Offline small business still don’t get the essence of social media marketing. However, the IT and internet develop so fast. So the gap between social media marketing and offline business become wider and wider. How to bridging the gap? It shows a huge market for social media marketers.

What Business What?
For any business, revenue and long-term ROI are what they want, in short, growth and profitability.
How to grow the revenue? Gain more customers.
How to gain more cunstomers? Marketing campaigns.

Marketing campaigns could be promoted by lots of channels, traditional channels are more expensive and less effective. Online banners, SEM cost too much for small local business. Social media is the best choice. It’s cost effective and much more appealing to young people.

New Era New Challenges
Small local business needs to be educated. Social Media agencies take themselves as expertise and educators, but business wants everything, much more than education.

It’s a new era, yet with new challenges. It’s a big market, but lots of work to do. I wrote a few tips here:
Customers First;
Data Mining;
SOP.

“Buyer information discovery, consumption and sharing habits have changed with the influence of social technology and search.”

Consumers are increasingly using both search and social to discover content. In a recent study by GroupM and comScore, only 1% of consumers were led to a purchase via Social Media but 51% were channeled via search and 48% through a combination of search and social media.

QR Code Example

I’ve been reading a few articles about QR code on Brand Engagement. QR Codes, short for “Quick Response Code”, could be the next wave of the future along with mobile internet, LBS etc. Share some  articles that might inspire your thoughts and ideas on Marketing Potential of QR Code.

QR Code and 2d Barcode Readers

(For mobile devices, your customers/audience may get it installed in their mobile devices)
Mobile device manufacturers are increasingly supplying their products with barcode readers pre-installed. For example Nokia Barcode Reader is pre-installed on the N82, N93, N93i, N95, E66, E71 and E90. If this is not the case for your mobile device check the readers below for your model and download the appropriate application version via the links.

The best of the available readers in alphabetical order are:

BeeTagg supports a wide range of mobile devices and reads QR-Code, Datamatrix and the proprietary code BeeTagg.
Compatability Download Instructions

i-nigma is pre-installed by all of Japan’s major mobile manufacturers and reads QR-Code and Datamatrix.
Compatability Download Instructions

Kaywa supports a range of mobile devices and reads QR Code and Datamatrix.
Compatability Download Instructions

Mobiletag scans 1D barcodes EAN 13 and UPC as well as the 2D barcodes Datamatrix, QR Code, Flashcode and Fotokody.
Compatability and download instructions

NeoReader supports a range of mobile devices and reads QR codes, Datamatrix, Aztec Codes, EAN, UPC and Code 128.
Compatability Download Instructions

QuickMark supports a range of mobile devices and reads QR Code, Datamatrix and the proprietary code QuickMark.
Compatability and download instructions

ScanLife supports a wide range of mobile devices and reads and the proprietary code EZcode.
Compatability and download instructions

UpCode supports a range of mobile devices and reads the proprietary code UpCode, and in Symbian phones QR Code and DataMatrix.
Compatability Download Instructions

Zxing has clients for Android, Java, and iPhone but not Windows mobile devices and reads QR Code, Code 39, Code 128, UPC-A, UPC-E, EAN-8 and EAN-13.
Compatability and download instructions

Decoder/Encoder
Stand alone Encoder and Decoder

For the iPhone Optiscan is very good and also try QuickMark.

Source: http://2d-code.co.uk/qr-code-readers/

QR Code and 2D Barcode Generator

QR Code and 2D Code Generator
Kerem Erkan has produced an excellent QR Code, Micro QR Code, Datamatrix and Aztec Code
generator with many interesting features including URL shortening.

Maestro
Create QR Codes for telephone, SMS, Maps, URL, MeCards and Raw data.

Jason Delport’s Create QR Code
User interface for the Google Chart API with 500px x 500px maximum size.

BeQRious
50px x 50px images can be inserted in the code and output can be saved as gif or pdf.

i-nigma
Foreign language versions available in Espa?ol, Português and Italiano.

Invx
One size but generates a QR Code and a Datamarix Code simultaneously.

Jaxo
Select encoding mode, multiple colors and upload background graphic.

Goqr.me
Any color background or modules and many other options.

