Facebook and Twitter have seen significant growth over the last 18-24 months. Here are the *Facebook growth statistics for the 35 – 54 and 55 + age categories, two of the largest consumer demographics.

Social Media Traffic Trends

This graph represents traffic trends created by ongoing Facebook management and promotion. As you can see the there is a general upward trend in site visits and also several large spikes.

These large spikes, both of which resulted in all time traffic records on the website, are the result of 3^rd party Facebook endorsements resulting from direct, personalized outreach. This tactic is part of a service we call Social Media Ambassador Development and is part of our Advanced Social Media Management package.

This graph represents a 4-month contract where part of our responsibility was to drive traffic from Facebook to a company blog. The highlighted area represents Facebook traffic volume for my contract period. As you can see during my contract traffic increased significantly and has fallen back to previous levels now that the staff has resumed managing the pages.

Viewers are far less forgiving online than they are offline. On average, a viewer spends 2.5 seconds on a website before moving on to something more interesting, and seldom returns to the same website twice. Similar to economics, viewers consider their attention as an “opportunity cost” (or the value of the next best alternative) measured by quality.

The first step towards attention is consistent quality.

Unlike traditional media which relies on the training and judgment of editors, online media relies on tools like Digg, Facebook and Google to filter out extraneous content from content produced with specific viewers in mind. This is different from competing for pagerank or authority, which can be affected by “black hat” tactics like link farming, content repackaging, and link exchanges.

People are turning into curators of their own online world, using alerts, bookmarkers and people with similar interests to sort and rank the content they consume daily. Curation isn’t focused on individual pieces of content, but a pattern of quality content produces consistently until the connection to value has been established. In other words, do something long enough, and eventually people will trust that you’ll continue doing it.

In conclusion, deliver high value content regularly instead of sharing the same content as someone else and you can expect steady growth in customer attention and ultimately online sales.

Online Publicity

A Brief Overview
What was once an estate comprised of highly trained, centrally-focused professionals, now is largely made up of citizen journalists, conversation communities, and content sharing groups. This is the world of “new media relations.” With the socializing of the internet, one new blog is created every two seconds, social networks are streaming content 24 hours a day, and the exchange of information is happening faster and further than ever in human history.

Service Explanation

Viral Marketing
The use of viral marketing can be traced back to the 1940’s to Brownie Wise Tupperware home demonstrations and the dawn of the “procumer” model, where the act of selling begets more buyers and sellers. The idea is to reach out to the target market most likely to spread the message, with the most credibility, and largest network. However, a weakness of the old Tupperware model was its profit driven incentive, causing tension between fellow salesmen and women from crossing territories. The digital word however is driven by excitement, a collective identity, and the chance to hear something first. What is more, assets are digital, replicable and transmittable in seconds across the world. We’re just bringing the concept into the 21st century, where information can travel a lot faster and a lot farther than ever before. So the question becomes: What tactics and strategies are available to best utilize this new media ecosystem?
Viral loops are the most advanced direct marketing strategy being developed in the world right now. Viral ability is what separates crap from quality. There’s nothing you can do to make something go viral, but there are characteristics that can be exploited to increase its chances.

Value of Third Party Endorsements
A company can find itself mislead into spending on costly second-rate promotion resulting in insufficient and inadequately qualified leads. Marketing publicity, on the other hand, uses the most under-utilized, under-valued, most believed and most powerful forms of marketing on the planet — namely, third party endorsement and word of mouth- to secure a large number of low cost, highly qualified leads. Paired with viral marketing – the oldest and most advanced direct-marketing strategy to date – creates one of the most comprehensive marketing strategies for acquiring superior leads in both quality and quantity.
 The power is in third party endorsement.

Online publicity will allow you to lead the conversation through credible third party endorsements, strengthening your reputation and value along the entire customer buying process. An article laden with positive customer testimonials, published as an editorial, and coming from a trusted source of news and information will add a level of credibility that is difficult to achieve through advertising- a medium viewed with a high level of skepticism.
People are arguing that journalism is dead (Regan.com. What does the future of Journalism Look Like. April 14, 2011.) when it’s really just the platforms that are changing. Trends including “citizen journalism” and “brand journalism” are taking hold where companies like Dell and Chrystler as well as individuals are creating their own periodical content. Reason is because readers are going online, bypassing the added costs of subscriptions and memberships and going straight to the source of information. And where the eye balls are soon follows the money.

Our Approach – “Integrated Online Marketing”
We use primarily three strategies: SEO, video, and social media. What differentiates us from others is our use of them in combination. We start by increasing your pagerank using key terms we agree upon. Next, we manage your social media profiles for easy access to your target customers. Finally, we populate your social media sites, website and blog with interesting and informative video and photos, and content so customers are discovering new and exciting information every day. The best part about the integrated approach: All three of these tools work in concert to mutually reinforce your pagerank, attention and interest.

Increasingly complex strategies are emerging everyday for adapting to these new forms of communication. As the great equalizer, the internet has changed the dynamics of how business is performed, giving small companies the same capabilities as larger companies. The “long tail” of journalist niches has opened new opportunities for e-commerce and media outreach. For businesses who know the tools and strategies, this gives them a huge advantage over business yet to embrace these new forms of communication.

The diagram below represents the overlap of three distinct industries. Each has a crucial place in the online marketing ecosystem. These worlds are interconnected in many interesting and relevant ways and therefore must be handled or managed by one company that understands how they work together and how each can help support the efforts in other areas.

The diagram below represents actual strategies and individual tools used to execute the online marketing objectives of any company attempting to get more out of their online marketing efforts. There are literally thousands of other tools, but these represent the  best tools on the market today.

