketers leverage the power of video and show the product in action. This is often complimented with video testimonials. Once hooked, discounts and incentives to purchase should be provided immediately. The online customer loathes waiting for the “ask.” Once they’re ready, show them where to enter their credit card information.

Drama doesn’t cut it. Neither does fancy. Customers today are much too wise and have moved far beyond old methodologies. If they feel too much money was spent on building a site, they automatically equate this to increased costs. Attempts to over-impress lead to the worst sound in the world—wallets snapping shut.

There’s little doubt that Facebook offers immediate and powerful opportunities. That said, so did CompuServe and MySpace. The Internet is a vast, often volatile, landscape reminiscent of the Wild West, and can be just as unpredictable. Business longevity is the direct result of being proactive, maintaining awareness of the market’s evolution, getting while the getting’s good, and being adequately prepared for what’s next.

Facebook should absolutely be a component of your overall promotional strategy, but you shouldn’t depend on any one resource for your marketing. As with investing, always diversify, because there’s no telling what the future will bring.

How to Use Google+ Hangouts on Air

On May 7th Google started rolling out the Hangouts On Air feature worldwide. (http://goo.gl/tbL4l)

Here is our take on how to use it. While it is still in the introductory age, one still needs a jumping off point.

What Exactly is Hangouts On Air? (http://goo.gl/AjUpx)

Hangouts on Air is a built-in feature for hangouts to stream your hangout within Google+ and YouTube records it. The recorded video then will be available on your YouTube Account after the Hangout has ended. The Google+ post will then contain the recorded video once it's processed for prosperity and possibly better SEO rankings and traffic for your YouTube page.

How Exactly Does it Work? (http://goo.gl/O3rM5)

Start your hangout as usual, invite people,  and give it a name. Make sure to enable Hangouts On Air before you click "hang out."

After that you have to agree to the Terms of Service and Legal Agreement and you are ready to go. If you don't have a verified YouTube Account yet, the hangout will prompt you to do so. (http://goo.gl/dO6yS)

Now you can invite more participants and get ready for going live. At this point only you are able to see the live video.

You are not public yet...

The host who started the hangout is the only one allowed to invite more people to the hangout; unfortunately you can't invite publicly. You can also copy the embed code from within the hangout to include your live event on external websites like a blog or company site.

Going Live 

When you are ready to go live, hit the button "Start broadcast." Now your broadcast will be posted on your stream and on your YouTube channel publicly and anyone can watch it.

Can You Reshare the Post?

Of course, use the regular share link and Google will reshare the post including the player and the description.

Are there any moderation features?

As of yet, not so much. You have the regular features like muting and blocking a user, however only the host/broadcaster is allowed to invite more people via the hangout. You can still share the link publicly or with your friends.

I have some issues what can I do?

If you have trouble setting up your Hangout On Air or experience any other issues feel free to use the "send feedback" link in the hangout, post your question in the help forum: http://goo.gl/6eRNx or use the send feedback on the hangout page (https://plus.google.com/hangouts)

This new feature for Google+ pages may just be the feature that is needed to attract more users, and more businesses, to the struggling Social Network. The possibilities seem to be quite vast and it will be interesting to see just how the medium gets utilized. Small Businesses may be able to supplant their local TV marketing efforts and focus on a G+ distribution model and self-produce adverts themselves. Experts in their fields, Social Media gurus and mechanics alike, can take the late 2000s popularity of  Audio Podcasts to video with a better distribution model and not have to self host the content.

How will you use it? Will it work for your business?

Facebook Offers: 5 Things To Consider Before Creating An Offer

It has arrived.

The newest edition of the Facebook Deals has become available on our Pages this morning and I wanted to share my two cents.  Facebook Offers is a very simple solution to entice users to engage your store and drive foot traffic into your location.  However, I am not quite sure this fits the non- ‘brick and mortar’ businesses.

Most of us can remember the Facebook Deals and its almost immediate retraction from Facebook.  As we began putting our clients into these spaces to increase interaction with clients, Facebook decided to pull the idea.

Whether it was from lack of use or lack of success, Facebook Offers has streamlined the process while making it a bit more viral.  BUT, I am already seeing a few ‘road blocks’ as we just created our first offer this morning.

Here are 5 things to consider before creating an Offer:

1. Understand the Redemption Process:  To redeem the offer, the user must take the email and print it, if possible.  It also states that you can ‘just show it from your phone’.  This may pose an obvious issue if your store is online only.  Considerations to redemption could be added to the terms and conditions area when creating the email.  It may be wise to require further action like emailing this certificate to the email address in the terms area.  This would have to be manually entered.
   
2. Define a Clear ‘Fine Print’ Area:  This is where you need to put in considerations to your offer that can not help filter out the misunderstandings that most offers can create.  Keep the terms simple and apply any necessary restrictions to help make the offer successful.  Just because people are claiming the offer doesn’t mean they are ‘converting’ to a sale or in-store visit.
3. Create A Great Headline:  Facebook is only allowing for 90 characters here so you must be ready to express the offer in very clear terms.  This could be the critical success factor that drives the offer into a viral state.  Be clear and state the call to action.
   
