Our graphic design team finished the Character Design that Evan Carmichael requested. Evan is an entrepreneur & an international business speaker. He may be most known for his interviews with famous entrepreneurs & small business experts.
An internet marketing consultant from our company is a forum moderator on EvanCarMicheal.com and was asked if WebBizIdeas could help him with annual blog review. This year Evan is publishing the top 50 social entrepreneurship blogs!
Anush, our lead graphic designer took images of Jill Fehrenbacher, Tom Zeller Jr., and Ethan Zuckerman and made them each into cartoons “hugging the earth.”
Thanks Evan for letting us be a part of your social awareness project!
Keeping organized is a major component of promotional marketing. When you’re dealing with thousands of bloggers, figuring out who wrote what, when to send out a product, and how you should rate your bloggers is critical. We developed a control panel that shows all the stats necessary in a simple to follow format.
Promoters Control Panel: Overview of Promotions
When logging into tomoson.com you will first be able to see an overview of your promotions and what’s happening with them. This birds eye view tells everything from how many promotions you have to what products you need to ship out. Each of the promotions on the overview page will have links going directly to the stat or information details. The best part of the overview is you can see the total POTENTIAL traffic, twitter followers, and facebook friends who are part of your promotional network.
WIREFRAME OF PROMOTION OVERVIEW CONTROL PANEL
Promoters Control Panel: Blogger Stats
As a promoter you want to know what each of the bloggers are doing for each promotion. The blogger stats page will show who is writing reviews, if you need to enter a tracking number on a product shipped, and the traffic each blogger has. After each blogger writes a review you can view each review, see the amount of keywords written in the review, and if the blogger created any links tracing back to your website.
Shipping products is also easy with the control panel. From the blogger stats page you can mass upload tracking numbers using an excel csv file. This way you can manage large numbers of products being shipped daily. The system can also export blogger shipping information into the same easy to manage csv file. This can be uploaded to any shipping module like stamps.com for quick shipments.
WIREFRAME BLOGGER STATS
Blogger Control Panel: Overview of Promotions
Bloggers can also see what’s going on with the promotions they’ve applied to. An easy to view display will show if they’ve completed all the steps to apply for a product and when they need to review a product. When a promoter ships a product the blogger he/she gets notified and can log back into the system to see the tracking number. Once the review is written the blogger can verify the review on the system with a few clicks.
WIREFRAME BLOGGER CONTROL PANEL
Next week we will be reviewing the custom message center which allows promoters to answers multiple blogger questions with one message.
Besides selling more products by getting bloggers to write reviews on them, you can increase your search engine ranking from the links created during the review process. As many of you know building links coming back to your website helps increase your websites search engine ranking.
When you send a product to the approved blogger they will write a review and most likely add a link in that review going back to your website. This one-way link is a huge benefit to your websites search engine goals. Most of the time Google gives bloggers higher search engine rankings because they are updating content regularly. Your review will be one of those pages that are weighed heavily, talking about your product, and linking back to your website. These are the three major components to any link building campaign.
How Do I Tell What Links Were Added In A Review?
The power of Tomoson is its reporting features. After a blogger writes a review they need to verify it with a simple piece of code they copy into the review. This piece of code serves two purposes:
1. It will display an icon stating this is a review the blogger got a free product for (Which is now required by law for all bloggers to do)
2. It will capture the review so we can display it in your Tomoson.com control panel.
The second purpose gives you, the promoter all the power to review what was written, how many links are in the review, and where they link. This makes Tomoson.com not only a powerful sales tool but a powerful SEO tool as well.
Next week we’ll review the tomoson.com Control Panel.
Every business wants to rank well in the search engines. But, if your business services a local market, local search engine optimization is crucial to online growth. Local results have been showing up in Google, Yahoo, and Bing in organic search engine results for well over 2 years.
Many companies such as Google, Yahoo, Yelp, CitySearch, JudysBook, Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Better Business Bureau, Chamber Of Commerce, YellowBook, SuperPages, Dex, and more promise to help local businesses obtain new customers. For the most part, all of the sites listed can help companies achieve that goal. But one question always arises, what websites should I spend time & money promoting my business on now?
The simple answer is to register for free accounts on all of them. Then, the next answer is to focus on getting in Google’s Top 10 Local Pack because this listing will drive the most amount of free organic search engine traffic.