Compare Internet Marketing to Traditional Marketing

The graph above displays actual sales numbers from a long term client. Their internet marketing efforts cost around $20,000 – $25,000 per year. Magazine Ad 1 costs around $30,000 after a 50% co-promotional partnership with the publisher. Magazine Ad 2 costs around $15,000 after a similar co-promotional discount. The 30,000 brochures mailed to a targeted list of subscribers to their magazine partner costs around $10,000 and their larger mailing to a group of targeted lists costs around $30,000. As you can see all methods are yielding diminishing results except for internet marketing which continues to increase.  Inversely, their cost per customer is around $150 from web, $250 per customer from magazine advertising, and between $1000 and $2000 per customer from brochures. That is why the brochures did not mail this year. Their profit margin is around $500 – $700 per customer. The only percentages not represented on the graph include individual sales representatives and word of mouth.

Currently this client is only running a SEO campaign, Google paid advertising campaign, online banner advertising, a newsletter, and advanced social media with direct outreach. We expect significant growth in the online sales numbers this year as the client adds online video production and distribution, blog creation and blogger outreach, and additional social media outreach.

Successful online marketing requires a comprehensive campaign, which includes SEO, social media, and online advertising and PR. When a business develops an integrative Internet marketing campaign it is possible to achieve excellent results and to create a long-term comparison of these results. This kind of comprehensive approach can generate large overall increases in website traffic, as well as conversions. It is an approach best used by companies with a marketing plan focused on the Internet and a company website.

Internet Marketing Results

There are five graphs included in this case study.

Graph 1 – Increase of Total Website Traffic

The first graph shows an overview of the visitors to the website between March and December of 2011. Over the course of these 9 months you can see a comprehensive online marketing strategy has increased overall site traffic from under 3000 Visitors per week to 6000 Visitors per week. This is more than a doubling of site traffic in less than one year.

Graph 2 – Increase Organic in Search Engine Traffic

The second graph shows the increase in organic search engine traffic from March to December of 2011.  The Internet marketing campaign executed during this time frame focused on content development for SEO. The creation of keyword targeted content on the website for both general keyword terms and “long tail” or niche keyword terms. Organic search engine traffic was increased by 100% over the course of nine months. This organic search traffic was increased by targeting multiple, specific keyword terms capable of attracting qualified website visitors.

Graph 3 – Increase of Traffic from Referring Sites, Online PR and Link Building

The third graph shows the effects of online public relations, link building and banner ads. The online campaign executed between March and December of 2011 focused on increasing the number of backlinks to the company website via online PR, link building and valuable banner ad campaigns on specifically chosen websites. These combined efforts increased the number of referring sites to the company website, and therefore the number of visitors being referred to the website increased as well. Taking a “quality over quantity” approach to link building ensures the backlinks created have the highest value to the search engines and therefore the most powerful, long-term effects. Over the course of nine months the traffic generated by referring sites doubled some weeks and the increase of highly qualified traffic has resulted in increased sales.

Graph 4 – Improving Google Adwords Performance

The fourth graph shows the effects of a well researched, tested, and executed Google Adwords campaign. Paid search strategies can generate leads, as well as closed sales, quickly and efficiently when Google Adwords set up, management, regular evaluations and campaign adjustments are handled properly. Until the Google Adwords campaign was reviewed and one – proper keywords were added, two – ad calls to action were developed, three – the highest priority website entry pages were identified, and four – average cost per click was analyzed the campaign did not produce. After these steps were taken, the paid search traffic doubled.

Graph 5 – Improving Social Media Performance

The fifth graph shows the results of social media efforts between March and December of 2011 executed as part of the comprehensive online marketing campaign. 

This client produces one major event each year, so traffic naturally spikes around event time, but as you can see traffic is steadily increasing year-over-year because of continued content creation, link building and optimization. As you can see Google has sent over 50,000 free visitors on a total of over 13,000 different keyword searches. It takes a lot of content to generate 13,000 different consumer search keyword combinations. This site has around 300 total pages with around 40 search engine optimized pages. We expect a large upward trend in April from 25 new keyword articles and additional link building currently being development for this site.

This client has seen steady search engine growth since the launch of their new website in May of 2008. The site was launched with around 150 pages of static product content each optimized and fully integrated, as well as 50 specific keyword target pages. The site would be doing even better if they had pursued an ongoing content creation strategy and additional link building. When we began working for this site in 2005, their site got less than 500 visitors per month. This graph represents the launch of their new site which immediate resulted in a 25-30% increase over the first site that I build for them in 2005. On top of their current free traffic of around 2,500 visitors per month, this site also uses paid search advertising to attraction 5,000 additional visitors each month.

SEO Results

There are two graphs included in this case study.

Graph 1 –  Increase in Overall Organic Search Traffic Including Brand Traffic

This graph shows how the website’s organic search traffic during 2011. It also shows 40,550 Visits on the site between January and December of 2011. These visits were generated by a variety of keywords including the website, company and product names.

Graph 2  –  Increase in Actual Organic SEO Traffic Created by General Consumer Searches

This graph shows that when brand specific traffic is filtered out the actual number of Visits generated from consumer searches completed by now potential customers with no previous knowledge of the brand name is 4,843 Visits as opposed to 40,550 Visits. It essential for any company to understand the importance of all the website analytics, data, and figures so website performance can be clearly tracked and understood.

SEO Results

In the long term every company wants to see an increase each year in website traffic, prospective customers, and closed business. This single graph shows a year over year comparison of Organic Search Traffic on the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area website for 2010 and 2011. Approximately 30 days into the contract a jump in traffic occurs and approximately 90 days after the start of the contract there is a significant spike in traffic. When the fall season of 2010 is compared to the fall of 2011 site traffic has more than doubled. Even in the off season months the year over year comparison shows a large increase in website activity.