Nokia
Includes full VCARD implementation.

QReate & Track
Includes iCalendar and vCard formats and an option for real-time reporting.

QR Stuff
Lots of options here including color, batch printing with Avery label compatibility and send by email.

Raco
Can specify error correction levels.

SnapMaze
One size but choice of six colors.

Winksite
PNG and JPG in standard sizes.

ZXing
Includes encoding in MECARD format.

Decoder/Encoder
Stand alone Decoder and Encoder

ScanLife: In each and every edition of Website Magazine, you’ll see two-dimensional QR barcodes on a few of our editorial and advertising pages. There are a few reasons that we use ScanLife over their open source competitors – namely that it covers the broadest number of mobile phones/smartphones and that some very valuable analytics come with it. If you have anything to do with advertising you know how important that is to the bottom line. Creating barcodes (for non-commercial purposes) is free and the rates are reasonable for commercial enterprises.

Top 5 Creative Ways to Use QR Codes
Source: http://www.foxypropaganda.com/qr-codes-top-reasons-to-use-qrcodes/

Chevy Case Study: Using Mobile, Location and QR Codes to Inspire Brand Engagement
Source: http://www.emarketer.com/blog/index.php/chevy-case-study-qr-codes-mobile-location-inspire-brand-engagement/

1. Brand character matters.
If you are going to do social media marketing, make sure your ID is a kinda real person rather than a robot. So the character of your ID is important. Generally it comes from your company’s brand. It might be serious, humorous, lovely or whatever. I take IDP as a professional, official, kind, easy-going and sometimes a little bit lovely.

2. Plan of the publish of your content.
Don’t rush into the publish of your tweets. I made a plan of the content, including the frequency, category of my tweets, focus of your tweets.
Frequency: 5-10 tweets per day.
Category: #news, #staffs, #specialoffer, #reviews, #onlineevents, #retweets of excellent tweet.

3. Decoration of your account.

1.Make sure you have filled all the blanks of your profile;
2.Choose a official avatar for your account, this will make your account alive. Don’t forget to write your bio, keep it simple & accurate.
3.Tag yourself. I tagged IDP “education, AUS, USA, study abroad” etc. The tags will help 4.your fans to identify the content of your ID.

4.Target your audience.
How to find your audience?

1, search your brand. People who mentioned your brand may interested in your brand & business;
2, Search the keywords of your business, People who mentioned your business might be your potential customers;
3, Search your competitors. People who mentioned your competitor might be your potential customers, too.

5. Interaction of your audience.

1, Follow your audience;
2, Conversation with your audience;
3, Retweet your aduience’s tweet.
4, DM your aduience.

#No.1 Pagination: Best Practices for SEO & User Experience
Sure, we have to make clear the reasons:

Why is Pagination an SEO Issue?
Pagination, the practice of segmenting links to content on multiple pages, affects two critical elements of search engine accessibility.

* Crawl Depth: Best practices demand that the search engine spiders reach content-rich pages in as few “clicks” as possible (turns out, users like this, too). This also impacts calculations like Google’s PageRank (or Bing’s StaticRank), which determine the raw popularity of a URL and are an element of the overall algorithmic ranking system.
* Duplicate Content: Search engines take duplication very seriously and attempt to show only a single URL that contains any given piece of content. When pagination is implemented improperly, it can cause duplicate content problems, both for individual articles and the landing pages that allow browsing access to them.

And, I do noticed the dos & donts
Do:

* Try to link to as many pages of the pagination structure as possible without breaking the 100(ish) links per page limit
* Show newer content at the top of the results list when possible, as this means the most link juice will flow to newer articles that need it (and are temporally relevant)
* Use and link to relevant/related categories & subcategories to help keep link juice flowing throughout the site
* Link back to the top results from each of the paginated URLs

Don’t:

* Show only a few surrounding paginated links from paginated URLs – you want the engines to be able to crawl deeper from inside the structure
* Link to only the pages at the front and end of the paginated listings; this will flow all the juice to the start and end of results, ingoring the middle
* Try to randomize the paginated results shown in an effort to distribute link juice; you want a static site architecture the engines can crawl
* Try to use AJAX to get deeper in the results sets – engines follow small snippets of Javascript (sometimes), but they’re not at a point where this is an SEO best practice
* Go over the top trying to get every paginated result linked-to, as this can appear both spammy and unusably ugly

Last, you have to pay attention to Nofollows. Rel=Canonicals and Conditional Redirects.

