You’re probably like, what’s SMA? I just came up with it: Social Media Applications. Ok, back to what I was talking about. Prospero recently came out with a report, gathering information from various sectors about SMO/SMA. Here’s what was found:

That percentages above represent SMA, not SMO. It looks to me that the marketing departments at these large corporate entities aren’t aware of how effective a successful Digg/StumbleUpon campaign can really be. They obviously aren’t focusing on that based upon:

C’mon… 7% is going to be used on Profiles/Social Networking? Furthermore, blogs and forums are at the top of their “Social Media Attack Plan”. What is this 2005? This needs to be shifted to Digg and the Digg’s within your industry. Probing where people congregate in your niche and attacking it. What is that you say? ….there isn’t one? Build one. Create a Digg-like site for you industry. There are platforms, like Pligg, that have layed down the coding for you. Put one on your large PR5/6/7/8 site and watch it grow right before your eyes.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The need for forums, blogs and other social aspects, like user reviews, on a site are of hugely important. But, these social applications have been around for a while and aren’t anything new. Various reports and studies have shown their effectiveness, and just now, these large entities are deciding to pour financial resources to make their site sticky.

Here’s a thought, hire someone who can go and get you on the homepage of Digg. Who can stumble every article you have that’s fresh to an extra 1000+ uniques a day. See how effective that is. Jump into the 2007 internet marketing attack plan and stay ahead of the game, rather then focusing on stickiness practices that have been around for years. Continue to build stickiness internally, but use the social tactics of today that generate what you’re looking for: revenue.

Src: Marketing Charts

As a search engine marketing company, I (we) take a vested interest not only in local search (meaning North America), but how search is doing around the world - how its growing, what others are doing and where its going. Search in North America is huge, of course, and we always here about how the hispanic market is an up-and-comer in the search space. But let me ask you, what about Asian-Pacific?

Let me hit you with a fact from a study that just came out: Asia-Pacific receives 5 million more searches then North America monthly. Here’s a chart that breaks down searches, based upon region:

You don’t here too much about the Asia-Pacific SEO/M market. I rarely see any talks about SEO in Asia, but Asia-Pacific countries represent a HUGE amount of searches every…single…month. Here’s the kicker: We can all agree that GOOG is the authority when it comes to search engineering in North America. They’re getting pretty good at it in the US of A. And for my fellow SEO’s who target alternative Google engines, you can attest to the difficulty in ranking in a “foreign” search engine, rather then to Google’s TLD. Having said all that, why haven’t you started to lay the ground work for an SEO force in Asia-Pacific?

Here’s a supporting chart:

Baidu and Naver (NHN Corp.) are killing it. They’re bringing in tons and tons (and tons) of search traffic, but you never hear about them. C’mon…Baidu is even getting more traffic then MSN Live.

There’s a huge opportunity to start working with Asia-Pacific businesses: 搜索引擎營銷.

Charts Source: Marketing Charts

How do you use word of mouth marketing for you business? Are you even using it? Do you know the power of it? Of course, you’ve heard that its the best form of marketing and you get the highest qualified leads by doing so. I ask you then, how come you’re not doing more of it? How come you’re not focusing your attention on it?

You can reform word of mouth marketing into “building relationships”. Marketing and building a client base, especially in the SEO business, should be formed more on relationships. The ‘SEO pitch’ is wearing thin on a lot of CEO’s now. They don’t want to hear it, because you’re the 4th company that’s called them today and they’re happy with their PPC campaign. Since you can use your word/mouth to market, you have an open line of communication with that business owner (relationship) - and can relate to their needs and wants, offering a solution that isn’t “sales-y” in nature.

A recent study, showcasing word of mouth marketing online:

Almost 80% of online users trust other consumer’s opinion. Interestingly further, after newspapers, online users trusted opinions posted online. That’s 3rd. …waiting for that too sink in.

Why aren’t you utilizing the myriad of features online today to harness COMMENTS, TESTIMONIALS or OPINIONS for your ecommerce store, lead generation website or service related company? If you run a service related website, offer testimonials, pictures (when they’re warranted), opinions and phone numbers from others who have used your service. If you’re selling a product, make sure you have a way (directly underneath the product) for previous customers to say what they liked and (hopefully not) disliked about your product. Your mind is the only limit to get the customer interactive with their opinion on your website.

Moving forward… a little more reinforcement:

Undergoing a word-of-mouth marketing strategy is essential for marketers, especially in the SEO space.

So, what types of word of mouth marketing are there? Lets name them:

* Buzz Marketing: Using high-profile entertainment or news to get people to talk about your brand.

* Viral Marketing: Creating entertaining or informative messages that are designed to be passed along in an exponential fashion, often electronically or by email.

* Community Marketing: Forming or supporting niche communities that are likely to share interests about the brand (such as user groups, fan clubs, and discussion forums); providing tools, content, and information to support those communities.

* Grassroots Marketing: Organizing and motivating volunteers to engage in personal or local outreach.