4. Inform The Staff:  It is often these offers are created and then forgotten.  It’s imperative that if you decide to create an offer, you must provide this information to anyone facing the customer on your staff.  You can really create a disconnect with a customer if your staff looks baffled at their inbound opportunity.
   
5. Start Simple:  It’s free.  Start simple and try to provide a value proposition for a visit.  You should really consider using this as a tool to promote and create traffic around your services or products.  Groupon began losing its traction as soon as the businesses that were using Groupon found they were actually losing money.  It’s an advertising opportunity, not a revenue generator.
   
   

You should expect losses up front and should consider using this as a promotional tool.  It’s important to remember that including this offer in an overall marketing strategy combining traditional efforts along with online campaigns will increase the overall awareness to your services/products.  We often see campaigns that are disconnected because they were not put into action with an overall approach or plan.

What is your first offer going to include?

Five Money-Making SEO Tips for Small Business Online Stores

Small businesses operating their own online stores have to use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to drive traffic, convert visitors into customers and make money online.

But, most traditional small businesses don't have the time or resources to implement a sustained SEO campaign, or pay a good SEO company to drive traffic on their behalf.

Without a steady flow of qualified traffic (that comes from SEO, social and Internet marketing), operating an eCommerce (online store) site may not be financially sustainable.

Regardless of whether your comapny has SEO experience or not, the following five easy-to-implement SEO tips will ensure that potential customers find your content and start buying. These great SEO techniques can be used by any type of business to drive more web traffic, whether you're a butcher, baker or candle-stick maker.

1. Add content. Add content. Add content.

I regularly come across business people who are frustrated with the Internet as a medium for business. "Why does a defense attorney need twitter followers?" "I have to work on my actual business. Why should I waste time writing online?"

The answer is this:

Adding content increases online visibility. The more people who happen across your content, the more likely you are to make a conversion and gain a sale."

Sure, there are other considerations, but that's the basic formula.

What drives traffic? Content. Lots of relevant and engaging content. Make sure that your blog content is setup to guide people to your store or products so that they can convert into customers and generate revenue for your business.

SEO Tip: Try and get everyone in your company to add content to your website on a regular basis. It could be relating the story of how you satisfied a customer's need, it could be a story of how you had to drive across town to get some mushrooms for a special dinner (if you're a caterer). Whatever. So long as you keep adding content.

2. Personalize SEO content with Google Authorship

By implementing Google authorship, you give a face to your content. That's important for consumer trust. It's not just another article by someone 'out there' - it's by Joe from "Joe's Deli", or Alice from "Alice's Wheel balancing". You get the picture.

One of the most important factors in getting people to buy from your online store, is credibility. I am far more likely to buy from someone I feel I know, or know something about, than a faceless unknown business.

To implement authorship:

1. Create a Google+ account
2. Link your Google+ profile to your content

Authorship may take a while. Google is pretty slow on showing author information next to its results. Don't hold your breath, but keep checking every week or so.

3. Improve your online store's technical SEO performance

Do you know how fast your web pages are being served? Did you know that Page speed is an important factor in Google's PageRank algorithm. Are your pages cached? Is your CSS compressed and aggregated? Are your JavaScript files compress and aggregated?

If none of this means anything to you, then it is likely that you can improve your SEO performance by upgrading your performance related SEO. You will probably need to speak to someone with web development experience who also knows SEO.

SEO Tip: Read this article entitled "Improve your SEO and compare the SEO of five leading SEO sites"

SEO Tip 2: Don't be seduced by promises of instant SEO magic. Subsequent to Google's Panda and Penguin updates, businesses that use cheap, unethical SEO contractors are paying the price by disappearing from search results.

4. Localize content for better SEO performance

Google has started to favor local results over more general ones. To appear higher up in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for customers in your area, you have to make sure that your content has localization information.

If the majority of your store's sales come from a specific location (i.e. a town or county), then you'll probably want to implement these three super SEO localization techniques:

1. Target users in your area using Webmaster tools. Select the relevant option from "Site configuration >> Settings >> Geographic target"
2. Use localized SEO keywords in your content. Instead of writing an SEO page heading like "Baking the best muffins", you could write "Baking the best muffins in New York City"
3. Add your business to Google maps
4. Use "Location coordinates" META tags in your page content (This is slightly more technical, so you might need to get in touch with a good SEO consultant or firm to help you out)

5. Implement regular SEO and ROI analysis

SEO is nothing without the ability to monitor the results. Ensure that your website is integrated withWebmaster tools and Google analytics.

Without analytics it is difficult to improve your store's ROI (Return on Investment). Analytics will allow you to see precisely which content is driving traffic, what customers are doing on the site, and give insight into how you can maximize conversions and traffic going forward.

Check out these two quick ROI calculator apps:

• Return on Investment (ROI) calculator for blog and business content
• Content revenue calculator for bloggers and businesses

SEO Tip: Use analytics to see which keywords are driving traffic to your website. If these keywords are driving traffic that is converting, keep using them. If not, think about other keywords that might drive interested customers and start using those in your online store's content.