Small Business 2.0: Social Marketing

dw — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:25:05 +0000

I presented at Small Business 2.0 on my chosen specialist subject of 'Getting closer to your customers'. It was all about using Web 2.0 services, social networking and online communities to talk with existing and potential customers. The audio should hopefully be available soon.

Here's a precis and a list of the services I mentioned:

- Social networks and online communities are huge and possible sources of traffic.
- You need to follow that traffic and see if you can get some for yourself.
- Getting involved is a good way of generating SEO links too.
- It's vital to join the conversation: authenticity and genuine participation is key.
- Start with building profiles that require little maintenance (such as LinkedIN)
- Then join relevant communities.
- Comment on relevant blogs. Keep track using Google Reader
- Measure, measure, measure. Using Google analytics
- If it works, do more. If not ditch it.
- There is a huge difference between Networking and Not Working.

Sites I mentioned:

BT Tradespace
Digg Facebook
Flickr
Last.fm
LinkedIN
Moneysavingexpert
MySpace
Qype
Squidoo

Twitter
Xing
YouTube

And that great video:

Small Business 2.0: SEO

dw — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:02:33 +0000

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) was definitely one of the most compelling topics for attendees at Small Business 2.0 last Saturday. Will Wynne of online purveyors of fine blooms and stems, ArenaFlowers.com, kicked off the day by explaining the basics. But for my money his comment that all the SEO in the world is time, money and effort wasted if you can't convert visitors into customers when they land was one of the most valuable insights of the day. Will is a great advocate of SEO: he has essentially built his massively successful company on SEO. He has posted his slides from the talk on the Arena Flowers blog.

The day closed with a panel discussion with various SEO bods from: SLI Systems, Pure Online Genius, Netseek and Inventa Tech.

They were asked, among other things, what the most useful SEO tools out there were and I thought I'd share them:

Google Webmaster Tools: There's a whole suite of exciting stuff here. Including...

Google Analytics: A free tool from Google that allows you to understand the traffic, sources and activiy of users who use your website.

Google Keyword tool: For inspiration when it comes to generating keyword rich text, try this free tool.

SEOmoz: For the latest buzz and speculation about SEO, SEOmoz is the only place to go.

Dan Wilson » Small Business 2.0

Small Business 2.0: Social Marketing

Small Business 2.0: SEO