But is register on all local search engine directories, internet yellow pages, and local review sites enough to rank well organically in Google? Do companies need to know anything before they start registering on 30+ sites? And better yet, should multiple accounts contain consistent information?
Gib Olander from Localeze spoke at an event on “Local Search” and informed listeners that he recommends a consistent Company Name, Company Address, and Company Phone Number when creating company profiles online. Considering Localeze is responsible for provider the data that appear on Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Bing Local, Superpages.com, Yellowpages.com, Best of the Web Local, OpenList, DexKnows, Addresses.com, Citysquares, GenieKnows.com, YellowBot (reference: http://getlisted.org/resources/local-search-data-providers.aspx) it may be wise to take a closer look at why he recommended business owners to do that.
Why a Consistent NAP?
can Google keep track of how many times your company is listed if you are not consistent with your company name? If you are trying to rank well for the keyword “Minneapolis Divorce Lawyer,” but enter “Anderson’s & Sons Minneapolis Divorce Lawyer” into Google’s Company/Organization field, you are telling Google to look for references to “Anderson’s & Sons Minneapolis Divorce Lawyer” online.
Is your company listed everywhere online as “Anderson’s & Sons Minneapolis Divorce Lawyer?” Or is your company name clearly published on your website as “Anderson’s & Sons Law Firm.” When you registered on Yelp, Twitter, CitySearch, Facebook, etc… what company name do you use?
Local search engines look for references & citations of your company when determining your local search engine placements. If your company does not have a consistent NAP, your rankings will be poor.
WebBizIdeas has been helping businesses rank in Google’s Top 10 Pack since Google Maps merged with Google’s organic search results. Just like SEO, many people have various ideas on how to rank well in Google’s local search engine results.
For the past month our internet marketing director, Jeff Foster from WebBizIdeas, has been working a free educational tutorial to help businesses who may not have the capital to hire a professional internet marketing consultant. We are please to announce the completion of the project.
Below you will find a video, a special report, and a visual to help your company rank well locally with Google.
Don’t Want To Read? Watch The Tutorial On YouTube:
Download Special Report:
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - Optimizing For Google Local Business Center Image:
Tomoson.com will have two types of users, bloggers and promoters. The promoters will be the users giving away a product and the bloggers will be the ones writing the reviews on those products. The One of the reasons Tomoson is being made is to bring these two users together on one website.
Blogger Accounts: 100% FREE
Bloggers will be able to register on Tomoson.com for FREE and browse all the products available for review. If a blogger sees a product he/she likes, they can ask questions to the promoter directly or apply to review the product. If they pass the promoters criteria then the promoter will mail the product to the blogger for FREE to write a review and keep. The promoter’s criteria will be things like the amount of twitter followers, website traffic, and number of facebook fans. If the promoter sends a product to the blogger and he/she does not write the review and verify it was written, the blogger will be banned from tomoson.com.
Promoters can allow blogger contests as ways for bloggers to have contests on their own website and give away a product they reviewed. If the promoter allows the product to be used in blogger contests then after the blogger verifies the review. The blogger can promote on their own blog a contest giveaway the product their just reviewed to their readers. The obvious benefit is the promoter get’s exposure on the blog twice and the blogger gains more readers.
Promoter Accounts:FREE 30 Day Trail
The promoter is the person who truly benefits from the power of Tomoson.com and that’s why we give them a free 30 day trial to test the software. After the 30 day trial they can cancel the membership or continue and pay a small monthly fee. The promoter will be able to create promotions, set their criteria, and manage what bloggers are writing reviews.
The advantage to the promoter is getting access to thousands and hopefully millions of bloggers who are willing to write reviews about their products, translating into millions of buyers who read and purchase that product. Here are some quick numbers for you to think about. If your product costs $40/item with a 30% markup and you give away 10 products to ten bloggers who each have 10,000 unique visitors, 500 twitter followers, and 500 facebook fans. You have just got your product in front of 110,000 people PER MONTH for $400. Even if only 1% of those people bought from you (1100 people) that still equates to $12,800.00 in pure profit in that first month. This is the power of tomoson.com and why we wanted to make a piece of software to bring bloggers and promoters together.