#No.2 Strategic Link Building: How to Productize Link Acquisition and Dominate Your Niche

In the deck below, I walk through a number of examples of sites, primarily startups, that have done this. These include:

* Twitter – every user of Twitter has an incentive to link to their profile so more people will follow them. This is also true of sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, DeviantArt, Etsy & others
* Vimeo – nearly everyone who uses Vimeo appreciates the beautiful aesthetic they’ve created. The embeddable versions of Vimeo videos look and feel more professional and high quality than nearly any other player, hence they get embedded (a lot). This embed action automatically drives links back to the video on Vimeo’s site, Vimeo’s homepage and the user’s profile, all with targeted anchor text.
* Urbanspoon – not only do they give badges to restaurants like Yelp and have started an online reservations system like OpenTable, Urbanspoon also features reviews from bloggers and foodies, who are then incentivized to promote their inclusion on the site.
* Last.fm – the widgets users embed on their site to share their favorite music automatically creates links back to the service.
* SurveyMonkey – a truly viral product (anyone who’s surveyed is automatically exposed to the site), SurveyMonkey is inherently link acquisitive through the product. In order to use the service, you need to link to SurveyMonkey’s site, where your form is hosted.
* Scribd – just look at the embed and the link below; ’nuff said.
* Miibeian.gov.cn – possibly the greatest link building strategy ever devised. The Chinese government requires that all websites in the country link to this site in order to operate legally; not too shabby, eh?

• Crucial element of the traffic source. – 70% above now
• Learning & practice is the first thing at present stage.
• Key words analysis & optimization.
• With analyzing tools, to improve the performance of the website.

• Email lists collecting.
• Tools to send our clients Emails.

• Integration. Sync updates between your twitter, facebook, digg, Google accounts etc.
• Useful & helpful updates. Don’t be taken as a spammer, try to make your messages helpful and friendly to others.
• Selective reading. Well-informed but not over-informed, select the most appealing news and updates.
• Choose your Social Media Base. Choose 1-3 social media tools as your marketing base, do don’t waste too much time.
• Interaction. Trying to communicate with your followers, emphasizing their suggestions.

• Use existing resource. Choose the outbound links of another site, contact them to building links.
• Comments or post in blogs & forums.
• Creative writings. Attract more links to your high quality articles.

Online Marketing Resource:
#SEO

1. http://designm.ag/resources/free-page-analysis-tools/
2. http://searchenginewatch.com/3626600
3. https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
4. http://www.seomoz.org/
5. http://yoast.com/
6. http://mattcutts.com/

#Email Tools

1. http://www.constantcontact.com/
2. http://www.icontact.com/
3. http://www.myemma.com
4. http://www.verticalresponse.com/
5. http://www.benchmarkemail.com/

#Email Lists

1. http://www.infousa.com/
2. http://www.email-point.com/
3. http://www.thedatasupplier.com/
4. http://route72.com/
5. http://www.americaint.com/targeted-email-lists/targeted-email-lists.html
6. http://www.copywriter.com/lists/

#Social Media
—

#Links Tools

1. https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
2. http://rapid.searchmetrics.com/en/seo-tools/
3. http://www.wintzell.net/seo-tools/domain-outbound-links-check.php
4. http://www.rightscripts.com/outboundlinkchecker/

I am taking some SEO notes now. Taking something really useful, helpful.

SEO notes about: How to increase your Google indexed pages?
Clean Code Matters

To move JavaScript and CSS definitions to external files, and clean up tag soup would help google indexing.

“SEOs pay a lot of attention to issues like duplicate content, link building to increase PageRank, and link structure to move PageRank throughout the site. However, I haven’t seen many SEO articles about the importance of proper Web development methodology.”

