by Todd Hyten

Client wisdom: Blogging success equals consistency

I know, a week isn’t exactly like going off into the wilderness. But for most daily bloggers, it’s the next best thing to growing a beard and playing Bongos in the Village.

I just decided to step back after I got very busy with another project and decided to let the blogging slide for a little while. I learned something very interesting from one of my clients no less. We were chatting about other local blogs (competitors and others loosely in the same market). His blog ranks very highly on Google, for his market.

His explanation of his success was simple. He blogs every day, and his blog posts are very short (100 words is long for him). “It all comes down to consistency,” he said. Even when he’s not able to blog, he has employees posting interesting news and data on his blog — every day. People know he is a “source” for knowledge in his market. His return visitor percentage is huge. He also has great spikes in new visitors when a post gains traction. I know – I track and evaluate his site performance.

So that’s the lesson, and I’m going to change how I blog accordingly. Let’s see how it goes.

09.20.10

by Todd Hyten

Three great videos on marketing: Baer, Godin, Pulizzi

A lot of people may think of web marketing/social media/inbound marketing as geeky stuff … but it’s actually just about the business of selling. In other words, it’s as old as the hills. But there are some brilliant people out there who can “connect the dots” from old concepts to today’s technology.

Here are three of them. These are brilliant, entertaining (and not short) videos from three big-name marketing guys in the current world of web marketing: Jay Baer, Seth Godin, Joe Pulizzi. You can follow short pithy thoughts from Seth Godin on his blog. Jay Baer’s site is Convince and Convert — where you can do some very deep dives on marketing. Joe’s blog is here, and if you know what’s good for you you’ll spend a lot of time on the Content Marketing Institute site as well.

Jay Baer Social Media Speaker from Jay Baer on Vimeo.

Seth Godin at Gel 2006 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

Joe Pulizzi Interview from Michael A. Stelzner on Vimeo.

09.16.10

by Todd Hyten

Twitter followers more likely to buy from your business than Facebook fans

Photographer: Francesco Marino

I don’t always use my blog to repeat news – but this item underscores one of my favorite points: you shouldn’t ignore Twitter in your marketing plans. Why?

According to a recent report by email marketing company ExactTarget (reported via eMarketer), Twitter followers are more likely to purchase from a brand they “Follow” than Facebook “Fans.”

Summing up the ExactTarge data, eMarketer says this:

Daily Twitter users who followed a brand were more than twice as likely as daily Facebook users who “liked” a brand to say they were more likely to purchase from the brand after becoming a social media follower. What’s more, Facebook fans were the most likely group to actively disagree with the question. Subscribers to opt-in marketing emails fell in the middle.

Twitter user are also more likely to recommend a brand (your business) than Facebook followers. This is supported by other studies as well. As eMarketer notes, however, Twitter users are a smaller base than Facebook. But that doesn’t diminish the fact that when they follow your business on Twitter – they are more interested/engaged than the average user.

Anecdotally I’ve seen with one client that traffic that came from Twitter spent far more time onsite and viewed far more pages. For small business users on Twitter, this is key: who would you rather have, lots of casual “Fans” on Facebook who are more skeptical and not likely to recommend, or a few who are really interested and likely to recommend your business to their friends.