Please stay tuned for the next blog update on why Tomoson.com will help your search engine rankings (coming next week)
We have been working with the online jewelry retailer Mykonospa.com for the last year to increase search engine rankings. We started out by targeting the most highly search Pandora Beads & Charms initially in 2009; providing the highest ROI for the client. Results have been good:
Building content for eCommerce Websites can be tricky. When someone comes to a category landing page they want to view the products; not paragraphs of text. So I wanted to share with our readers an easy work around on how to add content to eCommerce landing pages with out ruining the User Experience.
Step 1: Modify eCommerce Software so you can add content to the top of the page & the bottom of the page.
Step 2: Write & Publish a short paragraph at the top of the eCommerce Landing Page
Step 3: Write & publish a few paragraphs at the bottom of the eCommerce Landing Page. This way you can still have a good amount of text on the web page to tell search engines what the page is about while keeping the focus of the page on the products
Now you have an eCommerce Landing Page that is both user friendly both also search engine friendly. It is important to note that you can rank product pages #1 in the search engines with out too much content; but the more keyword optimized content the better!
WebBizIdeas is looking for an Informational Architect (IA) to join our creative team in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The information Architect will work with business analysts, designers, and project managers to develop information architecture for web, product, and all online interactions.
If you are an experienced website architect or user interface designer please review the job description & requirements here:
About WebBizIdeas: We are a business development company located right out side Minneapolis in Saint Louis Park. Our focus is on building user & search engine friendly websites that convert traffic into sales/leads.
Mykonos is a retailer of Pandora Jewelry, which is based out of Pennsylvania. Mykonospa.com is an ecommerce web site that sells authentic Pandora beads, Pandora bracelets as well as Pandora charms and more. They are one of the few authorized Pandora jewelry retailers. After creating a website in 2008, Mykonospa realized that it would have to take advantage of a new kind of eCommerce web site design if it was ever going to surpass its competitors.
The idea to create/revamp the ecommerce web site design came when the owner wanted to expand the business, but also wanted to set their company apart from its competitors. In order to get started, we first implemented a flash application called ‘Build a Pandora Bracelet.’ This application operates by pulling products from the ecommerce shopping cart database, which allows users to build their own bracelet.
Next, we incorporated a drag-and-drop feature to the ‘Build a Pandora Bracelet’ application in order to make it more user-friendly. This idea has proven to be a great success with thousands of users utilizing this feature in order to build their own bracelets. To further increase sales, we also added two additional features: 1) a shopping cart built in to the flash application (which allows a user to easily purchase all beads and charms that they’ve created), and 2) a print button (which gives each user a print-out of each product along with a sku and a description.
Building an extensive web site from scratch can sometimes be complicated as well as costly. Because Mykonospa.com was working within certain budget constraints, we decided to go a slightly different route. Rather than focusing on Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, we instead launched an aggressive link building campaign along with a search engine optimization (SEO) campaign, which has resulted in a 225% increase in website traffic for 2009.
To all the promotional marketers and bloggers out there this is for you. WebBizIdeas has been marketing websites that sell products for over 8 years now. During this time we’ve found a very effective means of increasing sales and search engine rankings simultaneously, PRODUCT GIVEAWAYS. Since bloggers control a large portion on content found online we started giving products to bloggers to review for FREE. These bloggers wrote HONEST reviews and posted them online for their readers. Some of the reviews were good and some bad, but we made sure they wrote them and posted something to link back to the website we were promoting. The result was a large number of back links, higher search engine rankings, and more products sold.
All the bloggers needed to disclose they were reviewing the product in exchange for a free product but that didn’t detour potential customers. They appreciated the honesty and bought more products because more creditability in the company was created. Obviously this was a win win situation, the bloggers got free stuff and the promoters sold more products.
The major downfall to all of this was the management side of things. It was extremely time consuming to monitor all the bloggers, make sure they wrote the review, make sure the product was shipped, and make sure the bloggers were keeping everything legal.
This management dilemma is what brings us here today. We are in the process of making a new piece of software to manage all of this. Users will be able to go from 40 hours/month of management time to 2 hours/month of management time. The software is called Tomoson.com and we are looking to launch in the next 4-8 weeks.
If this sounds interesting to you please go to www.tomoson.com to sign up free updates and promotins on the project.