“you should try to increase the PageRank of your pages, and you should design your link structure so that PageRank is distributed throughout your site in a way that makes sense. You should provide unique and valuable content. Those tactics will help your indexing, but you also need to pay attention to the dirty details of how your pages are put together. If everybody served clean code, Google would be able to index significantly more pages. “

Link source: http://searchenginewatch.com/3626600

First, you have to clarify the goal of business.
Put the first thing first. Remember the goal of the business is the very first. Make everyone known and understood the goal of your business.

Then, comes with the current situation of your business.
A analysis of your current situation is necessary. The Alexa rank, Google PR, IPs, indexed URLs, outbound links, referral sites etc. You gotta to list these information on your spreadsheet. For these could be a guide to tell your how to find your ways to go further.

Next, figure out the ways to achieve your goal.
Where there is a will, there is a way. Actually it is not so difficult to figure out your ways to achieve your goal, yet you have to make a good effort. I’d like to put my short list here:

• SEO
• Email Campaign
• Social Media
• Link Building
• SEM
• Website Ads & Resource Sharing
• Creative Writings

No more explain for each line.

Finally, put it into your practice.
You’d better make yourself a schedule, and do the items above everyday and persist for a long time, several or even longer. You will see some smart results.

2. You’re at a party with a bunch of friends and see a gorgeous girl. One of your friends goes up to her and pointing at you says: “He’s very rich. “Marry him.” -That’s Advertising”

3. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and get her telephone number. The next day, you call and say: “Hi, I’m very rich. “Marry me – That’s Telemarketing”

4. You’re at a party and see gorgeous girl. You get up and straighten your tie, you walk up to her and pour her a drink, you open the door (of the car)for her, pick up her bag after she drops it, offer her ride and then say:”By the way, I’m rich. Will you “Marry Me?” – That’s Public Relations”

5. You’re at a party and see gorgeous girl. She walks up to you and says:”You are very rich! “Can you marry ! Me?” – That’s Brand Recognition”

6. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: “I am very rich. Marry me!” She gives you a nice hard slap on your face. – “That’s Customer Feedback”

7. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: “I am very rich. Marry me!” And she introduces you to her husband. – “That’s demand and supply gap”

8. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and before you say anything, another person come and tell her: “I’m rich. Will you marry me?” and she goes with him – “That’s competition eating into your market share”

9. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and before you say: “I’m rich, Marry me!” your wife arrives. – “That’s restriction for entering new markets”

• Maybe I’ll buy something, how’s the first impression?
• Maybe I’ll buy something, but I’ve no idea how this website is. And what about its reputation?
• Maybe I’ll buy something, is there any special stuffs here in this website?
• Maybe I’ll buy something, is there anything I like?
• Maybe I’ll buy something, is there any discount?

• I want to buy something, but I don’t know what should I buy.
• I want to buy something, is there something I need here?
• I want to buy something, can I find it quickly?
• I want to buy something, is it fit for me?

• I want to buy it, I couldn’t figure out whether I need it or not although I’ve view the instruction.
• I want to buy it, is the quality guaranteed?
• I want to buy it, how’s other people review this product?
• I want to buy it, is it the cheapest?
• I want to buy it, but it’s a big money for me, I cannot afford it at one time…

• Is there any discount if I take more pieces or what about I introducing some friends here?
• I like several types of it, yet I don’t know which one is better.
• I decide to take it, but the ordering procedure is too complicated. Can you make it easier?
• I decide to take it, but I was worrying about your service because of frequent errors of you website.
• I want to pay the bill, but the billing methods here are not for me.
• Is my payment online secure?
• Can I get the product after the payment? What about its quality?

• I’ve made my order and paid the bill. Now I want to cancel it, how can I get my money back?
• It really good, yet I cannot buy it for personal reasons. Maybe next time…

• Is there an extra charge of the delivery?
• When exactly can I receive my pack?
• What about the logistics? Is it good and fast?
• What if I am not at home? I mean how can I get my pack?
• What if I didn’t receive my pack? Is there any instructions for me to follow in this case?

• It’s different from the thing I want. Can I change another one? Is it complicated?
• If I encounter some problems about the product, what should I do?
• How is the customer service? Can my problems be solved?

• As a returner, will I get more discount next time?
• Am I feeling good about the service?
• Is it the shopping online interesting?
• Will I return? Will I recommend it to some friends?