* Evangelist Marketing: Cultivating evangelists, advocates, or volunteers who are encouraged to take a leadership role in actively spreading the word on your behalf.

* Product Seeding: Placing the right product into the right hands at the right time, providing information or samples to influential individuals.

* Influencer Marketing: Identifying key communities and opinion leaders who are likely to talk about products and have the ability to influence the opinions of others.

* Cause Marketing: Supporting social causes to earn respect and support from people who feel strongly about the cause.

* Conversation Creation: Interesting or fun advertising, emails, catch phrases, entertainment, or promotions designed to start word of mouth activity.

* Brand Blogging: Creating blogs and participating in the blogosphere, in the spirit of open, transparent communications; sharing information of value that the blog community may talk about.

* Referral Programs: Creating tools that enable satisfied customers to refer their friends.

Src: WOMMA

WOMMA has a nice list of case studies too. I’d recommend going through all the case studies, grab some starbucks or Juice it Up, and let the creative juices flow.

You know you’ve seen it. Time and time again, a great ranking in the search engines but when you click onto the site, the site just wreaks of usability issues and bad design. Everyone appears to know, understand and acknowledge the basics of search engine optimization: Add keyword within Title tags, add descriptions to your meta’s, acquire on-topic powerful links, but how many Ecommerce Mom and Pops focus on their design, usability and conversion percentages?

Let’s take a look at this statistic:

Wow, that’s pretty interesting. 81% of online retailers are converting under 8%. Just think if you could raise 1% on your conversions - how much revenue would that be monthly/annually?

If you’re having a tough time obtaining ideas to make your site convert higher, I’d propose looking through this chart:

Wouldn’t it be nice to convert your visitors at 25%? Lets put our head around that figure a little differently: 1 in 4 people visiting your site purchase a product. Maybe its time to put down the SEO Book and start focusing on why people aren’t buying stuff on your website. You’ve got a nice traffic flow from the “Big 3″ (Google, Yahoo and Wikipedia…ooops, I mean MSN LIVE), but now its time to roll up our sleeves, get a little dirty, and bust out with our A/B split testing tools.

If you’re having difficulty channeling new ideas to make your visitors convert, go through the list above and visit each site. Here’s a guideline while popping each site into your browser:

1. What do you like about the site?
2. What don’t you like about the site?
3. What call-to-action methods do they have in place?
4. Are they offering any types of discounts, free stuff or special offers?
5. Does their web design flow nicely?
6. Can you purchase from a product page effortlessly?
7. Is the checkout process seamlessly integrated that a baby could purchase products?

That’s a good start. I’m sure you’ll find other areas on your site that are lacking in which these websites are very strong at.

If usability and navigation through your website seems to be a troubling factor, I’d like to draw your attention to the Father of Usability: Jakob Nielson. His website might not be flashy, but he has been playing around with usability integrated with web design for 10 years and definitely knows what visitors like and don’t.

Another good site to get in touch with for usability and building higher conversions is Future Now Inc. Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg published an amazing book a couple of years ago about converting for several large online brands and have an excellent track record of boosting conversion rates up tremendously.

If you’re not converting visitors-to-buyers by 8%, don’t settle for sub-par conversions. Ask yourself what you can do to make your website stand out from the other sites within the search engine result pages and convert higher. Because 1% boost in conversions means daddy’s getting a new car after the Christmas rush.

With most people thinking of Octoberfest, Halloween and Thanksgiving, you should be taking this time to revamp your online marketing for Christmas. Christmas is a huge time for many industries and verticals. Some online business rely on the Christmas season to generate more then 40% of their annual revenue. That’s a big chunk of the pie.

Predictions and forecasts for this holiday are reaching $42 billion, why are you waiting until the turkey has been carved to start your Christmas marketing push.

Here are a few of types:

1. Seasonal Trends: Keyword Discovery Seasonal Trends has great reporting that shows you seasonal reports of past keywords. That kind of keyword data is invaluable when setting up a PPC campaign or focusing for you organic rankings.

2. Landing Page Optimization: October would be the ideal month to tweak, test and turbo charge those landing pages. Jump over to Marketing Experiments and see what you’ve been missing. Add some color, pictures and new copy writing to those organic and PPC landing pages. You want to make sure you’re getting the highest possible ROI on those pages - work on those CONVERSIONS!

3. Pull Data from Last Year: If you have data from last holiday season, start plugging that information into your marketing campaign.

4. Long-Tail Keyword Pages: Find out the hot items in your industry and start developing long-tail pages for them. By doing so now, you give the search engines ample time to index those pages and get ranked. Long-tail pages will convert extremely high - don’t neglect them!

5. Christmas Specials: Its cutthroat out there! You need to have your head above the sea of your competitors and offer specials. Maybe 10% off over $50. Maybe Free Shipping. Maybe a free Christmas Teddy Bear with every purchase. Give your web visitors strong call to actions so they don’t hit the back button and go to your competitors.

That’s it for now. I’m sure we’ll visit this topic in the near future and I’ll offer a few other tips to make sure you’re progressing nicely into the holiday season.